THE REBIRTH OF RELIGION IN RUSSIA 



The Church Reorganized While Bolshevik Cannon 

 Spread Destruction in the Nation's 

 Holy of Holies 



By Thomas Whittemore 



THE Holy Kremlin of Moscow 

 has become a Bolshevik fortress. 

 From the 9th to the 16th of No- 

 vember, 1917, for more than seven days 

 under a hurricane of fire, the city was 

 stormed and finally carried by the Bol- 

 sheviks in terrible fratricidal war. Since 

 then the sacred citadel has been playing 

 a new and ignominious role in the history 

 of Russia. 



From the time of the building of the 

 Church of the Beheading of St. John 

 Baptist and of the little Church of our 

 Saviour in the Forest, bespeaking the 

 days when the acropolis was still a 

 wooded hill, a multitude of churches and 

 palaces, witnesses of Russia's glory, have 

 written here a national document in stone. 

 The history of Russia is the history of 

 the monuments of the Kremlin. 



During the bombardment a Chinese 

 workman, looking on, was heard to say, 

 "The Russian is not good ; bad man ; he 

 shoots on his God." . 



Outraged and despoiled, the Kremlin 

 is in bonds today, guarded by foreign 

 mercenaries. The forty times forty 

 churches of the white stone city seem to 

 draw a little closer in answer to the 

 trumpet calls of the Kremlin domes. The 

 battered towers and shredded gates, from 

 which red flags are defiantly flung in the 

 face of Russia, still stand bravely to pro- 

 tect the sacred site. 



Deputations from the Sobor, or Rus- 

 sian Council, now sitting in Moscow, have 

 abjectly to ask the Bolshevik commit- 

 tees' permission to hold vices in the 

 churches of the Kremlin. I.; the Bolshe- 

 viks dared, they would long since have 

 declared the churches of the Kremlin to 

 be museums, and so extinguished their 

 light of faith. 



The representatives of the Church have 



acted in fearless determination that the 

 churches should continue to function, and 

 have continued their sessions amid the 

 violence and destruction raging on all 

 sides of them (see also pages 392 and 

 393)- 



Entrance to the once always open 

 Kremlin is now only by permit, through 

 the Troitsa gate. All day long a moving 

 line of people on various missions, show- 

 ing their passports at the window of a 

 little wooden kiosk, beg to be allowed to 

 enter. 



A SCENE OF SACRILEGE WITHIN THE 

 KREMLIN 



Once within the walls of the Kremlin, 

 one faces piles of ammunition, barbed 

 wire, and ugly miscellaneous heaps of 

 rubbish. Austrian, German, and Lettish 

 soldiers, some frankly in their enemy uni- 

 forms, are lounging about or standing 

 guard. Army motor-lorries and cars 

 carrying dark, sallow, un-Russian-faced 

 government officials tear up through the 

 gates, shrieking a curse, so it seems, 

 as they enter upon all-hated Christian 

 Russia. 



The farther one walks about and sees 

 the outraged fabric on all sides, the 

 stronger becomes the feeling of grief. 

 With indescribable emotion, one enters 

 the resounding stone inclosure near the 

 Cathedral of the Falling Asleep of the 

 Mother of God. Here are still to be 

 traced the stains of enormous pools of 

 blood in which floated human fragments, 

 tracked about by daring feet.* 



* Many notes of personal experience and all 

 the photographs of the Kremlin which illus- 

 trate this article were graciously given me in 

 Moscow by my friend, Bishop Nestor, the dis- 

 tinguished missionary bishop of Kamchatka, 

 who took them himself in the Kremlin by per- 

 mission of the Bolshevik government. 



379 



