PRIESTS ARE URGED TO BOYCOTT POLISH CEREMONY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78-03061A000400010029-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 28, 2012
• Sequence Number: 29
• Publication Date: July 18, 1966
• Content Type: NSPR

' Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/06/28 :CIA-RDP78-03061A000400010029-7
.. .~
_ .....
~~~s~~ .r~ ~Jr~~c~ ta~-~?a~>co~t .~'ali~~e C'e~emcaray-
?Ar~rPl6ishop Ca~~s N~emoricil to
Fape John Nat ~'nity Sdgla
WA.ItSAW, July:17 fAP) ~-~-
A Palish Roman Catholic Arch-
bishop today asked priests to
baycatt a.prej~t, b~tickedikly, the
`
Communist regime tv .erect
a
5Yi3ii'ioriaC'~o~'ope "John XXIrr.
;' Archbishop Boleslaw Kominek
'af Wroclaw (formerly 73reslau)
:warned in? a message to priests
that the project was desibned to
ground of renewed assertions by
the church that Tt does not seek
a? test of strength with the Gav-
ernment,
.Archbishop ri`ominek asked
priests not to attend a meeting
in Wroclaw on Tuesday at
:which the cornerstone of a mon-
urnent will be laid as part of the.
.Government's celebration oP the
1,OOOth anniversary of naticn-
hood. The church, at the same
time, is marking the 1,000th an-
niversary of C}uistianity in Po-
land,
The ceremony, the Archbishop
sale}, "is not a symbol of thel
'holy unity of Christ's church inl
,I'olaa~d." rj[e added; : "We want.
,to state that this event has -been)
organized without. knowledge ofd
she church hierarchy. and out-~
side its jurisdiction. We have
~ not encouraged and we do not
teztcours..~e participation Sn cele?
Asserts Event Was Ovga-liistd~
Withoat Clearc~i Knaw}~cdge~~,;
worshiping in makeshift church.i
es. The Office oP Religious Af-
fairs not onl~+ does not give per-
mission but'~~has-.even ordered
that 'a church under Construe:.-
tion be dismantled to its foun~
dation: ` . ? .
Pro -Government ~t5 in
Wro~rav3'~g'~h zed the memo-
r a pre ect to commemorate a
statement by Pope John than
the city was in the "Western
territories,: recovered after cen-
turies." Wrde3aw is 185 miles
southwest oP Warsaw in an arefi.:,
transferred -from Germanyy to
1'piand after World War TI?
Archbishop Kominek spurned
AreB-bi~han 2ioleslaw KdtnLYek ~ Cardinal Wyszynski, whose,cele-
~bratfons aP the millenium of
clear:' , : .
In a letter' to priests; Arch-
bishop ?Kominek declared that
".we havebeen asking permission
for years from the' Government
Office aE Religious .Affairs to
build . a few . new.:churches ,in
Wraclaw'and vicinity, which. we
would like to ded}cate_ to the
memory'of Pope John XXIIL"
"Thousands . oP ~. people ' were
Polish Christianity have touched
off .clashes between Catholics-
and the police..
Speaking in I{ielce, gbout 100.
miles south of Warsaw, Cards-
nal Wyszynski told 20,000 cheer-;
ing followers last night; "How
frivolous are these . suspicions
of small- people -who think that
we want through .our :celebrate,
or want so}nehow a >r',/ number abnut 30 mi] 1.7 nn, n f who m
s.';.-,,; ; million nti11 prrxctic? their roli-
,~ion. Islam has always been the rallying
point of the peoples of Central Asia ay,ainst
the Russian conquest, and later for rebel-
lions against Russian rule.. Wh o n Soviet
Russian armies rcinvaded Central Asia in 1918
to crush the newly independent Muslim states,
the long 13astnanhi Rebellion ensued, crntinu-
ing intermittently until the thirties. It
was effectively crushed by 1931, when the'
last important rebel loader, Ibrahim A eg,
Commander of the Muslim Liberation Army of.
