Vladimir Lenin
Classes and Parties in Their Attitude to Religion and the Church
Written: June (4)17, 1909
Source: Collected Works, Volume15, pp. 414-424
First Published: Soisial-Demokrat, No. 6, 1909
Translated:Andrew Rothstein and Bernard Issacs
Online Version: marx.org 1996; marxists.org 1999
Transcribed: Robert Cymbala
HTML Markup: Brian Basgen and David Walters
The debates in the Duma on the Synod estimates, then on the restoration of
rights to persons who have left holy orders and, finally, on the Old-Believer
communities, have provided very instructive material characterising the attitude
of the Russian political parties towards religion and the Church. Let us make a
general survey of this material, dwelling mainly on the debates on the Synod
estimates (we have not yet received the verbatim reports of the debates on the
other questions mentioned above).
The first and most obvious conclusion that emerges from the Duma debates is that
militant clericalism in Russia not only exists, but is clearly gaining ground
and becoming more organised. On April 16, Bishop Metrophanes stated: "The first
steps in our Duma activities pursued the explicit end that we who have been
honoured by the votes of the people, should here in the Duma stand above party
divisions, and form a single group of the clergy, which should throw light on
all sides from its ethical point of view.... What is the reason why we have
failed to achieve this ideal situation? ... The fault for this lies with those
who are sharing these benches with you [i.e., with the Cadets and the "Left"],
namely, those clerical deputies who belong to the opposition. They were the
first to lift their voice and say that this was neither more nor less than the
emergence of a clerical party, and that this was extremely undesirable. Of
course, there is no such thing as clericalism among the Russian Orthodox clergy
we never had a tendency of that kind, and in seeking to form a separate group we
were pursuing purely ethical and moral ends. But now, gentlemen, when, as a
result of this discord introduced in our brotherly midst by the Left deputies,
there followed disunity and division, now you [i.e., the Cadets] blame it on
us."
Bishop Metrophanes in his illiterate speech let the cat out of the bag: the
Left, don't you see, are guilty of having dissuaded some of the Duma priests
from forming a special "moral" (this term is obviously more suitable for
hoodwinking the people than the word "clerical") group!
Almost a month later, on May 13, Bishop Eulogius read in the Duma "the
resolution of the Duma clergy": "The overwhelming majority of the Duma Orthodox
clergy considers"... that in the interests of the "leading and dominant position
of the Orthodox Church" neither freedom of preaching for the Old-Believers, nor
the unauthorised functioning of Old-Believer communities, nor the using of the
title of priest by Old-Believer clergymen, are permissible. "The purely moral
point of view" of the Russian priests stands fully revealed as clericalism pure
and simple. "The overwhelming majority" of the Duma clergy, in whose name Bishop
Eulogius spoke, probably consisted of 29 Bight and moderately Right priests in
the Third Duma, and possibly also included 8 priests belonging to the
Octobrists. The opposition had probably been joined by 4 priests belonging to
the Progressist and Peaceful Renovation groups and one belonging to the
Polish-Lithuanian group.
What is then the "purely moral and ethical point of view of the overwhelming
majority of the clergy in the Duma" (the June-the-Third Duma, one should add)?
Here are a few excerpts from the speeches: "All I say is that the initiative for
these [i.e., Church] reforms must come from within the Church, not from without,
not from the state and, of course, not from the Budget Commission. After all,
the Church is a divine and eternal institution, its laws are immutable, whereas
the ideals of state life, as we know, are subject to constant modifications"
(Bishop Eulogius, April 14). The orator recalled "a disturbing historical
parallel": the secularisation of Church property under Catherine II. "Who can
vouch that the Budget Commission, which this year expressed the desire to put
them [the Church funds] under state control, will not express next year the
desire to deposit them in the State Treasury, and then fully to transfer their
management from the Church authorities to the civil or state authorities?... The
Church statutes say that since a bishop is entrusted with Christian souls, then
all the more should Church property be entrusted to him.... Today before you
[deputies of the Duma] stands your spiritual mother, the holy Orthodox Church,
not merely as before representatives of the people, but also as before its
spiritual children" (ibid.).
This is pure clericalism. The Church is above the state as the eternal and
divine is above the temporal and earthly. The Church cannot forgive the state
for secularising Church property. The Church demands a leading and dominant
position. In its eyes the Duma deputies are not only or rather not so much
representatives of the people as "spiritual children".
These are not officials in cassocks, as the Social-Democrat Surkov called them,
but feudalists in cassocks. Defence of the Church's feudal privileges, outspoken
support of medievalism that is the essence of the policy pursued by the majority
of the Third Duma clergy. Bishop Eulogius is by no means an exception. Gepetsky
also vociferates against "secularisation" which he calls an intolerable "wrong"
(April 14). The priest Mashkevich fulminates against the Octobrist report for
seeking "to undermine the historic and canonical foundations on which our Church
life has rested and must rest ... to push the life and activities of the Russian
Orthodox Church off the canonical path on to the path where... the true princes
of the Church the bishops will be obliged to give up almost all their rights,
inherited from the apostles, to secular princes.... This is nothing but ... an
encroachment on somebody else's property and on the rights and possessions of
the Church.... The speaker is leading us towards the destruction of the
canonical order of Church life; he seeks to subordinate the Orthodox Church and
all its economic functions to the Duma, an institution composed of the most
diverse elements in our country, of religious creeds both tolerated and not
tolerated" (April 14).
The Russian Narodniks and liberals have long been comforting themselves, or
rather deceiving themselves, with the "theory" that in Russia there is no basis
for militant clericalism, for a struggle of "the princes of the Church" with the
temporal power, and so forth. Our revolution has dispelled this illusion, as it
did a number of other Narodnik and liberal illusions. Clericalism existed in a
hidden form, so long as autocracy existed intact and inviolate. The all-powerful
police and bureaucracy concealed from the gaze of "society" and the people the
class struggle in general, and the struggle waged by the "feudalists in
cassocks" against the "base rabble" in particular. But the first breach which
the revolutionary proletariat and peasantry made in the feudalist autocratic
regime laid bare what had been hidden. As soon as the proletariat and the
advanced elements of the democratic bourgeoisie began to make use of the
political liberty, the freedom to organise the masses, which they had won at the
end of 1905, the reactionary classes, too, reached out for independent and open
organisations. Under absolute autocracy they did not organise, and did not come
out too much in the open, not because they were weak, but because they were
strong; not because they were incapable of organisation and political struggle,
but because at that time they did not yet feel any real need for independent
class organisation. They did not believe in the possibility of a mass movement
against the autocracy and the feudalists in Russia. They fully relied on the
knout being sufficient to keep the rabble down. But the first wounds inflicted
on autocracy compelled the social elements which supported it and needed it to
come out into the open. It was no longer possible to use only the old knout in
fighting masses that had been capable of causing the events of January 9, the
strike movement in 1905, and the October-December revolution. It became
necessary to build up independent political organisations; it became necessary
for the Council of the United Nobility to organise Black Hundreds and engage in
the most irresponsible demagogy; it became necessary for "the princes of the
Church the bishops" to organise the reactionary clergy into an independent
force.
A typical feature of the Third Duma, and of the Third Duma period of the Russian
counter-revolution is, indeed, that this organisation of the reactionary forces
has come out into the open, has begun to develop on a nation-wide scale, and has
demanded a special Black-Hundred bourgeois "parliament". Militant clericalism
has shown its true colours; and from now ...
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