ussia.

"Probably in no other country have religion and the church played
such an important role in the affairs of the state as in Russia up
to the very present time. Truly, it was not so much the force of
arms as that of ignorance which kept up the Czardom for hundreds of
years. The Feudal aristocracy realized the advantages to be derived
from keeping the minds of its slaves in darkness and superstition.
One of the most powerful weapons in the hands of aristocracy was
the Church, whose noble duty it was to sow and to propagate
ignorance. The Church was officially a part of the state. People
were forced to go to church; school children[10] were taught the
'Holy Law of God,' attacks against the church were punished as
attacks against the Czar.

"Religious ignorance of the masses was the greatest enemy of the
Socialists in their propaganda work; at every step they had to meet
and to combat the authority of God, in whose name the church
servants consecrated the yoke of the Czar and the landlords. It was
necessary to pull this poisonous tooth out of the jaws of the
state. Hence came the demand: 'Religion is a private
matter,'--private as opposed to state. It meant that the Church
should be separated from the state and be deprived from its
protection. It was a demand which, put to the Czarist government,
if granted would only facilitate the struggle against this very
religion.

"Similar demands have been put in the Socialist platforms of
Germany, Austria, and other countries which were confronted with
conditions like those in Russia. One of the immediate demands of
the French revolutionists of the nineteenth century was of this
nature.

"The November Revolution put the Russian workers in possession of
the machinery of the church. As a weapon of ignorance, it could not
be used against the exploiters; nor could it be destroyed by force.
Then the Russian workers declared religion a private matter,
thereby depriving it of State protection and forcing it under the
blows of scientific criticism, which will rapidly do away with the
reminders of the decrepit superstitions.

"In America religion always was 'a private matter.' It had never
been officially related to the state, but just the same it is now
being employed by the ruling class aga