Bukhara, was captured and shot; but between
1930 and 1933 alone, according to Kommunist
Tadzhikistana, Februarg 16, 1956, sixty-six''
Muslim rebel bands were exterminated.
As in Algeria, the link between Islam and
suppressed nationalism is both subtle an d
strong. An article in Kom~nunist Uzbekistana,
No. 10, 1963, complained:
"One of the favorite methods of the'
Muslim priesthood in adapting the re-
ligion of Islam to socialist reality
is their attempt to endox all religious-
reactionary-traditions, rites and cu s-
tems with the appearance of ~national'-
traditions... Some intelligent peo-
ple, often even Communists alth ou~gh
they consider themselves to be athe-
ists, observe religious rituals inside
their families, mistakenly considering
that these are ?national' rituals."
The celebration of the Muslim ho]y season
of Ramadan and other feasts is periodically
condemned by the Russian authorities because
it takes xorkora away from ~roduction.'P3ear-
ly .~il.l the cotton produced for Russian in-
dustry is grown in the predominantly Muslim
republics.
The sippression of Islam i s more diffi-
cult because of the strong solidarity of its
predominantly Asian adherents against the
European colonists, and Russian ignorance cQ'
the native languages. Ono reads of mosques
being closed "at the request of believers"
(Komrm~nist Tadzhikistana, March 17, 19b1),
but other articles in the press reveal pop-
ular collusion to keep mosques operating se-
c retly. The January 1964 i s-sue of Komrma-
nist, Moscow, complained that many Muslim
religious leaders were operating illegally,
that some mosques officially "not in use"
were being used, pilgrimages to noted
"mazars" (mausoleums) were continuing, and
mosq~ies were secretly operating disguised as
tea-houses, clubs, and museums. The Febru-
ary 1961. issue of the atheist ,journal SM-
ence
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'cultural events were permitted in towns with
a large Jewish population. One Yiddish the-
ater is said to exist in the Ukraine, a n d
there is one Yiddish journal, Sovet3she Heim-.
which, however, is devoted largely to
denunciations of foreign charges of Soviet
anti-Semitism, polemics against Zionism, and
the advancement of other Soviet policies.
Official suspicion c~' Jews has led to their
exclusion from certain sensitive types of
employment in the government. The Russian
defector Igor Gouzenko recalls that the ruth-
less purge of Jews from the ranks o f th
diplomatic service and other government bu-
reaus began under Stalin. The Yugoslav Com-
munist D~ilas (in Conversations With Stalin,
New York, 1962, page 170 relates the fol-
lowing incident during his official vi s i t
to the USSR after the war;
rrLesakov (a Russian official)...boasted
of how Comrade Zhdanov purged all the
Jews from the apparatus of the Central
Committee. ...Lesakov told me...about
the Assistant Chief of the General
Staff, General Antonov; 'Imagine, he
was exposed as being of Jewish origin.r*
The continued presence on the Central Com-
mittee (until dismissed in 1957) of Lazar
Kaganovich, despite the above comments,
showed that by completely renouncing a 11
Jewish affiliations and p ossessing a good
political background, a Jew could overcome
the discrimination. When questioned by
journalists in Paris on April 8, 296k, c on-
cerrring official discrimination against Jews,
Alexey Adzhubey, editor of Izvestiva. listed
a number of prominent Jewish scientists,
writers, theatrical artists, and a Jewish
Vice-Minister, Dymshits. He was evasive,
however, when asked to name a single ;yaun a
Jew in the diplomatic~servic?, in an imp~r-
tant scientific position, or in the army of-
ficer corps.
Discrimination is facilitated by the in-
ternal passport, required at age 16 of all
persons living in or near towns. This pass-
port lists the bearerts "n ationalit yr' on
page 5. All such Jews therefore must bear
a passport with the designation "Jew." Va-
rious reliable Soviet sources have admitted
in interviows that there is a q not a on the
number of Jewish applicants to u niversitq
study in certain preferred professions, but
paint out that Jews are still greatly over-
represented in higher education with respect
to their proportion to the total population.
