ROTHMUS: Because the Church was the last independent power still commanding loyalty outside Party control. Marxist atheism treated it as a rival that had to be broken, . . .

Lenin waited until Russians were eating human flesh and corpses lined the roads before ordering the Church destroyed.

In March 1922, with millions already dead from famine, the Bolsheviks seized Orthodox gold, silver, and sacred vessels under the banner of feeding the starving.… pic.twitter.com/HrNzs8twOh

— Rothmus 🏴 (@Rothmus) July 23, 2026

Lenin waited until Russians were eating human flesh and corpses lined the roads before ordering the Church destroyed. In March 1922, with millions already dead from famine, the Bolsheviks seized Orthodox gold, silver, and sacred vessels under the banner of feeding the starving. Patriarch Tikhon offered voluntary aid but refused to surrender consecrated items. When parishioners in Shuya defended their cathedral, Red forces opened fire and killed several. 4 days later Lenin sent a top secret letter to the Politburo and turned the crisis into a kill order. He said the famine was the perfect window. Peasants were too broken to resist, so strike now with “the most frenzied and ruthless energy.” Arrest dozens of priests, stage lightning trials, and shoot “the very largest number of the most influential” so the rest remember for decades. Because the Church was the last independent power still commanding loyalty outside Party control. Marxist atheism treated it as a rival that had to be broken, and the famine gave them the cover and the timing. They framed defense of the altar as sabotage of the starving, then executed clergy for it.

The Bolsheviks effectively turned mass starvation into a weapon against the only force left between the State and total control of the Russian soul.