Gareth Jones
[bas relief by Oleh Lesiuk]
HOME |
Stop Press |
Complete Soviet Articles & Background Information |
Précis of Gareth's
|
All Published Articles |
BOOKS
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
TOPICAL
'Are you Listening NYT?' U.N. Speech - Nov 2009 |
Gareth Recognised at Cambridge - Nov 2009 |
Reporter and the Genocide - Rome, March 2009 |
Order of Freedom Award -Nov 2008 |
Premiere of 'The Living' Documentary Kyiv - Nov 2008 |
Gareth Jones 'Famine' Diaries - Chicago 2008 |
Aberystwyth Memorial Plaque 2006 |
GENERAL
Scholarship Fund |
Site Map |
Links |
Legal Notices |
Sponsored Links |
Contact |
The Western Mail, April 12th, 1933
EASTER
IN A GODLESS COUNTRY
Renewed Persecution of Christians
---
By
GARETH JONES
---
Easter
in the Soviet Union is a period of renewed anti-religious propaganda. When
a Christian festival occurs the Society of Atheists booms out its anti-God
publicity with increased vigour. At Christmas and Easter time there are
mocking processions in the streets which revile the beliefs and rites of
Christianity.
The methods of
the Atheists have, however, changed since 1930, and the persecution of religion
is now in its fourth period. In the first period, from 1917 to 1921,
religious people were persecuted by violent methods, such as terror, and
innumerable priests were killed or sent to the prison islands of the North and
to Siberia. When the New Economic Policy was introduced in 1921 a period
of comparative toleration began, which was interrupted from time to time by
outbursts of persecution, such as the trial of and death sentence upon the
Catholic Archbishop Cepiak, in 1923.
When in
1928, however, the period of toleration ended and Stalin began on his course of
rapidly turning Russia into an industrialised Socialist State by the Five-Year
Plan, religion was again submitted to violent persecution.
RELIGION LIKE A NAIL
From 1928 to 1930
force was applied to the crushing of all religious sects and creeds. None was
spared. The attack was not only against the Orthodox Church which had been a
pillar of Tsarism, but against Baptists, Evangelists, Mohammedans, and the
innumerable sects which had arisen. That attempt to crush religion by
force in 1928 to 1930 failed. Lunacharsky, once Commissar for Education,
summed up the failure pithily when he stated: “Religion is like a nail: the
more you hit it the deeper it goes in.”
That saying has
guided the anti-religious policy of the Bolsheviks since 1930, when the fourth
period began, and the dominant note had been, “We must fight religion by more
subtle methods, by science and by propaganda.”
THE NEW POLICY
Thus the
Atheists have now declared themselves against physical force and state: “We
are for the ideological form, of struggle, for deep cultural
propaganda.” Lecturers tour the country to show that religion is
unscientific, that religion is mere superstition, that religion: is symbolic of
dirt, disease, and drunkenness, while Atheism brings electric light, the
aeroplane, and the tractor.
Atheism is
associated with the correct teaching of biology, geography, physiology,
chemistry, and other sciences. Religion is associated with all that is
medieval, such as witches, charms, curses, water-sprites and ghosts. Why
do the Communists fight against religion? Their policy is guided by the
slogan, “Atheism is a weapon of class-warfare.” Because there has been
renewed class warfare since 1928, the battle for Atheism has been waged with
greater energy. The Communists claim that the classes which they are
destroying are not dying without a struggle and that they are using religion as
a weapon to wreck the building of Socialism. religion as a weapon to wreck the
building of Socialism. Religion as a weapon to wreck the building of
Socialism.
“LETTERS FROM GOD”
Religious
people, the Communists complain, are fighting against the Socialist collective
farms. The priests have been writing letters which they purported to have
come from God, stating, “I, God, tell you that the collective farm is the work
of the Devil.”
According to the
Communist, religious peasants have been warning the others that if they entered
the collective farms they would go to hell. The Communists complain that
the religious peasants have been agitating against scientific methods, and that
they are still in favour of: the three-field system, because, as they say,
“Even God is for the three-field system, because God is for the Trinity, and
the Trinity is symbolic for the three-field system.”
The Communists
state that the religious festivals do harm to agriculture and that the peasants
drink so much during these festivals that they do not ‘work for many days and,
thus wreck the spring sowing. The Communists are against religion because
they claim that religion upholds the old capitalist world and that the churches
are merely tools of Rockefeller, Ford, and Deterding.
“Why are there
missionaries in the world?” they ask; and they reply, “The missionaries are
there because the capitalists and the imperialists have sent them.”
CHILD ATHEISTS
Thus the
Bolsheviks are attempting to crush religion. Although they have stated
that they wish to abandon forceful methods, thousands of preachers and priests
are now half-starving in prison. How great, has their Success been?
Among children the .propaganda. and the teaching in the schools have undoubtedly
had a great effect. If you ask Russian children, “Do you believe in
God?” most will answer emphatically, “No.”
But there are
many young people who believe in God. One Russian girl told me that she
believed in God, but that she was going to join the Young Communist
League. “How can you join the Young Communist League when you believe in
God?” I asked. She replied, “Of course I can. I shall pretend to be a
Communist and make wonderful Communist speeches, but all the time I shall
believe in God,” and she added a phrase which impressed me deeply, “For what
my lips say, my heart need not believe.”
The hearts of the
Russian people often remain Christian while their lips utter vilifications
against God. Religion has not been crushed.
NEW SECTS
There has been a
religious revival in the last year. Numerous sects have sprung up.
Personal religion has grown. Deep human emotion is taking the place of
ceremony. Mr. Hessell Tiltman was quite right when he said: “They may
shoot every Christian in Russia and men and women there will still nurse the
image of God in their hearts. Long after the last anti-God poster has
faded on the hoardings, the last lesson in Atheism been given in the schools,
and the present Soviet leaders are no more, the1ove of God will be found in.
Russian hearts. For the Communists, who are so fond of quoting the
proverbs of Lenin, have forgotten one proverb that Lenin did not write, but the
truth of which is attested by all history. That proverb runs: “The blood
of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”
|
|
|
|