An essay in universal history

5. THE CHURCH IN EASTERN EUROPE

Similar tactics to the KGB’s repression of the Russian Orthodox Church were used in other East European countries… In Romania the communists took over in 1944, but there was strong opposition to them, and it was only after King Michael was forced to emigrate in 1947 that the persecution began in earnest. As Fr. George Calciu writes, “they began to create the same situation that was in Russia. The majority of the political counsellors and Securitate were Russian. They had come from Russia to transmit their experience to the young Romanian communists.”⁷¹

Fr. George himself passed through the hell of the prison of Piteşti, which experience “altered our souls and hearts, and little by little, one by one, we fell. Namely, we came to deny God and to sever ourselves from our families. We came to forget all that was good in our hearts. Fortunately, this experiment lasted only about three years…”⁷²
In his biography of Valeriu Gafencu (+1952), Monk Moise writes: “Among the many prisons of Communist Romania, Piteşti is a particular one. It became famous for the horrible atrocities that happened there as a result of the implementation of that satanic experiment known as re-education…
“In the first part of the year 1948, following an order from Bucharest, the prisoners were grouped according to their age at the time of arrest. All university students were sent to Piteşti. In the first phase, the prisoners, most of them Legionnaires, lived under a rather lax regime. In short time, however, things changed and [what can be identified as] a program of extermination was initiated. The guards became very strict, doling out harsh punishments to the prisoners for perceived offenses. The quality of food deteriorated and they were given just enough food to keep them alive. Beatings, cold and hunger lowered their physical and moral resistance. All of these measures represented only the preparatory phase, so that when re-education was later unleashed, exhausted prisoners would be that much easier to subdue.
“A group of prisoners was brought to Piteşti from Suceava, led by Eugen Țurcanu. Țurcanu was to become famous for crimes and tortures committed at Piteşti and later at Gherla. Eugen Țurcanu and the other Suceava prisoners had gone over to the Communist side and they were identified by prison administration as the tool by which re-education would be implemented. It must be stated from the beginning that re-education was conceptualized at a high level, by leadership in the Ministry of the Interior, Țurcanu and his group being their instruments, essentially. When the experiment was called off, they were executed by the very Communist government they had served, while those who were truly guilty, those in the shadows, went unpunished.
“At first, the Suceava prisoners were scattered throughout the cells, mixed in with the others. They succeeded in gaining the others’ trust with their well-meaning attitude. After some time, at the beginning of December, 1949, the Suceava prisoners, together with other prisoners who were purposefully selected, were brought back together, to inhabit the same cell. One day, Țurcanu and his group announced to the others that they had changed their ideas, that they had given up Legionnairism and had been re-educated, adopting communist ideology. When they recommended to the others that they do the same, there was objection and laughter. Țurcanu and his followerS attacked. They began beating the others, armed with broomsticks and wooden clubs hidden ahead of time under mattresses. Soon thereafter, the prison leadership – director, officers, guards – joined Țurcanu, severely beating the others [who wouldn’t renounce Legionnairism]. This moment marked the beginning of the re-education program, which meant continuous beatings and torture. The prisoners, closely supervised by Țurcanu’s group, were subjected to a regime of constant terror without the possibility of escaping or committing suicide.
“The torture was well-planned; it stopped only when the prisoner was about to die. There were various kinds of torture: beatings, hunger, being forced to maintain the same position 17 hours a day – legs extended horizontally, hands on knees, chest at 90 degrees – and at the slightest wavering, the supervisor would respond with a club. The prisoners were forced to drink urine and to eat excrement from buckets that served as toilets in the cells. They were forced to drink highly-salted water and then left to dry out from thirst; these were some of the may other tortures devised by the sick minds of the torturers. Those who caved [in] were required to ‘unmask’, i.e., to reveal everything they had not confessed at their interrogation, to betray those prisoners who had helped them in prison or those guards who had treated them humanely. Likewise, in order for the destruction to be complete, each one of them was required to profane the memory of whatever had been most important to him in front of everyone in his cell. For example, perhaps someone loved his mother or wife very much. In front of everyone, he was required to denounce them, to make the most obscene and absurd statements about them. Whatever was bright and good in the mind of the one being tortured had to be slandered and dirtied.