By virtue of their higher incomes and con-
centration in cities, Jews enjoy a "natural"
advantage in access to universities, resultr
ing in an aceidental disadvantage to nan-
Jews which the 5aviet Government fee 1 s i t
must correct to a certain extent. Although
those disabilities apply irrespective of re-
ligious practice, the religious Jew suffers
additional discrimination.
Though offset considerably by the prom-
inence of Jews in the early Russian Comm u-
nist Party, the traditional trading and lerri-
ing vocation of the bulk of the Jewish pop-
ulation of Europe made them the natural tar-
gets of Communist ideology. Among Karl
Marxts many denunciations of the role of Jews
in society is. the following:
"What i s the world basis o f Jewry?
Practical need, avarice. What is the
world religion of the Jew? Haggling.
What is his earthly God? Money. ...
The emancipation of the Jews in itsfY-
nal meaning is the emancipation oP man-
kind from the Jews."
---Karl Marx and Friedrich En els;
istorisch-Kritisc e G esa mt-
AUSRa e. Im uftrag des arx--'.
Engels Institute, M?skau, her-
ausgegeben von D. R~asanow, I.
Abt. I, 1, page 601.
This quotation appeared in the anti-Semitic
book Judaism Without Embellishment b y T.
Kiehko, published i n December 1963 b y the
Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and withdrawn
in April 196t, by the Soviet Government after
world-wide protest. The book repeated at-
tacks against Judaism, Zionism, and alleged
blackmarketing by Jews which had appeared in
dozens of Soviet provincial newspapers in
recent years. Similar books have been pub-
lished which vilify other religious groups
as well, but Kichkots work drew immediate
foreign attention because of the offensive
cartoons, most of which featured exaggerated
Semitic facial features in the mariner of Wazi
caricatures.
Two other attacks against Judaism, The
~eactionary Essence of Judaism and o v a-
tion in ,the New Year had appeared previous].'
in Russian.
A sgnagogue was burned by a mob in Mala-
khovka, near Moscow, irY 1962, the xf.fe of
its caretaker apparently killed, and anti-
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Semitic leaflets scattered. A visitor to
the Ianingrad synagogue in 1962 noticed that
all the wifidows on one side had bcer- replaced
and additional replacements were stacked in-
side in case of emergency. Gang attacks on
synagogues have also bean repartad Fran other
parts of Russia.
The Economic Trials Tho traditional
commercial experience of most Jews naturally
resulted in their concentration fn the state
trading network of the Soviet Union -the
weakest area of the Soviet economy. The
high prices and shortages of consumer goods
have tended to focus popular exasperation
against the government, particularly in re-
cent years. The authorities have attempted
to divert popular anger to more convenient
scapegoats -- dishonest employees o f state
trading o~ztlets selling merchandise "out the
back door" on the black market, etc. Th e
Soviet press strove to emphasize the Jewish
background of the defendants in most cases.
7n the cane of soma Georp_,ian Jews whose ex-
otic nvnes would not indicate even to a Rus-
sian that they xere Jews, the press empha-
sized the discovery of Jewish religious ar-
ticles and publications among their posses-
sions.
The reasons for this emphasis are ob-
scure, but it is commas knoxlAdge that there
has boon a phenomenal rise i n "e c o n o m i-c
crimes" in the Soviet Union ~ all sections
of the population. Iasi year 16,000 offi-
cials worn sacked in Kazakhstan alone for
corruption. Some observers believe that the
government is attempting to discourage Rus-
sians and Ukrainians from speculation by
branding such activity as "Jewish" arxihence
unpatriotic and "alien."
3. The Protestants and "Sectarians" The
largest protestant group in the USSR is the
Baptists, who, i n conversations with for-
eigners, have claimed a membership of
1,,000,000, mostly in Russia, g r o u po d i n
5,400 communities. There are thought to be
about 1,000,000 Iutherans, who have abeorbed
the smaller Methodist groups. Both of these
live mostly in the Raltic States. There era
several million "Old Relievers," an agRre-
-pate of offshoots from the Orthodox Church.
