In the Russian city of Shuya, eight Russian Orthodox priests, two laymen, and one woman were sentenced to death for resisting the state confiscation of church property.
The episode was part of the cynical 1922 Soviet campaign to confiscate the wealth of the Russian Orthodox Church on the pretext of famine relief, a famine that Soviet policies and ineptitude had itself brought about. No amount of stored church wealth was going to address what the Soviets had brought about and the effort has been argued simply as an excuse to attempt to break the back of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Lenin demanded the death penalty and Trotsky, who of course would ultimately lose his life as well at the hands of Soviet policy, concurred, but Politburo member Lev Kamenev intervened, saving the lives of the laypersons and three of the priests. While Lenin was the dictator of the Soviet Union at the time, Soviet power was not yet as fully concentrated as it would become under Stalin, such that Kamenev could intervene.
Lenin was days away from a stroke at the time, and Kamenev would rise to be the acting head of the Soviet Union as a result in 1923 and 1924. In that role, he sided with Stalin against Trotsky. In 1936, he was a victim of one of Stalin's purges.
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