“Theological students and those who were devout – ‘mystical bandits’, as they were called – were forced to apostasize, to deny God, to curse everything that had to do with the Christian faith. At Christmas and Pascha, they were forced to sing carols or well-known religious hymns with altered words which profaned Christ and the Virgin Mary. They were forced to participate in blasphemous processions and to celebrated ‘liturgies’ using human waste from buckets in the prison cells, and were then forced to swallow it as ‘Communion’. Some of them were ‘baptized’ in tubs full of excrement. I believe that these things provide sufficient proof of the satanic nature of re-education.
“After the prisoner ‘unmasked’ himself, in order to prove that he had been re-educated, he was required to become a torturer himself and to convince others to give up ‘all bourgeois rottenness’ and to accept communist ideology. Through the use of terror, the prisoners were truly brainwashed. The tortured, no longer able to endure the incessant torment, unable to commit suicide, always closely supervised, finally gave in and were transformed into robots, their hearts turned to stone and, from being victims, they became executioners. Not even after being re-educated did they escape the terror for, at the slightest sign of solidarity with their victims, they were subjected to torture themselves. And thus, living in a state of constant terror, always suspicious of one another, they broke down completely, foregoing the possibility of returning to a normal state. Dumitru Bordeianu, who experienced this experiment, described the experience in his book Mărturisiri din Mlaștina Disperării (Confessions from the Mire of Despair). He says that at a given moment a demonic ‘communion’ was created between the torturer and the one tortured. For example, if Țurcanu asked him what he was thinking, he was unable to lie because Țurcanu would have sensed it immediately. From this came the fear of even thinking something which could be considered bad by Ţurcanu: You couldn’t hide anything if you were questioned, while telling the truth was punished.
“Another Satanic aspect of re-education was that everything that one had hidden at the interrogation and that represented a point of support on the path of internal collapse began to torment him so much that he himself requested to ‘unmask’, feeling afterwards a sense of relief like that after sacramental confession, even though the things he confessed were held against him. A strange process occurred, resulting in mutations to the personality of the one tortured, who came to disavow his former beliefs and to accept whatever Țurcanu imposed upon him with the conviction that he was doing good. In the process of brainwashing, ‘his mind was enlightened’, he experienced a sense of relief, he ‘understood’ everything that he had previously rejected and he set out, in full confidence, to bring others into the same state of ‘enlightenment’. For those of us who have not passed through similar demonic states, these things are incomprehensible.
“Most of those who tortured others did so under the dominion of terror, without experiencing the mutations I referred to above. The system was planned in such a way that, as a result of the continual torture, very few were able to hold out to the end. In general, most of them compromised, some of them more, some less, according to the structure and stamina of each.
“From Piteşti, the system was extended to Gherla and the Canal, but due to the fact that word leaked out and there were international protests, the re-education experiment was stopped. If the secrecy had been maintained, re-education would have been applied to every prison in the country.
“Looking at re-education from a spiritual perspective, both those who directed this experiment from the shadows and those who applied it were nothing but instruments of the devil in the destruction of souls. Father Gheorghe Calciu, who went through Piteşti, said, ‘In order to understand what Piteşti was, we must remain above the facts and get at the roots of this evil, try to see the internal mechanisms of perversion and its metaphysical dimension. I believe that Piteşti was a diabolical experiment. What occurred there was a struggle between good and evil, in which the executioners and the victims were simply instruments. It was a diabolical experiment that took place in our country more than in any other place in the world.’
“The satanic character of re-education was clearly seen in the words of Țurcanu, preserved in the memory of one political prisoner: ‘If Christ had passed through my hands, He never would have made it to the cross. He would not have been resurrected. Christianity, that great lie, would never have existed, and the world would have lived peacefully! I am Țurcanu! The first and the last! No one has ever been born who could replace me. No one can lie to me the way that I lie to you fools. I am the true Gospel! I am writing it now. I have something to write on – your carcasses. What I write is true, it’s not a bedtime story for children.’