;; r,T t,},ens prntont,:~rtt grog{>n rtrd lictmnec~l
>s legitimutU rcrl.i.nirnre orpunizr~l;lon9 by lha~
government. In addition, however, there are`
some small sects, known as "Sectarians;'
which have boon refused liconoea as roliPi,nun __
organizations and have been designated anti-
stato organizations because of beliefs which
challenge the aGthority of the Soviet Gov-
ernment. The most important of these is the
Jchovah~s Witnesses, who seem to thrive on
the most severe persecution meted out to anq
religious group in the USSR. The mysterious
ability of the Witnesses even to operate
clandestine printing presses -- in a country
whore printing or reproduction a qui p most
must be registered with the police - is es-
pecially annoying to the police. Tho Jeho-
vah~s Witnesses' open ro~ection of the au-
thority of any state, and the location of
their headquarters in Brooklyn, U.SA., casts
than in the role of an anti-state underground
political organization in the eyes of the
Soviet Government. The Soviet press con-
tains frequents mention of trims of Jehovah?s
Witnesses, including the seizure of their
children (a fate suffered by other sects as
well). Tho following article in Tru De-
cember 26, I962, reporting the arrest of some
Jehovah~s Witnesses is typical of many:
"The sect of Johovah~s Witnesses is
actually not a religious but a politi-
cal organization. Its heads in Brook-
lyn (telex York USA) worked out sppecial
instructions ~'or strict secrecy in re-
gard to all the work of the Witnesses
and assessed for coded :reports cover-
ing all their day-today work... De-
testing Soviet rule and the socialist
camp, the heads of the Jehovah~s Wit-
nesses sect order its members to col-
lect political and economic informa-
tion for the Witnosses~ center in
Brooklyn, USA, and to spread ]aping,
panic rumors. ,..They established
underground printing presses in the
villages of the Irkutsk and Trans-
Carpathian Oblasts. There they re-
produced the 'literatures which they
received from the USA."
A case was reported on February 8, 1964,
in Kazakhstansk ya Pravda. Four members of
a religious sect known as the True Orthodox
Believers had bean sentenced to terms of 3
to 7 years imprisonment in " a corrective
labor colony of strict regime" for "anti-
Soviet propaganda and agitation, and th e
manufacture, storage, and distribution of
literature of a slanderous nature, for lead-
ership of an undergrrnand sect, the work of
which, done under thc+ fn~i:~e of the exorcise
of ro7i.F;lr,un s?l,tnn, ittvolvrxi 1.n,lttr~~ to the
health nf, rind infringement of the rights of,
citizens." Tho phrar9e "rights of citizens"
usually means the "right" of children not to
have religious instruction.
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In such cases, and the case of some mem-
bers of an "outlawed fanatical sect of Re-
formed Adventists" arrested in Kutai s i
(Zama Vastoka, October 25, 1963), the cul-
prits are tried under the laws applicable to
political criminals.
Some "Old Believers" and a few Orthodox
monks fled decades ago into t h e Siberian
+ taiga, there to live their version of the
Christian life without giving trouble to ang-
one or suffering hindrance themselves. There
they led a pioneer existence, cut off from
the world. But recently some of these set-
tlements were discovered by Soviet aerial
reconnaissance in the forests and bogs along
the remote Dubches River, and presumably
liquidated.
The Soviet press is not above twisting a
news story in order to damage the reputation
of the sectarians:
"...S. Zagoruyko, special correspond-
: ent of the newspaper Sovetskaya Kul~-
tura, has studied only super~'ic3~Ty
~1 a case of the murder of the militant
atheist Bel~kov in Biysk by his neigh-
bor the wild fanatic S hegurov, a n d
cared the murderer a sectarian and his
teachers -- sectarian preachers. And
yet it was obvious that the crime was
committed by a fanatical member of the
['Russian)' Orthodox faith. ...Such
approaches as this on],q give our ene-
mi~s a chance to discredit our props-
'.. Banda."
