A Riot Against a False God. Joseph Stalin. Threshold 12

There were present: the AG (Angel Guardian), the AD (Angel-Destroyer), Joanna, Sergius Bulgakov, A. Izgoyev (a publicist and public figure), Nikolai Nekrasov, Leo Tolstoy, S. Askoldov (a philosopher), and Leon Trotsky.

"Wasn't mad and proud the dream of those utopians to drive all humanity into 'narrow gate' and save it?" the AD hissed.

"It was a general Plan to save as many 'men' as possible making them good for the Kingdom. And it is nothing like the tower of Babel as you are going to object me now."

Babel is when sinful and unworthy people insolently climb Heaven, i.e. they first of all seek earthly well-being in the idea of God forgetting that 'My kingdom is not of this world'. But our dreamers rejected such a god. Though some people 'threw the baby out with the bath water' and saw only bad cosmic infinity, they dreamt about 'liberation of humanity' and about creative work... Is it not for this purpose that God created the world?

Seekers of truth didn't consider material benefits as happiness though there were many people of the kind. They served high goals, fair world of creative work without idleness, wasteful luxury, selfishness, depravity... I will never believe that the Lord will condemn them more than vampires who get stuck in all those vices and prosper at the cost of sufferings, sweat and blood of neighbors like the rich man from the Gospel.

Isn't it an unconscious longing for God's Kingdom of all who are written in the book of life. "My sheep know my voice." Children of this world don't dream of 'humanity's happiness', and even more, they don't lay down their lives for it.

But true revelation and going of those dreams out of narrowed earthly consciousness are given only by miracle or the Holy Spirit because faith is miracle."

"Exactly, but they decided to dispense with God!"

"Not without God but without devil! They acted like that, devising so lofty plans as if your boss, the prince of darkness, didn't exist. They called the original sin 'bourgeois survivals' and that was and there is an end to it. They alleged that if bourgeoisie stopped its existence survivals also would disappear and only virtues would remain. We think that only 'God's image will remain: in word it is atheism and in practice it is the most fanatical faith in this very 'Image' in man.

"Think a little how can a monster who 'originated from monkey' according to their foolish teaching and grown up as a result of natural selection, i.e. enmity, barbarity, merciless, competition for a place in the sun dream to 'turn a tale into reality' or overcome a space."

"Do you mean a breakthrough into eternity?"

"It was not a riot against God but FOR GOD. Those revolutionary boys, the best of them, knew in their hearts that they had been born for 'liberation of humanity', i.e. for God's work. If earthly life is not a process of choice between light and darkness then what is it needed for?

Earthly life is short, hard and with inevitable death sentence.

"Live for living itself' is a universal modern credo. This is an example of theomachism!

As life is given to us for an active and high purpose, and if this gift was given not by chance and not in vain then we should perform this purpose.

'I have called up evil from dark abysses by my own will.
I have filled my heart with passion and disturbed my mind with doubts.'

Therefore why shouldn't we unite and drive this evil back? Why does church tolerate the system of the world that 'lieth in wickedness'? Why does it so passively treat the transformation of 'The Holy Russia' into a hotbed of vampires and Gods people into food for predators? Isn't struggle with evil a cause of heavenly warriors? 'Set at liberty them that are bruised...'

"Yes it is said, 'resist not evil' i.e. your own offender but not EVIL ITSELF!

Non-resistance to EVIL is not pleased to God; it is a betrayal of God's work on the earth because it hourly kills souls of both vampires and their victims.

Since church refused to solve these problems, people who actively sought truth did it outside church fence. What would happen if John the Forerunner shut his eyes to unlawful acts of king Herod? You know that 'God is not mocked' though He is 'betrayed by keeping silence'. But church in this regard is very vulnerable, particularly in the face of activity of various sects and other religious confessions. For example remember Rasputin. You know better, son of darkness, those were your dealings...

Here is a testimony from 'At the feast of gods' by the priest Sergius Bulgakov.

