Do you want to know the truth about the "God-fearing" Russian people, "who adored their tsar and his faithful servants - God's shepherds from the Russian Orthodox Church"? From morning to evening, Patriarch Kirill (in the world is a citizen of Gundyaev) and his company tell us about the "universal Orthodox spirituality" of Russian workers and peasants during the tsarist autocracy.
Let's see what she really was. Moreover, we will not look at the Bolsheviks, so as not to provoke reproaches of "odious Soviet propaganda", but from their implacable class opponents - the most loyal servants of the Russian monarch - clergymen, scientists of the Russian Empire, White Guards, as well as modern Russian bourgeois researchers …
Here is some information from church reports of the 19th-20th centuries.
According to them, in the 19th century, the proportion of parishioners who did not perform the Holy Mysteries was about 10%, and by the end of the century - 17.5%.
According to the Report on the Penza diocese for 1877, the regular reception of the Holy Sacraments is 57.7%. And then there is a confession amazing in its honesty: "Many of the youth do not confess … only old people and old women go to church, and for 6-15 years they do not go at all, they say, they still have time to pray … Terrible negligence in the performance of the Holy Sacraments."
In the report of the district police officer in 1902, we read: “The appearance of the proclamations made a strong impression … Added to this was also dissatisfaction and hostility towards the local clergy for increased extortions for corrections and harassment for marriages, etc. As a result, the clergy lost their influence on the parishioners. (State Archive of the Penza Region (GAPO). F. 5. Op. 1. D. 7333)
"Arsons and robberies of the homes of parish priests were committed." (GAPO. F.5. Op. 1. D. 7421)
In the Report on the State of the Tambov Diocese for 1906: "The benevolent donations of money and swearing from the parishioners have decreased and decreased against the usual by almost half, and in some places even more."
Promotional video:
And here is the testimony of the Bishop of Saratov and Tsaritsyn Hermogenes: "… in many parishes there are also those who show respect and respect to their clergy only outwardly, but in their souls … have aversion to him and even a hidden enmity."
Maybe this Bishop is lying and slandering Orthodox and God-loving citizens of the Russian Empire?
We read from another church dignitary - Bishop of Tambov and Shatsk Innokenty: “Young people do not bind themselves with any rituals, they are negligent in their main Christian duties. At evening and night meetings of young people … all civil and religious institutions are condemned and ridiculed, civil and spiritual neglect is preached to power."
And here is another report - from the priest of the Syzran district: “The lean years had a very sad effect on the religious life of the peasants; the peasant does not go to church, and does not serve prayers, and has forgotten his dead relatives, and therefore the church suffers materially, not to mention the meager content of the parable. (1908, GAPO. F. 368. Op. 1. D.6)
Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), later after the Civil War - the first chairman of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, writes about the results of revisions of theological seminaries in 1907:
“I know everything that I have written about the Kiev Academy from faithful witnesses, as well as the fact that priests students at the academies do not go to church for months, and civilian students in all academies attend Sunday mass of 7-10 people. The priests eat sausage with vodka before the service demonstratively, they go to brothels in crowds, so that, for example, in Kazan one of these is known to all cabmen under the name "priest's b." and so they are called aloud. In the spring of 1907, the widows of the priests invited those married with their wives to Kazan; one widower began kissing and crushing someone else's priest, got hit in the face from her husband, gave back, he again, and a priestly fight with dozens of participants began, there were scraps of hair, blood and teeth on the floor, and then the students reprimanded the priests for their behavior, ending it verses, of which the last stanza:
Forward science, priests!
Do not bother other people's wives,
Drink less, be humble, And visit the church more often!
When prudent students object to the priests at a gathering: "this is not in accordance with the basic tenets of the Christian faith," they are answered: "I do not recognize the dogmas." And so crowds of such beast-like specimens fill our schools"
This is the testimony of the clergymen of autocratic Russia themselves. Now let's see what representatives of one of the ruling class in the Russian Empire, the bourgeoisie, have to say on this issue.
From the book of the leader of the Cadets, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government in 1917 P. N. Milyukov "History of the Russian Nation":
“What brought you to the priestly rank,” asks St. Dmitry Rostovsky was a typical priest of his time (the beginning of the 18th century), perhaps in order to save himself and others? Not at all, but in order to feed his wife, children and family."
