SOVIET AND RELIGION. MOCKERY AND SACRILEGE. CARNIVAL OF DESECRATION.

The special correspondent in Russia of the Chicago-tribune wires:

Moscow, Sunday Night.

History waited just 130 years to repeat to-day scenes from the French Revolution, when religion as well as autocracy became subject to attack, when Bacchanalian Feasts of Reason were held in the churches, when the “Carmagnole” was danced by girls clad in priests’ vestments, when images and ideas men worshipped were flaunted to the winds. Here in Russia churches were respected, but every known mockery which the students of the Sveroloff Communist University could invent was made of all religions; the Greek Catholic ritual was gone through in public squares with Marxian epigrams and street slang; scores sticking out their tongues and crossing themselves mockingly; the whiskered Hebrew “Rabbis” jestingly singing prayers; Oriental “Mohammeds” turning somersaults; a score dressed as Greek Catholic priests drinking vodka whilst praying.

Finally, Moscow’s Christmas anti-religion demonstration reached a climax when a figure called “Almighty God” was burned in a bonfire, while hundreds warmed their hands in the bitter cold night and danced Russian folk dances. Hundreds were locked in arms, singing and shouting, as the flames leaped higher and the effigy crashed to cinders.

A procession numbering several thousands, chiefly boys and girls and young men from universities, the majority of whose fathers are pious Greek Catholics, carried a hundred effigies of the leaders of the world’s religions – Jesus and Moses, Buddha and Confucius, Mohammed, Osiris, St. Gabriel, St. George, Abraham, and the Virgin Mary. They took the effigies through the main streets to the Red Square outside the Kremlin. Here they had to pass Russia’s most sacred shrine, the Shrine of the Iberian Virgin. The priests of the shrine of the Iberian Virgin had gone home. They had doubly padlocked the door and trusted to faith. But some of the devout did more. When the anti-religious procession approached the shrine they found two score of devotees before the padlocked door. There were aristocratic women in furs and jewels and beggars wearing cast-off, torn garments. This group defended the shrine.

But no defence was necessary; the marchers contented themselves with jeers. The devout crossed themselves. The marchers also crossed themselves, derisively laughing and shouting. The devout thereupon fell upon their knees, and there, in the dirty snow in zero weather, and under a setting sun, they prayed for their shrine while company after company of marchers went by, heaping jeers or mocking benedictions upon them.

Few of the hundred thousand onlookers protested; all remained silent except an occasional individual expressing approval or disgust. Thus one incident, which drew a crowd, concerned an ancient, pious Jew, who heaped curses upon those who travestied his religion. Effigies and placards were anti-semitic as well as anti-greek Catholic. Amongst the figures burned was one labelled “Jehovah”, looking like a burlesque stage-type of Jew, wearing a praying cloth and other Hebrew emblems. The figure called Almighty God was an enormous straw dummy, bulbously red-nosed, bleary eyed, be-whiskered, carrying gold bags in one hand and a cross in the other. On a coffin borne by four persons sat a Communist student dressed as a priest dispensing benedictions. Thousands of stickers were thrown to the crowd bearing the words, “Religion is opium for the people.”

Many speeches were made in the Red Square. One declared that the demonstration was not anti-religious, but was non-religious. Another declared the purpose was to break the chains which enslaved Russian peasants to the Church. “Your priests told you that we would be stricken dead by a thunderbolt from heaven if we did this,” said one speaker, “but no thunderbolts have come.” The Red Square demonstration concluded with a mock Salvation Army meeting, drum beating, imitation hymns, and a mock sermon.