“As you know, gentlemen, the Russians are a very religious
people. Like here in the United States, there are very many
denominations there, but most of the people belong to the
Greek Church. Of course, the priests and religious people are
not very pleasant to the Bolsheviki, because the Bolsheviki
deny any religion or any religious sentiment. They oppose the
Russian clergy and the Russian clergy oppose the Bolsheviki,
and the Russian priests are treated very badly. For instance,
they are set to do streetwork, cleaning the streets, paving
streets, digging ditches, and so on. The workmen told me
several times, ‘The Bolsheviki are sending out priests to work
in the streets. Why do they not send their rabbis?’ And that is
true. _The Jewish Rabbis are not sent to work on the streets._
The Bolsheviki are opposing religion to such an extent that
lately when I was going to Petrograd they raised a question
of teaching atheism in the schools. They boast that they have
opened so many schools, but they do not say that they closed
as many schools as they opened. We had schools in connection
with the churches, in connection with every church there was a
school, and all these schools are closed now.”[22]
Further evidence that the Bolsheviki, although attacking Christianity,
protect the Jewish religion, is found in the following article, which
appeared on the 5th of July, 1919, in the weekly publication _Soviet
Russia_, page 15. The article is entitled “Soviet Tolerance.” It reads as
follows:
“The New York Jewish Daily, ‘_The Day_,’ in its issue of
June 24th has the following cablegram from its European
correspondent, N. Shiffrin: ‘Glad Tidings from Russia.’ ‘The
Zionists have organized throughout Russia Food Co-operative
Societies which are united in every city into Central
Co-operative Associations united in the All-Russian Federation
of Jewish Food Co-operative Associations. The Federation is in
part subsidized by the Moscow Soviet Government. All schools of
the Zionists in which the language of instruction is ancient
Hebrew, as well as the Hebrew High School in Minsk, have been
taken over by the government. They have been incorporated
in the Public School System which is maintained by the
Commissariat of Public Education.’”
The significant part of this article consists in the fact that the old
Hebrew is a religious language in which the Talmud is written. The old
Hebrew can serve only for the study of the Talmud as well as of other
Jewish religious writings. Thus, while combating the Christian religion,
the Bolsheviki are extending protection to the Jewish religion and to the
synagogues.
In a pamphlet entitled “The Russian Church under the Bolsheviks,”
recently published in England, is printed the appeal of Father Serge
Orlov, “who played an important part in the Reform movement in the
Russian church,” and who is now in Switzerland, where the National
Consistory has expressed its sympathy for the Russian people by composing
a special prayer for the liberation of Russia from the Bolsheviks. We
quote the following passages from this appeal of Father Orlov:
“Owing to Bolshevism the Orthodox Russian Church is passing
through so acute a crisis that there is serious danger to the
fundamental idea of the whole of Christianity.
“Bolshevism is essentially hostile to Christ, and manifests
even greater hatred towards Christianity than did the pagan
power of the first centuries....
“Bolshevism and the Christian Church cannot exist side by side.
“The persecution of the Church began in January, 1918, and has
been increasing since then. The Bolsheviks issued a decree
on the disestablishment of the Church, although never had
the Russian Church been so firmly in the grip of the secular
authorities as in Soviet Russia. The Church has not only been
robbed but treated with contumely. Every commissary has the
right of prohibiting a service if he suspects the priest or his
congregation of counter-revolutionary tendencies. Practically
whenever he chooses he can close a church, turn it into a
cinema, mock at the ancient sacred relics, and in general
insult people’s religious feelings.
“But it is strange that the greater the persecution of the
Russian Church the nearer and dearer does it become to the
tortured Russian people. Indeed, the priests of the Russian
Church boldly denounce the Bolsheviks. _Not one of the secular
rulers has accused them so openly as Tikhon, the All-Russian
Patriarch, over whom the Damocles sword of the Bolsheviks is
always hanging. But the sword can only kill the body, and not
the spirit._
“As early as last February, Patriarch Tikhon excommunicated the
Bolsheviks, the excommunication being read in the churches. At
that time the persecution of the clergy had already commenced,
but the Patriarch had not been arrested. It was only later,
in the autumn of 1918, during the universal Terror, that he
was placed under domiciliary arrest in his apartments in the
Kremlin, with a guard of Chinese, Letts and Red Army men, and
deprived of his rations. But even as a prisoner the Patriarch
issued declarations against the Bolsheviks, in which he
severely denounced them.