“… The clergy was neglected by the nobility as a“vile race of people”; it has built a reputation for bribe-takers among the peasantry."
“When in the 60s. the government considered it necessary to find out why the schism and sectarianism were growing and turned to the governors - it received from several of them the most disappointing description of the morals of the provincial clergy. Thus, the Governor of Arkhangelsk SP Gagarin replied: “Our clergy are uneducated, rude, unsecured and at the same time stand out from the people by their origin and way of life, without exerting the slightest influence on them. All the duties of a priest are enclosed in a narrow formalism. He mechanically serves Mass, Matins, Moleben, Panikhida, he also mechanically fulfills the requirement, takes money from hand to hand - and then all the pastoral duties of the ministry are over. Governor of Nizhny Novgorod: “Can the people look at the clergy with respect, can they not get carried away into schism, when every now and then one can hear how one priest,confessing a dying man, he stole money from him from under his pillow, another - the people pulled out of an obscene house, a third - christened a dog, a fourth - during a divine service the deacon pulled out of the church door by the hair? Can the people respect the priests who do not leave the tavern, write slanderous requests, fight with the cross, scold with bad words in the altar?"
The vector is clear, right? Something is clearly not what our current guardians for the Orthodox faith are telling us - either they have invented something, or they “love” their native country Russia so much that they don’t want to know its history.
Remarkable information on this topic is available in the article of modern Russian scientists who, in fact, are not at all Marxists or communists, but on the contrary - workers of the scientific front, which, like all other spheres of social life under capitalism, cannot in any way be aloof from interests of the ruling class in society - the bourgeoisie. However, the authors of the above article turned out to be honest workers, incapable, like, for example, Russian journalists and bourgeois propagandists, looking at black, say that it is white.
The article is called "Attitudes towards the clergy of estates and social groups of the Russian Empire (early XX century)" [1]. It was written by Doctor of Philosophy, Leading Researcher of the Center for Civilizational and Regional Studies of the Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences L. A. Andreeva and Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of the Academy of Labor and Social Relations E. S. Elbakyan. Not the last people in Russian science, right? So, from the height of their scientific authority, they completely expose the inventions of the Gundyaevites and that part of the Russian bourgeois propagandists who are now trying hard to convince all of us of what has never existed in historical reality. Two doctors of philosophical sciences, relying on the evidence of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, completely debunk the myth of the "God-fearing and God-loving Russian people."
Here's some information from this article.
Despite the increase in the population and the massive construction of new churches, in the period from 1867 to 1891 the number of those wishing to study in theological educational institutions decreased from 53.5 thousand to 49.9 thousand people. In theological schools, there was a huge outflow of students, which became especially noticeable in the early 1870s. (According to statistical data from 1840 - 41 to 1890 - 91. St. Petersburg, 1897.) The following facts eloquently testify to the low level of prestige of ministers of the state cult: in 1863, students of theological seminaries were allowed to enter universities, and by 1875 46% of the country's university students were former seminarians. In this connection, after 4 years, in 1879, the concerned church department achieved the cancellation of this permission. (Russian Orthodoxy, 1897, p. 168).
The tsarist general of infantry Nikolai Yepanchin, in his memoirs, written later in exile, stated that the attitude of the nobility towards the clergy was little better than the attitude towards the "vile people": something lower … True, in a significant number it was poorly educated, even in the church-theological relation, it had not that secular, but almost no manners … As for the general and theological education, many times I had to hear the opinion that the priests did there is no need for such an extensive education that the apostles were simple fishermen, etc. The influence on the flock of such an insufficiently trained clergy, of course, could not be deep, and perhaps this explains such sayings as "The priests have envious eyes" and others;Is this not what explains the ease with which the peasants left the church during the troubles of 1917? (Epanchin N. A. At the service of three emperors. Memoirs. M., 1996.)
Not surprisingly, with such deep contempt for the clergy, "the nobility, except in the rarest cases, never chose a spiritual career for themselves." But we are interested not so much in the attitude of the Russian nobility towards Orthodoxy, as in the attitude towards the ROC and the Orthodox faith of its working people - the peasants, who made up the overwhelming mass of the population of Russia - 85%, and the workers - the new advanced and growing social class of society. After all, we are convinced that the people in Orthodoxy and its priests - priests and priests doted. And then we learn amazing things that are very far from the statements of our Russian bourgeois propagandists-Gundyaevites.
