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Read Victor Sebeschen's Lenin, Power and Love (15)
Continued by Victor SebeschenLenin, Power and Love.The following are some of the memorable passages from the
Lenin and the Russian Orthodox Church
One organization that continued to resist Lenin's will was the Orthodox Church. Christian faith and Lenin's version of communism were destined to clash sooner or later. Lenin had always wanted to launch an anti-religious campaign and, if possible, destroy the Church, but he waited for the right moment. For the first three years he was cautious and relied on political propaganda. When his army was defeated and the rebel peasants were pacified, Rainin saw the time to attack the church. With a single edict that he hoped would gain popular support, Lenin decided to attack the church.
Under successive emperors, the Church occupied a unique position of both immense secular and spiritual authority. Only the Orthodox faith had the right to accept converts.
It received generous state subsidies, which covered the salaries of 45,000 parish monks and supported the finances of its 100,000-strong monastery. The Orthodox Church was one of the largest land owners in Russia.
Although church congregations had declined dramatically in the ten years preceding the February Revolution, Russia remained an overwhelmingly Orthodox nation. The Orthodox faith and the power of the Czar were inextricably linked. The Church was, in effect, a ministry of the state with its own ministers. Historically, its politics have been ultra-reactionary.
Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, vol. 2, p.295
Some line breaks have been made.
Prior to the Russian Revolution, the Russian Orthodox Church under Czarist rule functioned as one of the governing bodies of the state. This citation states that it had an immense power and financial base.
Yes, that is true, but the local priests and monks were forced into a very difficult life.
On that subject, see above.The Life of a Russian Rural Priest in the Nineteenth Century."The imbalance between the power and financial base was enormous. Only the high-ranking clergy of the great central temples, such as Moscow and Petersburg, enjoyed a privileged life, and the countryside was quite desolate. This citation says that the lavish treasury money was supporting 45,000 clergy, but the local priests and monks were paid only enough to make it impossible for them to live on. Furthermore, the educational institutions were in dire straits, and the number of corrupt and corrupt local churches was increasing. For more details, please read the above article.
Now, this religious situation must also be considered carefully when considering Dostoevsky. Even if we speak of Russian Orthodoxy in general, the elite monks in the center and the dilapidated priests and monks in the provinces differ in their personalities, and of course their individual personalities are also different.
In the midst of such a wide variety of forms of Russian Orthodoxy, I felt again that it is important to consider what kind of image of Russian Orthodoxy Dostoevsky idealized.
The Beginning of Lenin's Attack on the Orthodox Church
One of the first proclamations issued by Lenin separated church and state, recognized non-Orthodox marriages, banned religious education in state-run schools, and withdrew all state financial aid to the church. This is quite moderate for a revolution led by staunch atheists.
The new Patriarch, Archbishop Tikhon of Moscow, had a reputation as "a ...... pious and unworldly man with a strongly Russian view of destiny. He chose to clash with the Bolsheviks from the start. Tikhon was "an open and ...... concealed enemy of Christ who has been bent on destroying His cause by beginning to persecute the Church and sowing the seeds of ...... malice, hatred, and unjust strife everywhere. He lamented about "these ...... enemies of mankind, these monsters of mankind.
There were a few sporadic attacks on some monks, but such attacks were not official policy at this stage. In his instructions to the Chekars and Red Guards, Lenin explicitly stated that for the time being they were not to bother with the churches. Be very careful with the Church. Do not be in a hurry. The time for this battle will come, but wait," he wrote to Gerzinski. When he and other Communist leaders were "excommunicated" by Cihon, Lenin ignored this Patriarch.
Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, vol. 2, p.295-296
Some line breaks have been made.
Lenin will first press the Church in a relatively moderate way. Of course, this alone will be quite painful for the Church.
Patriarch Qihong clearly sets out a hostile stance.
But what Lenin is skillful about is that he is not "rushing into things" here. The time is not yet ripe to crush the Church thoroughly. He is waiting for the right moment.
Finally, Lenin makes his move.
Beginning of full-scale repression - Looting in the wake of famine
In 1919, the government began seizing church lands and property, as it had already done to all large landowners. This included factories, apartment buildings, dairies, hospitals, stores, and monasteries with large farmlands. The regime introduced even stricter rules forbidding religious instruction outside the church, including in "public places such as parks.
Qihong filed a formal complaint, saying, "This is aimed at making the very existence of the church, i.e., the church organization and the clergy, impossible." He was placed under house arrest for several months, and about 100 other monks were arrested.
Next came the famine, and Lenin saw an opportunity to launch an all-out attack on non-communist beliefs. Tikhon offered to deliver a substantial sum of money and "church property, except sacred consecrated vessels," to the state. In the summer of 1911, Lenin launched a political propaganda campaign that mobilized all the newspapers, pointing out that the church was "hoarding treasure" and that "we aremoney (written before an amount)to give them more of their "...... hidden wealth" so that they can convert it into bread, he demanded. If they refused, he said, their property would be confiscated.
