The separation of Church and State did not exist. In fact under Tsarist rule the church was in essence a wing of the government. Following the October Revolution that would change. Vladimir Lenin spoke openly about his disdain for religion. In his writings he had said “Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression.” For the first three years in power Lenin could not take all of the steps he wanted to “against the fog of religion.” He is well known for saying “religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.” Lenin wanted to wage war against the Russian Orthodox Church but he needed the right opportunity.
According to Victor Sebestyen Lenin had ordered the Checka and the Red Guards “to leave the Church alone, for now. ‘Be very careful in handling the Church. Do nothing hasty. There will come a time for this battle, but wait,’ he wrote to Dzerzhinsky.” For years Lenin waited before launching his assault on the church. During the Revolution and during the civil war he had not been able to act against the church in the manner he wanted to. In 1921 the event he had been waiting for presented itself and Lenin was ready to act.
Famine arrived in Russia and Lenin saw this as his opportunity to destroy the church. Quoting a letter written by Lenin outlined in Sebestyen’s book Lenin “The enemy [he meant the Church] is committing an enormous strategic mistake in trying to drag us into battle at this time…for us this is the moment when we can with ninety-nine chances out of a hundred smash them and secure for ourselves an unassailable position for many decades to come. It is precisely now, when in the starving regions people are eating human flesh, and thousands of corpses are littering the roads…that we must carry out the confiscation of Church valuables, with the most merciless energy and crush any resistance. It is now, and only now, that the peasant mass will be for us, or at any rate will not be in a condition to support the clergy…We must seize the valuables now speedily; we will be unable to do so later because no other moment except that of desperate hunger will give us support among the masses. The confiscations must be conducted with merciless determination the greater the number of clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing for this reason…[i.e., resisting church looting] the better. We must teach these people a lesson so they will not dare even to think of resistance for decades.”
Sebestyen oulined how successful Lenin’s actions were as follows: “This was the violent beginning of the suppression of religion, which over the next fifteen years or so saw more than 97 per cent of the Soviet Union’s churches, synagogues and mosques closed down. Within two years of Lenin’s edict more than thirty bishops and 1,200 priests had been killed and thousands more jailed.”
Lenin had used the power of the state to destroy organized religion in the Soviet Union.
For more of Lenin’s own words on Religion see Socialism and Religion published in Novaya Zhizn December 3, 1905
For more details about Lenin’s life see Victor Sebestyen’s Book Lenin published in 2017
William Wilberforce has been called an agitator for his commitment to ending the slave trade. One of his well known speeches on the subject was given on May 12, 1789.
Cardinal Richelieu has been hailed as a great statesman and as a subversive authoritarian. Depending on who you talk to he was a man needed to strengthen the monarchy in France, or he was a tyrant seeking personal power. Next week I will have a book review that may shed more light on Cardinal Richelieu.
When Lenin was working on his major writing projects he would often pace across the room formulating the ideas that he would write down by saying them out loud. Once he had the idea for what he wanted to write he would often repeat the idea to Nadezhda Krupskaya, who would provide feedback. Once this process was complete he would then write the ideas down.
Here is an AI rendering of what that might have looked like when he was drafting What is to be Done.
This month this community will focus on political subversion. What is subversion? When is it justified? What is the interplay between subversion and agitation? These are some of the topics to be discussed this month.
“You get used to the despot’s shortcomings, when they are not great vices, and the change of an autocratic ruler leads to involuntary fear.”
Sergei Trubetskoi
