THE CHURCH DESTROYER #

Bishop Mikhail Semyonov

Recently, Bishop Alexei of Taurida, a hierarch of the “dominant church,” declared in a public speech that all is well within the Church: “Our temples are full; the efforts of journalistic lackeys to sow discord in the Church have been unsuccessful.”

Clearly, the bishop rejoices that the prophecy of one such “lackey,” V. V. Rozanov, has not yet come to pass.

This writer has an article titled A Troubled Night. It is a dream. The writer beholds a church…

It is brightly lit… Brilliantly… As if on purpose—to drive away the dread and horror that dwell inside the church. A priest is serving the Vigil. He walks about the temple with a censer and chants, “O praise the Lord, all ye servants.” But it is clear that he is afraid.

“O praise the Lord…” But there are no servants… The church is empty… Completely empty… And this emptiness is final.

Empty forever.

This has not yet come to be. The churches are not yet empty, and the bishop rejoices.

There is not yet the cry:

— “Away from this church that is bright on the outside but defiled within!”

Yes, the temples are not yet entirely deserted—but are they as full as they once were?

And more importantly: is not the inward emptiness and the abomination of desolation in the holy place becoming plain to see?

I #

Violence and forgery—these are the two pillars of Synodal Orthodoxy.

Thus may be briefly stated the essence of the post-Nikonian history of so-called “Orthodoxy.”

We recall how, during the debates in Kazan with the Old Believers, a certain Peretrukhin shocked the “Orthodox” by hurling at the Synodal Church the charge of Luciferianism—the Spanish heresy of misanthropic men who knew neither forgiveness, nor mercy, nor compassion.¹

When the Old Believer cast this accusation at Nikon, the listeners understood that something new, threatening, and profoundly Christian and just was being expressed.

Yes, a merciless man and a tyrant cannot be a reformer of the Church: he can bring into it only gangrene and decay.

A morally sensitive conscience, in issuing its indictment of the Synodal Church, can begin nowhere else than with this same accusation.

The Synodal Church was born of intolerance and violence… Its earliest steps in history are stained with blood.

Let us recall how Nikon, without guilt or trial, tore the bishop’s robes from Pavel, Bishop of Kolomna; let us remember his underground prisons, crammed with innocent people… the tortures in the Resurrection Monastery… the people tormented at the order of the “most holy”…

All this had to become—and did become—the seed of the devil, from which was destined to spring religious violence…

And it did spring forth…

The alterations to ritual and liturgical order introduced by Nikon provoked the so-called schism—the falling away from the state church of thousands and even millions of the most fervent and believing Christians.

The reasons for their departure are easy to understand…

Imagine that a holy icon, before which your mother once prayed, is to be thrown into the mud, so that it might be replaced by a new one, more finely painted…

You would not permit such blasphemy.

You will say: “My old icon is dear to me: so many tears have been shed before it, so many fervent and heartfelt prayers lifted up to the Creator of all! It is dearer to me than any other!…

What’s more, you might even feel hostility toward the new icon. Why? It’s very simple. It was brought by blasphemous, evil hands, which seek to throw the holy thing into the mud, and by their touch have defiled what is sacred…

And you would, of course, be right to treat with hostility those who insult your beliefs and holy things.

But precisely in this position—of the offended—stood the adherents of the old rite at the moment of their departure from the Nikonian church.

Their holy two-fingered sign of the cross was broken, their rites dismantled, their services altered…

Let us grant, for a moment, that the new rite was just as pure and holy as the old—but was the old somehow bad? In what way? Prove it!.. You know that all these rites, this whole antiquity, are dear to us like the graves of our fathers and mothers, like the holy relics of God’s saints… You break them… Have pity on our love for the holy, on the union of our souls with the “old ways.”

And how did they answer the tears and pleas of deeply faithful people?..

With blasphemy!… The introducers of the new rite did not shrink from blasphemous mockery of the old; they dared to write the name of the spirit of darkness—the liar and murderer from the beginning—on the two fingers used for the sign of the cross…

They saw fit to render the Most Holy Name “Isus” (Jesus) with a contemptuous and near-abusive word!

The conclusion drawn by the defenders of the old holy things was clear: if the new is being introduced with blasphemy and violence, then clearly the preachers of this new thing are from the evil one.

Even if the new thing—let us repeat—was not in itself bad, it becomes evil by the fact that it is brought forth with slander and sacrilege against the holy.

And so it was only natural that pure-hearted people clung to the old, fearing that if they gave way here, they would squander all their spiritual treasures, and “renew” their souls after the image and likeness of blasphemers and desecrators.

They instinctively felt the danger and were afraid of it.

It is a grim thing to think that rite is something empty, unimportant. Rite, as the “Orthodox” professor Klyuchevsky explains, is the “garment of dogma.”

For the people, who lacked formal theological education, it was precisely through rite that they could and were meant to enter “with their untrained minds into the meaning of God’s word, seeking the spirit within the image. For them, dogma merged with rite as with an unwritten symbol of faith.”