When Tikhon replied that it was blasphemy to use consecrated goods for secular purposes, Lenin dispatched a cheker agent to loot the church. In the small town of Shuya, 300 km northeast of Moscow, 15 pious townspeople were killed in early 1912 when they tried to stop soldiers from seizing valuables from the church.
In Lenin's absence, the Party Politburo, in real power, decided to postpone future confiscations, at least for a while. When he heard of this decision, he was, as usual, furious. For him, now was the perfect time to confront the clergy, and he did not want his comrades to shy away from the confrontation.
Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, vol. 2, p.296-297
Some line breaks have been made.
The famine gave Lenin the pretext "for the sake of the starving people," and he took this opportunity to begin suppressing the church.
Lenin launched a political propaganda campaign that mobilized all the newspapers, pointing out that the Church was "hoarding treasures" and that "we are the only ones who have the power to make the world a better place.money (written before an amount)to give them more of their "...... hidden wealth" so that they could convert it into bread." This is a frightening part of Lenin's This argument is quite heinous.
This is how the churchThey hoard treasures with malice aforethought, and hide their wealth by abandoning their people."This is the impression that the Church has been hiding its wealth from the public. The point of this phrase is that even if the Church did not really hide its wealth, it is impossible to prove that it did. You can't prove that something doesn't exist. You cannot disprove the question, "Where might it be? Lenin knows this and deliberately blurts out, "The Church is actually hiding wealth.
And furthermore, Lenin said, "We who take back the wealth of the people from the wicked church, we are the righteous ones.He also adds the nuance of "the
But as I told you before,This famine was caused by the Bolsheviks in the first place.Famine. The famine was caused by excessive deprivation of grain from the peasants. In order to cover up their own mismanagement, they make the church out to be the bad guy and gloss over their own responsibility.
It was a multiple delicious operation from Lenin's point of view: looting the church and taking responsibility for his own actions. For more information on this famine, please see this previous article.
At a time of heightened public discontent of starvation, he makes the church look bad and directs the public's discontent and anger there. Herein lies Lenin's cleverness.
The media creates bad guys and directs the public's discontent to them. This is exactly what continues to happen in our lifetime. We might want to be careful when the search for the bad guys is being actively promoted.
The search for villains continues in the Corona disaster. The search for villains continues, but in a way that is off the beaten track, rather than what needs to be discussed most. We must consider what this means. It is possible that the frustration and anger is being skillfully directed.
Lenin's Violent Suppression of the Church - Convincing Use of Famine
Lenin's response to his fellow Kremlin overlords - which has only recently come to light, long after the collapse of the Soviet Union - is still shocking in its cynical cruelty. It exposes Lenin at his worst, and it is no wonder that his successors have been so careful to conceal the letter. It is a bit long, but worth quoting.
Lenin deliberately used the famine as an excuse to launch an attack on the clergy.
The enemy [referring to the Church] is making a grave strategic error in trying to draw us into battle at this time. ...... Now is the time for us to crush them with a 99% probability and secure ourselves a firm position for decades to come. It is time for us to crush them with a 99% probability and secure ourselves a solid position for decades to come.
It is precisely now, in starving areas where the people are feasting on human flesh and countless corpses litter the streets, that the valuables of the church must be confiscated with the most ruthless zeal and any resistance crushed.
It is only now, now, that the peasant masses are not in a state to support us, or at least support the clergy. ...... We must now quickly confiscate valuables.
We will not be able to do so later, since there will be no time to give us popular support except in times of desperate hunger.
The confiscation must be carried out with ruthless determination. ...... The more we succeed in executing more clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie for this reason [resistance to church plunder], the better. We must teach these people a lesson so that for decades to come they will not even dare to think of resisting.
This was the beginning of violent religious repression, and over the next fifteen years or so, more than ninety-seven percent of Soviet churches and synagogues, as well as mosques, were closed. Within two years of Lenin's proclamation, 30 archbishops and 1,100 priests had been killed and thousands more imprisoned. In Perm, witnesses said they saw Archbishop Andronik's eyes gouged out, his cheeks plucked out, and his ears cut off before he was shot. Bishop Germogen of Tobolsk was tied to a rock and thrown into the river.
On the other hand, the Bolsheviks made enormous loot from the looting of churches. According to a report to Lenin, in November 1921 alone, they confiscated 500 kg of gold, 400,000 kg of silver, 35,670 kg of diamonds, 265 kg of various precious stones, "and 964 other antiquities of undetermined value.
Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, vol. 2, p.297-298
Some line breaks have been made.
Strike when hostile forces are least able to resist.
At a time of maximum peasant discontent and starvation, no one should be trying to protect the church.
Lenin waited until it was now or never to destroy the church, and finally took action.
It was a policy typical of Lenin's thoroughgoing strategy for seizing power.
Thus, the Russian Orthodox Church was thoroughly suppressed and suffered a harsh fate during the long years of Soviet power.
I will discuss Russian Orthodoxy in the Soviet era in greater detail on another occasion.
be unbroken
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