V. I.

Lenin

The debates in the Duma on the Synod estimates, then on the restoration of
rights to persons who have left holy orders and, finally, on the Old-Believer
communities, have provided very instructive material characterising the attitude
of the Russian political parties towards religion and the Church. Let us make a
general survey of this material, dwelling mainly on the debates on the Synod
estimates (we have not yet received the verbatim reports of the debates on the
other questions mentioned above).

The first and most obvious conclusion that emerges from the Duma debates is that
militant clericalism in Russia not only exists, but is clearly gaining ground
and becoming more organised. On April 16, Bishop Metrophanes stated:

“The first steps in our Duma activities pursued the explicit end that we who
have been honoured by the votes of the people, should here in the Duma stand
above party divisions, and form a single group of the clergy, which should throw
light on all sides from its ethical point of view.... What is the reason why we
have failed to achieve this ideal situation? ... The fault for this lies with
those who are sharing these benches with you [i. e., with the Cadets and the
“Left”], namely, those clerical deputies who belong to the opposition. They
were the first to lift their voice and say that this was neither more nor less
than the emergence of a clerical party, and that this was extremely
undesirable. Of course, there is no such thing as clericalism among the Russian
Orthodox clergy—we never had a tendency of that kind, and in seeking to form a
separate group we were pursuing purely ethical and moral ends. But now,
gentlemen, when, as a result of this discord introduced in our brotherly midst by the Left
deputies, there followed disunity and division, now you [i. e., the Cadets]
blame it on us.”

Bishop Metrophanes in his illiterate speech let the cat out of the bag: the
Left, don’t you see, are guilty of having dissuaded some of the Duma priests
from forming a special “moral” (this term is obviously more suitable for
hoodwinking the people than the word “clerical”) group!

Almost a month later, on May 13, Bishop Eulogius read in the Duma “the
resolution of the Duma clergy”: “The overwhelming majority of the Duma
Orthodox clergy considers”... that in the interests of the “leading and
dominant position of the Orthodox Church” neither freedom of preaching for the
Old-Believers, nor the unauthorised functioning of Old- Believer communities,
nor the using of the title of priest by Old-Believer clergymen, are
permissible. “The purely moral point of view” of the Russian priests stands
fully revealed as clericalism pure and simple. “The overwhelming majority” of
the Duma clergy, in whose name Bishop Eulogius spoke, probably consisted of 29
Right and moderately Right priests in the Third Duma, and possibly also included
8 priests belonging to the Octobrists. The opposition had probably been joined
by 4 priests belonging to the Progressist and Peaceful Renovation groups and one
belonging to the Polish-Lithuanian group.

What is then the “purely moral and ethical point of view of the overwhelming
majority of the clergy in the Duma” (the June-the-Third Duma, one should add)?
Here are a few excerpts from the speeches: “All I say is that the initiative
for these [i.e., Church] reforms must come from within the Church, not from
without, not from the state and, of course, not from the Budget
Commission. After all, the Church is a divine and eternal institution, its laws
are immutable, whereas the ideals of state life, as we know, are subject to
constant modifications” (Bishop Eulogius, April 14). The orator recalled “a
disturbing historical parallel”: the secularisation of Church property under
Catherine II. “Who can vouch that the Budget Commission, which this year
expressed the desire to put them [the Church funds] under state control, will
not express next year the desire to deposit them in the State Treasury, and then
fully to transfer their management from the Church authorities to the civil or state
authorities?... The Church statutes say that since a bishop is entrusted
with Christian souls, then all the more should Church property be entrusted
to him.... Today before you [deputies of the Duma] stands your spiritual
mother, the holy Orthodox Church, not merely as before representatives of
the people, but also as before its spiritual children” (ibid.).

This is pure clericalism. The Church is above the state as the eternal
and divine is above the temporal and earthly. The Church cannot forgive the
state for secularising Church property. The Church demands a leading and
dominant position. In its eyes the Duma deputies are not only—or rather
not so much—representatives of the people as “spiritual children”.

