which he severely denounced them.
“It is not enough,” writes the Patriarch, “that you have stained the hands of the Russian people with the blood of their brethren. You have instigated the people to open, shameless robbery. You have befogged their consciences and stifled their conviction of sin, but under whatever name you disguise an evil deed, murder, violence and robbery will always remain crimes and deeds of evil that clamor to Heaven for vengeance. Yes, we are going through a dreadful time under your dominion, and it will be long before it fades from the hearts of the nation, where it has dimmed the image of God and impressed that of the beast.
“But as yet the Bolsheviks have not dared to raise their hand against the aged Patriarch. Apparently he is alive.”
A faint idea of what the Bolsheviks are doing to the Russian Church may be gathered from the following:
“According to information received from A. Kartashov, former Minister of Cults, by December, 1918, the Bolsheviks had killed ten archbishops and bishops; it is difficult to ascertain the number of priests killed. It reaches several hundreds. The Patriarch is a prisoner in his own house. According to the (later) message from the Archbishop of Omsk, President of the Supreme Administration of the Orthodox Church, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Metropolitan of Kiev, twenty bishops and hundreds of priests have been assassinated. Some were buried alive. ‘Wherever the Bolsheviks are in power,’ says the Archbishop of Omsk, ‘the Christian Church is persecuted with even greater ferocity than in the first three centuries of the Christian era.’
“When, in January, 1919, the town of Yuriev (Dorpat) was taken by the Bolsheviks, Bishop Platon was arrested. The Reval papers thus describe the Bishop’s last moments. The Bolsheviks burst