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tized under the old regime, it appeared to me that it had acquired great moral force, since it had received its liberty. It seemed to be on the point of undergoing a complete revival on the basis of a return to its primitive form. The principle of re-election: introduced at the bottom of its hierarchy, its contact with the people, of which under the regime of the Czar it had been practically deprived of, all led one to cherish great hopes of it, so much the more so as its patriarch had not allowed himself to be monopolized by political parties, by the Kadet bourgeoisie which for its own paltry interests was now pretending to be religious. It was therefore not at all impossible that the orthodox Church would become a popular, democratic force, freed from all servitude of classes, and this was, of course, a question of indisputably high importance. Unfortunately the orthodox Church, at least as a whole, did not, during the following few months determine its rupture with the bourgeoisie, and further, did not know how to borrow from the Soviet formula that in it which was profoundly christian. It did not know how to resolutely thrust aside the violently anti-christian appetites and passions of certain elements, wrongly reputed to be „religious“. Later on, it failed to place itself above material considerations, and instead of concluding, an alliance that stood ready before her with the Soviet, power, the Church weakened itself in a vain struggle on the question,—absolutely foreign to christian ideas,—of clericalism, a struggle which, of course, could not fail to be exploited by bourgeois politicians, ostensibly for the welfare of the Church, but in reality,
