Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/172

156 When it was pointed out that all the time limits set by the Apostle John had passed long ago, and nothing had changed in Russia, that the prophesied ruler of the name of Michael could not become the Tsar of Russia because the only Grand Duke of that name had been murdered by the Bolsheviks in Perm; when one laughed at the apocalyptic monster, at the riders on pale, black, and scarlet horses, in which some perceived England, Japan, and France, others Denikin, Kolchak, and Wrangel, one received in reply explanations not less hazy than the Apocalypse itself, one was confronted with an assurance impossible to be shaken, because those who possessed it had no alternative but to believe or to die of despondency and despair.

While the educated classes were engrossed in revelations, the clergy launched an agitation among the popular masses. Hundreds and thousands of monks, priests, and friars, who had lost their employment through the closing of churches and monasteries, set to work among the mass of workmen and peasants.

The Apocalypse, apocrypha, personal ingeniousness, improvisation, eloquence, piety, asceticism all of it was mobilised for the purpose of propagating the idea of Antichrist in Russia.

Antichrist has already been born, and is already assembling his army of anarchists and criminals. Already he has dispatched his servants to ruin and break tip the richest of all countries and nations Russia and the Russians. And lo! where once were the Bars,