Four general phases can be distinguished in the development of mysticism and the struggle against it. The first phase is characterized by a complete lack of natural scientific views; animistic views rule in their place. Fearing that which appears incomprehensible, the primitive has a strong urge to find an explanation for natural phenomena. On the one hand he must give his life a sense of security, and on the other hand he seeks protection against the overpowering forces of nature. He acquires the one as well as the other (subjectively, not objectively) through mysticism, superstition and animistic views of natural processes, his inner and psychic processes included. He believes, for example, that he can increase the fertility of the soil by erecting phallic sculptures or that he can get rid of a period of drought by urinating. The principal features of this situation remain unchanged among all peoples of the earth, until at the close of the Middle Ages rudimentary efforts towards a scientific comprehension of nature, efforts prompted by several technical discoveries, assume a serious character. These efforts constitute more and more of a threat to mysticism. In the process of the great bourgeois revolution, an intense struggle breaks out against religion and for enlightenment. The period approaches in which science would be able to replace mysticism’s explanation of nature, and technology would be able to assume a much more significant role in dealing with the human needs for protection (second phase). But now that the revolutionaries are in power, they are no longer revolutionary. They make an about-face and create a contradiction in the cultural process. On the one hand they promote scientific research with every available means, because it helps economic development. On the other hand, however, they encourage mysticism and turn it into the most powerful instrument for the purpose of suppressing millions of wage earners (third phase). This contradiction finds tragicomic expression in scientific films such as Nature and Love, in which each part carries two headings. The first heading reads something like this: ‘The earth was developed over millions of years as a result of cosmic mechanical and chemical processes.’ Below it, we read something like this: ‘On the first day God created Heaven and Earth.’ And highly respected scholars, astronomers and chemists sit in the stalls and quietly look at this ironic union, convinced that ‘religion too has its good side’. Could the separation between theory and practice be depicted more graphically! The methodical withholding of scientific findings from the masses of the population, and ‘monkey trials’ such as we find in the United States, encourage humility, lack of discrimination, voluntary renunciation and hope for happiness in the Beyond, belief in authority, recognition of the sacredness of asceticism and the unimpeachableness of the authoritarian family.
The workers and the bourgeois elements that are intimately connected with them constitute the freethinkers’ movement, which the liberal bourgeoisie allows to go its own way as long as it does not transgress certain limits. Whereas the resources of the freethinkers are confined to intellectual arguments, the church enjoys the help of the state power-apparatus and plays upon the strongest emotional forces in the psychology of the masses, sexual anxiety and sexual repression. This great power in the emotional sphere is not countered by a commensurate emotional force. Insofar as the freethinkers employ sex policies at all, they are either intellectualized or confined to questions of population politics. At best they include the demand for economic equality for women. This, however, cannot have any mass effect on the powers of mysticism, for in most women the will to economic independence is unconsciously checked by the fear of sexual responsibility, which goes hand in hand with economic independence.
The difficulties involved in overcoming these emotional factors force the revolutionary freethinkers’ movement to push the so-called philosophic questions into the background, for one often achieves the opposite of what one intends in this regard. Since mysticism cannot be countered by a commensurate emotional power, this point of view is certainly justified.
The Russian Revolution raises the struggle against religion to an unprecedented high level (fourth phase). The power apparatus is no longer in the hands of the church and big business, but in the hands of the executive committees of the Soviets. The anti-religious movement obtains a firm foundation, the reorganization of the economy on a collective basis. For the first time it becomes possible to replace religion with natural science on a mass scale, to replace the feeling of protection offered by superstition with an ever-growing technology, to destroy mysticism itself with sociological elucidation of the functions of mysticism. Essentially, there are three ways in which the fight against religion takes place in the USSR: by the elimination of the economic basis, i.e., in a direct economic way; by anti-religious propaganda, i.e., in a direct ideological way; and by the raising of the cultural level of the masses, i.e., in an indirect ideological way.
The enormous importance of the power apparatus of the church can be seen from some statistics, which shed light upon the conditions that existed in old Russia. In 1905 the Russian church possessed 2,611,000 desjatines of land, i.e., about 2 million hectares. In 1903, 908 houses belonged to the parish churches in Moscow; 146 belonged to the monasteries.
The annual income of the metropolitans amounted to 84,000 roubles in Kiev; 259,000 roubles in Petersburg; 81,000 roubles in Moscow; 307,000 roubles in Nishni-Novgorod. The earnings in kind and fees received for every individual religious performance cannot even be estimated. Two hundred thousand persons were in the service of the church, at the expense of mass taxation. The Troitskaya Lavra monastery, which is visited by an average of a hundred thousand pilgrims annually, possesses sacred vessels valued at some 650 million roubles.
Backed by its economic power, the church was able to exercise considerable ideologic influence. Needless to say, all schools were denominational and subject to the control and domination of the priesthood. The first article of the constitution of czarist Russia stated: ‘The sovereign of all Russians is an autocratic and absolute monarch and God Himself enjoins voluntary subordination to his supreme power.’ We already know what ‘God’
represents, and on which infantile feelings in the human structure such claims to power can rest. Hitler refashioned the church in Germany in precisely the same way. He extended its absolute power and granted it the pernicious right to make the schoolchildren’s emotions ripe for the reception of reactionary ideologies. The task of raising ‘moral standards’ holds top priority for Hitler, who executes the will of our most holy God. Let us return to old Russia.
