AN INTERVIEW WITH THE PATRIARCH
During my residence in Moscow I visited the Patriarch, Tikhon, at his
palace. I was first met by one of his clergy, who warned me that the
Patriarch was under “house arrest,” and not supposed to see anyone
without authorization. I was also given to understand that I should run
some risk myself, as I should have to sign my name in a book which had to
be submitted afterwards to the Extraordinary Commission.
I signed my name, however, and was soon afterwards ushered into
the presence of the Patriarch, who certainly lives in comfortable
surroundings, having the whole palace to himself and his small entourage
of clergy and servants. None of the furniture, pictures, _ikons_, etc.,
in the spacious halls have been disturbed, and the whole place is kept in
good condition. Tikhon wore the gorgeous dress of a Russian patriarch,
and he received me with simple dignity. He is a tall man of about sixty,
with shrewd grey eyes and a florid, healthy face—the face of a peasant.
In the subsequent conversation he struck me as simple in the ways of the
world, but fearless and sincere. He is as different from, say, Cardinal
Mercier, as the Orthodox Church is different from the Roman. The latter,
I should say, has a powerful organization, and possesses among its higher
ecclesiastics cultured men with trained minds and great diplomatic
ability. The former is in a more primitive stage, and its long connection
with the State has atrophied it. Cardinal Mercier is a highly educated
man with Latin energy and initiative. Patriarch Tikhon is a pious,
unsophisticated man with a considerable knowledge of Russian theological
literature, and with more than a touch of Russian fatalism and apathy.
Although he lived for several years in America and Alaska, visiting
Russian congregations there, he must have lived in monasteries all the
time, for he knows nothing of American conditions, and has only picked
up one word of English—“Good-bye.” He is capable of being a martyr,
but incapable of inaugurating and carrying on an active anti-Bolshevik
movement. He told me of the encyclical in which he had cursed the
Bolsheviks, and remarked, with a chuckle, that the latter were very
annoyed about it, and had complained to him that Denikin’s troops were
using it very extensively as propaganda and had pasted it up on all the
walls in Tombov and other towns. I told him that Kolchak had used it in
the same way, and this intelligence seemed to gratify him. But I do not
think that he will write any more encyclicals, being apparently satisfied
that he has done all he can, and that the rest is in the hands of God. On
the other hand, the Bolsheviks are not likely to trouble him so long as
he keeps quiet.
He approved of the separation of Church and State, but complained that,
though the Church had lost Government help, the Government continued
to interfere in its internal affairs. About sixty Bishops and several
hundred priests had been put to death, but the Communists made it
impossible for him to get accurate statistics. It was difficult for any
ecclesiastic to get a permit to travel, with the result that diocesan
visitations had been pretermitted, many churches left without a pastor,
and the whole ecclesiastical machinery stopped. Thus Lenin has made
use of the peculiar importance of the railways in a vast and thinly
settled country like Russia, and of the fact that Bolshevism has a firm
hold on the railwaymen, in order to strangle not only all the political
parties which are opposed to him, but also Christianity. He prevents
rival politicians from travelling on the railway or sending their
correspondence by it, and he also prevents priests from doing so. No
doubt some of these difficulties are due to a disorganized transport
service, and not specially created for the persecution of the Church.
There was little altar wine left and little oil. The Patriarch wanted to
know if I could get these for him from England. He was anxious to know my
religion, being apparently afraid of Jews visiting him. All the Church’s
printing-presses and paper had been confiscated, and this made the
publication of religious works or periodicals impossible. All meetings of
ecclesiastical Councils are also impossible, and it is doubtful if they
will be allowed in the future, so that common action among the leaders of
the Russian Church is precluded.
The position of the Patriarch is pathetic, and also the position of the
clergy, who are now entirely dependent for support on their parishioners.
If the latter do not want a particular priest or any priest at all in
their villages, they need only refuse their offerings. The result will
be an entire change in the status of the clergyman who, in any case, was
never very much venerated by the villagers. That status will be lower, I
think, henceforward, for the clergyman will be an expensive luxury, and
the higher ecclesiastical authorities will cease to have any hold on him.