---I. Uzkov in Nauka i Reli ire, Mos-
cox, No. 3,19
The regime seems embarrassed by the fact
that the sectarians and religious people
generally, are better behaved than the rest
of the population. Izvestiya on December
11, 1963 reported "disgraceful rumors (which
turned out to be unjustified) in a certain
plant that one of the workers was a sectarian,
and quoted his accusers as folloxs:
"A sect member! A really inveterate
onel And all his habits are those of
sect membersl Judge for yourselves:
He doesn't drink; he Gantt stand to-
bacco; and, thirdly, he doesn't curse.
So what more do you need? Heta obvi-
ously a sect membert"
The Soviet press contains many reports of
Baptists gaining. influence ovor youth, par-
ticularly i.n rural areas. Leninsk via Smena
complained on February 25, 1964, concerning
Baptist proselyting in Karaganda, that "W e
are losing while they are gaining." Reports
of such religious activity in rural area a
are usually coupled with charges of laxity
on the part of the lot al officials, some of
whom are accused of sympathizing with t h e
religious gro~xps. Occasionally groups of
Baptists break away from the'bfficial," li-
censed Baptist organization in order to es-
cape close surveillance of their missionary
activity. Komsomolets Uzbekistana on Feb-
ruary 27, 1964, described atrial of Baptists
in Tashkent:
"...a group of Baptists which had split
away from the official community m e t
secretly in apartments and organized
group-listening to r a d i o broadcasts
from abroad. Frorn abroad they also
received illegal literature: pamphlets,
all sorts of messages and 'divine'
poems and songs which contained slan-
ders of Soviet reality, and calls to
unite and take action under the banner
of religious convictions again st the
existing order."
"Slanders of Soviet reality" (i.e., crit~ I
icism of conditions within the USSR) is a
cliche which Drops up frequently in charges i
against minority religions, although they e
is no law containing this phrase. T h e : e
Baptists were accused of reproducing reli-
gious sermons on tape and in manuscript faun.
Despite the Constitutional guarantee of free-
dom of speech, one of the most serious crimes E
in the Soviet Union fa the unauthorized pos- ?
session of the means to print anything, even r
if the material printed in itself violates
no law. Sovetskaya Kul'tura, on February 3,
1962, reported that a group of evangelists ''
were sentenced to exile in "a special, re-
mote place with obligatory assignment to work
at the place of settlement." They were sen-
tenced under the sweeping "Parasite" law,
which, though generally applicable to unem-~
ployed persons who refuse to accept ,j o b;~
provided by the state, has been used to ex-
ile anyone incurring the displeasure of the
Communist officials. In this case the aa>-
title admitted that the accused did w ork,
but "only for the sake of appearances."
Again the reason for the sever s sonte nce
seems to have been the acquisition of tape
recorders, even though the content of t h e
tapes and confiscated literature w a s aai d
merely to have been "pessimistic ...anti -
social, and religious."
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t,. The Roman Catholics As a result of
the Russian military occupation of foreign
territory after World War II, between 7 and
8 million Roman Catholics are ra,r under Rus-
sian rule, nearly all in former eastern Po-
land (West Ukraine) and Lithuania, which is
81.2 per cent Catholic. Soviet policy to-
ward those two areas is strikingly different?
In the Wost Ukraine, the Catholics wero mc~
bers of the Uniat branch of the C a t h o li e
Church, which nharos soma of the rites of the
Russian Orthodox. The Soviet Government
simply abolished the Uniat Church and trans-
ferred its members and property to the Rus-
sian Orthodox Church. It demanded that the
Uniat clergy renounce allegiance to Rome and
submit to the jurisdiction o f t h e Russian
Orthodox Church. While some priests did in
fact abjure Roma, many, along wit h t h e i r
bishops, refused and were a r r e s t e d along
with the Uniat archbishop S 1 i py i, who wa s
eventually released to Rome in 1 ate 1963?
idaz~y churches were closed a nd priests shot
or deported, usually without t h e lip serv-
ice to Soviot law practiced elsewhere. This
policy of ropreasion continues to thin day.