In the theological seminaries and academies there were special academic chairs for the fight against the revolutionary movement. On 9 January 1905, a clerical proclamation appeared in which the rebelling workers were accused of having been bribed by the Japanese. The^ February Revolution of 1917 brought about only minor changes. All churches were put on an equal footing, but the long-awaited separation of church and state failed to materialize. The large landowner Prince Lvov became head of the church administration. At a church council in October of 1917 the Bolsheviks were excommunicated; the patriarch Tikhon declared war on them.
On 23 January 1918, the Soviet government issued the following decree:
With respect to religion, the Russian Communist Party is not content to accept the already decreed separation of the church from the state and the school. In short, it is not content with measures which also appear in the programmes of bourgeois democracies, which have never been able to carry them through to the end anywhere in the world owing to the numerous factual connections between capital and religious propaganda.
It is the conviction of the Russian Communist Party that only the realization of methodicalness and consciousness in the entire social and economic life of the masses will effect the complete withering away of religious prejudices. The Party is working towards a complete elimination of all the connections between the exploiting classes and the organization of religious propaganda. It has organized a comprehensive scientific propaganda of an instructive and anti-religious nature. This propaganda contributes in a factual way toward the liberation of the working masses from religious prejudices. However, every effort must be made not to offend the feelings of the faithful, for this would only lead to an intensification of religious fanaticism.
It follows from this those local ordinances which would restrict the freedom of conscience or create privileges for members of a particular confession on the territory of the Republic are prohibited [paragraph 2 of the decree].
Every citizen can profess whichever religion be chooses or no religion whatever. All previous curtailments of rights in this regard are annulled.
Any reference to a citizen’s religious denomination or absence of denomination is to be removed from all official documents [paragraph 3 of the decree].
The activities of all public and other official and social institutions will take place without any religious customs and ceremonies [paragraph 4].
The free exercise of religious customs is guaranteed, provided they do not entail any disturbance of the public order and do not infringe upon the rights of citizens of the Soviet Union. In such cases where disturbances occur or rights are infringed upon, the local authorities are entitled to take all measures necessary to restore peace and order.
No one has the right to evade his civic obligations on the basis of his religious views.
Exceptions to this are allowed only on the basis of a decision of the people’s court in each individual case, and on condition that one civic duty is replaced by another [paragraph 6],
The religious oath is abolished. If need be, a formal declaration can be made [paragraph 7].
Civil status records will be kept solely by civil authorities, namely, by the registration office for marriages and births [paragraph 8].
The school is separated from the church.
The propagation of religious confession is prohibited at all state and public as well as private institutions of learning which follow a curriculum of general education [paragraph 9].
All clerical and religious societies are subject to the general regulations which govern private societies and associations, and they shall not enjoy any privileges or subsidies from the state or an autonomous local self-administrative organ [paragraph 10].
The exaction of taxes from members for the benefit of clerical or religious societies is prohibited [paragraph ii].
Clerical and religious societies have no private property rights, nor do they have the rights of a corporate body [paragraph 12].
All property of clerical and religious societies in Russia is declared to be the property of the people.
Edifices and objects necessary for divine services are put at the disposal of the various religious societies free of charge on the basis of special regulations of the local and central authorities [paragraph
13]-Priests, monks and nuns enjoy neither an active nor a passive right to vote because they do not perform productive work.
As early as 18 December 1917, the keeping of the civil status records was handed over to the Soviet authorities. In the Commissariat for Justice, a liquidation department was established, which began with the liquidation of church possessions. In the Troitski Lavra monastery, for example, an academy for the electro-technical division of the Red Army and a training school for teachers were established. Workers’ pools and communes were set up on the grounds of the monastery. The churches themselves were gradually converted into workers’ clubs and reading rooms. The anti-religious propaganda began with the exposure of the clerical hierarchy’s direct deception of the people. The holy fountain in the Sergius
Church turned out to be a simple pump. The brow of many a saint proved to be nothing other than a cleverly arranged piece of leather. Permission to kiss a saint’s brow had to be bought. The effect of this exposure in the presence of masses of people was prompt and radical. It goes without saying that the godless propaganda flooded city and country with millions of elucidative brochures and newspapers. The establishment of anti-religious natural science museums made it possible to contrast the scientific and superstitious views of the world.
Notwithstanding all this, I was told in Moscow in 1929 that the only organized and firmly rooted counter-revolutionary groups were the religious sects. The relationship of the religious sects to the sexual life of the sect members, as well as to the sexual structure of the society as a whole, was grievously neglected in the Soviet Union, both theoretically and practically. This neglect had serious consequences.
Thus, the assertion that the church in Soviet Russia was ‘annihilated’ is incorrect. One was free to profess and practise the religion of one’s choice. It was only its social and economic hegemony that the church lost. It was no longer possible for it to force people outside its circle of adherents to believe in God. Science and atheism had finally succeeded in acquiring the same social rights as mysticism. No clerical hierarchy could any longer decide that a natural scientist should be exiled. That is all. But the church was not satisfied. Later, when the sexual revolution disintegrated (from 1934 on), it won masses of people back into its fold.
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