These are not officials in cassocks, as the Social-Democrat Surkov
called them, but feudalists in cassocks. Defence of the Church’s
feudal privileges, outspoken support of medievalism—that is the essence
of the policy pursued by the majority of the Third Duma clergy. Bishop
Eulogius is by no means an exception. Gepetsky also vociferates against
“secularisation” which he calls an intolerable “wrong” (April 14). The
priest Mashkevich fulminates against the Octobrist report for
seeking “to undermine the historic and canonical foundations on which our
Church life has rested and must rest ... to push the life and activities of
the Russian Orthodox Church off the canonical path on to the path where
... the true princes of the Church—the bishops—will be obliged to give
up almost all their rights, inherited from the apostles, to secular
princes.... This is nothing but ... an encroachment on somebody else’s
property and on the rights and possessions of the Church.... The speaker is
leading us towards the destruction of the canonical order of Church life;
he seeks to subordinate the Orthodox Church and all its economic functions
to the Duma, an institution composed of the most diverse elements in our
country, of religious creeds both tolerated and not tolerated” (April 14).

The Russian Narodniks and liberals have long been comforting
themselves, or rather deceiving themselves, with the “theory” that in
Russia there is no basis for militant clericalism, for a struggle of “the
princes of the Church” with the temporal power, and so forth. Our revolution has dispelled this
illusion, as it did a number of other Narodnik and liberal
illusions. Clericalism existed in a hidden form, so long as autocracy
existed intact and inviolate. The all- powerful police and bureaucracy
concealed from the gaze of “society” and the people the class struggle in
general, and the struggle waged by the “feudalists in cassocks” against
the “base rabble” in particular. But the first breach which the
revolutionary proletariat and peasantry made in the feudalist autocratic
regime laid bare what had been hidden. As soon as the proletariat and the
advanced elements of the democratic bourgeoisie began to make use of the
political liberty, the freedom to organise the masses, which they had won
at the end of 1905, the reactionary classes, too, reached out for
independent and open organisations. Under absolute autocracy they did not
organise, and did not come out too much in the open, not because they were
weak, but be cause they were strong; not because they were incapable of
organisation and political struggle, but because at that time they did not
yet feel any real need for independent class organisation. They did not
believe in the possibility of a mass movement against the autocracy and the
feudalists in Russia. They fully relied on the knout being sufficient to
keep the rabble down. But the first wounds inflicted on autocracy compelled
the social elements which supported it and needed it to come out into the
open. It was no longer possible to use only the old knout in
fighting masses that had been capable of causing the events of January 9,
the strike movement in 1905, and the October-December revolution. It became
necessary to build up independent political organisations; it became
necessary for the Council of the United Nobility to organise Black Hundreds
and engage in the most irresponsible demagogy; it became necessary for
“the princes of the Church—the bishops”—to organise the reactionary
clergy into an independent force.

A typical feature of the Third Duma, and of the Third Duma period of
the Russian counter-revolution is, indeed, that this organisation of the
reactionary forces has come out into the open, has begun to develop on a
nation-wide scale, and has demanded a special Black-Hundred bourgeois
“parliament”. Militant clericalism has shown its true colours; and from now on Russian Social-Democracy will have to act again and again
as an observer of, and participant in, the clashes between the clerical and
the anti-clerical bourgeoisie. If our general task is to assist the
proletariat to unite into a special class, capable of separating from
bourgeois democracy, one component of this task is the use of every means
of propaganda and agitation, including the rostrum of the Duma, to explain
to the masses the distinctions between socialist and bourgeois
anti-clericalism.

The Octobrists and Cadets who have come out in the Third Duma against
the extreme Right, the clericals, and the government, have eased this task
for us immensely by providing an object-lesson of the attitude of the
bourgeoisie to wards the Church and religion. The legal press of the Cadets
and the so-called Progressists is at present devoting special attention to
the question of the Old-Believers, to the fact that the Octobrists as well
as the Cadets have taken a stand against the government, and to the fact
that they have, albeit in a small way, “adopted the course of reform”
promised on October 17. What interests us most is the principle involved in
this question, i.e., the attitude of the bourgeoisie in general, including
the elements who claim the title of Democratic Cadets, towards religion and
the Church. We must not allow a relatively minor question—the
Old-Believers’ conflict with the dominant Church, and the conduct of the
Octobrists who are tied up with the Old-Believers, and are partly even
dependent on them financially ( Golos Moskvy [2] is said to be financed by the Old-Believers)—make us
lose sight of the root question, that of the interests and policy of the
bourgeoisie as a class.