The first Russian revolution of 1905-1907. She clearly showed how the Russian peasants treat the clergy: "from February 1905 to May 1906, 31 priests were killed in the Russian Empire, and 12 churches and 2 monasteries were completely destroyed" (Malinovsky I. A. Bloody revenge and death penalty. T. 2. Appendix. Tomsk, 1909.). Representatives of the clergy on the pages of church periodicals characterized the mood of the flock in the following way: “Our clergy, even among the pious and previously humbly obedient peasants, has a very difficult life. There they do not want to pay the priest at all for the services, here they insult him in every possible way. Here you have to close the church and transfer the clergy to another parish, because the peasants decidedly refused to maintain their clergy; there are still unfortunate facts - these are cases of murders, burning of priests,cases of various gross abuse of them. " (Journal "Christian". 1907. N 1.)
From the report of the Kostroma diocese, it can be seen that the clergy was perceived by the peasants as an integral part of the exploiting class and the opinion was spread about “the wealth and greed of the clergy, about its alliance with people of noble and rich in order to keep the poor and working class of the population in ignorance, oppression and poverty, and that's why you don't need to listen to the priests … The clergy are thieves, robbing the people like no thieves and robbers. First of all, they lie, invent that there are souls, that there will be a judgment after death, that you need to fast, remember your parents, and so on. This they say for their income. They rob the people and materially: give money for everything. Are the sacraments for sale? The apostles took nothing. The priests are obliged to do everything for nothing and be content with what they give, and not give - not pretend. (Persits M. M. Atheism of the Russian worker (1870 - 1905). M., 1965.)
The negative attitude towards the clergy on the part of the peasantry had completely material root reasons, one of which was, in particular, the unresolved issue of church and monastery land tenure. Many peasant gatherings during the years of the first Russian revolution made decisions on the confiscation of church lands. Peasant uprisings against the priests were not, first of all, protests against the faith, but against the landowners. Moreover, often the peasants did not confine themselves to declarations, but proceeded to take active actions - for example, to seize church lands (and the ROC had a lot of them!).
So, for example, the Skopinsky police chief of the Ryazan province reported about the unauthorized plowing of church land by peasants in 1907: “Recently, relations between the clergy and the peasants have become much aggravated on the basis of high extortions during the performance of various kinds of rites and sacraments; so, for example, there were cases when, for the underpayment of a few kopecks, the deceased remained unburied for about a day after he was transferred to the church. And also weddings were not married due to the underpayment of the amount assigned to the priests. But what embittered the peasants most of all was the tax established by the current post for confession at 12 kopecks per soul; there were cases when a peasant who did not pay 3 or 4 kopecks was not allowed to confess and was immediately sent back by the priest in front of others. Impressed by this, on April 8, leaving the temple,the peasants unanimously decided to sow the old manor land of the clerk themselves."
Very remarkable evidence. Talking about a lot. Let's see if 12 kopecks for confession is a lot or a little? We, who are completely unaccustomed to kopecks and calculate their salaries in thousands of rubles, it seems now that this is negligible and there is nothing to talk about at all. However, the price level was quite different then. 12 kopecks was a lot of money, especially since not one person had to confess in a large family, but everyone who was over 6 years old.
What this money meant for the peasant then becomes clear when reading Leo Tolstoy, who reported, in particular, that the daily earnings of a village laborer was 10-15 kopecks. He also told in one of his works how once in a whole village of 10 households they could not collect even one ruble [2]. It turns out that if the family required five to confess once a week (peasant families then had many children), then the father of the family had to work exclusively to feed the priests. And what, excuse me, to support the family?
The negative attitude of the peasants towards the clergy had another completely material, and therefore deeply class reason - the church fully supported landlord and specific land ownership, i.e. those very feudal relations under which the Russian peasantry did not get out of hunger strikes for centuries. In particular, during the years of the first Russian revolution, the clergy published many proclamations and brochures in defense of landlord tenure. In 1905, the Synod repeatedly gave instructions to the clergy "to instruct the peasants not to encroach on private property," which quite naturally only added fuel to the fire, adding disgust to Orthodoxy in general, for the Russian peasantry, unable to feed themselves on their tiny allotments, simply suffocated without land.
