Marxists had always assumed the that Communism... when it finally arrived would be a perfect existence without religion. In the words of John Lennon :"Imagine there's no heaven... no hell below us, above us only sky." This had been a concept tossed around by European intellectuals since the Enlightenment yet few had dared to act upon it. The Russian Revolution gave the World a chance to see what it would be like to make that dream a reality. Lenin believed that religion (especially Russian Orthodoxy) was a cancer on society that needed to be ruthlessly extirpated or the Revolution would never have a chance to take root. The Bolsheviks would waste no time making the arch enemies of the proletariat pay for centuries of having fed the ignorant people "spiritual booze." The Revolutionary terror would sweep away millions of ordinary citizens of the former Russian Empire in a torrent of bloodshed but would turn its fiercest wrath on the Church. Atrocities the likes of which the modern world had never seen sprang up like wild fires across an empire of 150 million people. Who would dare resist? Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow... a man with less than a year serving in a position that hadn't even existed for 300 years in an organization that probably hadn't been politically relevant since the Middle Ages, decided to answer the call. Seems like quite a mismatch. But wait whats this? This guy isn't afraid to drop some bombs. Even Lenin will find himself scared to touch him. How will it all end? Check out our latest episode to find out!
Marxists had always assumed the that Communism... when it finally arrived would be a perfect existence without religion. In the words of John Lennon :"Imagine there's no heaven... no hell below us, above us only sky." This had been a concept tossed around by European intellectuals since the Enlightenment yet few had dared to act upon it. The Russian Revolution gave the World a chance to see what it would be like to make that dream a reality. Lenin believed that religion (especially Russian Orthodoxy) was a cancer on society that needed to be ruthlessly extirpated or the Revolution would never have a chance to take root. The Bolsheviks would waste no time making the arch enemies of the proletariat pay for centuries of having fed the ignorant people "spiritual booze." The Revolutionary terror would sweep away millions of ordinary citizens of the former Russian Empire in a torrent of bloodshed but would turn its fiercest wrath on the Church. Atrocities the likes of which the modern world had never seen sprang up like wild fires across an empire of 150 million people. Who would dare resist? Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow... a man with less than a year serving in a position that hadn't even existed for 300 years in an organization that probably hadn't been politically relevant since the Middle Ages, decided to answer the call. Seems like quite a mismatch. But wait whats this? This guy isn't afraid to drop some bombs. Even Lenin will find himself scared to touch him. How will it all end? Check out our latest episode to find out!
Stephen 0:00
I want you to take a minute.. Actually.. No, I want you to think about it for longer.. An hour.. A day.. hell .. this is something everyone should spend some time contemplating. What would you give your life for? Not like theoretically. No really.Is there anything that important? Some ground rules.. It can't be your child. It can't be a spouse. It can't be a family member. It can't be a living person. It has to be something intangible. An idea… Ask yourself.. Honestly, is there something that important?? A lot of people like to say they have these sorts of beliefs. People with religious faith certainly.. But how many of them would really allow for God to cash that check? When faced with oblivion or perhaps just a painful path to that end.. Who would do it? And even if you knew paradise waited on the other end? Its a tough question.. Ok let's flip the script. What if you knew for a fact that doing something horrible was the right thing to do? What if you were called upon by a higher power.. Let's just say God.. to do something awful. You knew with absolute certainty that this is what he wanted… Let's just say you had to kill a person. Not just any person but a person considered to be a really good person by almost everyone you know. Could you bring yourself to do it? One of the reasons people like the Bible I think are these sorts of moral dilemmas. Think about Abraham being told by God to kill his first born son. Killing a kid is awful but your own?? As a father of 3 I can't even imagine. But as the story goes he was willing to do it. Fortunately, God called it off at the last moment so he was saved from that horror but what if he wasn’t. How would he be able to live with himself afterwards? Maybe he would just compartmentalize it all. The story we will tell today follows a similar path. In the Soviet Union a group of revolutionaries will be called upon to create a new perfect world. They will try to create a new existence for mankind…. But in order for this to happen they will be forced to sweep away the old belief systems. It was just as necessary to them as when God told the Israelites to slaughter the inhabitants of the land of Canaan in the book of Judges. It was a terrible deed but one that was absolutely necessary in their eyes. The land had to be cleansed or the righteous would be corrupted by the sin of the land’s inhabitants. The worshipers of Baal had to be driven from the land. Its Lenin’s war against Christianity. This time on Savage Continent.
Intro Music 3:12
Welcome back to the show. As mentioned in the past, if you could, I'd like you to stow what you're doing and go to the screen on your cell phone or wherever they list the episodes in your podcatching service. Scroll down and click that “write review” button. Just fill out the little form and click submit. Also just hit up that 5 star review button. Ah yes. Thanks so much.
Well once again the show I had planned for today wasn't quite what I initially intended. I had all this research on another topic and then I ended up following this one. So sorry it took a little longer than intended. Nonetheless I think you’ll like it.
You probably haven't heard the name Yuri Alexandrovitch Bezmanov but had you been around in the mid 1980s chances are you would have seen him on television, read one of his articles or even read one of his books or attended one of his lectures. Bezmenov was a former KGB agent that at great risk to himself and his family found a way to defect to the west via india… which was no small feat considering that India under Indira Gandhi was politically aligned with the USSR and as such refused to grant political asylum from people fleeing from that or any other country. Its a long story but he apparently was able to assume the identity of your typical pot smoking guru chasing hippie that was common in the sub continent in those days. Like most defectors he had grown disillusioned with the Soviet system.. Felt he was living a lie and just wanted a way out. Of course as a KGB agent the man knew his stuff. He knew how the Soviet system operated. KGB agents were thoroughly schooled on ideology. They understood propaganda from the inside out. They started with the work of Sun Tsu and just expanded from that. In our previous series we talked about the Soviet nuclear program and the potential it had to devastate the west in the event of conflict. Of course that was a big part of Soviet strategy but don't get the impression that megatonnage and delivery systems was the whole story.. Or even the greater part of the story. Sun Tsu taught that the best battles are ones that don't need to be fought at all. Under optimal circumstances you can get the enemy to collapse without the application of coercive force. Maybe he can collapse on his own. Bezmanov explained that between 85-90% of the KGB budget was not spent on espionage.. Not on spies or wiretaps or satellites.. No.. it was spent on something called Ideological Subversion. It's basically a plan.. And this was real. No conspiracy theory here. The Soviets actually paid for this. Their archives have been opened. To “change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite their abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their families, their community, their country.” Its psychological warfare on a grandiose scale. A “slow brainwashing process.”
So how did this sinister plan work? The idea was this. You could defeat a nation state and bring them over to the Soviet side by implementing a 4 stage plan.. And he explained this in a 1984 interview.
The first stage was something he called Demoralization, could take 15 to 20 years to complete because “this is the minimum number of years it takes to educate one generation of students.”
Marxist-Leninist ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of these college kids for two or three generations without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism, American patriotism, or any of that. And he’s talking about this in 1984, and he surmised that demoralization process had been “basically been completed” by that point.
“Actually, it’s over-fulfilled, because demoralization now reaches such areas where previously, not even Comrade Andropov (the Soviet Premier at the time) and all of his experts would even dream of such tremendous success,” he added, referring to former KGB head and Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. “Most of it is done by Americans to Americans, thanks to a lack of moral standards.”