And it was entirely natural for them to hold fast even to the smallest details of the rite, because they feared damaging the truth of the faith hidden behind the rite.

But could you believe that they would not be robbed of their treasure of faith?

— Whom to believe!

Let us step back just a little.

First of all: who brought the reform?

What sort of man dared to shatter the old, to chop down and cast into the furnace the holy things sanctified by “the labors and tears of many generations”?

Was it a saintly man, strong in religious asceticism?

No—it was a man, perhaps with a strong will, but with a petty, morally base, and vain little soul.

He would change his vestment—his sakkos—twenty times in a single service. In that small act the whole soul of Nikon is revealed: small, enamored with the outward pomp of rank.

And together with these sakkoses come to mind his letters to Tsar Alexei after his fall, where his complaints that he is “alone, like a dog, deprived of a rich table” are mingled with the proud reminder that through his prayer “many were healed of various diseases” (Solovyov, Vol. XI, p. 257).

The holy Fathers call such a state prelest’—spiritual delusion and corruption of soul.

As for Nikon’s personal morality—particularly concerning the commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery”—it is all too well known.

Who has not heard of his connection with Maria Ilyinishna, the wife of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich? Or of the disgraceful accusatory letter issued by Patriarch Joachim to the abbot of the Ferapontov Monastery:

“To that same Nikon,” we read there, “come wives and maidens, supposedly for medicine, and he sits with them one-on-one and strips them bare, allegedly to examine their sores; and from his ‘remedies’ many have died. He, Nikon, calls maidens and young widows his ‘daughters’ and persuades them into marriage within his own cell; and after the wedding, they come again to his cell, and he gets them drunk and they sit with him until midnight. He, Nikon, took a pregnant married woman and forced her into another marriage; but the groom did not wish to marry her, and Nikon beat him with whips and forced him to marry her by coercion. To Nikon, his cell attendant Mikita Nikitich brought his wife by night. To Nikon, the deacon Obroska Isakov also brought his wife, likewise by night. Nikon was seen with a woman in a hidden place by the servant Mikitka Isaev. Also visiting Nikon often was the wife of Major Alimpiyev, Valutina Nastasya, and they would sit alone together behind locked doors, drinking to the point of drunkenness. He, Nikon, after the repose of the blessed memory of the great sovereign, drank to drunkenness throughout the whole of Great Lent, and when drunk, he unjustly disturbed all the monastery’s ranks; and at his command the musketeers beat the servants and peasants with whips, and some still lie in chains. And by his order, the elder Pafnuty was beaten at the whipping post for a whole week during Great Lent…”

That same Nikon beat the servant Thomka Obrosimov of the Ferapontov Monastery with a wooden water yoke, and from those beatings, he died. By Nikon’s command, his attendants beat the elderly stableman Lavrenty with sticks. And afterward, during Bright Week, Nikon plied that elder with strong wine, and from that drinking he died. Nikon also personally beat the servant Ganka Mikiforov in his own cell.²

“About other similarly godless acts committed by him,” continues the testimony of his subdeacon Fyodor, “I say plainly: Nikon is a heretic and a Sodomite. Once, I saw beneath Nikon’s bed a depiction of the Lord’s crucifixion placed there; and seeing this, I was filled with great terror. And the Lord, seeing my devotion to the love of God, did not conceal from me other shameful Sodomite deeds of Nikon. For once, having intoxicated his subdeacon Job—called Ladoshka—he defiled him with sodomitic acts.”³

Could such a man be trusted? Of course not—especially since for him there was no truth. Whatever he said—his slips of the tongue, his drunken babble—was for him solid truth, firm as the Gospel, simply because he had said it.

Nikon would sooner have broken the entire Church, rotted hundreds of souls in prison, burned thousands—than renounced his own careless word.

The Council of 1666 said that he had acted like the devil. The council itself was estranged from God and the Spirit of Christ; it judged Nikon with human cunning and malice, but in one thing it was right:

Nikon was possessed by the pride of the devil, and therefore he was falsehood. Had the people any right to trust him?

— No!

And this is the chief point…

In the matter of the reform, the spirit of heresy was manifest—the very spirit of pride that filled Nikon.

Nikon and the Council of 1666 sought to cast the people out of the Church.

But in the Orthodox Church, there is no church that teaches apart from the people. The Church is the priesthood together with the people.

The people of the Church gave strength even to the very councils. To expel them from the Church, to recognize the bishops alone as guardians of the faith—this was to destroy the work of Christ.

This was an assault upon the very life of the Church—upon her very essence.

And the people—the guardians of the faith, even according to the new-ritualist symbolical books—did not join in sin with their bishops.

The “external” coercive methods used by the mighty Nikonian Church only made the ritual reforms even more suspect.

Who does not know these methods of “admonishment” and “persuasion”?…

They are such that never, by any contortion of logic, will the Church manage to wash away the shame of these measures—measures that stained with blood the very pages that ought to have been pure as baptismal garments: the pages of “church” history.

