There's a chapter in Richard Pipes' Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime titled "The Assault on Religion". In this chapter, Pipes covers the oft-forgotten campaign against religion that Lenin and his Bolsheviks devised and carried out in the post-revolutionary years.
Although Russia's Orthodox Church bore the brunt of this campaign, the Catholics and Jews also suffered. In fact, of the four major religions in Russia, only Islam fared slightly better than the others—and, even then, only because Lenin had designs on the Middle East and didn't want to blacken relations with the Middle Eastern Muslims he hoped to use against the imperialist West.
The tactics employed in this struggle varied, but they can be divided into two groups. In the metaphor of Bolshevik Commissar of Enlightenment Anatoli Lunacharskii, there were those that hit the religious nail straight on the head—lynchings of clergy, ransacking of churches and synagogues—and those that grabbed the nail and tried to pull it out—leaving the Church hierarchy in place, but taking the religion out of the people. The latter are by far the more insidious and interesting.
One such tactic was to undermine the Orthodox Church by placing it in a lose-lose situation. And it was the Church itself that gave Lenin the idea.
After famine broke out in Russia, the Church offered to donate its non-holy artifacts (it had both holy and non-holy artifacts) to help relieve the situation. Lenin refused the offer—and, sensing a chance to strike, instead asked the Church to donate its holy artifacts. The Church now faced a choice: agree, and undermine the holiness of the artifacts; or disagree, and be seen as hoarding treasure while fellow Russians are starving? It disagreed, unwilling to give up its tradition and authority, but offered to raise money equivalent to the value of its holy artifacts through donation and the selling of other property. Lenin again refused. What followed was a campaign—inspired and headed by Trotsky—of confiscations that pitted Orthodox Russians against Orthodox Russians, as those protecting their local churches fought those attempting to break in and steal whatever they could find. As the campaign expanded, even the Vatican got involved: offering to pay the Bolsheviks money equal to the value of both Catholic and Orthodox property that was to be confiscated. Yet again, Lenin refused. The theft continued and violence escalated. Pipes describes as, in particularly gruesome and probably representative fashion, one bishop was taken from his church, "had his cheeks hollowed, his ears and nose cut off, and his eyes gouged: thus disfigured he was driven through the city and then thrown into a river to drown."
Though many details about this campaign are now lost, a few still remain: Soviet documents rveal, for example, that in 1922 around 8,000 people were killed "in the conflict over church valuables". Also, the actual final value of the confiscated property was, according to Moscow newspaper Izvestia, "ridiculously small" (not the officially announced "8 trillion rubles"), and, regardless, not used to help starving peasants anyway. Let them eat cake, I guess.
Another Bolshevik tactic, and the one that especially struck me, was the use of atheist counter-rituals to mock and ridicule Orthodox, Catholic, and Jewish traditions. At Christmas-time, for example, the Bolsheviks organized a "Komsomol Christmas", which constituted staging parades in which people carried caricature-effigies of various religious symbols and images and sung anti-religious songs ("We need no rabbis, we need no priests / Beat the bourgeoisie, strangle the kulaks"). When it came to Russian children, the angels and saints that had been previously used to "enslave the child's mind" were replaced with more appropriate entertainment: "satires on the Lausanne Conference, the Kerensky regime, and the bourgeois life abroad".
The actual reason I'm shamelessly plagiarizing Pipes' book, however, is a very specific aspect of this atheist ritualism. As Pipes describes it:
And, Pipes quoting Zvi Getelman's A Century of Ambivalence:
Because my trains of thought always arrive at cinema, I was struck by how similar these Bolshevik "trials" were to Abderrahmane Sissako's recent film Bamako, in which Malians stage a "trial" of—well, I'll let The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw explain:
Although I don't mean to compare Sissako to Lenin or equate their concerns—the Bolshevik show trials were conducted from a position of power, Bamako comes from a position of powerlessness, is but one important difference—but the form and function of both "trials" are similar. For example, the show part is emphasized in both: Judaism was on trial before an audience; Bamako is a film meant for an international audience. Tied to that, performance plays a key role in each: stage actors in Russia, film actors in Mali. In terms of bias, counter-arguments are twice silenced, as one side controls the entire "production": the Hebrew teacher is removed from the audience; Sissako controls what is filmed and what makes it into the film's final cut. Not to mention that both are, quite literally, scripted trials! And, finally, on trial are not people, but institutions, concepts: the various religions in Russia; and, as Cynthia Fuchs of PopMatters calls it, "the West’s diverse abuses of Africa" in Bamako.
