BACK TO CHURCH IN RUSSIA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16347, 23 May 1927, Page 11

BACK TO CHURCH IN RUSSIA

WORKERS FLOCK TO NEW BUILDINGS. Bolshevik leaders are gravely concerned by the return to religion oi increasing numbers of Russian workers, despite all their efforts to substitute for what Marx called “the opium of the people” their own materialistic ceremonies. Communist Party newspapers have received detailed reports of workers attending churches en masse throughout Russia, and even subscribing heavily for the building of new ones. Only 600 workers went to the meeting to discuss the annual report of the “Comintern Cotton Mills” at Kara* baiiovo, near Vladimir, but more than 2000 were present to hear the churchwarden’s report read. The local church—reconstructed almost entirely by proletarian subscriptions—was reconsecrated, amid great pomp and public rejoicings, by the Archimamlrate of Vladimir, who drove up through dense crowds in a smart three-horsed sleigh, followed by six others bearing his attendant clergy. Bolsheviks now ask themselves how they can make their own ceremonies brighter, in order to beat church ritual on iis own ground. 'They have other reasons, too; for wishing to reach the “religious instincts” of the masses by dignified and moving rites, because they attribute the scant respect shown for the institution of Soviet marriage largely to the slipshod and prosaic fashion in which couples are “joined” bv a casual and usually unshaven com missar, while nt another table in the same office a second couple is heing “disjoined’ with equal lack of charm .and even greater celerity. Communists are, in fact, racking their brains to devise a new “red wedding” which shall impress matrimonial candidates with their uufcv. if not to each other, at least to the State and to posterity,