And the Synodal Church cannot place the blame on private individuals… No—the guilt lies upon the whole Church, because the chief author of the violence was a council—even a “great council”—and its continuator, the “permanent council” of the Russian Church, known as the Synod…

We have seen how Nikon preached his new “truth.” After him, it was no better.

The Council of 1666 threatened “bodily torment” for love of the customs of one’s fathers and grandfathers.

Claiming authority “from the Holy and Life-giving Spirit,” the hierarchs ordered the tongues of Deacon Feodor and Priest Lazar to be cut out, and they held them—and many others—in dreadful imprisonment.

Women who baked prosphora bearing the eight-pointed cross were sent by order of Metropolitan Pitirim of Novgorod to the Tikhvin Monastery, where they were kept in chains…

In Pustozersk, Avvakum, ablaze with spiritual fire, was burned “by the will of that same spirit”; in Moscow, the deeply sensitive and sincere woman Morozova, radiant with transparent faith, rotted in prison; Nikita was beheaded…

And throughout the “God-preserved cities,” the bishops ordered the captured Old Believers to be doused with freezing water in the cold, setting them up in rows along the paths of their courtyards, burying them alive in the earth, stretching their sinews, burning them in barns and log cabins (Samarin, Works, vol. V, p. 239).

Who would not tremble upon reading the Old Believer Synodikon published by Pypin—more terrifying than the Synodikon of Ivan the Terrible… Two thousand people burned… Five thousand people burned… and so on.

And under Peter the Great, with Synodal blessing, there was published a “truly Christian” interpretation of Chrysostom in The Rock of Faith by Stefan Yavorsky: “Even the holy Chrysostom, with others, interprets heretics to be thieves and robbers… But what does the law do with thieves and robbers?… Does it not slay them?… The same must be done to heretics… There is no cure for heresy but death…” (See also the following pages.)

And they “treated” as they did Talitsky, whom they slowly smoked alive…

Is it any wonder that the people recoiled in horror from the “Orthodox,” seeing behind their deeds not the face of Christ, but the face of Antichrist—the great Lucifer, the father of lies…

And that face appeared in a new form well-suited to it—slander and forgery.

II #

In 1721, the Patriarchate finally died, and the Synod was born…

The story of the birth of this new institution was very instructive for the Old Believers. They very cleverly—and in their own way, solidly—linked the new ecclesiastical power with Peter’s Eleventh Patriarchate. This original “patriarchate” came after the death of Patriarch Adrian… As is known, Peter invented a disgraceful and blasphemous form of entertainment. He created the so-called Most Drunken Synod…

It was a jester’s parody of the patriarchate…

There was a “patriarch,” a “metropolitan,” “bishops”… Their titles were all formed from two or three obscene, vulgar words… This jester’s hierarchy mocked the faith of the people—even the holy mysteries.

And real bishops took part in this blasphemy, particularly the cunning Theophan Prokopovich, who believed neither in God nor the devil.

Finally, a great triumph was held… The “patriarch” of the drunken assembly was solemnly crowned. They forced a 90-year-old priest—the protopope of the Annunciation—to perform this act of sacrilege, and then they began to prepare the real “new patriarch.”

The same Theophan was commissioned to “sew the coat” for the new patriarch—as Peter put it, meaning to draw up the Statute of the Synod—the Reglament.

It’s clear what kind of “coat” this was to be, and what kind of “wearer” it would clothe—the Synod…

The Old Believers saw in Theophan’s creation a sort of successor to the Most Drunken Eleventh Patriarch—the same Antichrist.

Of course, the Synod was not the Antichrist—it was merely a “good chancellery,” that is, simply a bureaucratic office, full of bribes and with a “good” officer as the Tsar’s watchdog… But naturally, a blasphemous tailor could not produce anything Christian.

One detail is enough to illustrate this: the Reglament even made the sacrament of confession into a tool for police investigation. Clearly, this was not the work of Christ, and the people could not place their trust in this new authority.

With Peter and his “new patriarch,” a new, grievous heresy arose. Nikon had cast the people out of the Church; Peter and his Synod cast out Christ, the Head of the Church.

The Synod took an oath (and all bishops continue to swear it) to recognize the Emperor as the “final judge of the faith.”

What did this mean? It meant that Christ—the supreme Judge of the Church—was expelled from it, and in His place stood Caesar, even though he was the author of the comedy of the “Most Drunken Synod.”

The Church ceased to serve Christ and entered the service of Caesar…

Even confession was conscripted into Caesar’s service.

And is it any wonder that the Old Believers grew stronger, gained in strength?

This powerful movement had to be suppressed. But how?

And the Synod found a means—one worthy not of any Church institution, but only of Theophan Prokopovich and the Most Drunken Synod…

Peter the Great ordered the Synod to compose something against the raskol (the schism), “and to say it came from Dmitry with his brother”—that is, he ordered them to commit forgery, attributing a new composition to a respected, long-dead authority.