On a related note, some interesting historical context (describing 1960s Mali; Sissako was born in 1962) to keep in mind when watching Bamako. From "The Impact of Communism on West Africa", an article by Walter Kolarz published in the journal International Affairs in 1962:
And, from John N. Hazard's "Marxian Socialism in Africa: The Case of Mali", in the October 1969 edition of Comparative Politics:
But he's sure filmed an interesting show trial. Lenin would be proud. Long lives the revolution.
Although Russia's Orthodox Church bore the brunt of this campaign, the Catholics and Jews also suffered. In fact, of the four major religions in Russia, only Islam fared slightly better than the others—and, even then, only because Lenin had designs on the Middle East and didn't want to blacken relations with the Middle Eastern Muslims he hoped to use against the imperialist West.
The tactics employed in this struggle varied, but they can be divided into two groups. In the metaphor of Bolshevik Commissar of Enlightenment Anatoli Lunacharskii, there were those that hit the religious nail straight on the head—lynchings of clergy, ransacking of churches and synagogues—and those that grabbed the nail and tried to pull it out—leaving the Church hierarchy in place, but taking the religion out of the people. The latter are by far the more insidious and interesting.
One such tactic was to undermine the Orthodox Church by placing it in a lose-lose situation. And it was the Church itself that gave Lenin the idea.
After famine broke out in Russia, the Church offered to donate its non-holy artifacts (it had both holy and non-holy artifacts) to help relieve the situation. Lenin refused the offer—and, sensing a chance to strike, instead asked the Church to donate its holy artifacts. The Church now faced a choice: agree, and undermine the holiness of the artifacts; or disagree, and be seen as hoarding treasure while fellow Russians are starving? It disagreed, unwilling to give up its tradition and authority, but offered to raise money equivalent to the value of its holy artifacts through donation and the selling of other property. Lenin again refused. What followed was a campaign—inspired and headed by Trotsky—of confiscations that pitted Orthodox Russians against Orthodox Russians, as those protecting their local churches fought those attempting to break in and steal whatever they could find. As the campaign expanded, even the Vatican got involved: offering to pay the Bolsheviks money equal to the value of both Catholic and Orthodox property that was to be confiscated. Yet again, Lenin refused. The theft continued and violence escalated. Pipes describes as, in particularly gruesome and probably representative fashion, one bishop was taken from his church, "had his cheeks hollowed, his ears and nose cut off, and his eyes gouged: thus disfigured he was driven through the city and then thrown into a river to drown."Though many details about this campaign are now lost, a few still remain: Soviet documents rveal, for example, that in 1922 around 8,000 people were killed "in the conflict over church valuables". Also, the actual final value of the confiscated property was, according to Moscow newspaper Izvestia, "ridiculously small" (not the officially announced "8 trillion rubles"), and, regardless, not used to help starving peasants anyway. Let them eat cake, I guess.
Another Bolshevik tactic, and the one that especially struck me, was the use of atheist counter-rituals to mock and ridicule Orthodox, Catholic, and Jewish traditions. At Christmas-time, for example, the Bolsheviks organized a "Komsomol Christmas", which constituted staging parades in which people carried caricature-effigies of various religious symbols and images and sung anti-religious songs ("We need no rabbis, we need no priests / Beat the bourgeoisie, strangle the kulaks"). When it came to Russian children, the angels and saints that had been previously used to "enslave the child's mind" were replaced with more appropriate entertainment: "satires on the Lausanne Conference, the Kerensky regime, and the bourgeois life abroad".
The actual reason I'm shamelessly plagiarizing Pipes' book, however, is a very specific aspect of this atheist ritualism. As Pipes describes it:
"In Gomel, which had a mixed population, a 'trial' of Orthodox, Catholic, and Jewish 'gods' represented by effigies took place in the theater. The judges, assisted by the audience, condemned them to an auto-da-fe, following which, on Christmas Day, they were ceremoniously burned in the city square."
