12. Here is one of those ironies that almost.......almost.....makes one laugh....the Pope embracing a hammer and sickle with a crucifix....
The
famine, the mass murder, genocide, that communist governments employed was largely a weapon against religion....
a. As one of his friends later recalled, "Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov
(Lenin) had the courage to come out and say openly that famine would have numerous positive results...Famine, he explained....would bring about the next stage more rapidly, and usher in socialism, the stage that necessarily followed capitalism.
Famine would also destroy faith, not only in the tsar, but in God, too." The Black Book of Communism, p.123-124.
b. "
Just because any religious idea, any idea of any god at all, any flirtation even with a god, is the most inexpressible foulness, particularly tolerantly (and often even favourably) accepted by the democratic bourgeoisie—
for that very reason it is the most dangerous foulness, the most shameful “infection.” A million
physical sins, dirty tricks, acts of violence and infections are much more easily discovered by the crowd, and therefore are much less dangerous, than the
nubile, spiritual idea of god, dressed up in the most attractive “ideological” costumes."
Letter from Lenin to Maxim Gorky, Written on November 13 or 14, 1913
Lenin 55. TO MAXIM GORKY
c.
The Russians laughed about their alleged promises of future behavior. This is the conversation that Litvinov had with staff at his embassy after the 'agreement' to recognize the USSR (in 1933) was signed by Franklin Roosevelt:
"Well, it's all in the bag. They wanted us to
recognize the debts we owed them and I promised we were going to negotiate. But they did not know we were going to negotiate until doomsday.
The next one was a corker; they wanted us to
promise freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, and I promised that, too. I was very much prompted to offer that
I would personally collect all the Bibles and ship them over."
Manly, "The Twenty Year Revolution," p.33.
Communism Ascendant......
As communism rises, liberty, freedom of religion plunges.