The Synodal officials decided to be “more Catholic than the Pope”: they reasoned that if they were going to forge, they might as well do it on a grand scale—and they composed a document supposedly from the 12th century.

They were so brazen as to fabricate an entire history of the discovery of the document.

They told the tale of how, in August of 1717, Archimandrite Theophylact the monk was sent to Kiev to search for that same conciliar document, and His Eminence Joasaph Krakovsky, Metropolitan of Kiev, ordered it diligently sought in all the libraries. And lo…

“After a short while, that very book, by the help of God, was found in the archive of the deserted monastery of St. Nicholas, a book written half in desyat’ (large format) on parchment, colored with mold as with hoarfrost, eaten through by moths in many places, written in an ancient hand. And His Eminence Joasaph solemnly testified to the authenticity of that book and sent it to Moscow… And Stefan Yavorsky ordered that conciliar act to be stored for safekeeping in the printing office, while Pitirim was commanded to make a copy of the entire act and to issue a declaration with the seal and signatures of all the bishops who were present in Moscow.”

And so the forged document—written, indeed, on parchment, and moth-eaten, but clumsily cleaned, not in any ancient hand but in an 18th-century cursive (according to Melnikov’s report to Alexander II)—was sent into circulation…

Naturally, the forgery was immediately protested, and the Synod defended the authenticity of the document… with the blood of its opponents.

The “holy grayness” of the mold was sealed by the death of Deacon Alexander. They cut off his head. And they burned his body.

It was by the same method that Theognost’s Trebnik (Book of Needs) was later forged…

And thus the “truth” was “established, as on a solid rock.”

III #

All this was long ago… Now, let us draw parallels from more recent times.

Has the spirit of “Antichrist” disappeared over the course of two hundred years, or does it still live?

We must say: it lives.

But first, one question:

Can the Synodal Church be called Orthodox?

In her—in her actions—is her judgment.

The Church must have a confession of faith, a Symbol of Faith.

The Synodal Church has none.

The “Orthodox” Church does not know how she believes. She has an “Orthodox Catechism,” but it has been quite rightly considered unorthodox in several of its particulars.

“When there is no clean water, people drink from the ditch,” said the renowned Photius about the catechism, expressing the opinion of many.

There is also The Orthodox Dogmatic Theology by Macarius, by which future priests are instructed—but this book was considered un-Orthodox by Filaret, and Khomyakov called it “blasphemous rubbish.” And the authorities of the current Church—such as Anthony of Volhynia—echo this assessment…

But is it permissible to form the priestly conscience on “blasphemous rubbish” instead of on pure truth?

Academic theological studies have convincingly demonstrated, time and again, that the systems of Russian post-Nikonian theologians—such as the system of Theophan, who believed neither in God nor in devils—were simple translations from Protestant sources, and that of Stefan Yavorsky from Latin (i.e. Roman Catholic) textbooks (e.g., Budde). In the former, there prevailed “the unworthy opinions of the papists” (ineptum opiniones papistarum, as Theophan said of Stefan and others), and in the latter, “the mutterings and obscene doctrines of the Lutherans” (as Stefan said of Theophan).

The finest representatives of “Orthodox” ecclesial consciousness are considered to be Khomyakov and Samarin—but in fact, they were persecuted, regarded as heretics, and their writings could not even be published in Russia. But the most telling thing is this: the “Orthodox” Church considers her so-called “symbolic books” to be Orthodox… But what are these?

Is it known how our symbolic books were fabricated?

Under the influence of the Catholic Serbinovich, Protasov sought some kind of document in the Catholic spirit to further embellish an already Catholicized “Orthodoxy.”

They found the Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs. Filaret liked it—but it needed some “editing.” And so the editing began… This document, supposedly representing the whole Eastern Church, was shamelessly “cleaned up.”

Finally, the job was done. Filaret reported to Muravyov that the act had been “sufficiently de-wilded.”

Such is the reverent appraisal of the patriarchal epistle. And what a fine “symbolic book” it is—that was “wild” until a single metropolitan corrected it…

Or take the catechism of Metropolitan Filaret—who knows how many times it was revised and supplemented at the whim of any high-ranking official, especially Shishkov and his “lackeys.” It is no coincidence that both the liberal A.I. Turgenev and the conservative N.I. Ilyinsky write in agreement that in the “Orthodox” Church catechisms change with ministers and chief procurators, and that the Church “wavers between Catholicism and Protestantism.”

The Old Believers say of the Greeks that their Orthodoxy is “multicolored.” Of the Synodal Church, they could say that Orthodoxy is absent altogether. The truth of the faith there serves the state and its interests… The book On the Church by the priest Akvilonov was recognized as Orthodox—by an entire theological academy. It was defended by the most loyal scholar, Katansky, but it turned out to be “dangerous for missionaries,” advantageous to the Old Belief—and so it was declared unacceptable, heretical.

