port the War." But the Bolshevik measures were effective enough to prevent wholesale lying to the masses.
The Czar had used the priests of the Greek Orthodox Church as his spiritual police making "Religion the opiate of the people." With threats of hell and promises of heaven the masses had been bludgeoned into submission to autocracy. Now the church was called to perform the same function for the bourgeoisie. By solemn proclamation the Bolsheviks were excommunicated from all its rites and services.
The Bolsheviks made no direct assault upon religion, but separated Church from State. The flow of government funds into the ecclesiastical coffers was stopped. Marriage was declared a civil institution. The monastic lands were confiscated. Parts of monasteries were turned into hospitals.
The Patriarch thundered his protests against these sacrileges but with little effect. The devotion of the masses to the Holy Church proved to be almost as mythical as their devotion to the Czar. They looked at the Church Decree giving them hell if they sided with the Bolsheviks. Then they looked at the Bolshevik Decree giving them land and factories.
"If we must choose," some said, "we choose the Bolsheviks." Others chose the Church. Many merely muttered "Neechevo" (it doesn't matter