“_It is not enough,” writes the Patriarch, “that you have
stained the hands of the Russian people with the blood of their
brethren. You have instigated the people to open, shameless
robbery. You have befogged their consciences and stifled their
conviction of sin, but under whatever name you disguise an evil
deed, murder, violence and robbery will always remain crimes
and deeds of evil that clamor to Heaven for vengeance. Yes, we
are going through a dreadful time under your dominion, and it
will be long before it fades from the hearts of the nation,
where it has dimmed the image of God and impressed that of the
beast._
“But as yet the Bolsheviks have not dared to raise their hand
against the aged Patriarch. Apparently he is alive.”
A faint idea of what the Bolsheviks are doing to the Russian Church may
be gathered from the following:
“According to information received from A. Kartashov, former
Minister of Cults, by December, 1918, the Bolsheviks had killed
ten archbishops and bishops; it is difficult to ascertain
the number of priests killed. It reaches several hundreds.
The Patriarch is a prisoner in his own house. According to
the (later) message from the Archbishop of Omsk, President
of the Supreme Administration of the Orthodox Church, to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Metropolitan of Kiev, twenty
bishops and hundreds of priests have been assassinated. Some
were buried alive. ‘Wherever the Bolsheviks are in power,’ says
the Archbishop of Omsk, ‘the Christian Church is persecuted
with even greater ferocity than in the first three centuries of
the Christian era.’
“When, in January, 1919, the town of Yuriev (Dorpat) was taken
by the Bolsheviks, Bishop Platon was arrested. The Reval papers
thus describe the Bishop’s last moments. The Bolsheviks burst
into his house at night, dragged him from his bed. Barefoot
and clad only in his under-linen, the Bishop, with 17 other
persons, was dragged down to the cellars of the house they had
been arrested in. Here the Red executioners rushed at them with
their axes and killed them.
“Near Kotlas, all the ten monks of the monastery, with the
prior at their head, were shot for agitation against the Soviet
authorities.”
Information has come from Omsk that as a result of a judicial
investigation of the Bolshevik terror in Perm, the following has been
discovered:—
“Archbishop Andronik was buried alive; Vassili, Archbishop
of Chernigov, who had come to Moscow to inquire about the
fate of Archbishop Andronik, was cut down and killed with
his two companions. Bishop Feofan was first tortured, then
dipped several times into the river through a hole in the ice,
and finally drowned in the River Kama. Besides this, it was
discovered that 50 priests had been executed. Before being
killed they were horribly tortured.
“At the evacuation of Cherdyn the Bolsheviks took with them
among other hostages a highly respected priest, Nicolas
Koniurov, whom they subjected to atrocious torments.
“During a severe frost they stripped the old man naked and
poured water over him until he was transformed into a statue of
ice.”
(“_The Russian Church under the Bolsheviks,” pages 1, 2, 3._)
The statement of the Rev. R. Courtier-Forster, British Chaplain at
Odessa, already cited under the head of “Terror,” contains the following
passage as to the martyrdom of Christians under the Bolsheviki:
“It was the martyrdom of the two Metropolitans and the
assassination of so many Bishops and the killing of hundreds
of various Christian ministers of religion, regardless of
denomination or school of thought, that proved the undoing of
the _Scourge_. Russian Orthodox clergy, Protestant Lutheran
pastors, Roman Catholic priests, were tortured and done to
death with the same light-hearted indiscrimination in the name
of Toleration and Freedom. Then it was that the _Scourge_,
seeing the last remnants of Liberty ground under the heel of
a tyranny more brutal in its methods than a mediaeval torture
chamber, published another full-page cartoon representing Moses
descending from the Burning Mount, bringing in his arms the
Tables of Ten Commandments to Humanity, and being stoned to
death by a mob of workmen’s and soldiers’ delegates.
“The following Sunday afternoon I was passing through the Town
Gardens, when I saw a group of Bolshevist soldiers insulting
an Ikon of the Thorn-crowned Face of Christ. The owner of
the Ikon was spitting in the pictured Face, while the others
were standing around watching with loud guffaws of laughter.
Presently they tore the sacred picture into fragments, danced
on it, and trampled and stamped the pieces into the mud.”
(_“Bolshevism, Reign of Torture at Odessa,” by Rev. R.
Courtier-Forster, reprinted from The Times, Dec. 3, 1919, page
4._)
(_d_) _Inciting Class Hatred_
It will be recalled that the Protocols specifically refer to the
incitement of class hatred as one of the most effective means of bringing
about the destruction of Christian, that is, “GOY” states. The concluding
sentence of Protocol No. IV reads as follows:
“It will be at that stage that the lower classes of the
GOYS, not for the sake of doing good, nor even for the sake
of wealth, but solely because of their hatred towards the
privileged, will follow us against the intelligent GOYS, our
competitors for power.”
