The figures relate exclusively to the Orthodox church. A similar parasitic caste is found in every nation, though of course professing some other religion. These masses of people, instead of extracting vast sums of money from the population in order to promote popular ignorance, would have been able, had they been engaged in manual work, to produce immense quantities of values. The socialist State, when its economic apparatus has been perfected, will introduce labour service for the clergy as for all unproductive classes, so that they will have to become workers or peasants. Of the State revenues paid to the church under the tsarist regime. More than 12,000,000 roubles went every year to the urban and rural clergy. It is plain enough why the reverend fathers were opposed to the separation of the church from the State, since this implied the separation of a dozen million roubles from their pockets. This sum, however, was but a fraction of the clerical incomes, which for the most part were derived from professional fees, land rents, and interest upon the capital of the church. No one has been able to ascertain the precise amount of the revenues of the Russian church. Approximately the sum may be considered to have been 150,000,000 roubles — at a time (we repeat) when the rouble was worth one hundred of our present roubles. A considerable proportion of this income is still paid by the people to the clergy.
Literature
KILCHEVSKY, Wealth and Revenues of the Clergy. LUKIN, Church and State. MELGUNOV, Church and State in the Days of Transistion. MININ, Religion and Communism. STEPANOV, The Origins of God. STEPANOV, The Clergy, its Income, its Prayers, and its Curses. KUNOV, The Origin of Religion and of Faith in God. KAUTSKY, The Origin of biblical History. KAUTSKY, The classical World, Judaism, and