Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/121

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ASCETICS VERSUS ANTICHRIST
105

were terrorised by Tsarskoye Selo; he was arrested and imprisoned, but escaped, crossed the frontier, and published abroad his pamphlet on Grishka, full of invectives against the Tsaritsa, of personalities, expressing his own private views, but containing little real evidence.

During his stay on the Volga Hellodor had time to organise the Siberian attempt on his enemy, and another attempt in Petersburg, in which he was helped by the Metropolitan Makar and some of the Godfearing Moscow merchants of the "old belief."

Notwithstanding all attempts at suppression, the activity of Pimen and Hellodor created a sensation, a general curiosity regarding the "dark secret of Tsarskoye Selo," provoked several speeches in the Duma, a lively press campaign, and the formation of many groups for the purpose of struggling against Antichrist. The last embraced the Bishop of Novgorod Yevdokim, and the Bishop of Omsk Sylvester, who, later on, In 1919, Initiated the all-Russian Idea of Antichrist.