However, according to Andreeva and Elbakyan, the leading motive of the anti-clerical actions of the peasants was the extortion of the clergy. This motive can be traced almost everywhere. For example, the peasants of the Nizhny Novgorod province declared at the gathering: “The priests only live by extortion, they take … eggs, wool and strive to go around with prayers more often, and money: died - money, born - money, confessed - money, married - money, take not how much you give, but as much as he pleases. And a hungry year happens, he will not wait until a good year, but give him the last, and at the very 36 dessiatines (together with the clerk) of the land … It turns out that all these people live at our expense and on our own neck, and from them no sense (Revolution of 1905 - 1907. in Russia. Documents and materials. The second period of the revolution. 1906 - 1907. M., 1957. Part 1.)
The correspondent of the Free Economic Society reported from the Smolensk province that from 1907 “a noticeable movement against the clergy began. The peasants began to draw up a sentence to lower the tax, for example, for a prayer service instead of 25 kopecks. - 15 kopecks, while in the villages “attesting witnesses” (2 from the village) were selected in order to ensure that the peasants did not give more than 15 kopecks for the prayer, and in case of violation, a fine of 3 rubles was imposed”(Agrarian movement in Russia in 1905 - 1906 Ch. 1. SPb., 1908.)
Very interesting evidence of the attitude of the Russian peasantry to the clergy is contained in the brochures of two priests - V. Ryuminsky and M. Levitov, published during the first Russian revolution.
M. Levitov considered conversations about a “God-bearing people”, completely devoted to the Orthodox Church, to have nothing in common with real life: “The value of the piety of the peasantry turned out to be doubtful, and his good sonship toward clergy was more an illusion than a fact. These relations, which never approached the ideal, in recent years have escalated to an extreme degree "(Levitov M. People and clergy. Kazan, 1907.) The priest describes the relationship between peasants and Orthodox priests in the following way:" For a whole century the Orthodox clergy have served in a certain respect. " a parable in the tongues”, a repository and personification of wealth, greed and greed. The clergyman has to hear the well-known proverb "from the living, from the dead" from childhood to the grave … The theme of "the greed of the priest's offspring" is the favorite of the peasants. At the gathering, at the station,a public bath, in the field there is enough of the slightest reason, and endless rumors and stories begin … The appearance of a brass face in a carriage filled with common people is a true misfortune for our brother … In the peasant minds, priesthood and money have so grown together and associated that they have become almost synonyms. Pop is, in their concept, a bottomless money bag, which by some magic hourly attracts and sucks in money from an inexhaustible source - a peasant's pocket”.by some magic, hourly attracting and absorbing money from an inexhaustible source - a peasant's pocket. "by some magic, hourly attracting and absorbing money from an inexhaustible source - a peasant's pocket."
And what is most interesting (he was a smart man!), Levitov predicts a more than sad end for Russian Orthodoxy if it does not immediately correct itself (he, who did not understand the class essence of the Church and religion in general, had a naive hope that this was possible): in the event of a complete revolution and anarchy, the first clergy will perish”. What, as we know, happened later, because the priests did not take the side of the working people in the revolution, but fully supported the overthrown exploiting classes - the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, more than clearly proving that they are class and irreconcilable enemies of the working masses. (We believe that the same will happen in the very near future in our modern counter-revolutionary bourgeois Russia,since this time too, religion and its institutions have clearly and convincingly demonstrated to the working people their openly anti-popular and exploitative character.)
Another priest, V. Ryuminsky, at the same time (during the years of the first Russian revolution) wrote with bitterness: “How do the Russian people treat their priest, the parishioners treat their pastor, and there is nothing to tell. The most obscene stories are about the "long-maned", as Orthodox people call their priests, nasty proverbs are about them - "the priest's eyes are envious, but the priest's hands are grabbing," the people say. They bargain with them for the performance of religious rites, as they bargain in the bazaar for tar, as in a shop for goods. They are sued, and often litigations drag on for years - it's obscene to say - parishioners with their priest, believers with their mentor. " (Ryuminsky V. Clergy and People (Church and State). SPb., 1906.)
