The largest stronghold of the CPI (The Catacomb Church) was
the peasantry, the least amenable to Soviet propaganda and traditionally
keeping Christian foundations and loyalty to Orthodoxy.
The Holodomor (also known as the Terror-Famine) of 1932-1933 was specifically organized in order to finally crush the Orthodox peasantry who had put up a resistance to collectivization, and the violent transformation of the Orthodox people into a faceless mass of so called "collective farmers" and homo sovieticus. All those who resisted were subjected to
"dispossession" and forced eviction to Siberia, arrests, exile and
executions. The rest were forcibly turned into "collective farmers",
having regenerated, and in fact destroyed the peasantry as such.
However, even these measures did not give the desired results. As long
as the spirit of the Orthodox peasantry itself was preserved, invisibly
passed on from generation to generation, as long as its bearers were
alive, the successes of the Soviets in the countryside were ephemeral.
The Sergian-Renovationist schisms generated by the Soviets could not
have had any success among such peasants. Orthodox grain growers in many
regions remained predominantly faithful to the True Orthodox Church.
As
noted in the investigative files of the OGPU regarding the activities
of the CPC in Ukraine, "the core of anti-Soviet work was
transferred by the counter-revolutionary organization to the countryside
and the main focus of the leaders was turned to disrupting
collectivization."
The
position of the CPI was especially strong in such centers of the
"kulaks" as the Central Black Earth Region of Russia, Ukraine, Kuban and
Don. It was in these agricultural regions in 1932-33 the Bolsheviks
provoked an artificial famine, as a result of which more than 10 million
people died. In Ukraine, the campaign for the mass destruction of the
Orthodox peasantry was centrally carried out by the apparatus of the
Central Committee of the CP (B) U under the leadership of L.M.
Kaganovich. The blow was purposefully applied to the primordial centers
of Orthodox culture and tradition among the people. As a result of the
genocide, entire villages and districts died out en masse, people died
of hunger right on the streets, cases of cannibalism became more
frequent. Village Orthodox priests died along with the peasants.
As
a former catacomb priest later recalled, and later, in exile,
Archbishop of Chile (ROCOR) Leonty (Fillipovich): “Many starving people
were unable to reach the city and fell dead or in torment on the roads
and unknown paths ... I myself have seen more than once similar terrible images, when a man dying of starvation in his death throes, grass or
tree bark came out of his mouth with foam, which he greedily chewed a
few minutes before his death, hoping to get to the city ... And how many
people died during this famine, who were not only eaten by strangers, but
even close people... During
the Nativity Lent, I visited the homes of my parishioners on one of the
outskirts of Kiev. In a rare house they did not starve. Some of the images I will remember forever. Cold winter day. Walked in the room. In
the middle is a circle of human excrement. On the stove sits an old mother
swollen with hunger, wrapped in some kind of rags. In one corner lies a
young man who looks like a skeleton - a son who died of exhaustion two
days ago, in another corner - the youngest son is dying. How many such
pictures have I seen, only the Lord knows. I wonder how my heart could
take it and not burst."
The
cruelty and fanaticism of the communist regime towards the Orthodox
peasantry knew no boundaries. Those fleeing from death and trying to
flee to other regions not subject to the famine were caught by the
Chekists and returned either back, or exiled or shot. Stalin's special
Directive of January 22, 1933 categorically prohibited the departure of
peasants from the famine-stricken territories of Ukraine and the Kuban
to other territories of the USSR. Peasants were no longer selling tickets
for rail and water transport. Roads to cities were blocked. Those who
managed to leave were arrested and returned back. In the first month and a
half of this resolution, more than 220 thousand Ukrainian peasants were
arrested. More than 168 thousand of them are forcibly returned back to
Ukrainian villages, where they were dying of hunger. As a result of the
mass famine and the destruction of the Orthodox peasantry, the
influence of the TOC in Ukraine, in the Kuban, Don and in the Central
Black Earth Region of Russia was significantly weakened. Simultaneously
with the Holodomor in the villages, repressions against the followers of
the CPI in the cities did not stop... As Mendel Markovich Khatayevich, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Part (bolsheviks) U, said frankly, "It took hunger to show them who is the boss here. It cost millions of lives, but we won".
Rest, O Lord, the souls of your faithful servants, those who died innocently from famines and tortures of the godless government. Amen.