Black PR against the Church in Ukraine vs the USSR: Is there a difference?

The scandalous reel of "Quarter 95" in which its presenters discredited God, the Holy Scripture, the Church and Christianity in general has literally shocked Ukrainians with its blatant blasphemy. But few realize that in working against the Church, the new is "the well-forgotten old". The most superficial historical analysis allows us to conclude that the current events around the UOC are in many ways a copy of Bolshevik methods.

The "Q95" video itself appeared against a background of mass searches by the SBU, which have been carried out in hundreds if not thousands of churches and monasteries of the UOC. A priest of the Constantinople Patriarchate in Spain, Fr. Tarasiy Petruniak said the following about it: "Such primitive satire is an instrument of pressure of the authorities on the UOC, especially in the context of searches carried out by the modern NKVD men from the SBU. And it is difficult not to agree with such parallels. The present situation reminds very much of the Soviet methods.”

On the one hand, the authorities put pressure on the Church by its law enforcement agencies, and on the other, they form its negative image in society by means of tame journalists.

Let us remember the events of the not-so-distant past.

A little over 100 years ago, in 1919, the leader of the Soviet state, Vladimir Lenin, issued decree No 1866672, which reads: "in accordance with the decision of the VTsIK (the All-Russia Central Executive Committee) and the Council of People's Commissars, it is necessary to do away with priests and religion as soon as possible. Lenin stressed that "the priests must be arrested as counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs and shot mercilessly and everywhere. And as many as possible."

Why was he doing this?

The reason was not only his personal hatred for the Church but also his desire to take possession of Church property. As they say now, nothing personal, just business. The Council of People's Commissars needed money and gold to support the army in the war against the White Guards and to avoid hunger riots. It was very difficult to find gold in a country ravaged by the Civil War. The only solution was to rob the temples. But to do this, it was necessary to get rid of the priests and the faithful. It was not a task for one day.

The Soviet authorities understood that the immediate and literal implementation of such a decree would entail an increase in civil confrontation within the country. Therefore, it was necessary, in modern terms, to use "black PR" – to instil in the people that the clergy, the Church and religion as a whole are liars, obscurantists, lazybones, spies and traitors. In a word, the enemies of the people, who could and should be destroyed, who didn’t deserve mercy.

The Soviet authorities launched a powerful flywheel of anti-Church propaganda. In 1921, an Anti-Church Commission was established under the Propaganda Department of the RCP(b) Central Committee to coordinate the anti-religious struggle. A mass public organization, the Union of the Militant Godless, was founded on the basis of the Society of Friends of the newspaper “Bezbozhnik” (“The Godless”). From the very beginning of their activity, the workers of the Union used insults, mockery, sacrilege and caricature of everything connected with the faith in relation to the Church and the believers.

Let us cite specific examples.

Since the main enemy of the "Soviets" was the capitalists, the priests were declared their accomplices. How a simple priest, living somewhere in the countryside, could help the American or German factory owners in the fight against the Bolsheviks is unknown. Therefore, there was no evidence. The main thing was to have the "right" picture like this one, for example:

There are now plenty of similar caricatures in the media, only they depict UOC priests who are in league with the Russian world to oppose Ukrainian patriots.

Of course, to incite hatred among ordinary people towards the clergy, the claim that "priests help the capital" was clearly not enough. Some might believe it, some might not. Therefore, it was necessary to show that "priests" not only serve overseas manufacturers whom no one in the villages had ever seen but also "work" for a very specific enemy. For example, they hide weapons in churches and set up firing points in bell towers, from which they themselves do not mind shooting. As, for example, in this poster:

This caricature is more than relevant in Ukraine. It is now being told by every news outlet that the UOC keeps weapons in its churches and hides saboteurs.

In addition, priests and bishops were portrayed in the most unattractive light possible. They were humiliated and ridiculed with insults, vulgarity and vicious caricatures. Often mocked too were the bishops, who were always portrayed as oppressors living in affluence and luxury. There were no Mercedes at the time, so the Bolshevik "comedians" "joked" about food, like in the following propaganda materials:

Now comedians are also happy to use the theme of "greedy priests". They usually take a photoshopped photo of one full-figured diabetic priest.

Of course, not only priests and bishops were mocked, but everything that was sacred to a Christian – faith in God, the Holy Scripture, the Church, saints, feasts and the like. They were ridiculed viciously, vilely and impudently. Here is an example:

The natural result of such "propaganda" was a call for physical violence and reprisals against the clergy. The general public was led to the obvious conclusion: if a priest is a servant of the capitalists, helps the enemy, and wears White Guard shoulder straps under his cassock, then the only right thing to do to him is reprisal. This conclusion was reinforced by pictures, after which hitting, insulting or humiliating a priest was seen as a special act of valour as in these pictures:

Ultimately, this massive campaign against the Church resulted in trumped-up church trials of clergy and believers, as a result of which hundreds of thousands of believers, tens of thousands of priests and monastics, and hundreds of bishops were shot and rotted in prisons. And if any of the clergy tried to oppose this and appeal to the voice of the Bolsheviks' conscience – they were prosecuted "for discrediting the Soviet authorities".

For example, in the investigation file of St. Tikhon (Bellavin) there is a resolution (which did not come into force in connection with his death) to bring the Patriarch to trial for "drawing up information about repressions used by the Soviet power against churchmen, using information from not sufficiently reliable sources" with the aim of "discrediting the Soviet power.

I.V. Popov, a professor at Moscow University and the Moscow Theological Academy, was sentenced to three years in the Solovki District under exactly the same charges in 1925. In 1930 A. I. Drossi, the former secretary of the Moscow Metóchi of the Local Churches, was sentenced to three years in a Northern Camp in the Komi ASSR for drafting a letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople regarding the persecution of the Church, and so forth. In other words, one could not even speak of repression, as it was "discrediting"!

Can’t the opponents of the UOC use the same logic now when they say that the complaints of the faithful on the OCU’s raiding are used by Russian propaganda to discredit Ukraine?

All in all, according to scientific sources, the total number of the Orthodox Christians who suffered for the faith in 1917-1950 was estimated at 564 thousand people...

Today, after 30 years of Ukraine's independence, when our country is on the threshold of the European Union, we again are going through a period of persecution of the Church, which is somewhat similar to what happened 100 years ago.

It is not yet on the same scale or with the same end results. But the style and methods are very recognisable – a combination of law enforcement pressure and a "black PR" campaign.

The blasphemous video of "Quarter 95" showed in the best way that behind all the searches of churches and monasteries of the UOC, behind everything that is happening today to the Church, there is a usual hit piece ("jeansa"), that is an "order". Once again, someone needed to use the Church to achieve their goals. Only now, instead of "gold" and "Сhurch’s valuables", there is power at stake.

The only question is who is the client of what is happening. To answer this question, we must understand who benefits from it. The people of Ukraine? No, of course not. The people want victory in the war and peace in the country. The current authorities? It seems not, they also want victory, peace and stability. At least in order to rule further. Then who?

We do not know the answer to this question. We only know that there is no strong and powerful state which followed the same path.