The same thing is done with Orthodox truth as was done with St. Anna of Kashin… St. Anna was canonized as a saint, but it was discovered that her fingers were folded in the Old Believer manner—and sinful men stripped her of the halo given by God, de-canonized her for “ecclesiastical unreliability”…

It is evident that under such conditions, Orthodoxy cannot exist in the Church.

Truth cannot be in service to anyone… What is the nature of the Synodal Church’s relationship to the Greeks and the Bulgarians?

The “Orthodox Church” edits the epistles of the Eastern Orthodox patriarchs. Is such a thing even permissible?

Since 1872 the Bulgarians have been excommunicated by the Greeks and declared schismatics…

Who is right—the Bulgarians, or the Greeks, who in Macedonia trample underfoot the holy icons of Cyril and Methodius—is not for us to judge…

But the Church? Should it not speak up on such a matter?

Instead, obeying the interests of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it quietly, under the table, sends chrism to the Bulgarians—and only allows their priests to serve with Orthodox bishops by that same backdoor method, since they are considered schismatics.

Can the Church limp on both “molds” at once?

Is not such a “double game” anathematized by the canons of the holy fathers?

The Church has ceased to respect itself. This means that the Holy Spirit has departed from it.

The Chief Procurator issues orders not to interfere with runaway priests from the Orthodox Church because their activity is “less dangerous” than that of the “Austrians”…

Since when has the Church invented such a measure for her own judgment? And what of the history of edinoverie, which, instead of being a banner of unity, turned into a sly, dull-witted trap for the castaway stepchild of the “Orthodox” Church?

But enough for now about whether the Church has the right to call itself Orthodox, given its measure of respect for its own truth…

Let us return to the earlier theme. Has the Church shed the “guilt of falsehood and violence”? Violence lives on. It hasn’t even changed its form.

It is no coincidence that The Rock of Faith by Stefan Yavorsky, under Protasov and Filaret, was reissued in a second edition; it contained such glorious lines as: “There is no other remedy for heretics but death… It is just and proper to kill heretics… It is even beneficial for heretics themselves to die…”

Recently, The Old Believer newspaper reported a horrifying story told by a peasant from the village of Zybka in the Kherson province, Yakov Shalymanov.

Seven Old Believers, representatives of the village, refused to convert to “Orthodoxy,” despite perhaps having been registered as such—and were punished as rebels by being driven “through the ranks” of 400 soldiers. Six were beaten to death, their mangled flesh thrown into a pit… The seventh was still alive and—horribly to say—was, according to the reports, buried alive…

Are such incidents rare? This was under Nicholas I. But here is a completely modern scene… Take just two or three pages from Pavel Rudenko by Kravchinsky.

A guard opened a heavy, ironclad door with a large key and shoved him, Lukyan, “into some kind of dark, stinking hole. The door slammed shut. The iron bolt clanged—and Lukyan found himself in total darkness. He felt the cold walls, covered with a kind of soft slime. The floor was slick with filth. The air was so suffocating and saturated with stench that Lukyan’s head spun. But all of this was nothing compared to what he saw a few minutes later. The door above did not fit tightly in its frame, and a sliver of light seeped into the cell. When Lukyan’s eyes adjusted to the dark, that faint gleam was enough for him to see a bit of the ceiling and one of the back corners of his dreadful cage. It literally swarmed with insects. What he had taken for slime on the walls were thousands of gray, soft, revolting woodlice, coating the surface like embossed wallpaper. But the ceiling was even worse: entire herds of bedbugs moved slowly across it, crawling over one another, clinging and hanging down in disgusting clusters, from which pieces continually broke off and dropped to the floor—some landing on his head, face, or neck. Lukyan trembled all over: he could not endure insects, and now he was being delivered to them alive, as if tied in a sack filled with them. Sensing prey, the whole hungry horde began to stir. Something was already crawling over his body, clinging to and biting him. Out of his senses, Lukyan rushed to the door and began pounding on it with his fists, demanding the guard. Deathly silence was the only reply.”

Exhausted from his futile efforts, Lukyan thought to sit on the floor, choosing what seemed the cleanest spot. But new phalanxes of parasites surged up from below. He leapt to his feet, pulled his cap down over his ears to protect his head as best he could, and began to pace back and forth: it was the only way to defend himself somewhat from his ravenous enemies.”

And now, the scene after the first “admonition” of the “heretic.”

The door to Lukyan’s cell was opened, and a stench poured out so overwhelming “that Lukyan recoiled in horror. Had he truly lived ten days in that sewer?”

“I won’t go back!” he screamed… “Put me in a cage where people can be kept! I want to speak to the warden!”

“You don’t want this?” said the guard—and struck him on the head with his key.

Lukyan snatched the key and flung it twenty steps down the corridor—

Arefyev lunged at him with fists… Two more guards ran over… All three threw themselves on Lukyan, beating him with fists and keys—on the head, the neck… In a moment, he was thrown down, crushed, and Arefyev, losing all control, began to trample him underfoot.”