'Church should have denied Rasputin-minded tsar as early as possible when it was cleared up that Russia was ruled by inspirations of a Khlyst[1]. In that connivance there was really a grave sin of both priestly hierarchy and laypeople. However that sin was natural because of paralysis in church and its subordination to the state represented by an attorney-general. God be thanked, now church is free and ruled on the basis of conciliar origins which are innate to it.'

Don't surprise. The decree of 1918 about liberty of conscience and separation of church from state was approved of by many people.

'You lose sight of the most valuable attainment of Russian life which by itself is able to compensate and in a sense even justify all our trials. This is liberation of the Orthodox Russian church from state's captivity and from that deadly formal approach. The Russian church is free now though it is persecuted.'

Isn't it a terrible thing that officers were demanded to have communion certificates? Isn't it a blasphemy against the Plan? And the anathema number 11 which declared damnations to those who dared to rebel against Orthodox tsars 'anointed by God'. Weren't those things reasons of persecutions?

'Now therefore behold the king whom ye have chosen, [and] whom ye have desired! and, behold, the LORD hath set a king over you.

If ye will fear the LORD, and serve him, and obey his voice, and not rebel against the commandment of the LORD, then shall both ye and also the king that reigneth over you continue following the LORD your God.

But if ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king' (1 Samuel 12:13, 14, 25).

In the most fatal hour of history they were not able to keep Russia from Rasputin! Where was the power of the apostolic church, where was power to make decisions? And instead of an apostolic word the problem was solved by a stray bullet of an officer. It turned out that Rasputin's blood shedding on the Russian land begot the many-headed monster of bolshevism."

'That's putting it strongly," the AD began to clap his black hands," about 'the many-headed monster of bolshevism'. By the way, we have forgotten about Joseph."

"We haven't forgotten at all. We unravel his mystery little by little.

'It turned out that church was removed without any struggle as if it were not dear and necessary to people, and it was done in the country even easier than in towns and cities. The stratum of church culture turned out to be so small that even enemies of church didn't imagine it. Russian people suddenly turned out to be non-Christian.'

"So answer now, son of darkness, did Bolsheviks and Joseph really established atheism or 'destroy faith' as somebody claims? What did these comrades really want of Bolsheviks: to issue a decree and declare that God existed and commanded everybody to unquestioningly submit to the new authority because the old one had oppressed everyone? Suppose they referred to the Scripture and went to church all together in order to glorify the Soviet rule? Is it the thing you wanted?"

"But I really whispered this alternative to Joseph," the AD sighed.

"This idea was matured by Napoleon at the St. Helena Island, 'I would elevate the Pope beyond measure. I would surround him with magnificence and respect. I would arrange it so that he had no reason to sorry about his lost secular power, I would do an idol of him, and he would stay near me. Paris would become capital of the Christian world, and I would rule over religious world as well as political one.'



THE PAGES OF JOSEPH'S LIFE

In 1917 he made a report at the meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on the issue of Finland independence, was appointed chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars for the time of Lenin's leave of absence.

In 1918 he took part in the work of the 3rd All-Russian Congress of Soviets, spoke at the meeting of the Central Committee on the issue of the peace with Germans, spoke at the 3rd Congress of Soviets on an ethnic issue, conducted a conference of members of revolutionary parties from European and American countries.

He took part in organization of defense from Germans and in mobilization of bourgeoisie for digging trenches under the control of workers, struggled against Trotsky and Bukharin on the issue of the Brestsky peace agreement, took part in the work of the 7th meeting of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), was elected a member of the Central Committee and a member of the Commission on working out a project of the party program.

He took part in the work of the 4th All-Russian Extraordinary Congress of Soviets, was elected a member of the All-Russian Central Committee on elaboration of a project of the first Constitution of the Russian Soviet Republic and made a report on a model of the Russian Soviet Republic's federation. He also was an authorized representative of the RSFSR on the negotiations with the Ukrainian government on the issue of peace treaty, presided a conference on the issue of convocation of a founding congress of Soviets of Tatar-Bashkir Soviet Republic.

