18
December 1917 A.D. Blood-Lustophilic
Bolsheviks Begin Brutal Oppression of the Russian Orthodox
From 1721, in the days of Peter the Great, the
Russian Orthodox Church was governed by a Holy Synod appointed by the czars.
But the last czar, Tsar Nicholas II and his family, under the sway of the
"holy devil" Rasputin, governed so badly that the Russians revolted.
The nation's Orthodox leaders actually welcomed the revolution of March 1917,
which announced religious freedom.
The church saw the czar's
removal as an opportunity to free itself of state controls. No longer would it
be a puppet of secular authorities. In August, Russian Orthodoxy reintroduced
its earlier patriarchal system of government and in December elected Patriarch
Tikhon. Churchmen did not realize that a bad system was about to be replaced
with a worse.
In a revolution within a
revolution, the Bolsheviks (Communists) under Lenin seized control of Russia.
Communism is hostile to religion. A central teaching of its "prophet"
Marx was that religion reflects the world of class societies; institutional
religion impedes progress towards a classless society, the goal of Marxism. As
the Bolsheviks consolidated their power, they placed more and more restrictions
on the church.
On December 4, 1917, the
Bolsheviks confiscated church lands. A week later, they took control of schools
that had once provided religious education. Students would now be force-fed
Communist propaganda. On this day, December 18, 1917 the Communists completed their first
offensive campaign against the church by making marriage a civil, not a
religious, ordinance.
Over the next two years the Communists murdered 28 bishops
and countless priests. By 1938, the Communists had closed 70,000 Russian Orthodox churches and
chapels and all of the monasteries and seminaries. 280 bishops and at least
45,000 priests had perished.
As the Communists piled outrage
upon outrage, Patriarch Tikhon remonstrated, "Think what you are doing,
you madmen! Stop your bloody outrages! 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 will be cursed by future generations in this life." But the Bolsheviks
showed little concern for such warnings.
For eighty years, a brutal
repression of religion by the Communists continued. Late in the twentieth
century there was a tremendous change in the political and religious situation
in Russia. Thanks to the bravery of East European Christians, the resistance of Muslims to Soviet occupation and to the clearheaded
policies of an American president, the tyranny broke.
During those years of awful
suffering, the church showed an amazing power to survive--a power that the
Communists had not factored into their materialistic equations. Communism
collapsed but the church lived on. Christians know that the survival of the
church is owing to the power of Christ at work in common people.
Bibliography:
1. Adapted from an earlier Christian History Institute story.
2. Hutten, Kurt. Iron Curtain Christians. Minneapolis,
Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing, 1967.
3. Janz, Denis R. World Christianity and Marxism. New York: Oxford University,
1998.
Last updated July, 2007
No comments:
Post a Comment