This remarkable stipulation of the Protocols is literally followed by
the Jewish Soviet officials in Russia. This is how Mr. Roger E. Simmons,
in his testimony before the Overman Committee, describes the policy of
inciting class hatred by the Bolsheviki in Russia:
MR. SIMMONS. “Being a social revolution, of course the worst
parts about it are the results of the awful class hatred the
Bolsheviki leaders are inciting. They are inciting it in every
part of the country by their publications and in all their
efficient propaganda. It has not been any more disastrous
in any parts of Russia, I believe, than it has been in many
villages among the peasantry.
“Their policy has as an underlying motive the arousing of
class antagonism, the proletariat hating the bourgeoisie. In
practice it means that the less fortunate in every industry and
institution bear animus against those qualified to hold better
positions. This has been indirectly the cause of most of the
incidents of terrorism witnesses have spoken of, more of which
I will tell you about later.
“When it was seen that the peasantry did not rally to the
support of the Bolshevik cause and that they refused to sell
grain for rubles without value, the Bolsheviki took the class
issue to the villages. Lenine calls this movement awakening
class consciousness of the peasantry. He organized for this
work ‘poor committees,’ as they are called in translation.
These committees of soldiers go out to the villages to inflame
the dissatisfied elements and to extract by force food from the
peasants.... But Lenine sends the poor committees, agitators,
to incite peasants who have no land to conspire against those
who have, and to take the guns he gives them for fighting,
robbing, and plundering neighbors in their own and neighboring
villages who have land. When you come later to read, gentlemen,
the history of the Russian revolution, some of the bloodiest
fights, you will find, and worst horrors, have occurred in
villages. Those simple, peace-loving people have been living
among themselves for centuries in more or less harmony under
their communistic system. But all of a sudden Lenine, by his
nefarious policies, sets the passions of the demoralized class
aflame and turns them against the other two classes. Instead
of promoting brotherly love and helping to make the sentiment
of the nation one for the good of all, as we are striving to
do in America, the Bolsheviki are trying by _jealousy and
animosity to disintegrate the population of various localities_
into classes with a view of the honest toiler being overcome
and subjected. Now this is a serious matter. The peasantry
represent 85 per cent of the 160,000,000 Russians.
“In Russia class hatred is seen manifested everywhere. I
will mention one illustration which I saw in Petrograd—the
undressing of a woman. I had heard about it before. It was
about 6:30, growing dark, as I was walking down the Nevsky
Prospect on my way home. I heard a yell of distress from a
woman up a street running perpendicularly to the Nevsky. There
two soldiers were removing the cloak—a very good substantial
cloth coat—from a woman. And when protests were made by the
standers-by, the answer was, ‘We have blacked your boots and
washed your clothes for many years. Now you bourgeoisie have
got to bow to us and wash our clothes and black our boots.’
Undressing to steal clothes went on to a considerable extent
in Moscow, Petrograd and Kiev, according to reports. It went
as far as taking off besides cloaks the very dresses of women,
and where they could handle it, taking also the clothes and
overcoats off men....
“Now, you can see that all their practices aimed to invite
people to do acts of that kind showing intense hatred—I
wish I could think of another word, it is more than
hatred—detestation—against people that they thought were a
little higher up. Now, remember, as I pointed out in the first
place this hatred is against a good many of these people in
the cities, and people like the peasants who had land, who
belonged to the proletariat. But because they did not agree,
they call them bourgeoisie. You can see that they are fighting
parts of the very class for whom they say they are trying
to establish a dictatorship. They are not trying to put the
proletariat in power, but the most demoralized elements of that
class, which represents, gentlemen, a very small per cent.
“Now, this class hatred is a matter we have got to consider,
I think, with a great deal of interest and a great deal of
seriousness, because it is the basis of their international
movement.”[23]
(_e_) _Autocracy in Government_
The Protocols call for a world autocracy and state that liberalism in
government is a source of weakness which should be encouraged by the Jews
only for the temporary object of destroying Christian states with the
ultimate purpose of establishing a Jewish despotism over the whole world.
“Only an autocrat can outline great and clear plans which
allocate in an orderly manner all the parts of the mechanism of
the government machinery.”
On the other hand, the Protocols state as follows:
“In all parts of the world the words ‘Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity’ have brought whole legions into our ranks through
our blind agents, carrying our banners with delight. Meanwhile
these words were worms which ruined the prosperity of the GOYS,
everywhere destroying peace, quiet, and solidarity, undermining
all the foundations of their states.”