Bezmenov explained that demoralization is important because it robs the targeted population of its ability to process valid information. Even when demoralization targets are “showered with authentic proof” of contrary positions, they simply “refuse to believe it.” So think about your super lefty college professor who basically talks about america as guilty of all these crimes against humanity.
Another word for demoralization is guilt. “Americans are routinely compelled to feel guilty about their society and national history.” Guilt is the most powerful force. “People will not accept the radical expansion of punitive government power unless they feel guilty and deserving of punishment.”
The second stage, Destabilization, is much faster, requiring only two to five years under KGB doctrine. In this stage, the fundamentals of the targeted population’s economy, political system, and culture would be attacked, while the demoralized population could not mount much of a defense.
Bezmenov in 1984 found it “absolutely fantastic” how much influence Marxist-Leninist ideas had developed in the American economy and military. In essence, a demoralized population becomes willing to believe the worst criticisms of its own society, while learning to see defenders of that society as being enemies, while avowed enemies become natural allies. The defenders are held to strict standards, while anything goes for the most strident critics.
A destabilized population becomes obsessed with hypocrisy as the ultimate political sin. They believe the best ideas – individual liberty, sovereign rights, capitalism, even the rule of law – are presented insincerely by sinister powers who seek to exploit and manipulate them. The precious resource of goodwill disappears from society as everyone comes to believe their neighbors hate them and cannot be trusted. Demoralized people lose faith in their nation, history, and ideals; destabilized people lose faith in each other.
The next and probably most critical stage… Stage 3 is The Crisis. Now a crisis can be manufactured. A crisis can happen on its own. It can be an economic shock, Maybe its a natural disaster, maybe its well…. A public health crisis. Doesn't matter. Once destabilized society runs into a crisis it will begin to collapse. This stage should last 6 to 8 weeks ideally. Its a point where a certain critical mass is reached
The more subtle benefit of a crisis is that it tends to de-legitimize aspects of the existing system that have already been softened up by the long process of demoralization and destabilization. Those who control the organs of public communication have the power to decide which aspects of the system are supposedly indicted by the crisis.
The threat of a crisis is essential for terrorizing the middle class into accepting a political agenda that is actively hostile to its interests, which leads to the fourth stage of subversion: the offer to make the pain and fear go away by accepting “big brother” or political domination.
Stephen 13:58
So the fourth and final stage is called “normalization.”
“After a crisis, with a violent change of the power structure and economy, you have a so-called period of Normalization that may last indefinitely.” This is the final stage of subversion. He would say “Normalization is a cynical phrase borrowed from Soviet Propaganda.”
“When the Soviet tanks moved into Czechoslovakia in 1968, Comrade Brezhnev said, ‘Now the situation in brotherly Czechoslovakia is ‘normalized.’ This is what will happen in the United States if you allow all the schmucks to bring the country to crisis, to promise people all kinds of goodies and a paradise on Earth, to destabilize your economy, to eliminate the principle of free-market competition, and to put a Big Brother government in Washington, D.C. with benevolent dictators like Walter Mondale, who will promise lots of things – never mind whether the promises are fulfillable or not,”
“They are instrumental in the process of subversion only to destabilize a nation,” he said of the academics and activists. “When their job is completed, they are not needed anymore. They know too much. Some of them, when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist-Leninists come to power, obviously they get offended. They think that they will come to power. That will never happen, of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot.”
Its so interesting. This is what happens when the Soviet Union takes over other countries. When they take over Czechoslovakia and a number of different countries in South America where this happens. Vietnam. You could make the case that thats what happened in the Soviet Union where you have all these ardent revolutionaries carrying out these mass acts of terror. Doing all these dirty deeds and then once the government gets into power all those people one by one get knocked off. This is not hard to prove. Just look at some of the original Soviet Party Congresses and look at that same party congress 10 years later. Everybody’s been knocked off. It's a whole new cast of characters. You cant have all these original revolutionaries around.. Because they are not going to like the way things turned out because the utopia never arrives. The best example of somebody that gets knocked off is Leon Trotsky but I really don't want us to get too far ahead of ourselves. Bezmenov goes on to explain different obstacles that Soviet theorists sort of gamed out for how opposing states might attempt to thwart these designs. They might bar certain leaders from public office. They might ban certain ideas from being taught and so forth. The thing was that it was known that in the west measures like that were pretty much out of the question. There was one aspect of western.. Particularly American culture that did trouble them though.. Something they would have to undermine before there would be any hope of success. Religion. The soviets knew their history. They studied cultures from Mohenjo Daro, to ancient egypt, to the maya and aztec. If you can weaken the religious underpinning of a society everything else will fall in due time. If you can't.. Then all your efforts will be in vain. You either have to destroy it outright or compromise it to the point where it no longer operates to the benefit of the society in question. Marx and Engels knew this. Lenin knew this. Stalin and Mao knew this. You can check out his stuff. There’s still some of it up on Youtube.
It's no secret that the Soviet Union had a deep seated antipathy towards religious belief. We all know that. This of course goes all the way back to Marx himself… who took much of his thought from other thinkers like Hegel and Feurbach. Marx was a dialectical materialist. If it is not real and tangible it is not really what he cares about. All of our ideas are derived from our material condition. To think otherwise is to put the cart before the horse to say the least. We have all heard his famous “opiate of the masses” quote… “sigh of the oppressed.” Think about what an opiate is. Its something that makes one insensible to pain. Marx thinks that the main purpose for it is to make people (and we are talking about religion here) indifferent to the oppression they face in the here and now. Instead humanity is being unwittingly drugged with thoughts of some better life to come. Suffering is OK… hell maybe its something you will be rewarded for in the end. How convenient… well… if you are a member of an oppressing class of course. No. Marx is a revolutionary. In order for enough oppressed people to be willing to risk all on one throw of the dice. To have what it takes to overthrow a system of social hierarchy that goes back to the dawn of civilization they must not be allowed any sort of spiritual escape hatches. Moreover the morality that religion seems to imply.. This deference… this obedience to authority.. Hell even this concept of family. It all has to go. Marx like Neitzche believed that a completely new morality would be needed. He speaks of the need to “emancipate oneself from religion.” Once that is done.. And only then.. Is everything else he wants possible. And while Marx and Neitzche would probably find themselves disagreeing on most things. If Marx were to read Neitzche. There is one quote from “Twilight of the Idols” that he would like:
“If you give up Christian faith, you pull the right to Christian morality out from under your feet.”
And thats the whole idea. Once you take all the moral scruples that will hold back the revolution.
Marx will write:
“Of course, in periods when the political state, as such, is born violently out of civil society, when political liberation is the form in which men strive to achieve their liberation, the state can and must go as far as the abolition of religion, the destruction of religion. But it can do so only in the same way that it proceeds to the abolition of private property, to the maximum, to confiscation, to progressive taxation, just as it goes as far as the abolition of life, the guillotine.
At times of special self-confidence, political life seeks to suppress its prerequisite, civil society, and the elements composing this society, and to constitute itself as the real species-life of man, devoid of contradictions.”