At last, they shoved Lukyan back into the cage.

Arefyev grabbed the handle of the heavy oak door… Arefyev “either did not notice or pretended not to notice that the prisoner was not fully inside the cell.” His right toe still stuck out into the corridor.

A bloodcurdling scream came from within the cell… His foot had been crushed by the blow of the heavy door…

A few days later, Lukyan died.

You ask why I quote from a work of fiction? Very simply: it was reported literally in a Russian dispatch. It transmits, without exaggeration, a factual event—about which there has been silence among us.

If you need further confirmation, here is a list of verified incidents. And this was only in the 1890s!

— On September 11, 1892, a sectarian woman, Ksenia Lisova, was raped by the village elder of Bebenets. This was not just a crime—it was practically an act of “missionary intimidation.”

— That same year, Stundists were beaten in the village of Kishinevka in the Uman district of Kiev province.

— On December 30, 1899, in the village of Konstantinovka in Kherson province, Guryev volost, there was a pogrom in a sectarian house.

— On Pascha in 1903, sectarians were beaten in Buturlinovka, Voronezh province.

— On February 7, 1904, a peasant-sectarian was murdered in the town of Vyazovka, Cherkassy district.

And what of the acts committed against the Dukhobors in the Caucasus?..

Or Bishop Isidor—now a hierarch—who desecrated and blew up Old Believer graves!

I won’t even dwell on the smaller matters like the following:

— Archpriest Okhotin, a consistory official in Simbirsk, ordered 350 Old Believers to be brought forcibly to Simbirsk from 200 versts away for “admonishment.” They were herded like cattle into the square. The result of the operation: “Two rubles a head”… and then sent back.

Or an even smaller offense…

— An Old Believer, registered as Orthodox, is buried according to the old rite. A priest and a police officer dig up the body and forcibly reinter it in the cemetery of the “true Orthodox”…

What is there to say about such “trifles” when, at a missionary congress, plans were openly discussed to seize children from non-Orthodox parents…

Or take this semi-humorous account.

— In December 1848, on the occasion of the name day of Tsar Nicholas Pavlovich, Governor P.A. Bulgakov of Tambov held a formal banquet. During the dinner conversation, the hierarch present remarked that with the current rules from the Synod, it had become difficult to convert “schismatics” to “Orthodoxy.” “This year, for example,” he said, “we’ve only converted three schismatics.”

To the bishop’s remark, a thin, screechy voice suddenly came from the far end of the table—the voice of a colonel, commander of an internal guard battalion:
“But I was more fortunate than Your Eminence: at the age of 30, commanding a battalion, I managed to convert up to two hundred schismatics to Orthodoxy!”

“That is most interesting, Colonel,” replied the bishop. “Tell us, by what means?”

“Well, Your Eminence, we military men don’t have time for admonitions—that’s like pounding water in a mortar—I used domestic methods. For example, after the draft, they bring a group of recruits to me. I say immediately: ‘Schismatics, step forward!’ Five or six come out—sometimes up to twenty. I ask: ‘So, lads, are you schismatics?’ ‘Exactly so, Your High Nobility.’ ‘All right, Maksimov!’—I say to the sergeant—‘starting tomorrow, present one of those schismatics to me each day.’

Next morning, Maksimov brings one. I ask him: ‘Well, my good man, are you Orthodox?’ ‘Not at all, sir, I’m a schismatic.’ ‘All right. Maksimov, give him 250 lashes.’

Next day, the next one comes. Same thing. Eventually the first one comes around again. ‘Well, my dear fellow,’ I ask, ‘are you Orthodox?’ ‘Not at all, sir, still a schismatic.’ ‘Very well, give him 500.’

And so on, until it comes around again. ‘Well, now, are you Orthodox?’ ‘Exactly so, Your High Nobility, Orthodox!’ ‘Good—take him to the priest, and when he’s confessed, present him to me again.’

The newly converted comes back. ‘Well, my dear, are you Orthodox?’ ‘I had the happiness, Your High Nobility, to partake of the Holy Mysteries.’ ‘Congratulations! Here’s a ruble for you—and give him a shot of vodka.’

But one man, Your Eminence, was a particularly stubborn schismatic. When he received 750 lashes, he lay in the hospital for a month. They bring him back to me. ‘Well, my dear fellow, are you Orthodox?’ ‘Not at all, sir.’

‘Nothing for it—give him a thousand!’

He lay in the hospital for two months after that. Finally, they bring him to me again. I asked with fear, ‘Well now, my dear, are you Orthodox?’ ‘To my good fortune,’ he said, ‘I am Orthodox.’ I was so happy, I gave him a ruble and two shots of vodka.

