Monastery, Murder, Club

The doors of the centuries-old monastery in Kiev swung open, admitted a burly figure. In the dim chapel, flickering flames from the candles revealed him to be a Cheka guard. He leaned his gun against a statue, walked to a wall and snatched up a little gold lamp that had burned in front of a miracle-working ikon for 200 years.

A slender black-robed figure hurled himself upon the vandal. There was a slight scuffle, a slight thud and the cloaked figure of a priest lay face down on the stone floor . . . motionless. Other wraithlike figures scurried from out of the shadows and grouped themselves about the inert form. They carried him tenderly away. The guard laughed, adjusted his cap, slightly awry, swaggered out of the monastery. Soviet authorities said that 84-year-old Father Stanislav died of heart failure.

A larger crowd of heavily armed men stomped the mud and snow from their boots in the monastery and began to strip the church of its priceless possessions. Two hundred and forty priests, protesting to Heaven, were cast out into knee deep snow, and some were marched to prison. A riot followed . . . rifles barked . . . bullets bit into the crowd . . . soldiers dug bayonets into prone figures.

Last week the news of the raid and the changing of the monastery to a clubhouse filtered out of Russia. The Kiev monastery, once the goal of devout Russians, now resounds to dance music . . . there is a loud speaker on the radio . . . applause for the cinema . . . ash trays are handy for members.