Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/167

Rh The Bolsheviks understood the position and left the church without delay.

A similar mood of religious excitement prevails among all sects.

The professors of the old faith have become even more cautious in their relations with people of other beliefs; in the villages of the old believers there reigns an even stricter discipline and severer morality; the most famous bishops and priests of this sect were invited from abroad for the defence of the flock against the moral poison of the Soviets; the old believers have withdrawn their youth from the Red Army, willingly paying high taxes instead. The churches and chapels have been filled with the pious in expectation of Satan, whose servants have already sown the deadly seeds of sin and perdition.

The "floggers" count In hundreds of thousands the members of their sect, which gives them the means of forgetting, of lifting themselves above the unbearable conditions of life, created by the Soviets, of taking some active, physical part In the driving away of Satan, the echo of whose heavy step Is heard everywhere.

But the "floggers" no longer smite themselves with birch or aspen sticks; they flog themselves with twisted wires or Iron, red-hot rods.

"More torment, more self-affliction of the body, more blood!"—thus the priests of the sect incite them, "and the combat with Satan will be more fruitful and gerhaps lead to victory, after which peace and happi-