“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.”