He also saw the reason for the disrespectful attitude towards the clergy, first of all, in the policy pursued by tsarism: “… the church and the clergy covered everything that the government did with their high rank. In the long years that have elapsed since the time of Peter the Great, there has not been such a crime committed by the government, which would not have been consecrated by the church. Representatives of the authorities, killing each other, forcibly replaced thrones, tormented, tortured subjects, mocked the peasants who were in slavish dependence on the masters - the church and the clergy said: all this is good, as the peasant religion indicates. Throughout the long, difficult years of serfdom, no voice was heard from the heights of the metropolitan and episcopal sees, the village priests did not speak in sermons from the pulpit: it is shameful, contrary to Christ's teaching - the enslavement of some people by others."
A brilliant denunciation of the true essence of the Church and religion in general, and the Russian Orthodox Church in particular!
According to V. Ryuminsky, the submissive obedience of the clergy to the authorities lies in the dishonorable alliance between church and state. This clearly progressive-minded priest saw a way out of this situation in the fact that "… it is necessary to break, end this criminal, impious union, - to free the state from the compulsory character of faith, and to free the church from the coercion that the state imposes on it." That is, the clergyman himself spoke of the need to separate the church from the state, because only this can give faith true freedom. As we remember from the history of our country, this is what the Bolsheviks later did, freeing both the church and believers from the state reins, realizing in practice the full right of freedom of conscience.
We believe that now everything is clear with the attitude of the peasants to the priests. And what was the attitude of the workers of the Russian Empire towards the ROC?
No better. The authors of the article, Andreeva and Elbakyan state that since the beginning of the 1890s. distrust of the clergy and avoidance of participation in religious life are becoming widespread among the factory workers in Russia.
In one of the oldest industrial districts, the Central, according to the synodal reports for 1892, the workers do not go to church quite zealously, they avoid confession and communion without sufficient grounds. The report for 1893 already speaks of complete indifference to church attendance, the performance of church rites and the observance of church holidays. There are "instabilities and fluctuations in religious faith" and insufficient respect for the clergy.
The same is happening everywhere, and especially in the Urals and in the southern industrial region. In the reports of the Ural dioceses, it is noted that factory workers, as well as workers in the marina, are often ashamed to ask a priest for a blessing, they do not consider it a sin to break the fast; among the working people "there is a kind of religious indifference, instability and unsteadiness of religious convictions." One of the Ural bishops wrote that the workers from the factory villages "treat pastoral convictions in general with complete indifference, while expressing … unwillingness to even listen to them." In the report of the Ekatirinoslav Diocese (Southern Industrial Region) for 1898, they write: "In factories, mines and factories … complete indifference towards the religion of the church and its institutions is noticed … They are also indifferent to their spiritual pastors." (Red archive. 1936. N 3.)
In principle, this is not surprising. The economic situation of the workers in the factories was very difficult - the working day was more than 11.5 hours a day, the wages were penny, and the owners of the enterprises strove to keep that in all sorts of ways, especially actively with the help of fines for any reason and for no reason. The living conditions of the workers are wild, it is not uncommon for 10-12 people in one 8-meter room, or even in workers' barracks. There is nothing to say about any conveniences - what it is, then the workers did not even know. And with such a difficult hopeless life - priests, "smooth and ruddy", calling not to grumble and not "resist the authorities and masters."
It is quite natural that the clergy were perceived by the workers as an integral part of the ruling class, and their preaching as a religious justification for the existing unjust exploiting system. As Andreeva and Elbakyan write, "justice and religion began to be perceived as antagonistic entities." They point out that Leo Tolstoy in his novel Resurrection, telling about the factory worker Markel Kondratyev, reflected the true truth of that life: “He treated religion as negatively as he did to the existing economic system. Realizing the absurdity of the faith in which he grew up, and with effort and first fear, and then with delight freed himself from it, he, as if in retaliation for the deception in which he and his ancestors were kept, never tired of laughing venomously and spitefully at the priests and over religious dogmas. He was an ascetic out of habit,he was content with the smallest and, like every person accustomed to work from childhood, with developed muscles, he could easily, a lot and deftly work any physical work, but most of all he valued his leisure so that he could continue to study in prisons and at stages. He was now studying the first volume of Marx and with great care, like a great treasure, he kept this book in his bag."