That’s how, with such domestic methods, I converted up to 200 schismatics, Your Eminence—and for my zeal I received a high reward: the Order of St. Anna on a neck ribbon. And the amazing thing is that not one of the converted ever returned to the schism!…

Ah, pardon me, Your Eminence! Once the sergeant reported to me that one of the converted soldiers—the one who’d received 750 lashes—hadn’t gone to communion for two years. I summoned him immediately. ‘Is it true you haven’t confessed for two years?’ ‘Guilty as charged, Your High Nobility. I was on leave, and my family persuaded me to abandon Orthodoxy.’ ‘All right, my dear. Maksimov! Give him a thousand.’ After a month in the hospital, that turncoat didn’t even go home again—he became the most zealous of the Orthodox. (Russkaya Mysl, vol. 10, pp. 229–231, reprinted in The Word of Truth, 1897, no. 10.)

Yes, violence is alive.

Even more alive is falsehood. We would never finish if we tried to list every case of lies “by word and deed.” Under Peter the Great, a fake weeping icon was exposed. Do you think such things only happened back then?

Just fifteen years ago, in the refectory church of Zadonsk Monastery (with the relics of Tikhon), there hung a “weeping icon”… Its creators were even cleverer than those in Peter’s time. Instead of water, they moistened a sponge behind the eyes of the Mother of God with oil, which wouldn’t run.

In that same place, a monk carried around a mummified finger of his lover—and around this blasphemy they began to weave a legend about new relics of a certain Pachomius…

All of this was documented by the consistory. And what of falsehoods “by word”?…

I spoke earlier about how they “sealed the mouth” of truth, when it was inconvenient for the “Department of the Orthodox Confession,” which took the place of the Church. One must confess that the void left by hidden truth is filled in abundance with lies.

S.M. Solovyov—the well-known historian—tells how Filaret treated polemics “against the schism.”

He was handed a book based entirely on forgery. They pointed out that publishing this book would mean putting a forgery into circulation under the Synod’s name.

Filaret wrote his resolution: “This is not harmful.” And he was the center of the Church, the primary bearer of its “truth.”

And in the spirit of Jesuit principle, even the prefaces to the Horologion and the Psalter were filled with knowingly false claims—“testimonies of the holy hand of Andrew the First-Called,” and so forth.

On another occasion, someone showed Filaret a marginal note (a resolution) by Metropolitan Platon—favorable to the Old Believers, on some document… Filaret ordered it to be “erased”—and thus he “erased the truth” from everywhere.

The final years of the last century and the beginning of the new one are particularly disgraceful for the state Church.

The uncovering of the relics of St. Seraphim was the apex of the Church’s disgrace.

We ourselves hold deep and reverent respect for the memory of Father Seraphim, a man of a purely Christian soul—but the story of his canonization was, without question, unworthy of the elder’s memory.

The mere fact that the canonization emerged from the protective office of V.K. Plehve is enough to define the nature of the affair. A saint is sought out, fabricated, a scheme devised for purposes of political hypnosis, to distract the public from thinking about freedom.

The relics were sought in direct contradiction to the Church’s established practice—uncovering relics only when God Himself revealed a “sign” that “the time has come.”

And when it became clear that no incorrupt body existed—this fact was concealed, and the triumph of the new saint’s glorification was marred with falsehood.

And why all this? Solely to dazzle public thought in the interest of “authority” by means of a churchly celebration.

But this is sacrilege!

The sycophantic newspapers were filled with false miracles.

In our possession, for example, is a document certified by a notary in which a man—who, according to Moskovskiye Vedomosti, The Orthodox Guide, and special pamphlets, had supposedly died as divine punishment for blaspheming against St. Seraphim—writes that he is alive and well (Yakov Ivanovich Sitnov). We have letters in which the supposedly healed write that they were never sick, and thus never healed.

Why all this? Is it not an insult to the memory of a pure—if perhaps not formally saintly—departed man?

But let us leave that aside… Let us take a trivial example from daily life, both laughable and sad.

Russia is perishing from drunkenness, and so…

The bishop of [name redacted] province goes around the villages preaching that “it’s not good, you see, to drink in private taverns… There are state-run liquor stores, get your drink from there.”

To drink in taverns is sinful…

But the Smolensk consistory went further. It understood that taverns were useful to the state alcohol monopoly and issued a ruling condemning the decision of a parish council not to perform prayer services in homes where moonshine was sold. Such a decision, they said, was audacious criticism of government decrees—practically rebellion…

Bishops standing guard over the interests of liquor revenue…

An unheard-of, sorrowful phenomenon—outwardly laughable, but in essence deeply tragic.

And once again, “truth stood upon falsehood, as upon a solid rock.”

Then came the days of liberation. What role did the official Church play? It persecuted free thought. The banners of the “Union of the Russian People” were placed inside cathedrals.

Bishop Nikanor threatened with the torments of hell and knelt down begging people to vote for “landowners.”

Vostorgov toured Russia preaching a crusade against freedom.

Hieromonk Arseny traveled personally to Jerusalem and returned with an icon as a symbol of murder and pogrom.

Hieromonk Iliodor preached in the name of Christ that the road from Moscow to Petersburg should be lined with gallows, and he salaciously described the ritual of execution.

