(installment #3 – short takes from “The Gulag Archipelago”)
“In the spring of 1922 the Extraordinary Commission for Struggle Against Counterrevolution, Sabotage, and Speculation…decided to intervene in church affairs. It was called on to carry out a ‘church revolution’ – to remove the existing leadership and replace it with one which would have only one ear turned to heaven and the other ear turned to the Lubyanka…Men of religion were an inevitable part of every annual ‘catch,’ and their silver locks gleamed in every cell and in every prisoner transport…
True, they were supposedly being arrested and tried not for their actual faith but for openly declaring their convictions and for bringing up their children in the same spirit. As Tanya Khodkevich wrote: ‘You can pray freely, but just so God alone can hear.’ (She received a ten-year sentence for that verse).
A Person convinced that he possessed spiritual truth was required to conceal it from his own children!”
Socialism is soft communism. Both socialism and communism are imbued with a god complex. They require the fidelity and faith of the people. They shall have no other gods before them. If they can’t convince you to give up your faith, they will force you to keep it to yourself – don’t even tell your children. If you insist on your church, you must have leaders who listen to “Lubynaka” as well as heaven.
The communist utopian dream (nightmare) is atheistic. It cannot peacefully coexist with the church. The church and its dogmas are anathemas to the communistic state. Reliance on God is to them a rebellion against the state. Belief in Christ alone for salvation is a rejection of salvation by the state. Christianity, above all religions, is the enemy of communism. Communism requires Christianity be coopted and corrupted if it can’t be completely crushed.
Out of the Miry Blog 