“Although the devil may have imagined that he won the battle through terror, he had few decisive victories among those who compromised, some more, some less. After the torture stopped, most of those who acquiesced gradually returned to God. Considering the subsequent evolution of the re-educated, the devil won a battle at Piteşti, but not the war. According to Father Calciu, most of them returned to Christ more vehemently than before their trial by fire…”⁷³
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During the war, King Boris III of Bulgaria had tried to preserve his country’s neutrality between Hitler and Stalin, and, persuaded by Metropolitan Stefan of Sophia, had refused to allow the Bulgarian Jews to be taken to Hitler’s death-camps. For this he was killed in 1943. Professor Ya.Ya. Etinger writes: “Hitler demanded from his ally Bulgaria the dispatch of all the Jews of Bulgaria, Macedonia and Thrace to Auschwitz – about 48,000 people were subject to deportation. The head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Stefan of Sophia, on learning from the chief rabbi Asher Khamanel, the president of the capital’s Jewish community, that ‘the Commissariat for Jewish questions’ had already prepared the first lists of eminent Jews subject to deportation to Hitler’s death camps, openly declared: ‘I will conceal all the Jews in the churches and monasteries, but I will not hand them over for reprisals.’ He personally demanded that Prime-Minister Filov revoke the arrests of Jews in a series of cities in the country. The metropolitan also sent a letter to Tsar Boris, in which he wrote: ‘Let us not commit abominations, for which our good-hearted people will sometime have to feel shame, and perhaps other misfortunes.’ The metropolitan promised that he himself would remain under house arrest until the arrested Jews were released. For this he was accused by the local fascist organizations of ‘betrayal of the race and treachery’. Rabbi Khamanel, whom the police were hunting, was hidden by the metropolitan in his own podvorie. On May 24, the day of the national feast of SS. Cyril and Methodius, thousands of people came out onto the streets of the capital declaring that they would not tolerate the murder of their fellow citizens. Another highly placed clergyman, Metropolitan Cyril of Plovdiv, later patriarch of Bulgaria, also sent an epistle to the tsar. In his letter he demanded that the tsar immediately revoke the barbaric order. Otherwise, declared the metropolitan, he would not answer for the actions of the people and clergy. According to the reminiscences of eye-witnesses, he warned the local police authorities that he had said to the Jews of one of the poorest quarters of the city: ‘I present you my house. Let us see whether they will be able to get you out of there.’ And in a letter to Filov he said that he would go with a cross in his hands to the death camp in Poland ahead of the convoys with the Jews. These many protest actions attained their goal and the deportation was stopped. Tsar Boris III invited the German consul, A. Bickerle, and categorically declared: ‘The Jews of my country are its subjects and every encroachment on their freedom will be perceived by us as an insult to the Bulgarians.’ Prime Minister B. Filov wrote in his diary: ‘His Majesty completely revoked the measures taken against the Jews.’ On returning from Hitler’s head-quarters on August 28, 1943, Tsar Boris very soon died. There are grounds for supposing that he was killed by the Hitlerites for refusing to carry out the will of the Fuhrer.”⁷⁴
After the death of Tsar Boris, his brother, Prince Cyril, became regent and continued the same policy. But after the Soviet troops entered Bulgaria he was arrested and shot on “Bloody Thursday”, February 3, 1945.⁷⁵ Then so-called associations of priests controlled by the communists were infiltrated into the Church of Bulgaria, as into neighbouring Serbia. “After assuming power,” writes Ivan Marchevsky, “the communists began to destroy the clergy: a third of the 2000 members of the clergy was killed. Then they began to act in a different way: Vladykas appointed ‘from above’ ordained obedient priests.”⁷⁶ Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev) of Boguchar, who was in charge of ROCOR’s flock in Bulgaria, also joined the MP – although, according to his spiritual daughter, Abbess Seraphima (Lieven), he continued to call the Soviet power “satanic” and to oppose the infiltration of communist influence into the Bulgarian Church. In 2016 he was canonized by the MP.
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The timing of the Council of Moscow in 1948 was clearly aimed at upstaging the First General Assembly of the World Council of Churches which was also taking place in that month. In line with Stalin’s foreign policy, the delegates denounced the West and the Vatican and condemned the ecumenical movement.⁷⁷ Moscow’s hostility to the Vatican was determined especially by its desire to eliminate uniatism in Eastern Europe – that is, churches serving according to the Eastern Orthodox rite but commemorating the Pope.