And the high church hierarchy… While the chairman of the Union of the Russian People, Dubrovin, publicly poured slanderous filth upon the primate of the Russian Church—accusing him (falsely and blasphemously) of unspeakable things—this same primate, receiving the icon brought back from Jerusalem through deceit and trickery, kissed Dubrovin.

The Union of the Russian People and the Synodal Church became synonymous. United in their blasphemy and God-fighting. Not without cause did the extreme-right group in Saratov break away from the Orthodox Brotherhood founded by Bishop Germogen, saying it was “trying to turn monarchists into pogromist thugs” (as one monarchist put it).

It is frightening to say, but against the Church—and to its very address—could be directed, with slight changes, the accusatory speech… of Father Feodor in Teleshov’s story, aimed at the members of the Union, who placed their banners adorned with bears and fish in Orthodox cathedrals.

The speech is delivered in a petty shop filled with icons, in front of “truly Russian people,” gathered to carry out a procession and then, as a monstrous, blasphemous pendant⁴ to the holy event, commit a pogrom.

The leader of the anticipated pogrom points to the icon of St. George slaying the dragon.

That, in his view, is how sedition must be crushed.

“I see it, I see it,” said Feodor. “But who is the dragon? How is this to be understood?.. According to the legend, he was a blood-drinker: he would seize girls and youths from towns and villages—the very flower of the people—and tear them apart, until St. George trampled him. That’s what a dragon is!”

“Yes,” he said firmly, casting his eyes up and down the shop.

“From every wall, from every shelf, from every corner and side, the most pure faces of the saints of God gaze upon you. They will answer you better than I, sir, to all your words, to all your intentions. There they are! Look! These are the passion-bearers, the great martyrs, the defenders of God’s truth—

—with meek eyes they gaze upon you and ask: is there a place for them beside the foxes, fish, and deer on the banners of the pogrom-makers?

It is you who have taken away the key of understanding; you have bound heavy burdens, grievous to be borne, and laid them on men’s shoulders. Woe unto you, hypocrites!… Behold them—these holy martyrs and passion-bearers!

We honor their sufferings, we pray to them—our intercessors in trouble and grief, those who fell for the true teaching of Christ. And our Lord Jesus Christ commanded men to lay down their lives for their friends and to love their neighbors as themselves.

But you, the “faithful,” hiding behind the name and banner of the Church, speak in the name of Christ who dwelleth therein: ‘Strike thy neighbor, trample him like a worm,’ because he has found where the truth lies and is ready, for the happiness of others—for his own people, wronged and downtrodden—to endure suffering, even unto death.

And so they go forth, like martyrs, these brave souls, and carry a cup of water to the thirsty people. But you have snatched that cup from their hands and spilled it. You are not Christians, you “faithful servants”! You are not men—you are wolves in sheep’s clothing, cunning foxes, serpents, and dragons! It was you who boiled the healer Panteleimon in a cauldron, who scraped his body with iron scourges. You deceived the Emperor Maximilian and stirred up his wrath—

—yes, you! It was you who incited King Dadianus to let wild beasts devour Saint George and to bury him alive. You, royal henchmen, tortured the great martyr Barbara with fire, you tormented and slaughtered Vera, Nadezhda, Lyubov; you beheaded them, delivered Saint Irene to shame and mockery—this was all your doing!…

You seek to cover your abomination with the veil of the Church—but then what is your church, which has sold out Christ’s truth into the service of you, the violent, and now defiles the holy icons? Behold them—look!—they are all here!”

—cried Feodor, lifting his hand and again pointing to the icons. “Without number are those whom you have tormented.

And here is the Savior Himself, calling unto Him all who labor and are heavy laden.

He came to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised! But you—you crucified Him! You have been crucifying Him for two thousand years with your deeds! And your banners stand beside His holy face, O blasphemers! And in the name of Christ, so as not to shame Him—yes, even the ignorant flee from your blood-soaked banners!”
(N. Teleshov, “Revolt,” XV vol. of “Znanie,” pp. 186–188)

All the crimes weighing on the conscience of the blasphemous antichristian union must be accepted, at least in part, by the Church, which sold the things of God for the things of Caesar.

Is this not terrifying?

Is this truly a Church? Has it not traded the Cross for the fox and the bear?…

The last fifty years of the Church are fifty years of its dying…

Magnificent temples are being built in Kiev and Moscow, and in the North and in the Caucasus. Czechs and Urmians are being annexed from across the seas and lands—yet all decays, for the Holy Spirit is not there…

Miserable gilding—on rags. Paint on decayed coffins.

“Trifling improvements in church singing are inflated into historical events, fake miracles are invented, saints are manufactured—but none of it can cover or conceal the falsehood, cruelty, and the total collapse of living faith—and the abomination of desolation stands in the holy place, clear to all and undeniable!…”

Source: Bishop Mikhail (Semyonov), Collected Works, Vol. 1, Margarita, Moscow–Rzhev, 2011

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