Christianity.
“Bolshevism is essentially hostile to Christ, and manifests even greater hatred towards Christianity than did the pagan power of the first centuries....
“Bolshevism and the Christian Church cannot exist side by side.
“The persecution of the Church began in January, 1918, and has been increasing since then. The Bolsheviks issued a decree on the disestablishment of the Church, although never had the Russian Church been so firmly in the grip of the secular authorities as in Soviet Russia. The Church has not only been robbed but treated with contumely. Every commissary has the right of prohibiting a service if he suspects the priest or his congregation of counter-revolutionary tendencies. Practically whenever he chooses he can close a church, turn it into a cinema, mock at the ancient sacred relics, and in general insult people’s religious feelings.
“But it is strange that the greater the persecution of the Russian Church the nearer and dearer does it become to the tortured Russian people. Indeed, the priests of the Russian Church boldly denounce the Bolsheviks. Not one of the secular rulers has accused them so openly as Tikhon, the All-Russian Patriarch, over whom the Damocles sword of the Bolsheviks is always hanging. But the sword can only kill the body, and not the spirit.
“As early as last February, Patriarch Tikhon excommunicated the Bolsheviks, the excommunication being read in the churches. At that time the persecution of the clergy had already commenced, but the Patriarch had not been arrested. It was only later, in the autumn of 1918, during the universal Terror, that he was placed under domiciliary arrest in his apartments in the Kremlin, with a guard of Chinese, Letts and Red Army men, and deprived of his rations. But even as a prisoner the Patriarch issued declarations against the Bolsheviks, in