Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him

FREEDOM OF RELIGIOUS CONSCIENCE had been a plank in the Bolshevik platform—even the Salvation Army was permitted in Moscow from 1918 to 1920—but the Orthodox Church, the prop of the Tsarist state, met with implacable hostility from Lenin’s party. Only Anatoli Lunacharsky hoped to integrate the evangelical wing of the Church into Soviet ideology. In spring 1922, for the final time, Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky acted in concert—to destroy this last bastion of hostile ideology.¹⁵ Menzhinsky, the GPU’s most experienced blasphemer, took charge. This campaign was a logical development of the Bolsheviks’ economic and military victory: the Church was singled out not just because of Lenin and Trotsky’s anticlericalism or Stalin’s, ’s, and Menzhinsky’s religious complexes, nor just because it was the last element of the old regime with any hold over the populace. The pretext for action was the Church’s riches.

War and drought had by the middle of 1921 killed some 5 million peasants, and despite its requests the Russian Church was refused permission to organize famine relief. In August 1921 Lenin authorized the American Relief Agency to distribute wheat in the Volga region with contributions coming from agencies such as Fridtjof Nansen’s organization and the Quakers. The ARA’s success embarrassed the Soviet authorities: the Volga quickly began feeding the cities again.

At first sight the Church was no danger to the regime; it had failed to give any lead in public affairs, in theology or philosophy, for 200 years. But Orthodox laymen like Aleksei Khomiakov, Konstantin Leontiev, and Fiodor Dostoevsky had revitalized Russian Christianity at the end of the previous century, and it had even competed with social democrats and Marxists for the minds of educated Russians at the time. In 1921 people still remembered the religious-philosophical debates of 1903 and 1904 which had unnerved both the Church hierarchy and the revolutionary movements when they saw with what verve Christians and Marxists could convert each other.

The Church’s offer to undertake famine relief now suggested a ploy to the Cheka and the party: the Church would be forced, not encouraged, to hand over its icons, gold, silver, and bronze for sale. In vain Patriarch Tikhon requested that parishes should keep objects used in the liturgy. Lenin believed that billions, not just millions, of gold rubles would be raised by selling Church property—although the Church’s land and many of its buildings had already been expropriated—and proposed thus to pay off enough of the Tsarist government’s debts to win recognition from European states. Trotsky, convinced of imminent worldwide conflagration, saw the Church’s money as a war chest, to be grabbed quickly, before world revolution devalued it.

Both Lenin and Trotsky overestimated the value of the booty: objects were seized so roughly and precious metal scrapped so crudely that barely 4 million gold rubles was realized of which 1 million was spent on famine relief. Dealers in jewelry and works of art did not want to buy the loot; the Bolsheviks, like burglars, could sell only to fences. Protests from liberal Bolsheviks were overridden. Lunacharsky asked Lenin to collaborate with, not antagonize, the hierarchy, “so that we can win over the peasantry in a way that is not dangerous for us.” and Lacis of the Cheka dismissed this argument: “the usual quirks of God-seekers,” said Lacis. announced, “The Church is distintegrating, therefore we must help this process but in no way should we resurrect the Church in a renewed form. Therefore the Cheka must conduct Church policy. . . . Any kind of connection whatever of priests with other organs will cast a shadow on the party—that is very very dangerous. We’ve had enough trouble with just the ‘specialists.’ ” ¹⁶ Trotsky’s wife Natalia Sedova also remonstrated. She wanted Russian museums to have items of artistic worth and deplored icons being hacked up for scrap silver. Lenin was adamant: for the Church he felt a fury as strong as his contempt for the peasantry and its blind faith in God and the land. When parishioners rioted, notably in the town of Shuia, the Cheka shot the ringleaders and Lenin supported extreme measures. On March 19, 1922, he wrote to the Politburo: