In the process of maturing and in the course of the troubles itself, religion and the church play a great role. We can see this in the world today, for example, during the war in the Middle East or the confrontation in Little Russia (Ukraine).
It is clear that at the moment of an acute crisis, religious contradictions always turn out to be associated with social contradictions (especially in the issue of social justice) and political interests and are used by the opposing sides as a banner that has a powerful influence on people's emotions. In particular, this was how the discrediting and denigration of the “godless” USSR went on.
Religion and the church, ideally, should teach people the basics of being - good and evil. That is, to give basic concepts of the existence of civilization, state and people. Distinguishing between what is good and what is bad. Unfortunately, in Russia at the time of the catastrophe of 1917 the church has lost this opportunity, its basic function, and could neither stop nor slow down the split of the people and the maturation of mutual hatred in different parts of it. In particular, the racial hatred of the gentlemen for the "boors" and the hatred of the people with the gentlemen-bars, bourgeois capitalists, priests, "gold-diggers" and "lousy intellectuals".
The deep reason for this phenomenon lies in the split of religion by the Romanovs and Nikon's "reform". Under the Romanovs, the best part of the people, the most energetic, righteous and conscientious, went into schism. The Old Believers have preserved the foundations of the Russian faith - purity, sobriety, high morality and spiritual endurance. Nikonianism reigned in the rest of Russia. From that moment on, the people began to gradually lose their faith, and the authority of the church began to decline. Things reached the point that by the beginning of the 20th century, priests were considered by the common people to be part of a pack of oppressors and exploiters. State-owned, Nikonian Christianity is degenerating and shrinking. Religion retained its form, but lost its fiery essence - "Orthodoxy", "the glory of pravie-truth" (a synthesis of the ancient faith of the Rus-Russians and Christianity).
Peter completed this process - he liquidated the institution of patriarchy. The church became part of the state apparatus for the control of the people. It is not surprising that in the end we will see plundered, desecrated and destroyed temples, shrines, murdered priests and monks. It was not the red commissars who destroyed Vera, she died before them. If the people saw their natural and best part in religion and the church, no one would dare to blow up and desecrate Russian shrines.
It should be noted that since the 1990s everything has been repeating itself - again we see a state-owned, empty church, “revived Orthodoxy”, which is most interested in purely material things, “return” of property, and financial flows. There is a form - beautiful, new temples and churches, a mass of remakes, but the essence is not. The church does not fulfill its main task - what is good, what is bad. Therefore, the morality of today's society in Russia is much lower in level than in the "godless" USSR. And again we see the ripening of a new civilizational, state and social catastrophe.
Thus, at the beginning of the 20th century, the church degenerated, became an appearance and did not have the authority among the people to stop the catastrophe. Wherein materialization, earthiness of the church, clergy became a heavy burden for the peasantry, a major irritant to people. So, in the verdicts of rural and volost gatherings dedicated to relations with the church, the peasants noted that “the priests only live by extortions,” take food and things, “strive, as it were, to go for money with prayers more often …” They took money for funerals, baptisms newborns, confession, wedding. Used in the economy, construction. Church ministers, the priest pulled 7-10 rubles from the poor peasants for the funeral, 10-25 rubles for the wedding, etc. The peasants had to pay literally for everything, and even serve various duties (for example, build houses for churchmen) … In order to estimate these expenses on the church, you need to know that the provision of food for the peasant as a whole was about 20 rubles a year.
At the same time, anti-church sentiments as a whole did not mean a departure of the people from the faith. The peasants' demands for the church were socio-economic, not spiritual. In particular, in the instructions of the peasants to the State Duma in 1907, it was noted the need to assign a certain salary from the state to the clergy in order to stop the extortions of the churchmen, since these extortions corrupt the people and lead to the fall of faith.