Take a look at the speech delivered by Count Uvarov, an Octobrist in
his general views, but who has left the Octobrist group. Speaking after the
Social-Democrat Surkov, he started by refusing to deal with this question
from the standpoint of principle, as the workers’ deputy had done. Uvarov
merely attacks the Synod and the Procurator-General for their unwillingness
to give the Duma any information on certain Church revenues and on the
expenditure of parish funds. Kamensky, the official spokesman of the
Octobrists, approaches the question’ from the same stand point (April
16 ), and demands that parishes should be revived “for the purpose of strengthening the Orthodox faith”. Kapustin, the
so-called “Left-wing Octobrist”, elaborates on this idea. “If we turn to
the life of the people,” he ex claims, “to the life of the rural
population, we observe today, here and now, a sad fact: religious life is
tottering, the greatest and sole foundation of the people’s moral
principles is tottering.... What can replace the concept of sin, what can
replace the dictates of conscience? Surely, they cannot be replaced by the
concept of class struggle and the rights of this or that class. That is a
tragic concept which has taken root in our everyday life. Therefore, if
religion is to survive as a foundation of morality, if it is to be within
reach of the whole population, it is necessary that the bearers of this
religion should enjoy the proper authority...."

The spokesman of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie wishes to
strengthen religion, he wishes to enhance the influence of religion on the
masses, realising that it is inadequate and out of date, realising even the
harm caused to the ruling classes by “officials in cassocks”, who are
lowering the authority of the Church. The Octobrist is fighting
against the excesses of clericalism and of police tutelage in order to strengthen the influence of the Church on the masses, in order to
replace at least some means of addling the wits of the people, which are
too crude, too out of date, too threadbare to achieve their object, by more
refined and improved means. Police religion is no longer adequate for be
fuddling the masses: give us a more cultured, more up-to- date, more
skilful religion, one that will be effective in a self-governing
parish—that is what capital is demanding of the autocracy.

And the Cadet Karaulov fully subscribes to this same point of
view. This “liberal” renegade (who gradually “evolved” from the
Narodnaya

Volya [1] to the Right-wing Cadets) screams his protest against the
“denationalisation of the Church,understanding this to mean the exclusion
of the masses of the people, of the laity, from the building of the
Church”. He finds it “ shocking ” (literally so!) that the masses
are “losing faith”. He raises an outcry, quite in the style of

Menshikov, [3] because the “immense intrinsic value of the

Church is being depreciated ... to the great detriment not only of the
cause of the Church, but of that of the state as well”. He qualifies as
“words of gold” the loathsome hypocrisy of the zealot Eulogius on the
theme that “the task of the Church is eternal, immutable, hence, it is not
possible to link up the Church with politics”. He protests against the
alliance of the Church with the Black Hundreds for the sole reason
that the Church may, “with greater might and glory than today, fulfil its
grand and holy mission in a Christian spirit of love and freedom”.

Comrade Belousov did well to have a good laugh at these “lyrical
words” of Karaulov’s from the Duma rostrum. How ever, such ridicule is
very far from being adequate. It had to be made clear—and at the first
convenient opportunity this should be done from the Duma rostrum—that the
stand point of the Cadets is absolutely identical with that of the
Octobrists, and merely expresses the efforts of “cultured” capital to
bamboozle the people with religious narcotics by more refined methods of
Church deception than the ones now practised by the rank-and-file Russian
priests who are still living in the past.

To keep the people in spiritual bondage, there must be the closest
possible alliance of the Church and the Black Hundreds, said the “wild
landlord” and the old

Derzhimorda [4] through their spokesman Purishkevich. You are wrong,
gentlemen, retorts the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie through their
spokesman Karaulov: with such methods you will only make the people turn
away from religion for good. Now let us go about it in a more clever, more
artful, more ingenious way: let us remove the too stupid and crude agent of
the Black Hundreds, declare war on “denationalisation of the Church”, and
inscribe on our banner Bishop Eulogius’s “words of gold” to the effect
that the Church is above politics. Only in this way shall we be able to
fool at least some of the backward workers, and especially of the petty
bourgeoisie and the peasantry, and be able to help the renovated Church to
fulfil its “grand and holy mission” of retaining the masses of the people
in spiritual bondage.

Our liberal press, not excluding the newspaper Rech , has
concentrated of late on censuring Struve and Co. for their authorship of the symposium Vekhi . But Karaulov, the official
spokesman of the Cadets in the Duma, has done a superlative job of exposing
all the vile hypocrisy of these remonstrances, and these repudiations of
Struve and Co. What Karaulov and Milyukov conceal, Struve reveals. The
liberals blame Struve only for having imprudently blurted out the
truth, for showing his hand too openly. The liberals, who censure
Vekhi and go on supporting the Cadet Party, are most shamelessly
deceiving the people—condemning imprudently outspoken words , and
going on doing the very things that go with those words.