"But what really happened in Russia during all those congresses and commissions?' the AD wondered caustically, "what fruits did they really bring? Here I have several testimonies by the publicist and public figure A. Izgoyev.

'The whole world was horrified (socialists were horrified before anyone else) when all those dreadful pictures of becoming wild and returning to the times of the Black Death, the Thirty Years' War, the Great Moscow's revolt, unheard despotism, monstrous violence and full rupture of social bonds. Socialism that was performed and tried in real life turned out to be so.'

"What will you say?"

"Only the fact that in society where during a few centuries one part of people sucked blood of other part breaking the Plan and Commandment, i.e. in Vampiria, which recent Russia was, everybody with the exception of monks who were 'not of this world' was infected with latent vampirism, envy, malice and thirst for blood. I already recited statements of many people including Marx about 'proletarians poisoned by envy and hatred.

Man returned to a beastly state, and socialism has nothing to do with it whatever can be meant by it, i.e. by socialism. It is not liberty at all, only night came: a time of revenge for some people and a time of bloody feast for others. In short, 'your time is finished'.

But as it is known, the darker night, the lighter stars are. The witness observes that all attributes and achievements of labor and trade-union movement suddenly turned out to be bourgeois to the core according to pure Marxist doctrine, social laws, structures of political parties and policy of political struggle.'

Of course, one must not put new wine into old bottles...

'Orthodoxy brought up Russian man's soul. And when now Bolsheviks have carried out their experiment and shown us man without God, religion and Orthodoxy, i.e. shown him in the condition about which Dostoyevsky said, 'If there is no God everything is allowed', then the whole world was horrified by this sadistic and brutal monkey. Mass executions of children, beatings, tortures, the most horrible humiliations, and all of that is done out of mischief, hooliganism, malice and, even worse, blackmail. "Such wild and evil animal as man is...' with our own eyes did we see the creature this man who freed himself for God and called himself 'a socialist' turns into. 'Dog eats dog'. That is the main slogan of these terrible days.'

"Well, Positive, how does it listen to you?"

"Only that now no outward goals restrained destructive malice of newly vampires accumulated for centuries. The things that were done in a latent form and sometimes in an evident one by top circles, 'avid beasts and insatiable leeches' who obstinately refused to pay heed to it now are done by lower classes too. Servile patience that admired hosts of 'unmurmuring oxen' didn't originate from church at all as it was demonstrated in early days of the revolution:

'Dog eats dog' here is the slogan of these terrible days. 'Bolsheviks showed us man without God...' You'd better view yourself in the glass. It's you who were both 'dogs' and 'people without God' and predators who wouldn't enter God's Kingdom!

Former 'brothers' became 'dogs' as it was foretold in the Scripture and as a punishment for violation the Plan. As Leo Tolstoy warned:

'Labour revolution with horrors of destructions and murders threatens not only us, but we have lived with it thirty years already, and only for a while by various tricks we postpone its beginning... Classes oppressing people now have no justification in the eyes of people except tsar. They keep their position only by violence, craft and opportunism...'

The witness Askoldov (a philosopher):

"As every serious illness of human organism partly anticipates death and acquaints with it in advance, so revolutions being dangerous illnesses in lives of states include in a varying degree all main symptoms of death which from a religious point of view is the fullest demonstration of world evil... revolutions promote SEPARATION of good and evil exposing both of them in the brightest form.

In process of purification of good from evident evil they have from a religious viewpoint a seal of benefaction and in effect implement a religious meaning of history consisting of separation of good and evil in their mature forms. Christianity shouldn't be afraid of individual and universal death because in death only those things perish that should be perished, i.e. evil origins of life.'

"We must specify that it has to do with 'the second and final death' after the Judgement but not with earthly one.

'I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing' (Deuteronomy 30:19).

