The Church property seizure campaign for famine relief on the pages of the “Bor’ba” (“Fight”) newspaper of the RCP(b) Saratov province Balashov County Executive Committee during the year 1922

Abstract

The article is about the basic steps of the church property seizure campaign for famine relief. The campaign was carried out from March to May, 1922, in parallel with the Soviet authorities’ awareness-raising crusade to undermine the credibility of the Orthodox clergy in Russia, including the Saratov province. The local media of those years thoroughly reflected those processes, since the government of that time actively used periodic publications for its political outreach. In the pages of the newspaper “Bor’ba” of Balashov district executive committee of the RCP(b) unleashed political persecution of the clergy that was cleverly masked as a fight against the famine and collecting of necessary means. The March-June 1922 publications featured not only the reports about the course of the campaign, caricatures and articles accusing the clergy of greediness and indifference to people’s tragedies, but also some fictional formats that contained hidden messages to form a negative public response towards the Christian faith. Christ was pictured as a cruel God indifferently watching the death of his flock in starvation pains. The party leaders who did not abandon their citizens in difficult moments were presented as saviors. What was happening was a substitution of ideals.