There is little to say about the conduct of the Trudoviks in the Duma
during the debate on the questions under re view. As always, a noticeable
difference was revealed between the peasant Trudoviks and the intellectual
Trudoviks to the disadvantage of the latter, because of their excessive
readiness to follow the Cadets. True, Rozhkov, a peasant, revealed in his
speech his complete lack of political consciousness; he, too, repeated the
Cadet platitudes about the Union of the Russian People helping not to
reinforce but to destroy faith. He was unable to suggest any programme. On
the other hand, when he began in his artless manner to tell the naked,
unvarnished truth about the levies collected by the clergy, about the
extortions of the priests, about how, in addition to charging money for
conducting a marriage ceremony, they demand “a bottle of vodka, snacks,
and a pound of tea, and sometimes things that I am even afraid to talk about from this rostrum ” (April 16, verbatim report,
p. 2259)—this was more than the Black-Hundred Duma could stand. A wild
howl arose from the benches of the right. “This is scandalous, this is
outrageous!” shouted the Black Hundreds, realising that this simple
peasant’s speech about extortions, listing the scale of “fees” charged
for religious rites, was more likely to revolutionise the masses than any
amount of theoretical or tactical anti-religious and anti-Church
declarations. Thereupon the band of diehard defenders of autocracy in the
Third Duma intimidated their flunkey—the Duma Chairman Meyendorff—and
compelled him to rule that Rozhkov must sit down (the Social-Democrats,
joined by some Trudoviks, Cadets and others, handed in a protest against
this action of the Chairman).

Although the speech delivered by the peasant Trudovik Rozhkov was extremely
unsophisticated, it provided an excellent demonstration of the abyss
dividing the hypocritical, deliberately reactionary defence of religion by
the Cadets, and the primitive, unconscious, matter-of-fact religiousness of
the peasant, whose living conditions give rise—against his will and
unconsciously—to a truly revolutionary resentment against extortions, and
to readiness for a resolute fight against medievalism. The Cadets are the
representatives of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, which is intent
on renovating and strengthening religion against the people. The Rozhkovs
are the representatives of revolutionary bourgeois democracy, a democracy
that is undeveloped, lacking political consciousness, downtrodden, lacking
independence, disunited—yet frought with an all but inexhaustible
reservoir of revolutionary energy in the fight against the landlords, the
priests, and the autocracy.

Rozanov, a Trudovik intellectual, came close to the Cadets far less
unconsciously than Rozhkov. Rozanov could mention disestablishment of the
Church as a demand of the “Left”, but could not refrain from reactionary,
petty-bourgeois phrases about “amending the electoral law in the sense
that the clergy should be excluded from participation in the political
struggle”. The revolutionary spirit, which finds a spontaneous outlet in a
typical, average peasant when he begins to tell the truth about how he
lives, vanishes in the case of a Trudovik intellectual, to be replaced by
hazy and sometimes actually vile phrases. For the hundredth and thousandth
time we see the truth confirmed that only if they follow the proletariat’s
lead will the Russian peasant masses be able to overthrow the oppressive
and killing yoke of the feudal-minded landlords, the feudalists in
cassocks, the feudal-minded supporters of the autocracy.

The Social-Democrat Surkov, representing the workers’ party and the
working class, was the only person in the Duma to raise the debates to the
truly high level of principle, and said without beating about the bush what
the attitude of the proletariat is towards the Church and religion, and
what should be the attitude in this matter of all consistent and vigorous
democrats. “Religion is the opium of the people.... Not a farthing of the
people’s money to these murderous enemies of the people who are drugging the people’s minds”—this
straightforward, bold and outspoken battle-cry of a socialist resounded
like a challenge to the Black- Hundred Duma, and met with the response of
millions of proletarians, who will spread it among the masses and who will
know how to translate it into revolutionary action when the time comes.

---
Notes:
[1]
See Note 99.— Ed .

[2]
Golos Moskvy ( Voice of Moscow )—a daily newspaper, organ of the Octobrists— a counter-revolutionary party of the big
industrial bourgeoisie and big landlords. Published in Moscow from 1905 to
1915.

[3]
Menshikov, M. 0. (1859-1919)—a reactionary journalist, one
of the editors of the Black-Hundred newspaper Novoye Vremya
( New Times ).— Ed .

[4]
Derzhimorda —the name of a policeman in Gogol’s comedy
The Inspector-General typifying an insolent, brutal bully and
oppressor.