Religion: The Underground

It was dark when the raiding party reached the poor Moscow neighborhood where the informer had said there was underground activity. Before the raiders, a sagging frame house stood dark and deserted in the snow, waiting for the wreckers. In the light of a feeble bulb at the entrance, two women were sawing wood. A large dog lunged snarling at the squad leader, until one of the women called it off. "Whoever you are. you're in the wrong place." she told them. "There's nobody here but me and my sister and my old mother-in-law." The raiders pushed past and stamped through the empty rooms. They were about to leave, when one of them kicked open an inconspicuous door. And there they were—some 40 men and women packed in a stuffy blacked out room lit by guttering candles. These were clandestine Christians, and the squad of "militant atheists"—one of many similar vigilante bands organized by the Communist youth group. Komsomol—was on the prowl for just such underground believers. The squad leader told what happened in a recent issue of the Communist youth paper, Moskovsky Komsomolets.

"Let us now sing the 123rd Psalm," called a big. broad-shouldered man in a fur-collared overcoat. The militant atheist leader knew what to do. "Break it up. citizens." he ordered and commanded the women to leave while they questioned the men. One of the group had arrived only that day from the Ukraine. "I got off the train and just asked passers-by where to find true believers," he said.

"They gave directions." The sect's leader seemed like "a kind fellow," wrote the patrol captain, until "one suddenly remembered a sequence in a documentary film about the atrocious doings of the sectarians. This same face was thrust back, gazing aloft, his hands supplicating God. trembling in ecstasy, and by his mad praying infecting dozens of ignorant folk. The man in front of us was not just someone who was sincerely misled. In front of us was the enemy."