Tho West [Jkrainians resisted the Soviot
occupation--often violently--an d guerrilla
bands led by Stepan Bandera (eventually mur-
dered by Soviet secret police assassin Bog-
dan Stashinskiy in Munich in 1960) f ou g h t
ir, the forests for some years. Religious
feelings stiffened West Ukrainian opposition.
The feeling between the Russian Communist
authorities and their new West U k r a i n i a n
Uniat subjects is best illustrated b y t h a
following bit of evening "entertainment"
broadcast by the Lvov radio January 12, 1957
in reply to an anonymous threatening letter
from a Uniat Catholic:
"In the tone of your warning is felt
a hint to the fate of Yaroslav Galan,
murdered by a nationalist Uniat bandit
+We have received an order to
kill Galan,p answered the bandit to
the question of the prosecutor, 0be-
cause he was dangerous to the Vatican.
The bandits we mean are the Ukrainian
bourgeois nationalists,the members of
the Bandera organization which in the
mind of every decent man long ago be-
came closely associated by their crim-
inal relationship with the black Jesuit
and Uniat ravens... I probably make
no mistake if I take it you also ba-
lorg to the Vatican breed of the env-
:ws ~:s c: tre people... F~tlt, alas, you
c.rd tae weak and your hands are tea
short and our people h a v e s formida-
ble do~ully stick for you annkvo. Try
to bite and you wi].1 be g'r a w e d b y
your loathesomo Hack and thing s will
be all over for you."
There were about 600 former Uniat churches
in operation in 1962. Of the 25-30 Catholic
churches in Lvov in 19k6, there are now three.
Tho population is still far more religious
than that of any other part of the USSR. The
weekly Moscow magazine 0,~!anyek reported i n
its No. G,6 November 1963 issue the discovery
of a secret cloister containing ten nuns in
Lvov. The article alleged that flags of
the lkrainian nationalist partisan leader
Bandera were found there.
On the other hand, in Lithuania, after an
initial persecution in which about 1,200
priosts were shot or deported, its severity
was reduced, perhaps because of a Russian
fear of provoking the population to the vi-
olence experienced in the West Ukradne, par-
ticularly in view of the much greater pro-
portion of Catholics in Lithuania. Accord-
ing to the Elta Press, a news service of the
Ilthuanian College of St. Vladimir. in Rome,
greater freedom of religion became notices-
blv in 1959? On April 19, 1952, Tass re-
ported that fourteen Catholic priests had
graduated from a local seminary, claiming
that it was the twelfth such graduation since
the war. A Lithuanian Soviet broadcast at
that time claimed that 1,000 priests and
five bishops were working in Lithuania. This
is about 1/4 the ratio of priests to Catho-
lie population in the United States. I n
1962 this number had dwindled to about 800,
with about 500 churches in operation. Thera
is one seminary at Kaunas. Only two priests
hays been allowed to travel t o R o m e since
191,1,., and contacts era virtually cut off.
The Soviot authorities have stress?i more
subtle means of reducing religion In Lithua-
nia in recent years. In a ddition to the
usual propaganda and restrictions on the ac-
tivity of the clergy, t,hoy have triad to
promote a rump "National Lithuanian Catholic
Church" independent of Rome. It has thus
far been unsuccessful.
As in the case of the other minority re
ligions, nationalism appears to be the main
worry of~the occupying Russian authorities.
"The Catholic priosts now drag in the thesis
that the concept of a Lithuanian patriot
nocoasarily includes hie Catholic conacianca
and aontimvnto," ~ Sovntsk;~ya_~_.i,t
on December 19, 1963?
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Both at home and abroad, Soviet p ropa-
ganda attempts to discredit the Catholic
Church by associating it with the Nazis and
their allies in World Wax IT.#
5. Buddhists Little i s known about
the condition of the Buddhists in the USSR.
