The Russian Revolution: a Spiritual History
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A SPIRITUAL HISTORY Part 2: The Gates of Hell (1917-1945) Vladimir Moss Copyright © Vladimir Moss, 2009 PART 2. THE GATES OF HELL (1917-1945) You deserve to die, because you have not guarded your master, the Lord’s Anointed. I Samuel 26.16. Soviet power is organized civil war. Leon Trotsky. The judgement of God is being carried out on the Church and the people of Russia… A selection is being made of those true warriors of Christ who alone will be able… to resist the Beast himself. Hieromartyr Damascene, Bishop of Glukhov. When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come and see”. I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth. Revelation 6.8. God allowed the Russian revolution to take place in order that the Russian Church might become purged and purified and that the Orthodox Faith might be disseminated across the whole world. St. John Maximovich. 2 PART 2. THE GATES OF HELL (1917-1945) ..........................................................2 Apocalyptic Visions...............................................................................................4 Dual Power..............................................................................................................7 The Religion of Leninism...................................................................................12 The Revolution in the Church...........................................................................21 The October Revolution .....................................................................................25 The Moscow Council of 1917-18........................................................................34 The Murder of the Tsar.......................................................................................48 The Goals of Leninism........................................................................................51 The Russian Civil War ........................................................................................62 The Church in the Civil War..............................................................................67 The Russian Church in Exile .............................................................................72 From War Communism to NEP.........................................................................79 Communism and the Jews .................................................................................89 The Church in the Borderlands.........................................................................95 Secret Agents in Cassocks ................................................................................109 The Requisitioning of Church Valuables .....................................................115 The Renovationist Coup...................................................................................120 The Patriarch and the Commissars.................................................................135 The Fall of Renovationism...............................................................................142 The Rise of Stalin...............................................................................................150 Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsa ........................................................................161 The Rise of Metropolitan Sergius...................................................................174 The Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius .....................................................180 The Birth of the Catacomb Church.................................................................183 ROCOR and Metropolitan Sergius ................................................................192 Stalin’s War on Russia: (1) The Church .........................................................197 Stalin’s War on Russia: (2) Collectivization..................................................200 Stalin’s War on Russia: (3) Industrialization and Famine .........................208 Stalin’s War on Russia: (4) The Great Purges...............................................213 The International Civil War (I)........................................................................220 The International Civil War (II)......................................................................225 The Nazis Invade Russia ..................................................................................233 The Church in Belorussia and Ukraine .........................................................240 ROCOR and the Germans................................................................................244 The Stalin-Sergius Pact .....................................................................................249 The Consequences of the Pact .........................................................................258 The Moscow Council of 1945...........................................................................265 The Triumph of the Moscow Patriarchate (1) Inside the USSR ...............269 The Triumph of the Moscow Patriarchate: (2) Outside the USSR ...........274 Archbishop John of Shanghai .........................................................................281 The Triumph of Evil..........................................................................................288 CONCLUSION: BEYOND NIHILISM.................................................................293 3 Apocalyptic Visions On February 21, 1917, just before the February revolution, a 14-year-old Kievan novice, Olga Zosimovna Boiko, fell into a deep trance lasting for forty days during which many mysteries were revealed to her. She saw the following: “In blinding light on an indescribably wonderful throne sat the Saviour, and next to Him on His right hand – our sovereign, surrounded by angels. His Majesty was in full royal regalia: a radiant white robe, a crown, with a sceptre in his hand. And I heard the martyrs talking amongst themselves, rejoicing that the last times had come and that their number would be increased. They said that they would be tormented for the name of Christ and for refusing to accept the seal [of the Antichrist], and that the churches and monasteries would soon be destroyed, and those living in the monasteries would be driven out, and that not only the clergy and monastics would be tortured, but also all those who did not want to receive ‘the seal’ and would stand for the name of Christ, for the Faith and the Church.”1 So the coming age was to be an apocalyptic struggle against the Antichrist, an age of martyrdom for Christ’s sake – and the Tsar would be among the martyrs. More was revealed a few weeks later, on March 2, the very day of the Tsar’s abdication, when the Mother of God appeared to the peasant woman Eudocia Adrianovna and said to her: “Go to the village of Kolomenskoye; there you will find a big, black icon. Take it and make it beautiful, and let people pray in front of it.” Eudocia found the icon at 3 o’clock, the precise hour of the abdication. Miraculously it renewed itself, and showed itself to be the “Reigning” icon of the Mother of God, the same that had led the Russian armies into war with Napoleon. On it she was depicted sitting on a royal throne dressed in a dark red robe and bearing the orb and sceptre of the Orthodox Tsars, as if to show that the sceptre of rule of the Russian land had passed from earthly rulers to the Queen of Heaven…2 So the Orthodox Autocracy, as symbolized by the orb and sceptre, had not been destroyed, but was being held “in safe keeping”, as it were, by the Queen of Heaven, until the earth should again be counted worthy of it… A third vision was given in this year to Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow, who alone in the Church's hierarchy had refused to accept the Provisional Government because of his oath of allegiance to the Tsar: "I saw a field. The Saviour was walking along a path. I went after Him, crying, 1 Letter of Sergius Nilus to Hierodeacon Zosimas, 6 August, 1917; in V. Gubanov, Tsar’ Nikolai II-ij i Novie Mucheniki (Tsar Nicholas II and the New Martyrs), St. Petersburg, 2000, p. 121 ®. 2 It is said that during the siege of the Moscow Kremlin in October, 1917, the Mother of God ordered the “Reigning” icon to be taken in procession seven times round the Kremlin, and then it would be saved. However, it was taken round only once… (Monk Epiphany (Chernov), Tserkov’ Katakombnaia na Zemle Rossijskoj (The Catacomb Church in the Russian Land), MS, Old Woking, 1980 ®. 4 "'Lord, I am following you!' "Finally we approached an immense arch adorned with stars. At the threshold of the arch the Saviour turned to me and said again: "'Follow me!' And He went into a wondrous garden, and I remained at the threshold and awoke. Soon I fell asleep again and saw myself standing in the same arch, and with the Saviour stood Tsar Nicholas. The Saviour said to the Tsar: "'You see in My hands two cups: one which is bitter for your people and the other sweet for you.' "The Tsar fell to his knees and for a long time begged the Lord to allow him to drink the bitter cup together with his people. The Lord did not agree for a long time, but the Tsar begged importunately. Then the Saviour drew out of the bitter cup a large glowing coal and laid it in the palm of the Tsar's hand. The Tsar began to move the coal from hand to hand and at the same time his body began to grow light, until