And, Pipes quoting Zvi Getelman's A Century of Ambivalence:
"On Rosh Hashanah, in 1921, the Jewish religion was 'tried' in Kiev, ironically, in the same auditorium where the Beilis trial had been held. The 'judges' saw a strange array of 'witnesses': a 'rabbi' testified solemnly that he taught religion in order to keep the masses ignorant and subservient; an obese 'bourgeoisie' , bedecked in glittering jewelry, testified to the alliance between the exploiters and Judaism. The 'prosecutor'... demanded a 'sentence of death for the Jewish religion.' A Hebrew teacher who rose from the audience to defend Judaism was arrested on the spot. The 'judges' returned from their chambers and, to no one's surprise, announced a death verdict."
Because my trains of thought always arrive at cinema, I was struck by how similar these Bolshevik "trials" were to Abderrahmane Sissako's recent film Bamako, in which Malians stage a "trial" of—well, I'll let The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw explain:
"On trial is nothing less than the system of globalised capital, in the form of the World Bank and the [International Monetary Fund]. Prosecuting counsels and ferocious witnesses denounce African debt to these figures as a loan-sharking scam for which the lenders have sought out and cultivated a corrupt apparatchik-clientele [!] to wave through the arrangements, which turn the continent into an income-stream milch cow, and ensure that by having to spend nearly all its resources on servicing eternal debt, Africa will never be rich enough to develop indigenous industries, and so continue to be a captive market for the west's manufactured goods.
No opposite point of view is seriously advanced..."
Although I don't mean to compare Sissako to Lenin or equate their concerns—the Bolshevik show trials were conducted from a position of power, Bamako comes from a position of powerlessness, is but one important difference—but the form and function of both "trials" are similar. For example, the show part is emphasized in both: Judaism was on trial before an audience; Bamako is a film meant for an international audience. Tied to that, performance plays a key role in each: stage actors in Russia, film actors in Mali. In terms of bias, counter-arguments are twice silenced, as one side controls the entire "production": the Hebrew teacher is removed from the audience; Sissako controls what is filmed and what makes it into the film's final cut. Not to mention that both are, quite literally, scripted trials! And, finally, on trial are not people, but institutions, concepts: the various religions in Russia; and, as Cynthia Fuchs of PopMatters calls it, "the West’s diverse abuses of Africa" in Bamako.
On a related note, some interesting historical context (describing 1960s Mali; Sissako was born in 1962) to keep in mind when watching Bamako. From "The Impact of Communism on West Africa", an article by Walter Kolarz published in the journal International Affairs in 1962:
"Anyone travelling in French-speaking Africa and investigating the impact of Communism there will have to admit that the French Communist Party is 'discharging its duty' to the best of its ability. The party is doing its duty to world Communism not only by pumping Communist literature into Guinea and Mali but also, and even more, by putting trusted Communist Party members at the disposal of the African nationalist regimes. These French Communists do not occupy any high political posts, but they have been placed in positions where they can do a great deal to carry Marxist ideas into the decisive, literate sections of African society. French Communists are to be found, for instance, in the new African Workers' University in Conakry, in the State Research Organization of the Republic of Guinea, and in the editorial office of the only daily newspaper published in the Republic of Mali. French Communists have also been prominently associated with drawing up Mali's first long-term economic plan."
And, from John N. Hazard's "Marxian Socialism in Africa: The Case of Mali", in the October 1969 edition of Comparative Politics:
"Will the communists of Eastern Europe and Asia leave the new Malian regime free to develop as it wishes? This seems unlikely, for Mali has long been the brightest star in Africa for communists of the U.S.S.R. and China. When slogans were published annually on Soviet holidays, the greetings to Mali were placed immediately after the group of greetings to people within the inner group of fourteen members of the Marxian socialist commonwealth. Hope ran high that Mali would adhere to the group, although no such adherence was proclaimed.In his youth, after being born in Mauritania and brought up in Mali, Sissako travelled to Moscow, where he studied, mingled with communists from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, and, in 1982, enrolled in the Russian State Institute of Cinema. What he learned there, what his politics are, I don't know.
[...]
Mali remains too important as a focal point in Africa for operations and for proof of the viability of the Marxian socialist system for the U.S.S.R. and China to leave it alone, unless all hope has to be abandoned. The Marxist East has done better in Mali than elsewhere in training large numbers of Malians, and this group cannot be expected to remain silent once the first flush of excitement abates. Social revolution takes time, and Marxists do not permit themselves to become discouraged by what they believe to be no more than temporary setbacks in the progress of the dialectic of history."
But he's sure filmed an interesting show trial. Lenin would be proud. Long lives the revolution.
