Metropolitan Orgies?

Thousands of banners on Soviet public buildings have proclaimed that Lenin said "Religion is the opium of the people." Every enrolled member of the Communist Party is a professing atheist. The Soviet League of Militant Godless has kept clawing away at the Russian Church for twelve long years. Hence outside the Soviet Union, and even inside, there has been a tendency to forget that Communism has not wiped out the Church, that many of its priests have adapted themselves to Soviet conditions with such dexterity that they now preach Christ was the first Red.

Stalin, when drafting the new Soviet Constitution (TIME, June 15, 1936 et seq.), made it possible for any legally registered society to nominate candidates for office, forgetting or ignoring the fact that there are 30,000 such religious groups in Russia today. When Christians entered the campaign, Stalin was reminded. He promptly put a stop to it. With refreshed memory he last week acted to crush Christian presumption.

The Stalin crusher, now highly developed, is a system which begins by arresting a man secretly, blackening his name publicly in the press without announcing his arrest at the time, watching closely for any furtive reactions among the people, arresting those who react, and finally spiriting the accused off to exile or execution. Last week a beginning of this sort was made with the Church. Metropolitan Sergius and Metropolitan Vitalius, the two highest church dignitaries in Russia were the victims.

The great age and snowy beard of Sergius did not save him from figuring in Pravda and Izvestia as "a participant in orgies who had disgraceful relations with nuns." Frail old Vitalius was put down for "wrecking, espionage and other subversive activities." The official newsorgan Gorkovskaya Kommuna affirmed that the Brotherhood of Sobriety, an organization of young Orthodox girls, was founded by church dignitaries to recruit young women to become the sweethearts of Army & Navy men and wheedle military secrets to be sold to Germany and Japan. One Orthodox bishop was described flatly as a "Japanese agent."

Moscow correspondents, refused official information, picked up from terrified Christians reports that not only the Orthodox but also the Lutheran clergy are being "ruthlessly purged." Although the Government did not admit the arrest of the Metropolitans no one in Moscow doubted that it had taken place. Stalin's crusher was once more at work.

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