Page:Raymond Augustine McGowan - Bolshevism in Russia and America (1920).pdf/22

 22 used by the Russian people, while the Central Government has been supplying only 1½ or 2 per cent. of their needs. An attempt was made to turn the coöperative stores into State concerns, but the attempt failed except with the labor coöperatives. No doubt another attempt will be made, but the probability is that it will meet with the same opposition as before.

It is not new to anyone that Marxian Socialism is joined to hate of religion. Bakunin, the other theorist of the Russian revolution, was graduated in atheism in the school of Marx. Before the revolution, the program of the Bolshevik party called for separation of the Church and State and separation of the Church and School. Their seizure of power gave them their opportunity.

Among their decrees is to be found the following: "All the properties of the existing church and religious societies are declared national property. Buildings and articles designed for religious services are, by special decision of the local or central authorities, given for free use by corresponding religious societies." This decree took from the churches and religious societies not only their lands, but also their church buildings, schools, monasteries, hospitals, and asylums. It gives to men who hate religion and despise it, the power of forbidding public religious service. It attempts to put the Church under the complete control of the State. A later order tempered the certain rigor of the law by advising officials not to offend the feelings of the religious. Religious oaths are also forbidden in the courts and no sign of religion is allowed to appear in the Government. The net effect is to make the State an atheist State and place