ABSTRACT

The Reds were well aware of the defensive union of the bourgeoisie. They knew that the bourgeoisie, lacking more effective weapons, were shutting themselves up in their homes, as in fortresses. They called these assemblages of several families "gatherings of petty bourgeois cowering before the fresh gust of revolution". The Reds, whose doctrine was itself really a kind of religion, did not intend to recognize any other faith except that of orthodox Bolshevism. Every other belief must be stamped out as "anti-Communistic heresy". The Soviet authorities had arranged an "anti-religious campaign" for that day throughout the town, and had organized Bolshevist meetings in no fewer than six well-known churches, at which violent and blasphemous attacks were being made on religion. With the aim of gradually abolishing religion in our new Communistic State the Soviet leaders had already, in the course of the previous weeks, issued a series of anti-religious decrees.