(Above: a depiction of the bloodthirsty Soviet premier Joseph Stalin.) Soviet materialists viewed their premiers much as pagan Greece viewed their "gods"--as larger than life men to be worshiped. |
by Steve C. Halbrook
This revolution repeated a pattern from the first atheist revolution. Just as the French theocrats converted church buildings into “temples of reason,”
And, while the French theocrats worshipped “the goddess of reason,” the Russian theocrats worshipped the premier—Proletariat Incarnate, matter in its highest form. After the death of Lenin, the first communist premier, it was said: “Lenin lives in the heart of every member of our Party. Every member of our Party is a small part of Lenin. Our whole communist family is a collective embodiment of Lenin.”[6]
In the tradition of ancient Egyptians who mummified their deified Pharaohs, an “Immortalisation Commission” mummified Russia ’s premier.[7] Stalin repeatedly said at the funeral they would “honour” “thy [Lenin’s] commandment.”[8] Stalin then took over and became Russia ’s new god. He was heralded as the “father of the people,”[9] of whom it was said, “Thou art the greatest leader.”[10]
A poem of that time reflects Stalin’s reputed god-like omnipresence and omniscience: “And so—everywhere. In the workshops, in the mines/In the Red Army, the kindergarten/He is watching … You look at his portrait and it’s as if he knows/Your work—and weighs it/You’ve worked badly—his brows lower/But when you’ve worked well, he smiles in his moustache.”[11]
After Stalin’s death, his successor Nikita Khrushchev reminded the Twentieth Party Congress that they all had been taught to believe Stalin was “a superman possessing supernatural characteristics akin to those of a god.”[12]
A Soviet propaganda poster which says, "Study the Great Path of the Party of Lenin and Stalin!" Depicted is a student looking to his gods as he learns the ways of Marxist materialism. |
The Russian revolutionaries had rejected the Kingdom of God for a kingdom of matter. This kingdom of matter would be inaugurated by the proletariat, who, in the words of Lenin, were “to set up heaven on earth.”[13] Under the pretext of irreligion the Russian theocrats could not conceal their religion. Even the anti-Christian philosopher Bertrand Russell identified communism as developed in Russia as “a political religion analogous to Islam.”[14]
By their own speech, the Russian theocrats betrayed their professed irreligion. Lenin said, “Who plans whom, who directs and dominates whom, who assigns to other people their station in life, and who is to have his due allotted by others? These become necessarily the central issues to be decided solely by the supreme power.”[15]
Like Adam and Even, in rejecting God, Lenin inescapably exchanged the Supreme Power for another “supreme power,” man. As Khrushchev would later affirm, “the people” are “the creator of history and … the creator of all material and spiritual good of humanity.”[16] (Similarly, the Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-Tung wrote, “Our God is none other than the masses of the Chinese people.”)[17]
The Russian theocracy had thus rejected a biblical theocracy based on the “rule of God” for a material theocracy based on the “rule of the people,” more specifically, “the rule of the Proletariat.”
Excerpt from the (Lord willing) upcoming book, God is Just: A Defense of the Old Testament Civil Laws: Biblical Theocracy, Justice, and Slavery versus Humanistic Theocracy, "Justice," and Slavery by Steve C. Halbrook. Copyright © 2010 by Steve C. Halbrook. Based on the master's thesis, God is Just: A Defense of the Old Testament Civil Laws.
The Russian theocracy had thus rejected a biblical theocracy based on the “rule of God” for a material theocracy based on the “rule of the people,” more specifically, “the rule of the Proletariat.”
Excerpt from the (Lord willing) upcoming book, God is Just: A Defense of the Old Testament Civil Laws: Biblical Theocracy, Justice, and Slavery versus Humanistic Theocracy, "Justice," and Slavery by Steve C. Halbrook. Copyright © 2010 by Steve C. Halbrook. Based on the master's thesis, God is Just: A Defense of the Old Testament Civil Laws.
[1] Francis Nigel Lee, Communist Eschatology: A Christian Philosophical Analysis of the Post-Capitalistic Views of Marx, Engels, and Lenin (Nutley, NJ: The Craig Press, 1974), 90.
[Disclaimer: because of Lee’s theological similarities to kinism (although we don’t believe Lee’s views to be as drastic), we do not endorse Lee’s writings and lectures about race.]
Lenin writes in Can ‘Jacobinism’ Frighten the Working Class?: “Proletarian historians see Jacobinism as one of the highest peaks in the emancipation struggle of an oppressed class. The Jacobins gaveFrance the best models of a democratic revolution and of resistance to a coalition of monarchs against a republic. … ‘Jacobinism’ in Europe or in the boundary line between Europe and Asia in the twentieth century would be the rule of the revolutionary class, of the proletariat, which, supported by the peasant-poor and taking advantage of the existing material basis for advancing socialism, could not only provide all the great, ineradicable, unforgettable things provided by the Jacobins in the eighteenth century, but brings about a lasting, world-wide victory for the working people” (Ibid., 90).
[Disclaimer: because of Lee’s theological similarities to kinism (although we don’t believe Lee’s views to be as drastic), we do not endorse Lee’s writings and lectures about race.]
Lenin writes in Can ‘Jacobinism’ Frighten the Working Class?: “Proletarian historians see Jacobinism as one of the highest peaks in the emancipation struggle of an oppressed class. The Jacobins gave
French Revolutionary philosophy influenced Marx and Engels, the chief philosophical influences of the Russian Revolution. Engels writes of Rousseau, “already in Rousseau, therefore, we find not only a sequence of ideas which corresponds exactly with the sequence developed in Marx’s Capital, but we even find that the correspondence extends also to details, Rousseau using a whole series of the same dialectical developments as Marx used” (Ibid., 87). Engels mentions the “Great French Revolution” as being the first bourgeoisie uprising to “entirely cast off the religious cloak” (Ibid., 88).
Prince Lvov, head of two Russian provisional governments prior to the Revolution, wrote, “The spirit of the Russian people has shown itself, of its own accord, to be a universally democratic spirit. It is a spirit that seeks not only to dissolve into universal democracy, but also to lead the way proudly down the path first marked out by the French revolution, towardLiberty , Equality, and Fraternity.” Cited in Stéphane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 44.
Prince Lvov, head of two Russian provisional governments prior to the Revolution, wrote, “The spirit of the Russian people has shown itself, of its own accord, to be a universally democratic spirit. It is a spirit that seeks not only to dissolve into universal democracy, but also to lead the way proudly down the path first marked out by the French revolution, toward
[2] On the common French Revolutionary/Marxist views on materialism, Singer writes: “The empirical epistemology of Locke and his followers was no more successful than the rationalism which it replaced. Its major contribution to Western culture was to enhance the emergence of a secularism thoroughly embedded in materialism, a materialism which characterized the French Revolution and which ultimately produced Marxian communism and its philosophical satellites.” C. Gregg Singer, From Rationalism to Irrationality: The Decline of the Western Mind from the Renaissance to the Present (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1979), 408, 409.
2 comments:
Soviet Communism was institutionalized atheism. But institutionalized atheism isn't a "theocracy" because it doesn't recognize the sovereign authority of YHWH.
Call the godless Soviet government an "autocracy" or "autonomous" government. Reserve the words "theocracy" and "theonomic" for the political system that you are calling for.
Agreed, it doesn't recognize the rule of the One True God--but in rejecting the One True God, it embraces a false god, and hence is theocratic in its own sense.
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