The sage needs to hit the fool with his stick, with his weapon.

Revelations from the Russian Archives
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Letter from Gorky to Stalin

Dear Iosif Vissarionovich:
     ....

     The emigre and bourgeois press bases its perception of
Soviet reality almost entirely on the negative information which
is published by our own press for self-criticism with the aim of
education and agitation....... 

It is furthermore imperative to put the propaganda of
atheism on solid ground.  You won't achieve much with the weapons
of Marx and materialism, as we have seen.  Materialism and
religion are two different planes and they don't coincide.  If a
fool speaks from the heavens and the sage from a factory--they
won't understand one another.  The sage needs to hit the fool
with his stick, with his weapon.

     For this reason, there should be courses set up at the
Communist Academy which would not only treat the history of
religion, and mainly the history of the Christian church, i.e.,
the study of church history as politics.

     We need to know the "fathers of the church," the apologists
of Christianity, especially indispensable to the study of the
history of Catholicism, the most powerful and intellectual church
organization whose political significance is quite clear.  We
need to know the history of church schisms, heresies, the
Inquisition, the "religious" wars, etc.  Every quotation by a
believer is easily countered with dozens of theological
quotations which contradict it.

     We cannot do without an edition of the "Bible" with critical
commentaries from the Tubingen school and books on criticism of
biblical texts, which could bring a very useful "confusion into
the minds" of believers.

     There is a fine role to be played here by a popular book on
the Taborites and the Husite movements.  It would be useful
to introduce here "The history of the peasant wars in Germany,"
the old book by Zimmerman.  Carefully edited, it would be very
useful for the minds.

     It is necessary to produce a book on the church's struggle
against science.

     Our youth is very poorly informed on questions of this
nature.  The "tendency" toward a religious disposition is very
noticeable--a natural result of developing individualism.  At
this time, as always, the young are in a hurry to find "the
definitive answer."

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