He writes in A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right:
“The abolition of religion, as the illusory happiness of the people, is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”
Stephen 23:39
So Marx is pretty clear that Religion.. At least in the way that you and I would recognize it has to go. In his early writings like Das Kapital he advocates its forcible overthrow. His later writings seem to imply that maybe it will just go away on its own. He’s very clear that it is the lynchpin of what keeps the proleteriat in a state in which he is willing to submit to this terrible system of wage slavery. He thinks that the ruling class has cynically weaponized this system to their advantage. He doesnt think that it can be amended. It has to go. This is what being a revolutionary is all about. Its about tearing down systems. Not fixing them.
So his partner who was five years younger than him Engels would expound on Marx and introduce the idea of religion as “false consciousness.” That's when you follow a belief system that works against your best interest. You follow these traditions and superstitions that reinforce this dying capitalist phase of human development. He believed that science had made this mode of thinking obsolete. There is no other world. It's all make believe.
Engels would write:
“This modern materialism, the negation of the negation, is not the mere re-establishment of the old, but adds to the permanent foundations of this old materialism the whole thought-content of two thousand years of development of philosophy and natural science, as well as of the history of these two thousand years. It [materialism] is no longer a philosophy at all, but simply a world outlook, which has to establish its validity and be applied, not in a science of sciences, standing apart, but in the real sciences.”
Now of course these guys were not alone. Most socialists of the 19th century were materialists. Most were hostile to religion. Not all of them but most. We’ve talked about that in previous episodes so I don't want to rehash it all over again. Ok so our story…
Now Vladmir Ulyanov… Lenin. We’ve seen him before. He’s into the Nihilists. Chernishevsky especially. He starts from that and then he gets Marx and he puts the two together. That's going to be Marxist Leninism. He’s going to take this antipathy to faith and kicks it into overdrive. He believes that true communists must actually “combat religion.” He sees Russia as a backward and superstitious place. He hates the power of the Church in society. He associates it with the Czar and all the centuries of oppression he and his government have inflicted on the masses. This isn't like in the west. Church and state are completely intertwined. When people turn to religion.. Its almost like they are backsliding into the same state which allowed them to be oppressed all this time.
He would write:
“Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression, which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of the people, over-burdened by their perpetual work for others, by want and isolation. Impotence, of the exploited classes in their struggle against the exploiters, just as inevitably, gives rise to the belief in a better life after death, as [the] impotence of the savage in his battle with Nature gives rise to belief in gods, devils, miracles, and the like.”
In another quote he’ll say:
“Those who toil and live in want all their lives are taught, by religion, to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward. But those who live by the labor of others are taught, by religion, to practice charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters, and selling them, at a moderate price, tickets to well-being in heaven. Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.”
Now before the Bolsheviks actually assume power they are careful not to be too antagonistic to the Church. Remember. Until 1918 they are kind of a fringe group. They can't afford to alienate too many people. We will get into it in later episodes but there are numerous parties that are opposed to the Old regime. In the outset there would be little to gain by undermining the cherished beliefs of the masses. He championed “freedom of conscience” and “separation of church and state.” Nonetheless when the party did take power atheism was a requirement for anyone wanting to join the party. According to Lenin’s take on Marxism it would be this core of intellectual elites that would lead the way to the promised land… a land devoid of God.
He would say:
“The philosophical basis of Marxism, as Marx and Engels repeatedly declared, is dialectical materialism—a materialism which is absolutely atheistic and positively hostile to all religion… Marxism has always regarded all modern religions and churches, and each and every religious organization, as instruments of bourgeois reaction that serve to defend exploitation and to befuddle the working class…”
“We must combat religion — that is the ABC of all materialism, and consequently of Marxism. But Marxism is not a materialism which has stopped at the ABC. Marxism goes further. It says: "We must know how to combat religion, and in order to do so we must explain the source of faith and religion among the masses in a materialist way. The combating of religion cannot be confined to abstract ideological preaching, and it must not be reduced to such preaching. It must be linked up with the concrete practice of the class movement, which aims at eliminating the social roots of religion."
Lenin continued, stating that in order “to combat the religious fog… we founded our association, the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, precisely for such a struggle against every religious bamboozling of the workers.” Lenin wanted a political system “cleansed of medieval mildew.” He wanted to halt “the religious humbugging of mankind.”He even denounced Christianity as “necrophilia.”
Lenin doesn't mince words when it comes to this topic. He's not as good a writer as Marx. Certainly not as good as Neitzche but when he wants to make a point he really does it.
Stephen 31:27
Ok.. so what did this look like on the ground. It's one thing to denounce religion in writing or in speeches. European intellectuals had been doing that since the beginning of the enlightenment. To actually try to take it down by force? This was something seldom tried. Sure… religious groups would persecute one another. Look at the religious wars of the 16th and 17th century. Millions of people are killed over it. But trying to eliminate all religion? Thats rare. You can really only point to some extreme periods in the French Revolution for that. Well prior to the seizure of power the Bolsheviks tried to keep the cards close to their vests on the issue. They wanted to end the war, eliminate the landed elite and put dinner on the table for a people already desperate and on the brink of starvation. Following the October Revolution things changed in a hurry. All monasteries and religious educational establishments were taken over within a month. But still.. It wasn't something that Lenin wanted to be too public about. Things were tense and they still needed to build coalitions. But when the country drifted into Civil War the Bolsheviks started to become more and more extreme in their actions. Lenin introduced something called “the terror”.... A concept he got straight from Marx btw to establish his regime. They had to secure power over the countryside… a place full of peasants that increasingly grew hostile towards them. When an assassination attempt was made on the life of Lenin he let his dogs off the leash. A new secret police force named the Cheka came into existence. Its goal was to seek and destroy enemies of the revolution wherever they were and to do it with ruthless efficiency. Anyone that seemed to be in support of the old regime or even of a different revolutionary stripe such as the “left SRs’ had to go. The czar and his family were assassinated. Death squads fanned out across the land.
Figes, Orlando A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution pg. 642
As if the arbitrary arrests of suspected “class enemies,” the false imprisonment, extrajudicial murders and crippling grain requisitions were not enough it was torture and cruelty that made this episode amongst the grimmest chapters in human history.
Figes, Orlando A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution pg. 646-7
This is a nightmarish part of history that normally just gets glossed over when you learn about this period. Certainly it's something they don't teach you about in high school… or even in college. You’d like to think it was a little “here and there” but no.. millions of people were dying like this. The Russian Civil war in terms of death toll its right up there with World War I. Its unbelievable. But once you suck out the entire moral underpinning of society and all the traditional values are out the window what else is going to happen. Its like that star with nothing to keep its stable. It's going to collapse and explode in a spectacular fashion. So… who was there that had the guts to stand up to this wanton cruelty? Who would dare put their neck on the line in the face of such incalculable evil.. Enter Vasily Ivonavvich Bellavin.
Better known as Patriarch Tikon of moscow… the all to visible head of the ROC initially wanted to remain politically neutral but in the end he had no choice but to respond. He denounced the Bolsheviks in no uncertain terms and he soon became public enemy number one in their eyes. Although his office seems like an ancient one it had actually been eliminated 3 centuries earlier under Peter the Great. However, with the Czar deposed there was a need for a new spiritual leader. The Provisional government allowed for the Church to create a centralized leadership. When the Bolsheviks took over in the October revolution Tikhon was left in place. They soon wished they had gotten rid of him when they had the chance.
