The Murder of the Tsar

In 1922, Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) wrote: "If the [1917-18] Council was at fault in anything, it was, perhaps, in failing to express, with sufficient force, its condemnation of the revolution and the overthrow of his Majesty. Who will be able to deny that the February revolution was as God-hating as it was anti-monarchist? Who can condemn the Bolshevik revolution and, at the same time, approve of the Provisional government?"

The Provisional government was hardly less guilty than the Bolsheviks, because it was they who overthrew the Tsar, which led to the overthrow of everything else. For, as St.�John Maximovich said: "It cannot be otherwise. He was overthrown who united everything, standing in defence of the Truth." In fact, according to the profound consciousness of the Church, the murder of the Tsar and his family, on July 4/17, 1918, was not the responsibility of the Bolsheviks only, but of the whole people who, directly or indirectly, connived at it. As St.�John explained: "All the regicides in Russia's history were committed by some clique, not by the people. When Paul�I was murdered, the people were not even aware of it, and when they found out, they brought their condolences and prayers to his grave for many years afterward. Alexander�II's murder unleashed a storm of indignation in Russia, which helped strengthen the moral fibre of the people, as became evident during the reign of Alexander�III. The people were innocent of the Tsar-Liberator's blood. But here the people, the entire Russian nation, is guilty of the spilled blood of their Tsar. Some partook in the murder, others, just as blameworthy, approved of it, while still others did nothing to interfere. All are guilty, and truly we must say: 'His blood be on us, and on our children' (Matthew�27.25)�"

On hearing the news, the patriarch immediately condemned the murder. He had already angered the government by sending the Tsar his blessing in prison; and he now celebrated a pannikhida �for him, blessing the archpastors and pastors to do the same. Then he announced in the Kazan cathedral: "We, in obedience to the teaching of the Word of God, must condemn this deed, otherwise the blood of the shot man will fall also on us, and not only on those who committed the crime�"

At one point shortly after the murder of the Tsar, some member of the Council suggested to the Patriarch that he take refuge abroad, so that he not share in the fate of the Tsar. "The flight of the Patriarch," replied his Holiness, "would play into the hands of the enemies of the Church. Let them do with me what they want."

On July�26�/�August�8, in an address "to all the faithful children of the Russian Orthodox Church," the Patriarch said: "Sin has fanned everywhere the flame of the passions, enmity and wrath; brother has risen up against brother; the prisons are filled with captives; the earth is soaked in innocent blood, shed by a brother's hand; it is defiled by violence, pillaging, fornication and every uncleanness. From this same poisonous source of sin has issued the great deception of material earthly goods, by which our people is enticed, forgetting the one thing necessary. We have not rejected this temptation, as the Saviour Christ rejected it in the wilderness. We have wanted to create a paradise on earth, but without God and His holy commandments. God is not mocked. And so we hunger and thirst and are naked upon the earth, blessed with an abundance of nature's gifts, and the seal of the curse has fallen on the very work of the people and on all the undertakings of our hands. Sin, heavy and unrepented of, has summoned Satan from the abyss, and he is now bellowing his slander against the Lord and against His Christ, and is raising an open persecution against the Church."

This address characterized Socialism in similar terms to those used by Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, as the temptation to create bread out of stones which Christ rejected in the wilderness. Rather than seeking paradise in heaven and with God through the fulfillment of His commandments, the Socialists "have wanted to create a paradise on earth, but without God and His holy commandments." The result has been hell in this life and (to quote from the anathema) "the fire of Gehenna in the life to come."

This went some of the way to meeting the criticisms leveled against the Patriarch and the Council by Count Olsuphyev and Protopriest Vladimir Vostokov, that the essence of Socialism as an antichristian heresy had been hardly touched upon. As Fr.�Vladimir said: "From this platform, before the enlightener of Russia, the holy Prince Vladimir, I witness to my priestly conscience that the Russian people is being deceived, and that up to this time no one has told them the whole truth. So much has been said here about the terrors brought upon the country by Bolshevism. But what is Bolshevism? - the natural and logical development of Socialism. And Socialism is - that antichristian movement which in the final analysis produces Bolshevism as its highest development and which engenders those phenomena completely contrary to the principles of Christian asceticism that we are living through now.

"Unfortunately, many of our professors and writers have arrayed Socialism in beautiful clothes, calling it similar to Christianity, and thereby they together with the agitators of revolution have led the uneducated people into error. Fathers and brothers! What fruits did we expect of Socialism, when we not only did not fight against it, but also defended it at times, or almost always were shyly silent before its contagion? We must serve the Church by faith, and save the country from destructive tendencies, and for that it is necessary to speak the truth to the people without delay, telling them what Socialism consists of and what it leads to.

"We all, beginning with Your Holiness and ending with myself, the last member of the Council, must bow the knee before God, and beseech Him to forgive us for allowing the growth in the country of evil teachings and violence. Only after sincere repentance by the whole people will the country be pacified and regenerated. And God will bestow upon us His mercy and grace. But, if we continue only to anathematize without repenting, without declaring the truth to the people, then they will with just cause say to us: You, too, are guilty that the country has been reduced to this crime, for which the anathema now sounds out; you by your pusillanimity have allowed the development of evil and have been slow to call the facts and phenomena of state life by their real names!

The essential incompatibility between Socialism and Christianity was never doubted by the apostles of Socialism. Religion was called "opium for the people" by Marx, and by Lenin - "spiritual vodka". Again, Lenin wrote that "every religious idea, every idea of a god, even flirting with the idea of God, is unutterable vileness of the most dangerous kind." And, in 1918, he said to Krasin: "Electricity will take the place of God. Let the peasant pray to electricity; he's going to feel the power of the central authorities more than that of heaven." For, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn says: "Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy. It is not a side-effect, but the central pivot�"

That militant atheism was the central pivot of Marxism-Leninism was to become abundantly evident in the next seventy years. However, it was already clearly manifest in the murder of the Tsar and his family. For by his abdication in favour of himself and his son, the Tsar had already renounced all claims to power, so his murder had no political advantage in view, but was an act of pure malice. It was a trampling on the symbol of the old theocracy by the representatives of the new satanocracy, and an important signal from the new authorities to the people - a signal that there was no turning back. And just as the whole tragedy of the Russian people in the years that lay ahead lay in the fact that they had paved the way for this satanic act, the destruction of the Russian theocracy, and cooperated with it, so the only real hope of their regeneration now lies in their repentance of it