'Russian church as an empiric earthly organization was the centre and the basis of religious life from where paralysis and decadence of religious spirit spread. Having a mystic fear of revolution and defending religious foundations of the present authority according to the spirit of Christianity...'
"But I would like to say 'not spirit but letter," the AG interrupted himself, 'church undoubtedly came out of limits of guarding policy.'

"It wasn't able to see it connecting its fate and authority with the fate of the Russian autocracy; it was obliged to keep inward quality of this form and without interfering in politics become a voice of religious conscience in state life.

But the Orthodox Church hasn't played this very role of social organism at all since the time of Peter I. A process of inner infection began in it, that became a poison for some people and temptation for blasphemies and falling away from the Church and the Christianity...

Gregory Rasputin was the first and the greatest figure of Russian revolution because he became the main factor of visible Russian Church's fall. After that a mystery of invisible Russian Church began.

For many centuries the Russian Church had been under the guard of autocracy. But it turned this state of affairs into political service. Those things in the consciousness of Russian people that should had been bearers of the holy origin of Russia's soul, The Holy Russia, began to revile the dignity of this origin and its outer and dirty content. And the guard that began to be harmful instead of being useful was removed."

"I mean so called 'Keeper'."

"You'd better talked about Joseph. Don't wander away from the subject," the AD grumbled.

"I'm talking only about Joseph, exceptionally about him."

"OK, concerning the previous testimony, isn't the meaning of Christianity in the universal salvation or in bearing the cross? Being humble and patient to sins and weaknesses of others, in present case 'princes', you should save the Whole and those princes. 'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ', it seems to be said by your Apostle Paul?"

"And I say that some limit of evil was broken, when malignant cells threaten to destroy the Whole, i.e. the Plan, when relations of lowing family are broken, when a cardinal operation is necessary and when 'Let the dead bury their dead'.

And Russian revolution came true as an unexpected God's judgment.... We firmly believe that Russian revolution is not a work of men's hands though it was prepared by men's endeavors. Russian revolution turned out to be a judgment of not only policy and political figures of the old regime but also that part of Russian society that condemned and struggled against that policy.

If humanists of the Russian society would have stood up against savage origin of Russian soul in union with saints, then all the tone of their accusations and all their policy would have been quite different. But even acting as 'an intellectual force' humanistic origin didn't cope with its task because it didn't honestly and thoroughly examine problems that it criticized and intended to solve.

Due to it Russian humanistic movement was deeply filled with primitive materialistic spirit which didn't allowed it even to think about religion and hence about holy origin of the Russian community'.

Russian people remained to be estranged from humanism that arose and remained only among Russian intelligentsia. And when due to combined influences of temptations from both right and left sides its holiness died, its beastly origin didn't submit to human one and remained to be free from every enlightening and ennobling origin."

"Is it said not about Joseph, son of darkness? His people who became beasts, his comrades who didn't wish to 'look into problems', various false theories that were based on incredible conceptions about man and the Plan, and enraged resisting Vampiria, internal and external one, he was to fight against, and no support except his secret faith in his God...

Earlier months of post-revolutionary Russia:

'Instead of an expected Kingdom of justice, ordinary 'bourgeois' robbery and supremacy of brute physical force were established. Armed people take away property of the unarmed and week, doing it by alone and by crowds. All 'social revolution' being deprived of any idealism caused all those things.

Robbery led to usual consequences. In countries where law and order are not ensured and where there is no justice and social security, spirit of enterprise disappears and excessive rise of prices for all production takes place; force and violence are opposed to deception, hypocrisy and desire to isolate oneself and conceal all one's possession from everybody'.

In their hatred towards 'bourgeois world' socialists freeing people from 'law' only made them return to an initial moment of their evolution, i.e. to 'bourgeois law'. In our life 'a tooth for tooth' became to dominate and the cruelest methods of capital punishment, shameful executions and repressions with no investigation or trial began to be used.

Socialism at law turned out to be coming back to lawlessness. Socialism at politics brought about the most outrageous despotism with exceptional laws, inequality of citizens, everyday violence and lack of all liberties with tortures in jails and mass and single shootings of unarmed people'.