Unsurprisingly, it was the religious leaders that became focal points for popular opposition to this new, repressive regime. Also unsurprisingly they would become the targets of some of the most deplorable atrocities. Priests were publicly humiliated. Often they would be forced to shovel manure in their vestments. Monasteries were destroyed, Nuns were raped. Here is just a small selection of some of the more infamous crimes…
Stephen 44:40
A historian by the name of Dmitry Pospielovsky published a pretty thorough compilation of them in 1987. Here are just some of them:
“Metropolitan Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky) of Kiev was the first bishop killed by the Bolsheviks on January 25, 1918. He had consistently opposed the revolution, and he was severely beaten as well as tortured before being shot outside the Monastery of the Caves. Before being shot by his murderers he prayed to God for them to be forgiven.[11]
In the Don region in February 1918 the Reds were killing every priest they could find.[10] An 80-year-old monk-priest named Amvrosi was beaten with rifle butts before being killed. A priest named Dimitri was brought to a cemetery and undressed, but when he tried to cross himself before being killed, a soldier chopped off his right arm. An old priest who tried to stop the execution of a peasant was beaten and cut to pieces with swords. In the Holy Saviour Monastery, Red soldiers arrested and killed the 75-year-old abbot by scalping him and beheading him.
In the Kherson province a priest was crucified. In a Kuban Cossack village an eighty-year-old priest was forced to wear women's clothing, brought to the village square and ordered to dance; when he refused, he was hanged.[12]
Bishop Hermogenes (Dolganyov) of Tobolsk, was killed along with other detainees on 16 June 1918 by drowning. He had organized a religious procession the day after the Tsar had come through Tobolsk on their way to Ekaterinburg (April 28), in which he blessed the Royal family. He was arrested the following week and the Soviets promised to release him for 10,000 roubles, and later 100,000 roubles. When the ransom was collected and submitted, the delegation of notables and clergy that had delivered it were arrested as well (and later executed). Germogen was reportedly taken on a river steamer, rocks were attached to his head and he was thrown into the water.[14]
In Voronezh, seven nuns who had prayed for a White victory were reportedly boiled in a cauldron of tar.[13]
Archbishop Joachim of Nizhni Novgorod was murdered by red forces who hanged him head down on the iconostasis above the central 'Royal Doors'. The clergy in the Crimea suffered terribly: one priest named Ugliansky was killed by Red forces on grounds that he used green ribbons instead of red ribbons on the church icon lamps. Churches in Simferopol, Feodosia and other parts of the Crimea were desecrated and their clergy were brutally murdered.[15]
During the Red occupation of Stavropol diocese in 1918, the Bolsheviks killed at least 52 Orthodox priests, four deacons and four lectors. Priest Alexander Podolsky was tortured and killed for giving a Te Deum service for a Cossack regiment before it attacked the Bolsheviks. When a peasant came to collect his body, the peasant was shot dead on the spot. Fr Alexei Miliutinsky was tortured, scalped and killed for preaching to Red army soldiers that they were leading Russia to disaster and for offering prayers for the Cossacks. Even left-wing priests could be killed, such as Ivan Prigorsky who was taken out of church on Holy Saturday into the street, where Red soldiers cursed him, mutilated his face and then killed him.[17]
In the diocese of Perm, during 1918, at least 42 churchmen were murdered.[17] A priest in Perm was killed by the Cheka who cut out his cheeks and eyes, and then paraded him through the streets before he was buried alive.
Adronik, the archbishop of Perm, was arrested immediately after the rite of anathema was performed in his cathedral. He was probably executed some time shortly after December 1919. A delegation from the All-Russian Church Sobor in Moscow went to Perm to investigate what had happened. While returning, however, their train was boarded and they were all shot by Red soldiers.
In the town of Chorny Yar on the Volga, a lay missionary named Lev Z. Kunsevich, proclaimed the Patriarch's encyclical to a crowd of people. Kunsevich was arrested and publicly shot in July 1918.
Bishop Macarius of Vyazma, who was beloved by the local population, was arrested as a result of his popularity in the summer of 1918. He was executed along with fourteen others in a field near Smolensk, whom he ministered and attempted to comfort with blessings before their execution. One of the soldiers who executed him afterward confessed on his deathbed that he had killed a saint.
Bishop Nikodim of Belgorod, condemned acts of violence, plunder and murder in his sermons and he was arrested by the local Cheka commandant, Saenko, at Christmas 1918. Resistance from the population in protest to his arrest, caused Saenko to release him and ordered him not to preach those things again. The bishop continued to preach these things, however, and he was arrested again. A priest's wife who went to plead on the bishop's behalf was executed on the spot. The bishop was killed soon after, but they disguised his corpse to make it look like a soldier and threw it into the common graveyard.
Bishop Leontius was murdered along with most of the diocesan clergy in 1919 after he made a sermon that quoted Jesus' words "I was naked and you have clothed me, I was ill and you looked after me" and this quotation was interpreted as an attack against the Bolsheviks.
In Kharkov, a priest named Mokovsky was executed for criticizing the Bolsheviks in his sermons. When his wife came to get his body, the Cheka chopped off her limbs, pierced her breasts and killed her. In the village of Popasnaia in the Donets Coal Basin, the priest Dragozhinsky was executed for a sermon that was interpreted as an attack on the Reds.
A priest named Shangin was murdered and his body was cut in pieces. Arch-priest Surtsov was beaten for several days before he was shot and his body was thrown into the Pechora river. In the town of Pechora an old priest named Rasputin was tied to a telegraph pole, then shot and then his body was given to dogs to eat. In Seletsk Afanasii Smirnov, a psalmist was executed for giving a funeral litany over a dead French soldier.
The Bolsheviks closed churches and used them for other purposes. There were accounts of drunken orgies taking place in the desecrated churches.”
And it goes on and on… But the thing is that Russia’s War was so brutal, so devastating that one could make the case that these types of atrocities just sort of went with the times. Yes.. with the Bolsheviks being avowed atheists perhaps the church could have been just a potentially
subversive element in society. Maybe they had just been a bit “overzealous” Since the original February revolution there had been a huge drop off in church attendance. You get a lot of instances where people defended clergy but there were many more when people did nothing at all. In most instances they were just so scared that they wanted to get out of the way. There are numerous documented instances in which Red soldiers open fire on church processions.
There was a certain order of events that repeated themself time and time again.
The people who committed these atrocities very often were hardened criminals. Literally people who suffered from psychopathy. I teach psychology and the part of the course I always find interesting is the portion that deals with antisocial personality disorder. People that just don't seem to have a sense of guilt. Its not that they are evil necessarily, it's that they don't feel that sense of loss. That gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach when you knowingly hurt another person. They cant help it. For whatever reason that part of their frontal lobe just doesn't do what it should. We detest people like that but aren't we all on some level fascinated by it? I guarantee you more people are interested in the psychological makeup of charles manson than mother teresa. We want to think that the people who commit horrors like this are simply wired that way but it just isn't true. So many times when these massacres are taking place the people doing the killing recoil in horror from what they have just done. Its like the ideology and the adrenaline wear off… just for a moment and they are aghast at what acts they've just committed. They've listened to Lady Macbeth and they wish they hadn't.
