THE CHURCH IN RUSSIA

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 167, 16 July 1937, Page 8

THE CHURCH IN RUSSIA

Despite the fact that during the twenty years .since the Bolshevik revolution the Russian Church has suffered a steady decline m membership and influence, having lost more than half its pre-revolution adherents. Churchmen have never ceased their efforts to save religion from extinction in Soviet Russia. Latest reports show that Church organisations have succeeded in maintaining annual incomes amounting to hundreds of millions of roubles

These figures have been made public for tho first time in the report of a special investigator of Komsomolskaya Pravda, the influential organ of the Young Communist League, which has been a steadfast enemy of Church influence, and is now taking the lead in a new anti-religious campaign throughout the country.

The investigator admits that official Church statistics reveal that in Moscow one religious society in the past three years enjoyed an income of more than 650,000 roubles, while the Red capital’s

“Church of the Resurrection” alone reported an income of over 400.000 roubles for the same period. These, and other Church units, contributed liberally to the support of tho evnodic

Some Signs of Revival

and diocesan administrations. The newspaper reveals that the bulk of the enormous mcoino is being expended on the maintenance ot ciei .cal staffs and on organised religious propaganda intended to extend Churn* influence particularly in some rural regions where the peasantry have held tenaciously to religious beliels. Informed foreign observers here declare that the lew Church representatives who might be elected would u® an insignificant minority, powerless i/O olf-set the Soviet regime’s control of the Press, radio, cinema, theatre, and trade unions, which can be marshal.ed for a concerted attack at any time the fcioviet leaders wish to check the momentum of tho religious re viva Deprived ot financial support m the Government, and realising les .a 10 per cent, ot their iifcome from ideations, churchmen have resorteo 10 “trading” in ikons, crosses, intense, candles, aud wedding rings, which they buy from private craftsmen and are alleged to resell at several ’imes their original cost. The j Pravda report places special emphas on tin’s aspect of Church incom^ I characterising the clergy as profiteer*