About icons:
That same wild and primal, and later premeditated and methodical, barbarism that ruined and demolished the churches also destroyed the icon.
How many icons fell victim to it?
From October 1917 until this decade, twenty, thirty, million icons were destroyed in Russia!
This figure is cited by the Russian art historian A. Kuzniecov in the monthly Moskva (January 1990). Kuzniecov lists the destructive uses icons were put to:
In the army — for target practice
In the mines — as pavement for tunnels flooded with water
In the marketplace — as raw material for building potato crates
In kitchens — as boards for chopping meat and vegetables
In apartments — as fuel for stoves in winter
The author adds that massive piles of icons were also simply set afire or driven out to country and city garbage dumps.
The church in Irkutsk (the one that was saved, the one that was not destroyed so that a Party-committee building could be built on its foundations) has high, whitewashed walls against which icons glow, their aged varnish shining. From these dark paintings, framed in silver friezes and frames, gaze at us the faces of saints, evangelists, apostles, and mystics, who in a moment, when the light dims, will draw back into their secretive and enigmatic darkness.
Benches have been arranged in the nave. There are about two hundred spectators sitting on them — all the places are occupied. People are bundled in their coats, they are cold; this is Irkutsk, eastern Siberia.
Onto the stage, which was set up in the chancel, enter seven tall young men. They are dressed in old-Russian linen shirts, girdled with a ribbon, and ballooning linen pants stuffed into high leather boots. They wear their hair in the old Slavic fashion, with bangs, in a pageboy, and have long beards. Three of them are holding clarions like those of the trumpeters of Prince Vladimir’s brigade, and every now and then one of them beats a drumroll. At the head of this battle-ready troupe stands the Commander, the Standard Bearer, the Ideologue. He delivers a sort of hymn to Russia, which in places turns into a bold and lofty historical lecture and elsewhere into a fervid anthem interrupted by a long litany to Russia. It is loudly seconded by his fellow old-Russian warriors and ends with the roar of clarions and an explosion of drumbeats.
“Russia!” cry the warriors, “you were always great and holy! Glory unto you, Russia!” (Clarions, drum, the warriors make the sign of the cross, bow to the ground.)
“Yes,” says the Standard Bearer, “Russia was powerful, and the Russian nation led the world!”
“The whole world!” cry the warriors (clarions, drum, the sign of the cross, bowing). “Kings from Europe and from all the continents came to genuflect before our czars, brought them gifts of gold, silver, and precious stones!” (Bowing, drum.)
“But Russia’s greatness awakened the hatred of its enemies. Russia’s enemies had long been lying in wait for her ruin, desiring her extermination!”
The Standard Bearer falls silent and looks around the audience. We are all sitting motionless, staring and raptly listening. And suddenly, in this churchlike, profound silence, rising up on his toes, as if to take off in flight, and stretching his body, he shouts: “The October Revolution!”
He shouts in such a way that I feel a cold shiver run down my spine.
“The October Revolution was an international conspiracy against the Russian nation!” And after a moment: “The October Revolution was supposed to wipe Russia off the face of the earth!”
“Russia, they wanted to put you to death!” the warriors chime in (clarions, drum, bowing).
“Everyone colluded,” says the Ideologue, “everyone took part in the plot, Latvians, Jews, Poles, Germans, Ukrainians, the English, the Spanish, everyone wanted the ruin of the Russian nation! Three forces,” he rounds out the thought, “stood at the head of this conspiracy — imperialism, bolshevism, and Zionism. These were devils which brewed up seventy-three years of hell for us!”
“Begone, begone, Satans, save yourself, Russia, save yourself!” cry the warriors, crossing themselves, blowing on the clarions, and banging on the drum.
Jews enrage the Ideologue the most.
“The Jews,” he calls out in a tone of the greatest contempt and outrage, “want to appropriate the Holocaust. But after all, the true holocaust was perpetrated against the Russian nation!”
He waits until the warriors finish singing a song about the strength and immortality of the Russian land, then presents the following argument.
“In 1914,” he says, “there were 150 million Russians in the world. As our scholars have calculated, if these Russians had lived and multiplied normally, there would be more than three hundred million of them today. But how many of us are there in reality?” he asks, addressing the auditorium, and immediately answers: “There are only one hundred and fifty million of us. So I ask, where are the other one hundred and fifty million Russians, one hundred and fifty million of our brothers and sisters? They died, were murdered, shot, tortured to death, or were never even born, because their young parents got a bullet in the head before they could see their offspring.
“I want to say something more. I ask you, if they want to destroy a nation, who do they always strike at first? They strike at the best, at the most talented, at the wisest. So it was in Russia. The best half of our nation perished. That is the real holocaust. The imperialists, Bolsheviks, and Zionists, that internationale of torturers and Satans, could not bear the fact that the Russians were the greatest white nation in the world! The greatest!”
The clarions blare and the drum thunders.
I look around at the people. They sit engrossed, listening, but their faces express nothing, no emotions, no feelings. They say nothing, burrowed in their coats, wrapped in shawls and scarves; they do not move. Around us, on the white walls, the icons glow darkly, hung in rows, as seven young Russians in the chancel sing a song about the ruin of their nation.
When the singing comes to an end, the Standard Bearer resumes: “The world should humble itself and ask Russia for forgiveness for having dealt her such a terrible blow, for having stabbed her with the October Revolution as with a poisoned sword.”
“Let the nations ask Russia for forgiveness!” the warriors cry out.
“The world must cleanse itself of this guilt, of this sin it has committed against Russia!”
My God, I think, you have befuddled his mind.
I am freezing, but I don’t want to leave, I am waiting to see what will happen next.
“The Russian people immediately came out against the Bolsheviks,” says the Ideologue. “Uprisings and mutinies were breaking out everywhere, in each county, in each province. Let me read to you what one soldier who was fighting against Russian peasants in the Tambov province wrote: ‘I have taken part in many battles against Germans,’ this soldier writes, ‘but I never saw anything like this. The machine gun is mowing people down in rows, and they keep coming, as if they didn’t see anything, they are walking over corpses, they are walking over the wounded, they are unstoppable, terrifying eyes, mothers are holding children in front of themselves, they are calling, Holy Mother, Intercessor, save us, have pity on us, we are all dying in your defense. There was no longer any fear in them.’ ”
The Standard Bearer puts away the card with the quote. There is still silence everywhere.
“The Bolshevik army,” he says in a calm voice, “murdered during communism’s martial years more than ten million Russian peasants. Another ten million then died of hunger. Today they are trying to blame everything on Stalin. But Stalin wasn’t yet in power. In point of fact it was Mr. Bronstein and Mr. Dzierzynski who were ruling. Neither of them was a Russian.