Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov, adored in Russia for his wit and wisdom, talks about the Bolshevik terror.
300, 000 priests were killed during Communism.
They actually had an easy way out. They could have just rejected their priesthood and been set free. They could have kept praying in secret, even singing in church choirs, as long as they rejected their calling.
Yet so many of them chose death.
What people are ready to die for reveals with startling clarity what is actually valuable in life.
I mean, can you imagine being ready to die just because something frustrated you, for example, if you didn't get your newspaper in the morning?
No, people are only ready to sacrifice their lives for something incredibly, immeasurably important.
Something priceless.
Comment: Interestingly he mentions one 96 year old priest who renounced his position thus saving his life, and so was able to continue working in the community and provide support to those suffering under the psychopathic system that had come into power:
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Lenin famously defended the membership into the old pre-War Bolshevik party of an Orthodox priest candidate. He said the Party didn't care what a person's private opinions were only what their conduct was. The Party does not take positions on questions of science and philosophy. It fosters honest debate but such are not matters of discipline. The only criteria was actual conduct.
Considering that so much of the Orthodoxy was bound up in and beneficiaries of the old murderous regime it, were it's officers and enforcers, it could hardly be otherwise in such a brutal civil war that many would be casualties. It was the same in France in its Revolution and in England in Tudor times. I don't remember the Catholics being very nice during the 30 years war. Where are the Cathars now that we need them?
Where state violence did take place, it is almost never placed in context: decades-long campaigns of leftist terrorism, which killed thousands of people, including a tsar, and 'accomplished' far more than the imperial government ever did in retaliation.
R.C.