A start had been made already towards the end of the war, when it was suggested to the uniate episcopate in Western Ukraine that it simply “liquidate itself”. When all five uniate bishops refused, in April, 1945, they were arrested. Within a month a clearly Soviet-inspired “initiative movement” for unification with the MP headed by Protopresbyter G. Kostelnikov appeared.⁷⁸ By the spring of 1946 997 out of 1270 uniate priests in Western Ukraine had joined this movement, and on March 8-10 a uniate council of clergy and laity voted to join the Orthodox church and annul the Brest unia with the Roman Catholic Church of 1596. Central Committee documents show that the whole procedure was controlled by the first secretary of the Ukrainian party, Nikita Khruschev, who in all significant details sought the sanction of Stalin.⁷⁹
In October, 1948 the 1,250,000 uniates of Romania (the Romanian unia had taken place at Blaj in Transylvania in 1697) were united with the Romanian Patriarchate.⁸⁰ Then, in April, 1950, a council took place at Prešov in Slovakia attended by 820 delegates, at which it was agreed to revoke the Uzhgorod unia of 1649 and return to Orthodoxy. The “converted” uniates formed a new, East Slovakian diocese of the Czech Orthodox Church.⁸¹
However, as Archbishop Tikhon of Omsk writes, the merger of the uniates into the MP harmed both the uniates and the MP. It infected the MP, which drew a large proportion of its clergy from the Western Ukraine, with the false asceticism and mysticism of the Catholics. And the uniates, “on being merged into the unorthodox patriarchate, did not come to know the grace-filled ‘taste of True Orthodoxy’. The fruits of this ‘union’ are well known to all today.”⁸²
In August, 1948, Metropolitan Dionysius, head of the Polish Church, petitioned the MP to be received into communion, repenting of his “unlawful autocephaly”. In November, the MP granted his request, and granted the Polish Church autocephaly – again. However, because of his “sin of autocephaly”, and because he had accepted the title of “His Beatitude”, Dionysius was not allowed to remain head of the Church.⁸³ Another reason may have been his participation in the creation of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church during the war. This decision remained in force despite a plea on Dionysius’ behalf by Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople in February, 1950.⁸⁴ In 1951, at the Poles’ request, the MP appointed a new metropolitan for the Polish Church.⁸⁵ From now on the Polish Church, though with the new calendar, returned to Moscow’s orbit.
In 1948 the head of the Albanian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Christopher of Tirana, was deposed and imprisoned by the communist government for “hostile activity in relation to the Albanian people”.⁸⁶ Then, from February 5 to 10, 1950, a Local Council of the Albanian Church took place in Tirana. A new constitution was worked out in which it was declared that the elections of the clergy should take place with the participation of the laity.
A pseudo-patriotic note was sounded in article 4: “Parallel with the development of religious feeling, the Orthodox Autocephalous Albanian Church must instil into believers feelings of devotion to the authorities of the people of the People’s Republic of Albania, and also feelings of patriotism and of striving for the strengthening of national unity. Therefore all the priests and co-workers of the Church must be Albanian citizens, honourable, devoted to the people and the Homeland, enjoying all civil rights.” The episcopate had to pronounce the following oath: “I swear by my conscience before God that I will preserve the faith and dogmas, canons and Tradition of the Orthodox Church, and faithfulness to the people of the Albanian People’s Republic and its democratic principles, as prescribed by the Constitution.”⁸⁷
On March 5 the new head of the Albanian Church, Archbishop Paisius, gave a speech in front of the All-Albanian conference in defence of peace in which he said: “In agreement with the great ideals of love, brotherhood and peace throughout the world on which the Church is based, we will struggle for the holy affair of the liberation of the whole of mankind from hostile encroachments on its peaceful life. This task must be unanimously accomplished by all our clergy, as preachers of peace who are bound to direct the will of the flock to the struggle for peace… We preach peace, but we know that peace is not given gratis, therefore we bless the struggle for the final victory over those who are stirring up war…”⁸⁸