Another reason for anti-church sentiments during the years of the revolution was the active participation of the church in the political struggle. The church was part of the state apparatus and supported the government. Speeches against her were anathema (curse). Priests who joined the peasants' demands were defrocked. Already in the years of the First Russian Revolution (1905-1907), reports of a massive departure of workers from the church began to arrive from the dioceses to the Synod. After the state entered into conflict with the peasantry, the overwhelming majority of the population of Russia, it also dragged the church into the conflict. The intelligentsia, on the whole, pro-Western, liberal, sick with nihilism, departed from the official church even earlier.
Thus, The "state-controlled" church went down with the Russia of the Romanovs and its authority by the time of the 1917 crisis was low. So, according to military confessors, when in 1917 the Provisional Government released Christian soldiers from the obligatory observance of church sacraments, the percentage of those who receive communion immediately dropped from 100 to 10 or less.
At the same time, one must remember that this was not a departure from the faith, but from the church. Communist teaching in Russia, including "anarchist peasant communism", was largely faith. M. Prishvin wrote in his diary on January 7, 1919: "Revolutionary socialism is a moment in the life of the religious people's soul: it is, first of all, a rebellion of the masses against the deception of the church …".
The Russian revolution itself, its deepest essence, was a deeply religious movement, albeit an anti-church one. Russian Bolshevism, namely local, "soil", and not brought from outside, international, was based on the Russian matrix, the civilization code. The Russian Bolsheviks undertook to build a civilization of justice and truth, honest labor, a community of people living by conscience, love for their neighbor, an earthly paradise. Therefore, many Russian, Christian-minded thinkers were simultaneously supporters of socialism. Many thinkers noted that the West is spiritless, and Soviet Russia is deeply religious. The socialist state is an ideocratic, sacred state. Socialism is a messianic faith. The guardian of this messianic faith-idea was a special hierarchy - the communist party.
The revolutionary upsurge gave birth to the Russian worker at the beginning of the 20th century. This Russian worker, the core of the revolution, was culturally a product of enlightenment and Orthodoxy, while at the same time he had an active position. She was directed to the earthly embodiment of the dream of equality, fraternity and social justice. The Russian worker, a peasant by birth, retained a cosmic feeling, a connection with God and introduced the vector of the real construction of the material foundations of the "kingdom of God" (kingdom of justice) on earth. An active position meant a departure from Tolstoy's principle of non-resistance to evil by violence, the Russian Bolsheviks were ready for violence, in the battle for justice.
The clergy, like other estates of old Russia, split over the revolution. Some hierarchs saw the deep civilizational meaning of October, the path to salvation and deliverance and a civilizational, state catastrophe. But in general, as an institution and an important part of the old statehood, the Church did not accept October. The Soviet ideocratic state inevitably came into conflict with the church. The coexistence of two "bearers of truth-truth" on equal terms - the institutions claiming the status of the highest judge in matters of life order - was impossible. Therefore, the conflict between the church and the Soviet regime contributed to the incitement of the Civil War.
Thus, during the revolution, the church was unable to rise above the brewing fratricidal massacre as the highest, peacemaking force. She herself took positions in this battle on the side of the White movement, that is, the force that was not supported by the people. The Church openly opposed the Soviet regime. On December 15, 1917, the Council adopted the document "On the Legal Status of the Russian Orthodox Church." He went against the principles of Soviet power. In particular, the Orthodox Church was declared the leader in the state, only Orthodox Christians could be the head of state and the minister of education, it was recognized that the teaching of the Law of God in schools for children of Orthodox parents was compulsory, etc. On January 19, 1918, Patriarch Tikhon anathematized Soviet power. As a result, most of the clergy supported the White movement. The church paid a terrible price for this mistake. The situation stabilized only by the mid-1920s.
Patriarch Tikhon recognized the hostile policy towards the Soviet regime as a mistake and made a compromise with the Bolsheviks only in 1923, writing a "repentant" statement: "From now on, I am not an enemy of the Soviet regime." Then the patriarch condemned the encroachments on Soviet power and the struggle against it, called on the church to be outside of politics. In 1924, the reconciliation of the church and the Soviet government was officially confirmed.
