utdrag ur GULAG Archipelagen – del 1

Jag har precis satt igang med att lara kanna Alexander Solzenitsyn narmre, genom att lasa de av hans bocker jag kan fa tag pa har nere. Forst pa listan ar GULAG Achipelagen. Jag har alltid trott att det ar en roman: nu visade det sig att det snarare ar en stor samling (historiska, biografiska etc etc) tankar av Alexander gallande Sovjets behandling av dess invanare. Jag tycker mig dock se att detta egentligen endast ar ett yttre skal – de ord han sager verkar aven ha en inre, djupare innebord, vilka riktas inte mot Sovjet, men mot Manniskan.

Har foljer nagra utdrag, som inte nodvandigtvis behover vara ”djupa”. Jag bara valjer ett par stycken nastan pa mafa. Fler kommer folja. Enjoy.

In the spring of 1922 the Extraordinary Commission for Struggle Against Counterrevolution, Sabotage, and Speculation, the Cheka, recently renamed the GPU, decided to intervene in Church affairs. It was called on to carry out a ”church revolution” – to remove the existing leadership and replace it with one which would have only one ear turned to heaven and the other one to the Lubyanka. The so-called ”Living Church” people seemed to go along with this plan, but without outside help they could not gain control of church apparatus. For this reason, the Patriarch Tikhon [idag vordad som helgon av de ortodoxa, min anm.] was arrested and two resounding trials were followed by the execution in Moscow of those who hade publicized the Patriarchs appeal [en vadjan till de troende att fly till katakomberna - en del av dessa s.k. katakombkyrkorna finns fortfarande kvar idag, vissa av dem har tyvarr utvecklats til fanatiska grupperingar av olika slag, min anm.] and, in Petrograd, the Metropolitan [biskop, min anm] Veniamin, who had attempted to hinder the transfer of ecclesiastical power to the ”Living Church” group. Here and there in provincial centers and even further downin the administrative districts, metropolitans and bishops were arrested, and, as always, in the wake of the big fish, followed shoals of smaller fry; archpriests, monks and deacons. These arrests were not even reported in the press. They also arrested those who refused to swear to support the ”Living Church” ”renewal”  movement.

Men of religion were an inevitable part of any annual ”catch”,  and their silver locks gleamed in every cel and in every prisoner transport on route to the Solovetsky Islands.

[...]

However, the rootdestruction of religion in the country, which troughout the twenties and thirties was one of the most important goals of the GUP-NKVD, could be realised only by mass arrests of Orthodox believers. Monks and nuns, whose black habits had been a distinctive feature of Old Russian life, were intensively rounde up on every hand, placed under arrest, and sent into exile. They arrested and sentenced active laymen. The circles kept getting bigger, as they raked in ordinary believers as well, old people, and particularly women, who were the most stubborn believers of all and who, for many long years to come, wouldf\ be called ”nuns” in transit prisons and in camps.

True, they were supposedly being arrested and tried not for their actual faith, but for openly declaring their convictions and for bringing up their children in the same spirit. {ar det inte detta, eller nagot pa samma spar,  Dawkins och annat folk i vastvarlden idag ocksa borjar saga?] As Tabya Khodkevich wrote:

You can pray freely

But just so God alone can hear.*

——————————————

* Hon fick tio ar i fangelse for de orden.

Jag avslutar utdraget har, da jag tycker citatet av poeten var bra som avslutning. Ett litet tillag fran fortsattningen ar dock intressant ocksa:

A person convinced that he possessed spiritual truth was required to conceal it from his own children! In the twenties the religious education of children was classified as a political crime [...] ! True one was still permitted to renounce ones religion at one’s trial: it didn’t often happen, but it nonetheless did happen that the father would renounce his religion and remain at home to raise the children while the mother went to Solovetski Islands [sa sorligt!]. All persons convicted of religious activity received tenners, the longest term then given.

(in those years, particularly in 1927, in purging the big cities for the pure society that was coming into being, they sent prostitues to Solovetsky Islands along with the ”nuns”. Those lovers of a sinful earthly life were given three-year sentences under a more lenient article of the Code. [...] Three years later they would  return with laiden suitcasesto the places they had come from. Religious prisoners, however, were prohibited from ever returning to their children and their home areas.)