The World Significance of the Russian Revolution/Section 14
XIV. Religion.
Religion is regarded by the Bolshevists as "opium for the people" and a "tool of capitalist domination." The Russian Church is naturally regarded with special enmity by Bolshevism, as it is the embodiment and symbol of national life. Every effort has consequently been made in the last two years to extinguish it altogether, by persecution, and executions of priests. These very persecutions have, as has so often happened before, been the very means that have brought about a religious revival. In 1917–18 a remarkable National Assembly of the Orthodox Church sat in Moscow, reorganised the Church on an autonomous basis, and restored the Patriarchate. In the person of the heroic figure of the new Patriarch Archbishop Tykone—the embodiment of the national cause, the degrading cult of an international oligarchy endeavouring to set up material interest as the only Social bond, has met with a formidable opponent. The Red authorities are becoming increasingly uneasy at the growth of friendly relations between the "classes" under the influence of religion. In an interesting account by the one-time Professor of Law in the University of Moscow, which reached this country from Central Russia last January, an incident is described which occurred last year:
"One day the commissaries of Moscow 'nationalised' the auditorium of the Church of St. Barbara, where religious addresses were being given to the people. The 'orthodox' working men, who had founded the auditorium demanded the restitution of their property, insisting that they had a right to it as members of the proletariat. They were met with a formal refusal, the motives of which are interesting. 'This auditorium,' they were told, 'has become a place for pacific meetings and for friendly intercourse between the bourgeois and the proletariat'; and from the revolutionary point of view nothing could be more inadmissible."
It is perhaps fair to point out that the religious movement, revived by the revitalised Russian Church, is a menace to Bolshevism, not merely because it calls itself Christian, but because it is national, spiritual, vigorous and integrating, and is incompatible with an anti-national, international, economic materialism. On the other hand, there was nothing which aided Bolshevism more thoroughly or effectively than the type of invertebrate Christianity (Tolstoyism), which a Russian author, writing from Ecaterinodar, refers to in the following excerpt: "Bolshevism," he says, "was fostered during the first six or nine months of the Revolution by the absurd idealism of the intelligentsia who quoted the text, "Do not overcome evil by evil!" This was the genuine spirit of the teaching of that quaint enthusiast, Leo Tolstoy, whose doctrine of non-resistance to evil suited the Bolsheviks so admirably, and which served to reconcile the teaching of the Great Nazarene so conveniently with the teaching of that other Hebrew Prophet, Karl Marx: a circumstance which no doubt greatly contributed to the popularity of that hybrid creed among the intelligentsia of Russia and Western Europe, before the war.
We can, at any rate, understand the very natural outburst of an educated Russian workman, witnessed and reported by an Englishman[1] who escaped last year. "How I hate your intelligentsia," said the former to a lady. "Why?" she asked. "Because," was the answer, "because of their meekness. Why are they so Christian? Why cannot they hate? They make me sick with their fraternity. A student came to us the other day and preached that we are all brothers and must live in peace. How can a man of sense say that he—or that we—must be brothers with all this murderous canaille?"
- ↑ Mr. John Pollock.