He will tend to become a mere tool in the hands of the dominant faction
in his parish. The peasants, at least, will not dispense with him, for
he will be useful at the blessing of the crops and other functions to
which the _muzhiks_ attach a superstitious importance; but, even under
the Tsars, the parish priest was generally regarded as a man who had his
own trade, like a cobbler or a carpenter, and was not expected to take an
interest in the social and moral life of the people like the English or
French clergyman. Nor did he take any such interest. When he had finished
reading his Mass or performing some other religious service, he went home
to his family, without thinking that he had any other obligations towards
society at large than a mechanic who had done a piece of work and been
paid for it.
Bishop Anthony of Ufa tried to interest Kolchak in a scheme for making
the clergy take an interest in social and educational work, such as the
clergy of the Western Churches take, but this scheme was never carried
into execution. What would tell against its success would be the fact
that the priest is, as a rule, only a peasant himself, uneducated and
sometimes addicted to drink. In one village in Vologda Province, where I
lived before the war, the _muzhiks_ complained to me of a parish priest
who beat his wife, and got so drunk on Saturday night that they sometimes
had to pull him out of bed on Sunday morning in order that he might say
Mass for them.
The Patriarch told me that there are now no candidates for the
priesthood, and that all the ecclesiastical seminaries are closed. The
net result will probably be the downfall of the Russian Church and
the formation of a great number of small sects, some of them probably
of a very strange character. The Old Believers among the Cossacks
will probably become stronger, and so will the Baptists, the largest
Protestant sect in Russia, but there is more likely to be a throw-back
towards old and fantastic heresies than an advance, or what is generally
called an “advance,” on modern religious lines in the West. The
Communists will probably have trouble with sporadic religious outbreaks,
but these outbreaks will be accompanied by such massacres of Jews and
by the preaching of such impossible doctrines that Europe will find it
difficult to sympathize with them. Bolsheviks have confessed to me that
they are nervous on the subject of religion, and that they must go slow.
A Russian gentleman, who distinguished himself before the war by his
strongly anti-alcohol views, recently started some sort of religious
revival in Petrograd, but the Bolsheviks promptly put him in jail,
whereupon the movement collapsed.
The most formidable enemy of Bolshevism among the religious bodies in
Russia is the other great International—the Roman Catholic Church. This
Church possesses in every Russian and Siberian town large and very
earnest congregations composed chiefly of Poles and Lithuanians, and in
no case that came under my observation has the priest deserted his flock
or discontinued holding daily services, which are always well attended
by men as well as by women. There has been no interference on the part
of the Bolsheviks with these R.C. communities, save that their schools
have been closed, their school-books and libraries confiscated, and their
children forced to attend Communist schools. One of their prelates,
Bishop Ropp of Petrograd, has been imprisoned, but he was probably too
outspoken and aggressive, for the Government of the late Tsar once
exiled him from his see and from Russia owing to the high tone he took
with them. There were also arrests of Catholics in Petrograd, some few
months ago, owing to religious processions of protest against several
Bolshevik measures having been organized by the congregation of St.
Catherine’s Church on the Nevsky Prospect. In Little Russia the Uniat
Church, which is recognized by Rome, will probably gain in membership;
and a large number of Lithuanians, who had been forced by the old
Imperial Government to register themselves as Orthodox, will now profess
Roman Catholicism openly.
The Catholic Church in Russia is powerful, well organized, and solid
against Bolshevism, for no Catholic can be a Bolshevik, but owing to the
fact that it is mainly Polish, there is a national prejudice against
it in Russia, and it will consequently have no effect on the general
situation. Rome, too, is behaving with her usual prudence in this matter.
She is taking no steps against Bolshevism, being probably afraid of
exposing her followers in Russia to persecution.