Theres this one story I kind of alluded to it. I mentioned Bishop Mecarius. He recorded his experience of this. he said:
“Vladkya was the last one. All that time, he was praying with the prayer rope in hand and blessed everyone saying: “go in peace.” When it was his turn , the Red Army soldier hesitated. Seeing fear in the executioner’s eyes, Vladkya said: “My son, may not your heart be troubled, but do the will of the one who sent you.” Soon after, this soldier, an ordinary peasant, appeared at a hospital for the mentally retarded. Every night he saw the murdered saint blessing him. “I suppose I have killed a holy man. Otherwise how could he know that my heart sank? But he did know and he blessed me out of compassion and blesses me to show he is not angry. But I know that my sin cannot be forgiven. I do not like God’s world anymore. I do not deserve to live and I do not want to.” These were the words of the pitiful killer.”
Patriarch Tikon excommunicated the entire Bolshevik leadership because of these events… and he didn't do it quietly.. Maybe he knows that the people committing these crimes are being put up to it by other people? So, in the middle of all of this. The highest church in the land, the Russian Orthodox church published a letter and read it out publicly.
Here is a letter he published later that year. It was published and read out in Churches across the land:
“THE HUMBLE TIKHON, by the Grace of God Patriarch of Moscow and of All Russia,
To all God’s beloved, prelates, priests, and all faithful children of the Orthodox Russian Church.
“He might deliver us from this present evil world.” (Gal. 1: 4.)
The Holy Orthodox Christian Church is passing through a period of stress. The open and concealed enemies of the truth of Christ have started to persecute that truth and are aiming a mortal blow at the cause of Christ. In place of Christian love they are sowing seeds of malice, envy, and fratricidal war.
Christ’s precept to love our neighbor is forgotten and trampled tinder foot. Every day we learn that innocent people, not excluding those lying sick in bed, are being frightfully and brutally murdered for the sole offense that they have honestly discharged their duty to the country and have devoted all their energies to serve the welfare of the people. These crimes are committed … in broad daylight with unprecedented effrontery and outrageous brutality … in almost every city of our native land …
These crimes fill our heart with deep sorrow and compel us to denounce sharply these monsters of the human race … in accordance with the precept of the Holy Apostle: “Them that sin reprove in the sight of all, that the rest also may be in fear.” (I Tim. 5: 20.)
Think what you are doing, you madmen! Stop your bloody reprisals. Your acts are not merely cruel, they are the works of Satan for which you will burn in Hell fire in the life hereafter and be cursed by future generations in this life.
By the authority given me by God I forbid you to partake of the Christian Mysteries. I anathematize you if you still bear a Christian name and belong by birth to the Orthodox Church.
And you, faithful children of the Orthodox Christian Church, I beseech you to have nothing to do with this scourge of the human race: “Put away the wicked man from among yourselves.” (I Corinthians 5: 13.)
Violent outrages are being committed against the Orthodox Christian Church. The blessed mysteries, which sanctify the birth of man or the union of husband and wife in a Christian family, are openly declared unnecessary and superfluous. Holy Churches are being destroyed by gunfire (churches of the Moscow Kremlin) or looted and desecrated (the chapel of Our Savior in Petrograd); monasteries most revered by the faithful, such as Aleksandro-Nevskaia and Pochaevskaia Lavras, have been seized by the godless rulers of darkness under the pretext that they are the people’s property. Schools maintained by the Orthodox Church for the training of ministers and religious teachers have been declared useless and turned either into schools of atheism or into nurseries of immorality.
Church and monastery properties are being confiscated under the pretext that they are the property of the people, but the legitimate will of the people is never taken into consideration. And, finally, the government which promised to give Russia justice and truth and safeguard freedom and order acts everywhere and toward everyone, including the Holy Orthodox Church, with unrestrained arbitrariness and violence..
Is there no limit to this insolence … ? Is there no way of stopping the aggressiveness of the enemies of the Christian Church ?
I summon you, faithful and loyal children of the Church. Come to the defense of your outraged and oppressed Holy Mother! … I summon you, beloved children of the Church, even if you should have to suffer for the cause of Christ, … for the Apostle has said: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (Rom. 8: 35.)
And you, fellow prelates and priests, sound the call … for the defense of … the Orthodox Church, without an hour’s delay. Organize unions of crusaders of the spirit … who can resist external force with the zeal of the faithful, and I firmly believe that the enemies of the Church … will be vanquished by the Cross of Christ, because the edifice of the Divine Crusader cannot be demolished: ” … I will build My Church; and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matt. 16: 18.)
TIKHON
The Patriarch of Moscow and of All Russia”
Stephen 1:02:30
So that's where he closes. That is a blistering critique. Can you imagine anyone in the religious sphere saying something comparable today?? Not only is he calling out a group of people who want him dead but he is calling on all Christians to resist. And it didn't stop with Tikhon. Oh no. The church pretty much lined up behind him. The holy council of the ROC decreed the following several days later:
And it's not like this was a one and done thing. When the Czar an his family were murdered in July he announced “The killing of the soverign without a trial was was the very greatest of crimes and those who do not condemn this are guilty of his blood.”
What's interesting about Tikhon is that he not only condemns the Bolsheviks but he is not afraid to throw the responsibility on the Russian people. He is not afraid to call it like it is. He doesn't care who he offends. He would talk about OUR national sins and lawlessness. That what was occurring was the “shattering self annihilation of a great people.” He would say “Weep dear country, bewail the heavy sins of our fatherland before it has perished completely. Weep for yourselves and for those who because of their hardened hearts have not the grace of tears.”
Check out this letter he wrote directly to Lenin on the 1 year anniversary of the October Revolution. This is truly a fearless man:
“For an entire year, you have been gripping the power of the government in your hands, and you are already preparing to celebrate the anniversary of the October revolution; but the rivers of the blood of our brothers, pitilessly murdered at your rallying, cry out to heaven and force us to tell you the bitter truth.
Having seized power and called the people to entrust themselves to you, what promises have you given them, and how have you kept these promises?
Truly you have given them a stone instead of bread, and a serpent instead of a fish (cf. Matt. 7:9-10).
… the great Motherland is conquered, diminished, dismembered; and as pay for the tribute placed on it you secretly transport to Germany gold that you yourself did not amass.
You have taken away from the soldiers everything for which they had valorously fought. You have taught them, only recently brave and invincible, to leave off protecting the Motherland and to run from the field of battle.
You have extinguished in their hearts the inspiring consciousness that there is no greater love than should one lay down his life for his friends (Jn. 15:13).
You have traded the Fatherland for soulless internationalism, although you yourselves know perfectly well that when it comes to defending the Fatherland, the proletarians of all countries are those countries’ faithful sons, and not their betrayers.
… the freedom you have given consists in all manner of indulgence to the lowest crowd instincts, in murder and theft with impunity.
You have divided the entire nation into warring camps and cast it into a fratricide unprecedented for its cruelty.
You have openly exchanged love of Christ for hatred, and instead of peace you have artificially fomented enmity between the classes. And there is no end in sight to the war you’ve generated, since you aim to deliver triumph to the phantom of world revolution with the hands of Russian worker and peasants.
I will not speak of the collapse of a once great and mighty Russia, of the total fracturing of our railroad, of unprecedented agricultural devastation, of hunger and cold that threatens death in the cities…
It was not Russia who needed the disgraceful peace with its external enemy but you yourselves, who have plotted to irreparably destroy Russia’s internal peace.
No one feels safe; everyone lives in constant fear of searches, robbery, eviction, arrest, and execution.
Hundreds of defenseless people are seized, then languish for whole months in prisons, are often executed without investigation or trial, even without going to the court you have simplified.