'Class struggles of Russian 'proletariat was breathtakingly victorious. Miserable successes of German laborers who gained 200 gram more bread are nothing in comparison of the victory of Russian 'working class' which took all public authority and all public and private properties into its own hands. We have to show patterns of real socialist regulation and consummation, production and exchange. Both Larin and Lenin with all their seriousness repeatedly propagated in their speeches and articles great advantages and basics of a new social system. They didn't confine themselves to words and proceeded to realization of their ideas.

And they showed to the whole world that those ideas destroyed every industry, stopped and ruined every production, ruined all wealth of a country, caused horrible and mass speculation and hunger even if enough reserve was available; and value of innumerable paper money was kept only by devaluation of human blood.

Under 'socialist' order an excessive decrease of working efficiency set in. Our productive forces under 'socialism' regressed to serfdom-based factories in the time of tsar Peter's reign.

'Working control' soon showed its true nature... every discipline was destroyed immediately. Competent and honest workers were driven away or even killed. Productivity of labour decreased inversely to increase of wages.'

Receipts of savings to saving banks were stopped. It turned out that people least of all believed popular rule.'

'Life regulated prices according to the law of 'bourgeois' economy. It replied to socialist struggle against property with irrefutable, despite if its perversion, strengthening of property performed by many-millioned army of 'bagmen'.

'Such huge, mass, spontaneous and irresistible phenomena as peasants' refusal to sell bread per fixed prices under devaluated money and grand development of jobbery or catastrophic decrease of work efficiency became to be accounted for 'counter-revolutionary agitation' by right-wing socialist revolutionaries and Mensheviks or sabotage by Constitutional Democratic bourgeoisie an intelligentsia.

Being active people, Bolsheviks instead of various 'economic laws' grabbed bludgeons, guns and machinegun and began to shoot 'speculators' and take away their property, imprison saboteurs and organize armed forces for going to villages to confiscate bread.'

The main reason of the present failure of socialism lays in its false and deceitful human doctrine.

'Russia was never defiled with such a quantity of crimes, lie, treachery, baseness and heartlessness like in the year of the revolution. Before in the years of religious quietism a person putting up his religiosity for show aroused doubtful attitude to himself, but in the years of the revolution bold and open profession a religious faith elevated such a person over a crowd of deceived and brutal people.

Socialistic revolution, intending to destroy religion in Russia, in reality strengthened it, and also purified and ennobled ministers of church reminding them of self-sacrificingness of their service.'

"Yes, this testimony is very precious," hissed the AD. This witness started on a merry note, but finished on a sad one because all matter of the world..."

"Isn't worth a human soul," the AG finished with satisfaction. Below it sounds even more instructive:

'They began to discuss defense of 'the socialistic fatherland' when nothing was left of it... Criminal cases about 'high treason', 'relations with foreign states etc initiated by Bolsheviks served as confessions of their defeat.

Socialists being represented by their the most consistent and active people proved by an experience which was hard for Russia that they had no notion of high sides of human soul in those motives WHICH MAKE PEOPLE FORGET THEIR PERSONALITIES AND SACRIFICE IT FOR HIGHEST GOALS.

All attempts to replace religious faith and patriotism with calls for instincts of class hatred, thirst for material welfare or at least with personal ambitions brought about not heroism and self-sacrifice but cowardly malice and shameful robbery'.'

"What do you mean by this?"

"I mean that Joseph obviously had some notion of human soul's highest sides because under his rule thousands of people 'forgot their personalities and sacrificed them for highest goals."

'On the basis of their own fantastic objective laws they divided humanity into different groups of lower, middle and upper bourgeoisie, proletariat and so on. They imagined that it was not only methodological abstract constructs of their mind but realities as if members of those groups submitted to different 'social and economic laws'.

