Religious leaders have denounced Russia's 1917 communist revolution as a “Western plot” to destroy the country.
The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), an autonomous branch of the Russian Orthodox Church, claimed that Russian elites brain-washed by “Westernism” plunged Russia into political turmoil.
“[Western-educated elites] pushed Russia into the abyss with suicidal persistence,” the ROCOR bishops' synod said in a statement. “They persuaded the Russian people to renounce their faith, their king and their homeland."
The church also called for the body of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin to be removed from Moscow's Red Square as “a symbol of reconciliation” to mark 100 years since the revolution.
It said Moscow should be “liberated” from the body of “the greatest persecutor and tormentor of the twentieth century.”
The church isn't alone in suspecting the 1917 revolutions were part of a western plot. In an online poll conducted by Russia's Komsomolkaya Pravda newspaper, 32.7 percent of respondents said they believed that Western agents were the main cause of the 1917 February revolution, which triggered the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II.
A further 27. 7 percent said that
“ordinary people had grown tired of autocrats,” while 15.7
percent blamed the country's intelligentsia.
