MR McGILLICK ON RUSSIA

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVII, Issue 21504, 17 November 1939, Page 8

MR McGILLICK ON RUSSIA

Sir,—Mr McGillick's impressions of Russia were very interesting. The May Day parade may have been all Mr McGillick has described and nobody is likely to question the accuracy of that part of his statement, but when it comes to the question of freedom of worship in that country, one may be pardoned for accepting that part of the statement with some reserve. Mr McGillick is reported as having stated that he is satisfied on that point. No doubt he is, but how far does that bring us? Is all we have heard and read from very reliable sources, all a figment of imagination? It is very refreshing to know that if people, 14 in number, desire to worship in any particular creed, the Soviet Government provides a building at the worshippers’ expense. Fourteen is not a large congregation, judged by the standards in this, or any other country which has not outlawed Christianity. We know that for many years since the Russian Revolution the teaching of the youth has been taken over by the State. Christianity is taught to be a sham and religion a dope to keep the workers suppressed. A generation has grown up on this teaching, so it is not to be wondered that there is no great demand for churches or places of worship. After the revolution church properties were confiscated and buildings were turned into cinemas and museums Perhaps Mr McGillick did not know this. He probably went to Russia to see what he wanted to see. and then reports that all is lovely in that country. There is nothing so misleading as statements which contain a semblance of truth. The qualifying of Mr McGillick’s statement: That the Soviet Constitution provides for anti-Chris-tian propaganda, is full of meaning and would largely help to solve the problem.—l am, etc., NOT QUITE BLIND. Waimate, November 16.

Sir,—The Soviet in the role of defender of the orthodox faith is a wild and eerie concept. And yet Mr T. McGillick would have it so. The statements in the interview with hii.i which you published in your paper recently make ironical reading, especially in view of the documented and authenticated facts which have been published time and again. Only a man whose wishful thinking would lead him to try to find some good in the now debunked Communist regime would be foolish enough to try and foist such a story on people enlightened by recent events in Poland.

Under the Communist regime the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church barely stopped short of extermination. That church was dispossessed of its property and thousands of its priests and devotees were either slain or sent to prison camps. And, although orthodox worship in Russia persists, in spite of diabolical persecution, it may be doubted that the church any longer exists as an organised body. Intensification of the warfare against the remnants, it would seem, is about to take place. The burden of a long editorial in the official Communist newspaper “Pravda” (Moscow) is that “Godlessness is identical with Communism and the campaign to stamp out every vestige of religious belief and practice from the lives of the Russian people must be pursued with even greater intensity than in the past.” “Pravda” quotes Marx and other Communist leaders in its diatribe and goes on to lament laxity in the anti-religious campaign and the survival of religious belief and practice among the Russian people. “Many have not yet understood,” “Pravda” observes, “that antireligioiLS propaganda is an integral part of all Soviet political and cultural education .... Numerous Soviet organs do not understand that antireligious propaganda in our country has an official status.”

Your readers will have noted that Mr McGillick when he visited Russia as the leader of an Australian trade delegation in 1938, was accompanied by an army of interpreters. In that admission on his part may be found the key to the Russia with which he became acquainted. In any case it may not be impertinent to ask what is his mission in this country? He lectured on Communism in Dunedin earlier in the year, but to be fair it should be pointed out that the vie\w expressed in the interview in the “Timaru Herald” are, comparatively speaking, only “pale pink’ after all. —I am, etc., M. G. Dunedin. November 15.