"Recently we had the occasion to meet an Orthodox priest who escaped from East Germany, where he spent approximately three years in the “jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate.”
While he recounted how the Orthodox priests who did not accept the Moscow Patriarchate suffered cruelly and how, after a summons for a “discussion” to the NKVD (now MVD), all Orthodox priests (including the speaker) “could not refuse to enter the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, and entering, were obliged to carry out also the orders of the MVD". His admissions sounded like repentance. One must not accuse the repentant and unmask him for his faint-heartedness.
So all of us who listened to him were sadly silent. But when he began to justify himself, that he also “suffered,” for it was “hard for him to submit” and that his “moral sufferings” were greater, than the sufferings of the arrested and those suffering “only physically” —then it became necessary to interrupt and explain, that the “moral suffering” of those who submitted to the antichrist authority is not a merit and justification, but only a legitimate, deserved punishment of the “suffering of conscience.”
To put to one’s credit the “suffering of conscience” — is morally impossible, for then one should justify also Judas’ suffering with his suicide. Christian morality gives us a different example — an image, which should be a pattern for our behavior after the sin of renouncing Christ — this is the image of “bitterly weeping” in the repentance of Apostle Peter."
Elsewhere the same author writes, "I knew priests of the official Church who, at home, tore their hair out, who smashed their heads making prostrations, begging forgiveness for their apostasy, calling themselves Cain - but nonetheless they did not have the strength to decide upon martyrdom. But even they spiritually did not recognize the Red Church."
(Excerpted from the writings of I.M. Andreyev)