Bishops, priests, monks and nuns who are guilty of nothing are executed simply because of some wild accusations of vague and indeterminate “counterrevolution”. This inhuman execution is made even more onerous for the Orthodox because they are deprived of the final consolation before their deaths—the Sacraments—and the bodies of the slain are not given to their families for a Christian burial.
Isn’t this the height of aimless cruelty on the part of those who pretend to be the benefactors of mankind and who themselves supposedly suffered from cruel rulers?
But it’s not enough for you that you have reddened the hands of the Russian people with their brother’s blood; hiding behind various names—contributions, requisitions, and nationalization—you have pushed them into the most barefaced and wanton thievery.
At your hinting were plundered or seized lands, mansions, factories, houses, farm animals, money, personal things, furniture, clothing. First the wealthy, whom you’ve called “bourgeois”, were robbed; then under the epithet of “kulaks” were the more well-off and industrious peasants also plundered, thus increasing the number of paupers—although you cannot but recognize that with the impoverishment of a great multitude of individual citizens the wealth of the nation as a whole is lost, and the country is impoverished.
Tempting uneducated and ignorant people with the opportunity for easy and unpunished gain, you have fogged their consciences and muffled in them the awareness of
sin; but no matter what names you hide this evil-doing behind, murder, violence, and robbery will ever remain serious sins and crimes that cry out to heaven.
You promised freedom.
Freedom is a great good, if it is properly understood—like freedom from evil, not oppressing others, not turning into lawlessness and willfulness.
But you have not given that freedom; the freedom you have given consists in all manner of indulgence to the lowest crowd instincts, in murder and theft with impunity. All manifestations of both truly the civilian and higher spiritual freedom of mankind have you mercilessly crushed.
Is it freedom when no one can bring home food or rent an apartment without special permission, when families, and sometimes all the inhabitants of whole buildings are evicted and their possessions are thrown into the street, and when citizens are artificially divided into ranks, certain of which are consigned to hunger and being plundered?
Is it freedom when no one can speak his opinion openly without fear of being accused of counterrevolution?
Where is freedom of speech and press, where is freedom for preaching in church?
Many bold preachers have already paid with their martyrs’ blood; the voice of social and governmental discussion and criticism is being stifled; all press, other than the narrow Bolshevik press, has been completely strangled.
Yes, we are experiencing terrible times in our reign, and it will not be erased from the peoples’ soul for a long time, having darkened the image of God in it and stamping in it the image of the beast. The words of the prophet have been fulfilled:
Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.(Is. 59:7).
We know that our rebukes will evoke only anger and indignation in you and that you will look for an excuse in them for accusing us of opposition to the authorities, but the higher your “column of wrath” rises, the more proven will be the testimony to the truth of our rebukes.
Now to you, who are using your authority to persecute your neighbors and decimate the innocent, we extend our word of instruction: celebrate the anniversary of your coming to power by freeing the prisoners, putting a stop to the bloodshed, violence, devastation, and persecution of faith; turn not to destruction but to the establishment of law and order, give the people their desired and deserved rest from civil war.
Otherwise all the righteous blood you have spilled will be required of you (cf. Lk. 11:50), and you who took sword in hand will yourselves die of the sword (cf. Matt. 26:52).”
He’s writing this in 1918. A year after the October Revolution. Its just getting started. It hasnt event begun yet. When you talk about the sheer numbers of people that will be brutally murdered by this regime. Its almost like he sees where its headed. Not everyone will be like him. A lot of people… even within the church thought “maybe this might be a good thing.” Maybe it’ll work out!! And there is so much more.. There is a narrative out there that these guys just decided to lay down and die. That they just let the country go to hell in a handbasket. That is completely false. Nonetheless after 1918 until the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 no theological books were printed, no church schools were allowed to exist… all candle factories were closed. Still… with all that said during the Civil War period the persecution of the Church was more sporadic than systematic. Lenin didn't want to antagonize the peasantry too much. Soviet records had 1,500 clergyman out of 140,000 actually getting killed during the Red Terror. Even the requisition of valuables wasn't done thoroughly as one might expect. Propaganda and humiliation were the preferred weapons of choice.
Figes, Orlando A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution pg. 745-6
Stephen 1:17:05
They would do all sorts of things. They would open up coffins of saints to show that the supposedly incorruptible bodies had decayed after all. They’d show up a “weeping icon” was just a statue with a rubber water bottle behind it. They would take peasants up in airplanes to show that there were no angels in the sky after all. They founded a social organization. Eventually there will be 3.5 million people in this group called “The League of the Militant Godless' ' that would pose sham debates with some paid off priest that was just there to be a straw man. Its like putting Christopher Hitchens against some crummy street corner pastor. Although it was later proven that many of these clergymen had faced torture or been threatened with torture in Cheka jails before participating in these contests. Lenin ordered one particularly popular monastery outside of Moscow to be turned into a “museum of atheism.” They even changed the working week to six days. No sunday. No church. Some of the things they did were whimsical or even comical since they overtly took this state atheism and tried so hard to make it into a new religion that even a small child would be able to make the connection.
Figes, Orlando A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution pg. 746-8
Still. If you were a practicing believer.. At this point you could choose to look the other way and try to ignore it. You may have known someone that was killed due to religious belief.
The thing was that up until the summer of 1921 the Soviet state did not feel secure enough to go all out on these dreams of scientific atheism. h peasant rebellions had rocked the Russian heartland. But with those disturbances finally quelled the regime could get down to business. Starvation was rampant in the countryside with as many as 5 million deaths so far. Tikon decided this would be a good opportunity for the church to play the humanitarian role it had always played in society. He wanted it to orchestrate relief for the countryside. Now this had already been a sore spot for the Bolsheviks. Civil War notwithstanding the Volga Famine of the early 1920s was a humanitarian disaster on the level with few people had ever seen. Estimates on the death toll go as high as 10 million. In 1921 there were 33 million people on the brink of starvation. Outside of China the world had seen nothing on this scale. There are pictures … actual photographs of peasants selling human body parts in town marketplaces. One has a adult human head and the head of a child right next to each other. They are quite literally some of the most shocking photographs I've ever seen and they are from 1920. When the outside world learned of how bad it was food donations came in from all over the world.. Much of it from then Secretary of Commerce and future US president Herbert Hoover. He would organize a relief effort of grandiose proportions.
This is America’s contribution:
Children fed daily: 4,173,339
Adults fed daily: 6,317,958
Maximum number fed daily 10,491,297
Number of meals served 1.75 billion
Number of separate kitchens opened 21,435
People clothed 333,135
Medical supplies value 7,635,000
Hospitals 16,400
Inoculations 6,000,000
And thats just from America..
So if you are Lenin you should be happy no? The Capitalist west that you absolutely can’t stand just decided to turn the other cheek and…. Umm no..
Now Lenin was not a little embarrassed to have received all this aid from the despised capitalist west. I mean he was talking about destroying them… literally. I mean that was the point of invading Poland. That's for a future episode. The regime had systematically redirected almost all food imports to the proletariats in the city at the expense of the countryside and a lot of the people that are in charge of distributing food, Americans especially are going to be super frustrated to the point where they want to go home. The regime did spend some money on food imports in May and June, but these were for the cities, and they mostly consisted not of grain and seed, but perishable luxuries such as Persian fruits, Swedish herring Finnish salted fish German bacon (7,000 tons), French pig fat, and chocolate.