Pop Gapon with his owners.
Zubatovism - the policy of provocative workers' organizations artificially created by the security police of the Republic of Ingushetia, whose task was to take the growing labor movement under the control of the autocratic power - further worsened the attitude of workers to religion and priests. It was within the framework of "police socialism" that the "Petersburg meeting of Russian factory people" arose under the leadership of the priest of the Orthodox Church Georgy Gapon, which suffered a complete collapse on January 9, 1905, when unarmed workers with their families and children walking to the tsar with icons and banners were shot in front of the Winter Palace. Moreover, Gapon was warned in advance that the march he organized to the Winter Palace would be shot - he himself wrote about this to S. Yu. Witte. (Emelyakh L. I. Anti-clerical movement of peasants during the first Russian revolution. M., 1965.)
But Gapon is one thing, one could blame everything on the meanness of a particular person. Worse than anything else is the position of categorically condemning the demonstration on January 9, which the Synod took. Petersburg clergy delivered sermons and conversations, justifying the actions of the soldiers who shot the unarmed crowd that went to the tsar with a petition, and at the same time it was argued that the issuance of crosses, icons and banners from churches took place without the consent of the priests - all this was done by allegedly revolutionaries dressed in priestly dress. (Fedotov G. L. Tragedy of the intelligentsia // About Russia and Russian philosophical culture. M., 1990.)
The workers could no longer forgive the ROC. And even among the clergy there were many who were openly ashamed of this anti-popular position of the ROC.
From the memoirs of Metropolitan Veniamin (Fedchenkov), who was at that time a student of the theological academy: “I, a man of monarchical sentiments, not only did not rejoice at this victory of the government, but felt a wound in my heart: the father of the people could not help but accept his children, no matter what happened then … And then they came with icons and banners … No, no, I didn't believe so, I didn't want to. And although after that I continued, of course, to be loyal to the king and the monarchy, but the charm of the king fell. They say: the defeated idol is still an idol. No, if he fell, then he is no longer an idol. Faith in the power of the tsar and this system also fell. It was in vain then that General Trepov pasted long posters around the capital with orders "Do not spare cartridges!" This spoke of the government's fearfulness, and even more - of its break with the masses, which is incomparably worse. " (Sevastyanov A. Two hundred years from the history of the Russian intelligentsia // Science and Life. 1991. N 3.)
The outcome of the events of January 9 was not only the first Russian revolution, when the Russian people tried to throw off the yoke of the hated autocracy, but most importantly, the final reorientation of the consciousness of the workers, for whom the priests and the ROC no longer existed since then.
Moreover, judging by the reports of the bishops, this phenomenon was characteristic not only of the capital of Russia, St. Petersburg. In 1906, Bishop of Kursk and Oboyanskiy Pitirim wrote: “… the distrust with which the parishioners very often relate to the attempts of the clergy to get closer to their flock, that hostility, bordering on open hostility, which the parishioners often show towards the clergy, testify that the clergy begins to lose its former love and authority among the parishioners, who at the same time easily succumb to the influence of all sorts of crooks who call themselves "liberators." The blessed times, when none of the parishioners considered themselves entitled to undertake anything without the advice and blessing of their pastor, have passed, and the clergy found themselves in the position of a shepherd who does not walk in front of his sheep, but chases after them from behind. " (Medic. A frank word about the mood of the minds of the modern intelligentsia // Missionary Review, 1902. No. 5).
As a result, "the church fell into a" paralysis "and lost the last remnants of spiritual authority." Who do you think wrote this? No, not Lenin, and the Bolsheviks in general. The author of these lines, written in 1905, is a nobleman, historian, emigrant and anti-Soviet scholar S. P. Melgunov, who actively advocated an armed struggle against Soviet Russia and Bolshevism, which cannot be suspected of sympathizing with Bolshevism and anti-church propaganda. His book "How the State Church Was Created in Russia" is an exceptionally curious work that clearly proves one thing - that the ROC in the Russian Empire is something like Goebbels' ministry of propaganda, the main task of which was the ideological disarming of the masses, keeping them in obedience by the class of exploiters and oppressors. whose interests were faithfully served by the Russian police state.
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Prepared by G. Gagina