The Kren2lin, for external propaganda purposes
and to show that religious freedom is granted
to B~zddhists in the USSR, occasionally has the
abbot of Ivolga I,~vnasery, the abbot of Aginsk
Lamasery, and Bandido Khambo Lama Eshi-Dori
Sharapov (Chairman of the Central Buddhist
Religious Board) attend international meet-
ings of Buddhists. The three went to the
Fourth Conference of the World Fellowship of
Buddhists held in Katmandu, Nepal, in Novear
ber 195b. They also attended the ceremonies
in New Delhi venerating the 2 500th anniver
sary of the death of Buddha. Sharapov led
a delegation of Buddhists to Ceylon in 1960
and extended his trip to Burma and Cambodia,
assuring everyone that "the Buddhists in the
USSR have their own monuments, temples and
other places of worship where they carry out
their rites, led by lamas... Monuments and'
shrines are carefully preserved."
Policy towards Buddhism has been one of
fluctuation. A Congress of Soviet Stxd-
dhists was actually held in Moscow the win-
ter of 1926-27. Good relations, however,
came to an end during the period of collec-
tivization and political purges, when Bud-
dhist doctrines weere attacked on the ground
that they were against the doctrine of dia-
lectical materialism. These attacks, how-
(~) Such charges are best refuted by a list
of the titles of some of the propaganda books
issued in the Third Reich: "Jesuitism As a
Peril to the State," "Rome Against the Reich,"
aeThe Catholic Church As a Peril To the Statey"
"Hail Gertnar2y: Out With the Jesuits!" (cited
in Der Nationalsozialismuss Dokument?, e d.
by Walther Hofer, Frankfurt, 1957, pageslb2-
163). The Munich Gestapo referred to the
circular of Pope Pius .XI read in German Ro-
man Catholic churches in 1937 as containing
"highly treasonable attacks against the na-
tional socialist state." (Ibid., page 153)
ever, eased off by 1930 since too many Mon-
golian lamas began to emigrate to China. An-
other cyole of persecution began in 1937,
and during World War II, the Kalmyke in Eu-
ropean Russia suffered the most among t h e
Buddhists in the Soviet Union. Currently,
Saviet propagandists continue to assert that
Buddhism has quits a large follrnring in the
USSR and that the Buddhists ideals for peace
are the same as the peace policies of t h e
Communist Bloc.
b. The Armenian Orthodox The Armenian
Orthodox Church is currently never criticized
by name, since it is the subject of an im-
portant Soviet campaign to induce Armenians
to resettle in the USSR and to gain control
of Armenian clergy abroad. In 1955, using
the numerous obedient "votest0 of Soviet Ar-
menians, the Communists succeeded in arrang-
ing the election, with the participation of
non-Soviet Armenians, of a Soviet puppet
priest in Rumania as the new Katholikos, ar
head, of the Armenian Church. His dead pred-
ecessor, though no puppet, was resident in
the USSR.
The Armenian Orthodox Church received a
substantial financial gift some years ago
from the Soviet Government for operating ex-
penses and for restoration of the cathedral
at Echmiadzin. Rich foreign Armenians, in-
cluding Americans, have also contribute d
large sums to the Soviet Armenian Orthodox
Church. The favoritism shown the Armenian
Church is reflected by the fact that such do-
nations in the past by rich foreigners to the
Protestant groups have been regarded by the
Communists as signs of treasonable ca~2r2ec-
tions.
A broadcast in May 1956 reported an in-
terview with then Premier Bulganin in which
the Katholikos discussed closer ties with
Armenians abroad in ecclesi~sti.cat axed "other"
222atters. Bulganin cor2anentedr tOVery good.
This fully correspondends with the pres ont
paLi.cy of the Soviet Union."
There is a religious higher school which
the ICathol3,kos claimed would have 100 students
by 1958? The present attendance is not }cnomrn.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/06/28 :CIA-RDP78-03061A000400010029-7