They imagined that 'bourgeois' really thought in a bourgeois way and proletariat in a special socialist way. The first collision with reality destroyed all those cloud-castles. All labourers turned out to be the same 'bourgeois' as other people. And socialists didn't fail to make sure that proletariat was seriously infected with 'petty bourgeois poison' and didn't want to work for common ration without individual profit...

All economic policy of Russian socialists boiled down to the fact that newer and newer circles of people were declared to be bourgeois, petty bourgeois and counter-revolutionary ones. All Russian population except small groups of Red Army soldiers and Bolshevist authorities turned out to be 'petty bourgeois' and socialist character of the latter was discredited.'

'Now socialists are more cowardly and less honest, though they are more intelligent than Bolshevist theorists; they try to shift their own responsibility for Russian events to Bolsheviks. We can take an interest only in social and political aspects of the matter.

Form this viewpoint Bolsheviks in comparison with other Russian socialists should be put on much higher degree. These people were courageous enough as to implement their ideas. They showed implemented socialism. It couldn't be different. You can't expect different results of it. The lesson turned out to be horrible but perhaps there was no other way to our improvement' (S. Askoldov, 1918).

Unlike his fanatic comrades, Joseph didn't cherish any illusions about socialism and human nature. All people are potential werewolves and vampires who wait only for darkness, so that their fangs and claws, genitals of monstrous sides and unbounded bellies can grow in order to pierce into the first helpless flesh and soul.

In his Antivampiria there would be no life for vampires and predators; he would see to it. They are afraid of aspen stakes and light... there would be no problems with stakes but as for light... Let it be an artificial one but we would enlighten everybody.

We would build a Great Fortress and post incorruptible security guard, and no bloodsucker would force his way to my people. It is not important how we would name it but it would be the first kingdom of Light in the world. Antivampiria. Let this light be artificial but it is light anyway!

Joseph loved the word 'light' and songs containing it. He called the film 'The Light Way' and his daughter Svyetlana.[2]

A saint gladly gives up everything up to his shirt. An ordinary man gives up unnecessary things. A vampire gorges everything like a black hole.

The world that 'lieth in wickedness' belongs to vampires; they divided Vampiria into their own zones; from time to time they fight against each other involving everybody in this massacre. They thought up various 'laws' in order to somehow limit and restrict unrestrained appetites of each other.

Joseph didn't care about all kinds of 'isms'; he planned to create a reserve in the midst of Vampiria where there would be no life for predators... and 'isms' worshipped by his comrades-idolaters are only bricks of which he would construct wall of his future fortress. Good bricks would be put to use, bad ones would be thrown away.

He didn't know yet how it should be done but he perfectly knew how it shouldn't be done.

'Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I [am] against the shepherds; and I will require my flock at their hand, and cause them to cease from feeding the flock; neither shall the shepherds feed themselves any more; for I will deliver my flock from their mouth, that they may not be meat for them.

I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up [that which was] broken, and will strengthen that which was sick: BUT I WILL DESTROY THE FAT AND THE STRONG; I will feed them with judgment.

Because ye have thrust with side and with shoulder, and pushed all the diseased with your horns, till ye have scattered them abroad; Therefore will I save my flock, and they shall no more be a prey; and I will judge between cattle and cattle. And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, [even] my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd' (Ezekiel 34:10, 16, 21-23).

"As you can see, son of darkness, an experiment of Antivampiria took place in history already. Joseph had known this fragment from Ezekiel by heart from the time of his study in the seminary... By the way, one of his underground names was David.

"It's a very doubtful version in an atheistic state. Are you seriously going to base your defence on it?"

"For a start I would like to recite the testimony of Joseph's 'bitter comrade' Leon Trotsky: "Our roads parted long ago and far away, and in my eyes he is such an instrument of hostile historical forces alien to me that my personal feelings to him are hardly different from my feelings to Hitler or Japanese Mikado.'

(to be continued)

[1] A member of a Russian religious totalitarian sect.

[2] The name Svyetlana originates from the word 'light' ('svyet' in Russian).