The standard of education and general culture among the Roman Catholic
clergy in Russia is much higher than that which prevails among the
Orthodox clergy, hence the machinery of the Catholic Church is able
to function much as usual, despite the fact that it is exposed to the
same lack of communication as has paralyzed the Russian Church. Among
the Polish clergy are some very remarkable men, speaking four or five
European languages besides their own, and accustomed to move in the
highest circles of the Vatican. They are inclined to take little or no
interest, however, in the conversion of the Russians, whom they regard
with contempt as an inferior race. One of them, a very learned man, who
had travelled everywhere and spoke every language in Europe with the most
scholarly precision, complained to me bitterly of the Byzantine style
being chosen for Westminster Cathedral. He detested everything Byzantine,
and regarded the Eastern Church as a blind alley in artistic as well
as in religious matters. It was not, he maintained, a living organism
like the Catholic Church, and had not developed in any respect since
it had cut itself off from Western Christendom. It had made no attempt
to accommodate itself to modern life as the Catholic Church has done.
Its architecture, its pictures, and everything about it is stereotyped.
Joseph de Maistre said that the Orthodox Church is a mummy, and that,
when the wrappings are taken off it and the light of modern science let
into its coffin, it will crumble away. Most of the Poles believe that,
and they are as little interested in the conversion of Russia as a Sinn
Feiner is in the conversion of England. Consequently Rome, though it
takes a great interest in the Uniat Church, is unable to do anything for
it, as it has to act through the Polish clergy, who would almost decline
to go to heaven if Russians were admitted there also. A well-known
Galician prelate, who is also a Prince, a littérateur, a theologian, and
a publicist of somewhat similar stamp to Cardinal Newman in this country,
has made it his life-work, however, to persuade all Russians to enter
the Uniat Church; and the lifting of the Tzarist ban on the residence
of Catholic regular clergy in Russia may result in his obtaining able
assistants from the heads of the religious congregations in Rome. In the
present turmoil he can, however, do nothing.
I should have pointed out above that the schools, school-books,
libraries, etc., of the Orthodox clergy have been all taken over by
the State, and that all the children in the country of both sexes and
of every race and religion are taught together in Communist schools.
Education is conducted with enthusiasm, and will, if continued, reduce
very much the percentage of illiteracy in Russia, but it is very
anti-religious, and inculcates that anti-nationalism and class hatred
which are the first principles of the Bolsheviks. A generation of this
teaching will overthrow every religion in Russia, and convert the country
into a factory of high explosives which will make it a danger to the
whole world.
The number of Jews occupying high positions in the Soviet Government
is probably larger than the Jewish community is entitled to either on
account of its numbers or of its higher educational standard. But,
even in Russia, there are many Jewish anti-Bolsheviks; and several of
the leading Commissars are very anti-Jewish. Chicherin is Russian,
though several of his assistants are Jews. Derzhinsky, the head of the
Extraordinary Commission, is Russian or Polish, and none of the people
whom I met in that institution were Jews. Derzhinsky’s right-hand man,
Mogilevsky, with whom I was brought into close and unpleasant relations,
is very anti-Jewish, and is at present trying to get hold of a Jew in
Moscow who supplied Mr. North, it is alleged, with large sums of money
for anti-Bolshevik agitation.
There must be many such anti-Bolshevik Jews who are probably opposed to
Lenin on account of his ingenious scheme of inflating the currency until
money becomes valueless. One can quite understand that a race with the
financial ability of the Hebrews should dislike such a project.
Continental Freemasonry, which is not the same thing as English
Freemasonry, played some part in the Young Turk movement, and in the
Portuguese Revolution, but it plays no part whatever in Bolshevism. None
of the leading Bolsheviks are masons, and they all regard the institution
with suspicion as being calculated to encourage mysticism and help
in other ways the domination of the _bourgeoisie_. There are also no
secret societies in Bolshevism, but the movement itself is practically
a secret society, and it is almost impossible for a non-Bolshevik to
get admittance to Communist election meetings and conventions. Even the
reporters must not only show their permits, but also their cards of
membership and their identity cards, and must, in addition to this, write
their names in a book.