The courage, the fervor and the spiritual vitality evinced by these communities; the highly organized state of their administrative institutions; the facilities provided for the religious education and training of their youth; the conversion of a number of broad-minded Russian citizens, imbued with ideas closely related to the tenets of the Faith; the growing realization of the implications of its principles, with their emphasis on religion, on the sanctity of family life, on the institution of private property, and their repudiation of all discrimination between classes and of the doctrine of the absolute equality of men—these combined to excite the suspicion, and later to arouse the fierce antagonism, of the ruling authorities, and to precipitate one of the gravest crises in the history of the first Bahá’í century.
As the crisis developed and spread to even the outlying centers of both Turkistán and the Caucasus it resulted gradually in the imposition of restrictions limiting the freedom of these communities, in the interrogation and arrest of their elected representatives, in the dissolution of their local Assemblies and their respective committees in Moscow, in Ishqábád, in Bákú and in other localities in the above-mentioned provinces and in the suspension of all Bahá’í youth activities. It even led to the closing of Bahá’í schools, kindergartens, libraries and public reading-rooms, to the interception of all communication with foreign Bahá’í centers, to the confiscation of Bahá’í printing presses, books and documents, to the prohibition of all teaching activities, to the abrogation of the Bahá’í constitution, to the abolition of all national and local funds and to the ban placed on the attendance of non-believers at Bahá’í meetings.
In the middle of 1928 the law expropriating religious edifices was applied to the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of Ishqábád. The use of this edifice as a house of worship, however, was continued, under a five-year lease, which was renewed by the local authorities in 1933, for a similar period. In 1938 the situation in both Turkistán and the Caucasus rapidly deteriorated, leading to the imprisonment of over five hundred believers—many of whom died—as well as a number of women, and the confiscation of their property, followed by the exile of several prominent members of these communities to Siberia, the polar forests and other places in the vicinity of the Arctic Ocean, the subsequent deportation of most of the remnants of these communities to Persia, on account of their Persian nationality, and lastly, the complete expropriation of the Temple itself and its conversion into an art gallery.
In Germany, likewise, the rise and establishment of the Administrative Order of the Faith, to whose expansion and consolidation the German believers were distinctively and increasingly contributing, was soon followed by repressive measures, which, though less grievous than the afflictions suffered by the Bahá’ís of Turkistán and the Caucasus, amounted to the virtual cessation, in the years immediately preceding the present conflict, of all organized Bahá’í activity throughout the length and breadth of that land. The public teaching of the Faith, with its unconcealed emphasis on peace and universality, and its repudiation of racialism, was officially forbidden; Bahá’í Assemblies and their committees were dissolved; the holding of Bahá’í conventions was interdicted; the Archives of the National Spiritual Assembly were seized; the summer school was abolished and the publication of all Bahá’í literature was suspended.
In Persia, moreover, apart from sporadic outbreaks of persecution in such places as Shíráz, Ábádih, Ardibíl, Iṣfáhán, and in certain districts of Ádhirbayján and Khurásán—outbreaks greatly reduced in number and violence, owing to the marked decline in the fortunes of the erstwhile powerful Shí’ah ecclesiastics—the institutions of a newly-established and as yet unconsolidated Administrative Order were subjected by the civil authorities, in both the capital and the provinces, to restrictions designed to circumscribe their scope, to fetter their freedom and undermine their foundations.
The gradual and wholly unexpected emergence from obscurity of a firmly-welded national community, schooled in adversity and unbroken in spirit, with centers established in every province of that country, in spite of the successive waves of inhuman persecution which had, for three quarters of a century, swept over and had all but engulfed it; the determination of its members to diffuse the spirit and principles of their Faith, broadcast its literature, enforce its laws and ordinances, penalize those who would transgress them, maintain a steady intercourse with their fellow-believers in foreign lands, and erect the edifices and institutions of its Administrative Order, could not but arouse the apprehensions and the hostility of those placed in authority, who either misunderstood the aims of that community, or were bent upon stifling its life. The insistence of its members, while obedient in all matters of a purely administrative character to the civil statutes of their country, on adhering to the fundamental spiritual principles, precepts and laws revealed by Bahá’u’lláh, requiring them, among other things, to hold fast to truthfulness, not to dissimulate their faith, observe the ordinances prescribed for marriage and divorce, and suspend all manner of work on the Holy Days ordained by Him, brought them, sooner or later, into conflict with a régime which, owing to its formal recognition of Islám as the state religion of Persia, refused to extend any recognition to those whom the official exponents of that religion had already condemned as heretics.
The closing of all schools belonging to the Bahá’í community in that country, as a direct consequence of the refusal of the representatives of that community to permit official Bahá’í institutions, owned and entirely controlled by them, to transgress the clearly revealed law requiring the suspension of work on Bahá’í Holy Days; the rejection of all Bahá’í marriage certificates and the refusal to register them at government License Bureaus; the ban placed on the printing and circulation of all Bahá’í literature, as well as on its entry into the country; the seizure in various centers of Bahá’í documents, books and relics; the closing, in some of the provinces of the Hazíratu’l-Quds, and the confiscation in some localities of their furniture; the prohibition of all Bahá’í demonstrations, conferences and conventions; the strict censorship imposed on, and often the non-delivery of, communications between Bahá’í centers in Persia and between these centers and Bahá’í communities in foreign lands; the withholding of good-record certificates from loyal and law-abiding citizens on the ground of their avowed adherence to the Bahá’í Faith; the dismissal of Government employees, the demotion or discharge of army officers, the arrest, the interrogation, the imprisonment of, and the imposition of fines and other punishments upon, a number of believers who refused either to cast aside the moral obligation of adhering to the spiritual principles of their Faith, or to act in any manner that would conflict with its universal and non-political character—all these may be regarded as the initial attempts made in the country whose soil had already been imbued with the blood of countless Bahá’í martyrs, to resist the rise, and frustrate the struggle for the emancipation, of a nascent Administrative Order, whose very roots have sucked their strength from such heroic sacrifice.