(Oh, if only everyone had answered just that way! Our whole history would have been different.)
A debate about church law followed. The Patriarch explained that if the church itself surrendered its valuables, it was not sacrilege. But if they were taken away against the church’s will, it was. His appeal had not prohibited giving the valuables at all, but had only declared that seizing them against the will of the church was to be condemned.
(But that’s what we wanted—expropriation against the will of the church!)
Comrade Bek, the presiding judge, was astounded: “Which in the last analysis is more important to you—the laws of the church or the point of view of the Soviet government?”
(The expected reply: “The Soviet government.”)
“Very well; so it was sacrilege according to the laws of the church,” exclaimed the accuser, “but what was it from the point of view of mercy?”
(For the first and last time—for another fifty years—that banal word mercy was spoken before a tribunal.)
Then there was a philological analysis of the word “svyato-tatstvo,” meaning “sacrilege,” derived from “svyato,” meaning “holy,” and “tat,” meaning “thief.”
The Accuser: “So that means that we, the representatives of the Soviet government, are thieves of holy things?”
(A prolonged uproar in the hall. A recess. The bailiffs at work.)
The Accuser: “So you call the representatives of the Soviet government, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, thieves?”
The Patriarch: “I am citing only church law.”
Then there is a discussion of the term “blasphemy.” While they were requisitioning the valuables from the church of St. Basil the Great of Caesarea, the ikon cover would not fit into a box, and at that point they trampled it with their feet. But the Patriarch himself had not been present.
The Accuser: “How do you know that? Give us the name of the priest who told you that. [And we will arrest him immediately!]”
The Patriarch does not give the name.
That means it was a lie!
The Accuser presses on triumphantly: “No, who spread that repulsive slander?”
The Presiding Judge: “Give us the names of those who trampled the ikon cover! [One can assume that after doing it they left their visiting cards!] Otherwise the tribunal cannot believe you!”
The Patriarch cannot name them.
The Presiding Judge: “That means you have made an unsubstantiated assertion.”
It still remained to be proved that the Patriarch wanted to overthrow the Soviet government. And here is how it was proved: “Propaganda is an attempt to prepare a mood preliminary to preparing a revolt in the future.”
The tribunal ordered criminal charges to be brought against the Patriarch.
On May 7 sentence was pronounced: of the seventeen defendants, eleven were to be shot. (They actually shot five.)
As Krylenko said: “We didn’t come here just to crack jokes.”
One week later the Patriarch was removed from office and arrested. (But this was not the very end. For the time being he was taken to the Donskoi Monastery and kept there in strict incarceration, so that the believers would grow accustomed to his absence. Remember how just a short while before Krylenko had been astonished: what danger could possibly threaten the Patriarch? Truly, when the danger really does come, there’s no help for it, either in alarm bells or in telephone calls.)
Two weeks after that, the Metropolitan Veniamin was arrested in Petrograd. He had not been a high official of the church before the Revolution. Nor had he even been appointed, like almost all Metropolitans. In the spring of 1917, for the first time since the days of ancient Novgorod the Great, they had elected a Metropolitan in Moscow and in Petrograd. A gentle, simple, easily accessible man, a frequent visitor in factories and mills, popular with the people and with the lower clergy, Veniamin had been elected by their votes. Not understanding the times, he had seen as his task the liberation of the church from politics “because it had suffered much from politics in the past.” This was the Metropolitan who was tried in:
I. The Petrograd Church Trial—June 9-July 5, 1922
The defendants, charged with resisting the requisition of church valuables, numbered several dozen in all, including a professor of theology and church law, archimandrites, priests, and laymen. Semyonov, the presiding judge of the tribunal, was twenty-five years old and, according to rumor, had formerly been a baker. The chief accuser was a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Justice, P. A. Krasikov—a man of Lenin’s age and a friend of Lenin when he was in exile in the Krasnoyarsk region and, later on, in emigration as well. Vladimir Ilyich used to enjoy hearing him play the violin.
Out on Nevsky Prospekt, and at the Nevsky turn-off, a dense crowd waited every day of the trial, and when the Metropolitan was driven past, many of them knelt down and sang: “Save, O Lord, thy people!” (It goes without saying that they arrested overzealous believers right on the street and in the court building also.) Most of the spectators in the court were Red Army men, but even they rose every time the Metropolitan entered in his white ecclesiastical hood. Yet the accuser and the tribunal called him an enemy of the people. Let us note that this term already existed.
From trial to trial, things closed in on the defense lawyers, and their humiliating predicament was already very apparent. Kry-lenko tells us nothing about this, but the gap is closed by an eyewitness. The tribunal roared out a threat to arrest Bobrishchev-Pushkin himself—the principal defense lawyer—and this was already so in accord with the spirit of the times, and the threat was so real that Bobrishchev-Pushkin made haste to hand over his gold watch and his billfold to lawyer Gurovich. And right then and there the tribunal actually ordered the imprisonment of a witness, Professor Yegorov, because of his testimony on behalf of the Metropolitan. As it turned out, Yegorov was quite prepared for this. He had a thick briefcase with him in which he had packed food, underwear, and even a small blanket.
The reader can observe that the court was gradually assuming forms familiar to us.
Metropolitan Veniamin was accused of entering, with evil intent, into an agreement with… the Soviet government, no less, and thereby obtaining a relaxation of the decree on the requisition of valuables. It was charged that his appeal to Pomgol had been maliciously disseminated among the people. (Samizdat!—self-publication!) And he had also acted in concert with the world bourgeoisie.
Priest Krasnitsky, one of the principal “Living Church” schismatics, and GPU collaborator, testified that the priests had conspired to provoke a revolt against the Soviet government on the grounds of famine.
The only witnesses heard were those of the prosecution. Defense witnesses were not permitted to testify. (Oh, how familiar it all is! More and more!)
Accuser Smirnov demanded “sixteen heads.” Accuser Krasikov cried out: “The whole Orthodox Church is a subversive organization. Properly speaking, the entire church ought to be put in prison.”
(This was a very realistic program. Soon it was almost realized. And it was a good basis for a dialogue. )
Let us make use of a rather rare opportunity to cite several sentences that have been preserved from the speech of S. Y. Gurovich, who was the Metropolitan’s defense attorney.
“There are no proofs of guilt. There are no facts. There is not even an indictment…. What will history say? [Oh, he certainly had discovered how to frighten them! History will forget and say nothing!] The requisition of church valuables in Petrograd took place in a complete calm, but here the Petrograd clergy is on the defendants’ bench, and somebody’s hands keep pushing them toward death. The basic principle which you stress is the good of the Soviet government. But do not forget that the church will be nourished by the blood of martyrs. [Not in the Soviet Union, though!] There is nothing more to be said, but it is hard to stop talking. While the debate lasts, the defendants are alive. When the debate comes to an end, life will end too.”