Mirrors of Moscow

by Louise Bryant

However, the trials themselves are intensely interesting and mark an epoch in the life of the revolution. They actually mark the real beginning of public opinion in Russia and that, in any case, is a healthy development. It is like letting fresh air into a long-closed room. Discussions of the government and the church have for five years been going on in whispers behind closed doors. It now comes down to this: if the government is wrong and is unjustly stripping the church of wealth, the government will suffer by lack of support or even open hostility on the part of the peasants, who have so much power now that they can no longer be ignored on any question; and if the priests are wrong and prove themselves selfish in this time of need, the priests will be deposed. But the church itself will go on because the peasants are religious; they will continue to “love God” in the traditional manner.

About a week ago I met a Russian priest in New York and I asked him at once how he felt about the requisitioning of the jewels. He raised his hands devoutly. “What man could pray to God and hoard jewels at such a time?” he exclaimed. Then he showed me a very old and precious carved wooden cross. “There was a ruby in this cross,” he said. “It was the only valuable thing I possessed. I can’t tell you how happy I was when it was sold and the money used for relief. This is not a stone you see in it now; it is a piece of red glass, but it is somehow more precious to me than the ruby.” Here is the expression of a really devout man and the only sort of priest that people will follow in such a crisis.

It is perfectly true that the leaders of the Communist movement are not religious. All students, in fact the entire “intelligentsia” or educated classes of Russia, were never religious. Before the revolution all groups of revolutionaries and literary folk prided themselves on their lack of religion. So anti-religion is not confined strictly to the leaders of the Communist movement. Any other party except the Monarchist Party would be equally devoid of interest in religion.

The Monarchists necessarily support the church because the Tsar was really head of the church. This has been true since the time of Peter the Great, who while not actually abolishing the office of Patriarch, never allowed another Patriarch to be elected. One of the curious and interesting sidelights of the revolution was that a few weeks after the church was separated from the state, a Patriarch was elected for the first time in two hundred years, so that while in one way the church lost its power, in another way it really came into its own.

Freedom of religion, as we know it in the United States, was a surprise and a shock to the members of the Russian church, for up until 1917 no other sects but the Greek Orthodox were permitted by law in Russia. Naturally, when other religious orders began to send in missionaries the old church protested, and when the Soviets answered that freedom of religion was now an established fact they did not understand it as “freedom” and called it discrimination. And it seemed like discrimination, because, while the Orthodox Church was losing its former possessions, other religions were gaining concessions.

Tikon, whose official title is Patriarch of Moscow and All the Russias, and who is called, with a sharp flavor of French revolutionary days, by the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal, “Citizen Basil Ivanovitch Baliavin,” was born in Pskoff in 1860. He was educated in Petrograd Theological Academy and became a monk upon the completion of his studies. He later held several important posts as a professor in theological institutions. He was consecrated Bishop of the Aleutian Isles and North America in 1897 and then came to America. In 1905 he was made Archbishop and moved the cathedral residence from San Francisco to New York. He returned to Russia in February, 1907, having been appointed Archbishop of Jaroslav. In 1913 he became Archbishop of Vilna. Early in 1917 he was elected Metropolitan of Moscow and in November of that same year, just when the Bolsheviks came into power, he became Patriarch.

Just what influenced Tikon and made him so much more democratic than most of his colleagues, I do not know. My own opinion, after a conversation with him, is that he is somewhat of a student of history and a philosopher, as well as a priest. It is the opinion of many people, inside and outside of Russia, that it was his long residence in America which made him so liberal. Of one thing I feel sure. He would have resisted the Soviet Government if he had believed that it was better for the future of the church. I do not think he refrained because of any personal fears, but because he actually saw a real revival of religion in the fire through which the church was passing.

No one could have expected the church to embrace the revolution. The nobility and the clergy had walked too many centuries hand in hand. The nobility perished in the course of events and the church survived, as it did in France. And the church will continue to survive—merely the poorer by a few jewels or a few thousand acres of land. But it will never wield the same power that it once did or that it could wield if there was a return to Tsardom. It cannot be as strong, for example, as the Church of Rome is in Italy.

The real menace to the power of the Russian church lies in its own medieval outlook on life. It has scarcely anything to do with anti-church propagandists or with opposition by force or by requisition. The youth of Russia is interested in reconstruction and the government for the first time. The young people have learned to read and to think. They are no longer content with the old forms; they are repelled by dissolute or un-Christlike priests. If the church wishes to be strong and to have an influence in the life of the nation it cannot gain that influence by haggling over a pile of rubies and diamonds and emeralds while thousands of children are dying of hunger. The old peasants might follow Tikon when he says that the famine is the business of God, but the young people will not. It is almost inconceivable that a man can follow the lowly Christ in such a proud way. Certainly, the young Russians, who have so passionately defended the revolution, will never be satisfied with such a conception.

It seems very sad, from the religious point of view, that Tikon, who steered his church through the long period of fighting and destruction, should lose his equilibrium in the period of adjustment. He was able to smile through all the worst days of terror and suspicion. He could joke about the Cheka guard outside his door, he could calm his agitated congregations, but he could not sacrifice form. When I interviewed him he wore a gorgeous robe and jewels.