“ As one of Lenin’s own purchasing agents later recalled with a shudder, Communist elites in Moscow and Petrograd were consuming “truffles, pineapples, mandarin oranges, bananas, dried fruits, sardines and lord knows what else” while everywhere else in Russia “the people were dying of hunger.” Far from easing up on the starving peasants of the Volga basin, on July 30, 1921, Lenin instructed all regional and provincial Party committees to “bolster the mechanisms for food collection” and to “provide the food agencies with the necessary party authority and the total power of the state apparatus of coercion.”
Lenin seemed totally indifferent to this unfolding humanitarian crisis. He never toured the affected areas. He never saw a single dead body or starving child. He did however read the foreign news reports and for the Bolshevik government they were not a good look. He oversaw the creation of the “Friends of Soviet Russia”
Mcmeekin, Sean The Russian Revolution a New History pg. 324 (quote)
“Give,” the FSR instructed American readers of the Nation and the New Republic, “not only to feed the starving, but to save the Russian Workers Revolution. Give without imposing reactionary conditions as do Hoover and others.” Judging by the amount of money collected by the FSR—$ 125,000 by October 1921 (although $ 73,000 of this was wasted on agitprop and overhead)—these appeals were effective, not least in smearing Hoover, whom the Nation accused of “us[ ing] his food to overturn the Soviet government.”
In the middle of this PR debacle steps Tikhon.. And this to Lenin was just a golden opportunity. He knew a good thing when he saw it. Lenin was a political gamester. The whole time this had been going down he had discreetly been funneling the last remaining Czarist gold reserves to Soviet purchasing agents abroad… something to the tune of 44 tons in February 1921 not for food for the starving millions but for weapons. Nonetheless.. He knew he had a prime scapegoat in his sights.
Mcmeekin, Sean The Russian Revolution a New History pg. 325 (quote)
Patriarch Tikhon had embarrassed Lenin no less badly than had Hoover with his own response to the famine. By the end of June 1921—more than a month before Lenin had issued his own appeal to global “proletarians”—Tikhon had printed up 200,000 copies of a moving appeal to Russia’s Christians to “take the suffering into your arms with all haste… with hearts full of love and the desire to save your starving brothers.” The patriarch then established his own famine relief committee, which collected 9 million rubles. On August 22, 1921, Tikhon wrote to Lenin, asking permission for the Church to be allowed to buy food supplies directly and organize relief kitchens in famine areas. Enraged by the patriarch’s impudence, Lenin ordered Tikhon’s famine relief committee dissolved, arrested its leaders, and exiled them to Russia’s far north. Tikhon, still under house arrest, continued receiving donations, but he was forced to turn these over to the government.”
Stephen 1:36:18
The Soviet government launched an all out campaign against the church claiming it was they who were responsible for the starvation. Which is totally off the wall. They weren’t doing enough. Instead of selling all their remaining wealth for relief they were trying to raise money outside themselves. Articles circled in the state run newspapers Izvestia and Pravda supporting confiscation of Church valuables. When the Central Committee called for the requisition of all church property in February 1922 Tikhon lost it. He declared the decree a sacrilege and threatened excommunication to anyone who removed sacred vessels from the churches. Now a new reign of terror was to be directed soely at the clergy themselves.
Figes, Orlando A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution pg. 748-9
So many times you hear Marxists.. Again and again try to lay everything the regime did at the feet of Stalin. No… the evidence is pretty clear. Had Lenin lived longer the result would have been much the same. As it was in 1922 alone about 8,000 people were executed. Tikhon would claim knowing 10,000 priests in prison or exile. But…. and this is key.. The only thing that stayed the government’s hand… even now was how all of this looked abroad. The Soviet state would always deny that there was ANY religious persecution within its borders. They would NEVER officially state that professing a certain religion was outside the law. And even today you will hear people spouting this line. Its silly but not everyone knows what you know dear listener. And don't think it was only the Christians getting it on the chin here. Jews were persecuted right alongside with over 800 synagogues forcibly shut.
The state finally felt itself capable of moving against the actual church leadership… and they went right to the top. In May 1922 Tikhon himself would have to stand trial for… you guessed it… treason. Although he defended himself heroically the outcome was never in question. He would eventually be condemned to house arrest. In Moscow alone 11 top clergymen would be sentenced to death. Not only that but several days later a Moscow tribunal ruled that the “Existence of an organization called the Orthodox hierarchy” was now illegal. All people within it or loyal to it were criminals.” In his masterwork… “The gulag archipelago” Alexander Soldynitsyn would describe the efforts of the regime to create a sort of sham church known as the “Living Church” that was supposed to be friendly to the soviet state but everyone knew were mere puppets. And well… since this book is about the Gulag guess where all these unhappy people ended up!!
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Gulag Archipelago pg. 36-8
Now this “Living Church” is interesting because it represents an effort to destroy Christianity from within rather than without. There had been a movement to reform the Church called “Renovationism.” It was a movement that wasnt limited to Russia or even the Orthodox Church. And this is interesting… they made particular use of the term “social justice.” Originally “social justice” had simply meant a sort of personal virtue but its only now that it gains a wide parlance and becomes what we recognize it as today…. A sort of widespread progressive social equity and calls for a more even distribution of wealth among other things. As late as 1891 Pope Leo XIII used the term in an encyclical called “The Evil of Equality.” As it was the Renovationists flipped the term on its head. The Bolsheviks.. And this was an issue of dispute among them.. Thought that perhaps they could find people within the Church that were favorable to the ideas of Marxism. True Marxists are by definition atheist but…. There is a sort of egalitarian strain within Christian thought that perhaps one might be able to weaponize. There were a number of prominent clergy that go along with this. Some really believed it. Others saw it as an opportunity to get ahead. The figure most associated with the movement was Alexander Ivanovich Vvdensky. While Tikon is under house arrest in 1922 he becomes leader of the “Living Church.” Now the living Church would come out in favor of clerical marriage, hierarchical reform and several other things but the one thing they insisted upon is that people break with the old church and swear allegiance to the new Soviet state.
Stephen 1:51:30
In a council that met in April/May 1923 they announced the following:
“The great October revolution brings to life great values of equality and labor, which are found in Christian teachings. We must thank our government, which contrary to foreign slanders, does not persecute the church. In Russia, everyone is free to proclaim their beliefs. The faithful should not see in the Soviet government the power of Antichrist; on the contrary the Soviet government, by legal means, is the only one in the world to have brought about the ideals of God’s kingdom. Therefore, every believer must not only be an honest citizen but also with the Soviet government, by all means must struggle to implement the ideals of God's kingdom on earth.”
They go on to say they no longer recognize Bishop Tikhon who was formally deposed. They say they are fine with clerical marriage and a number of other things.
They also held some views that normal Christians… even today might find quite heretical. There is a sort of giant ecumenical meeting in Leningrad in May of 1922 where the leadership of the Living Church tries to sell themselves and their beliefs to the people. It doesn't end well. So there is going to be a liturgy and then an an Orthodox clergyman by the name of Metropolitan Benjamin addressed the people saying:
There have arrived from Moscow to representatives of the Living Church suppose that we accept their teaching I cannot do this without you who elected me so I've invited all of you who are interested in Church Affairs listen carefully they will explain their program to you and I will express my own opinion.