Ambassador Francis, when asked by Senator King whether Lenin and Trotzky
and those who are in control of the Bolshevik government were there as
the result of a general election, testified:[24]
MR. FRANCIS. “No, no. They are there as usurpers.”
SENATOR KING. “By force and terror?”
MR. FRANCIS. “I do not think they represent more than ten per
cent of the Russians.”
SENATOR OVERMAN. “Of the whole 180,000,000?”
MR. FRANCIS. “Of the whole 180,000,000.”
Mr. Roger E. Simmons also describes the Bolshevik government as it
existed when he left Russia in November, 1918, as follows:
“The Soviet government, composed solely of Bolsheviks, of a
portion only of the ‘manual proletariat’ is a government in
name only. Rightly stated, it is a well-organized institution
functioning to further the social revolution, the overthrow of
all recognized standards of morality and civilization.”[25]
That gradual despotism shown by the testimony of these witnesses to
exist in 1918 has tended to become more and more complete is shown by
evidence of a recent date. The British White Book, “Russia No. 1 (1919),
Collection of Reports on Bolshevism in Russia,” contains a report of a
Mr. C. who was formerly connected with a commercial company which had a
branch in Moscow. This document bears the date of January 21, 1919. Among
other information therein contained is the following:
“All factories nationalized; only about half of them working.
Men all anti-Bolshevik. Very discontented with conditions of
life, and with the working of the factories. Conditions getting
worse and worse every day. A great many of the men have gone
to the country, as it is practically impossible to live in the
towns.... In Petrograd more attempts to strike than in Moscow;
this is because in Moscow the workmen are more under the power
of the government, and _they do not dare to strike_. Even if
they did there is nothing to gain by it, for the government
would simply stop their wages, discharge a good many, and
probably cancel their bread cards.”
As recently as in the fall of 1919 conditions in the factories were
reported to be intolerable. The Soviet officials have gone far beyond
that part of the program of Karl Marx in his “Communist Manifesto,” which
prescribes “Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial
armies, especially for agriculture.” The Soviet government’s Code of
Labor Laws, translated into English and published in New York in _Soviet
Russia_, the organ of the Russian Soviet Bureau, in its issue of February
21, 1920, imposes compulsory labor upon every one, male or female,
between the ages of sixteen and sixty, unless physically disqualified,
and enforces iron discipline of the most tyrannical nature.
Moreover, the New York _World_ of Friday, April 9, 1920, published an
article entitled “Mobilize Russian Labor,” in which it was stated that
Trotzky, addressing the ninth convention of the Communist Party at Moscow
on March 27, 1920, directed his address chiefly to defining the relation
between the mobilization of industry to the industrial rehabilitation of
Russia, and stated:
“Mobilization is more necessary now than it was formerly,
because we have to deal with the peasant population and masses
of unskilled labor which cannot be utilized to the fullest
extent by any other means than military discipline. Trades
unions are capable of organizing great masses of qualified
workers, but 30 per cent of the people cannot be reached by
this means.”
An elaborate system among the workmen had been gradually
established and at present the communist spy reporting directly
to the Soviets has almost mediaeval powers of executing a man
merely for the reason that he is opposed to the tyranny of the
Soviets. Moreover, by the weapon of starvation, the workman is
compelled to work more hours than under any preceding form of
government. The very right to strike is entirely denied the
workmen. Every strike is called sabotage against the Soviets
and every act of sabotage is forbidden under pain of capital
punishment. Supplementary Decree No. 27 deals specifically
with incitements to strike. Persons violating such decree
are brought before the Extraordinary Committees to Combat
Counter-revolution.
This situation strikingly recalls a passage in the Protocols where it is
stated:
“Civilization cannot exist without _absolute despotism_, for
government is carried on not by the masses, but by their leader
whoever he may be.”
Is Trotzky this leader?
Immediately before his departure from the United States for Russia in
order to join his brethren who were engaged in the destruction of the
Russian state, Trotzky made the following boast:
“_I stand forth the world’s greatest internationalist. I shall
rule Russia._”
Then he made this appeal to the audience:
“On with our world civil war! On with the world revolution!
Down with the governments!”
Unfortunately, the wise step taken by the British Government in arresting
Trotzky at Halifax while on his way to Russia was countermanded, and
Lieut.-Colonel J. B. Maclean, proprietor of _Maclean’s Magazine_,
published at Toronto, in an article entitled “Why Did We Let Trotzky
Go?”, printed in the issue of June, 1919 (Vol. XXXII, No. 6), referring
to various explanations for his release, says, “Finally it is said it was
done at the request of the British Embassy at Washington over the head of
the British and American Intelligence Department; and that the Embassy
acted on the request of the U. S. State Department, who were acting for
some one else.”