E.N And not only the ones of Peter but also of the revolution.

V.E. We will leave the revolution in peace. We are at the present disclosing the reasons why it happened. So in part, it is of course needed to say that it is necessary for the living relations to be of the whole Body of the Church. This was highly difficult in practice. There is the well-known expression “the church in paralysis.” Incidentally, it is quoted without reference. But it belongs to the well-known Slavophile intellect, Yuri Fedorovich Samarin, a student of Homjakov. Even the homilies of the Living Word, the Gospel, is stifled by consistory conventionalism. It gradually kills the free breath of the Church Body. What can one say? We paid for this, but it was God’s treatment of the sickness, therefore not only should we not complain, but just the opposite, we need to thank the Lord. The deadened spirit of this conventionalism very quickly lowered some of the living movements of the Christian heart. Moreover, it is needed to have in sight this, that while it is not the main thing, it comes into force as the second thing. The clergy had little property and rights. The clergy all the time begged for something from those having power, especially the country clergy from the landowner. The city clergy were closer than anyone to the merchants of the middle hand, as the clergy were materially supported by these merchants. Not speaking about that, what existed was an incorrect church organization, in the sense that, for example, all of the higher clerical ordinations went by the decree of His Imperial Majesty and the monasteries and even communities were also founded by the decree of His Imperial Majesty all which were against the laws of the Ecumenical Councils. It all is, of course, absolutely not normal; therefore, it is not necessary to be too surprised when we, in the history of Renovation, read about all times the Church served man instead of God in Her collaboration with the Communist and repressive administration.. They [the clergy] occupied themselves with that to which they were used to under the synodal times; they just changed it from tsar.