“Brothers and sisters, up to now we have been subject to the Czar and the Metropolitans. But we are now free, and we ourselves must rule the people and the Church. More than 1900 years have passed since it was written for us that the Lord Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary and is the Son of God. But that is not true. We recognize the existence of the God of the Sabbath about whom our whole Bible and all the Prophets have written. And we recognize them. But Jesus Christ is not God. He was simply a clever man. And it is impossible to call Mary, who was born of a Jewish tribe herself and gave birth to Jesus the Mother of God and the Virgin. And so now we have all recognized the existence of God, that is the God of the Sabbath and we must all be united. That is both Jews and Catholics must be a living people’s Church.”
Then apparently everybody just loses it. A bunch of people get up and they’ll say this:
“We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God and we recognize the Mother of God to be the Virgin.”
Then another Living Church member gets up and says:
“Brothers and sisters. The baptism of small children has been accepted by us but when the child is just born he doesn’t understand anything. They baptize him. Put a little cross on him and he grows up with the obligation of wearing his cross and then taking it off. But when he as grown up he will learn and know everything and the cross will be quite unnecessary for him so we do not recognize the baptism of young children and when he becomes of age let him be baptized and wear a cross. In the same way we do not recognize marriage. It is an unnecessary and wrong. Why bind people? It should be like this: They should get together. Register a civil marriage and if one doesn’t like the other then let them go off in search of another and let him take another woman. We have freedom now so we do not recognize any saints and relics. We do not recognize monasticism. We don't need any monasticism. Before bishops come from the monks. This is wrong because man cannot live without a woman or a woman without a man. Bishops should be married and priests also. It used to be that a priests wife if she died he had to remain a widower throughout his life. That is wrong. Now there is freedom. We can take a second and a third wife.”
Then someone gets up and says:
“Although Vvedensky said the Jesus Christ is not God but a clever man and that the Mother of God is not a virgin, I do not agree with this. I recognize that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and the Mother of God a virgin… but baptism, marriage, holy relics, monasticism I do not recognize.”
After this the people get up and say “We do not need your explanations. We do not want your new Living Church!!”
So there is a disturbance. People are shouting then the guy who sort of called this meeting in… Metropolitan Benjamin. He’s representing the Orthodox Church. There’s a lot of people here. The account has like 12,000 people in attendance. Its not a small affair. He gets up and says the following:
“ You have all heard all the explanations of the representatives of the ‘Living Church.’ Perhaps there is someone who will agree to join them. But I cannot, because this is the same blasphemy which was previously preached by Arius and his followers. And so I, in accordance with the rules of the Apostles and the Eucemenical Councils am obliged to anathematize all the leaders of this living and new church and their followers.”
And then he turns towards the “royal doors” and he says the following “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God and of the all-pure immaculate and ever-virgin his Mother, the Birth-Giver of God I anathematize…”
And then he pronounces his anathema of all the teachers and followers of the Living Church and while they are chanting the anathema Vvendsky runs out of the room through this sort of side door and he informs the GPU (Cheka) and gives them a phone call informing them about what happened. So Metropolitan Benjamin is going to preach and he’s going to explain why these people are wrong to the people but while he’ speaking representatives of the Soviet authorities are going to arrest him and the 4 bishops and all the people that are organizing this meeting.
“The Petrograd Cheka threatened Venyamin that if he did not revoke the excommunication he would be put on trial for opposing the confiscation of church valuables, which could result in a death sentence. Venyamin refused to give in to this pressure, was arrested, put on trial for treason and shot together with three of his clergy.”
Stephen 2:00:00
The Renovationist movement would live on but it would never gain traction. People saw it for the sham that it was. By the late 1920’s it went into a period of rapid decline… Despite being backed wholeheartedly backed by the state.
While all this was going down Lenin was falling into a terminal decline. His health had gotten worse and a series of strokes left him in a near vegitative state. It was the way his death was handled though that would evinces the way the Soviets truly saw the idea of religion.
Slezkine, Yuri The House of Government pg. 212-13
St Augustine once wrote “there is a God shaped hole in every man that only Christ can fill.” The Bolsheviks were the first to truly put that idea to the test on a national scale. They were the progenitors of a grand experiment that would see according to some estimates 20 million people executed, worked to death or God knows what else for their faith. But this is just the opening chapter in a larger war that would spill far beyond the borders of the Union of Soviet Socialist republics. We hear about people that have suffered for their beliefs but it always seems to have the air of a children’s story or at best a sort of hagiography. The kind of stuff that goes on the stained glass window if a church window that one looks at to pass the time on sunday mornings. No this is real. These events happened within the living memory of many people alive today. Yet most people have no idea whatsoever. I’m certain most of you.. Even if you are observant believers Christians, Jews or whatever… No one told you this. But it happened. Its real. So in 1927 as the persecutions are rolling on… because after Lenin there’s going theres going to be a power vacuum and then Stalin will take over
A group of Orthodox clergy will be sent to the Solovetsky Islands in the high arctic into what was a monastery at one point. It will be part of the Gulag system and it was one of the worst camps you could get sent to. So in 1927 they are going to create something known as the Solovetsky Memorandum and it is going to lay out the “utter incompatibility of the Church’s teaching with what is called ‘Communism.’
It reads:
'The Church recognises the spiritual principles of existence; communism rejects them. The Church believes in the living God, the creator of the world, the leader of its life and destinies; Communism denies His existence, believes in the spontaneity of the world's existence and in the absence of rational, ultimate causes of its history. The Church assumes that the purpose of human life is the heavenly fatherland, even if she lives in conditions of the highest development of material culture and general wellbeing; communism refuses to recognise any other purpose of mankind's existence but material welfare. The ideological differences between the Church and the state descend from the apex of philosophical observations to the practical ... sphere of ethics, justice and law: communism considers them to be a conditional result of class struggle and assess the phenomena of the moral sphere exclusively in terms of utility. The Church preaches love and mercy; communism camaraderie and merciless struggle. The Church instills in believers humility, which elevates the person; communism debases man by pride. The Church preserves chastity of the body and sacredness of reproduction; communism sees nothing else in marital relations but satisfaction of the instincts. The Church sees in religion a life-bearing force which ... serves as the source for all greatness in man's creativity, as the basis for man's earthly happiness, sanity and welfare; communism sees religion as opium, drugging the people and relaxing their energies, as the source of their suffering and poverty. The Church wants to see religion flourish; communism wants its death. Such a deep contradiction in the very basis of their weltanschauungen precludes any intrinsic approximation between the Church and state, as there cannot be any between affirmation and negation ... because the very soul of the Church, the condition of her existence and the sense of her being, is that which is categorically denied by communism.'
In the end I dont think it is possible for faith.. Christian faith at least to be reconciled with something like Marxism… certainly marxist leninism. Marxism at its core believes that evil entered the world because of social hierarchy.. Division of labor. Before that people were in a sort of childlike perfection. Strip away all this baggage and we can get there again. The garden is still within reach… we can get there we just need to struggle… struggle… struggle against everything thats come up since we were hunter gatherers. Thats not compatible with a faith that preaches that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” A belief system that sees not innocence at the core of humanity but selfishness, greed, envy, lust, cowardice and fear. This is what happens when the teacher leaves the room. In my opinion the two worlds can never come together. Although they share many traits in common…. Take a jar of oil and water and shake them. For a time they might look like a single substance but in the end they cannot live in the same world.
Outro Music 2:14:17