gloom of the Russian countryside, where side by side with the pagan nomads swarmed great and varied multitudes of "fiends."
At last the new age has come of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of communism, and sovietism, of the all-powerful, blood-soaked Soviets, at the head of which appeared individuals stripped of religion, prejudice, traditions, old pagan and more recent pagan customs. There has come the rule of materialistic thought, the authority of speculative philosophy, the efforts for the well-being of the body! There is no soul, there is only a "vapour"! Thus spoke the old, scarcely literate, obscure Russian nihilists who left their workshops, mines, or prisons. Thus spoke also, although in another rhetorical form, the "People's Commissars" and dictators while liberating from the bodies of millions of Russians this "vapour."
There has thus arrived the era of profound and true rationalism and radicalism. One would think, therefore, that all religious sects, worships, and prejudices had disappeared from the horizon, that all those wizards, sorcerers, witches, and priests of the old gods had been compelled to put a violent end to their obscure lives.
But reality presents an entirely different picture.
Never before flourished In such fame and such glory the powerful mystic charms of the Church. Never before have the once secret Sectarian temples attained to such gower, have the mysteries of the "floggers"
