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Radzinksy in his biography of Stalin discussed the Russian Orthodox Christian Patriarch Metropolitan Sergei having a vision of the Lady of Kazan, very similar to the vision of the Lady of Fatima in Ourem, Portugal

Edvard Radzinsky, in his biography of Stalin, said that the Russian Orthodox Christian Patriarch, Metropolitan Sergei, had a vision of the Lady of Kazan, where she gave him instructions for how Russia could successfully defeat Germany. Stalin approved of Sergei openly discussing these visions and effectively gave the Russian Orthodox Christian Church the status of state religion in the Soviet Union during the war. Radzinsky wrote:

'Ilya, Metropolitan of the Lebanon Mountains, had shut himself up in an underground cell and gone without food or sleep while he knelt in prayer for Russia to the Mother of God. And he had a miraculous vision, which he described in a letter to the leaders of the Orthodox Church in Russia. On the third day the Mother of God had appeared to him in a pillar of fire and given him Gond's sentence: "The churches and monasteries must be reopened throughout the country. Priests must be brought back from imprisonment. Leningrad must not be surrendered, but the sacred icon of Our Lady of Kazan should be carried around the city boundary, taken on to Moscow, where a service should be held and thence to Stalingrad."

These words must have sounded like something from Stalin's forgotten childhood. A little while before he had proclaimed a "Godless Five Year Plan" by the end of which, in 1943, the last church was to be closed and the last priest destroyed. But now, the Boss decided to act on Ilya's vision.This was the beginning of his remarkable, short lived return to God.

Was it that? Had he seen the light? Had fear made him run to his Father? Had the Marxist God-Man decided to exploit belief in God? Whatever reason, after his mysterious retreat, he began making his peace with God. Something happened no historian has yet written about. On his orders many priests were brought back from the camps. In Leningrad, besieged by the Germans and gradually dying of hunger, the inhabitants were astounded and uplifted to see the wonder workign icon of Our Lady of Kazan brought out into the streets and borne in procession. From Leningrad the icon went to Moscow, and was then sent to besieged Stalingrad. It was displayed in each of the three great cities which had not surrendered to the enemy. Twenty thousand churches were reopened, including those of the Monastery of the Trinity and St Sergius, and the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev. He and his generals sent troops into battle with the words "God go with you"

On October 17 Pravda reported that the head of the Bolshevist Party [Stalin] had met the Interim Head of the Patriarchate, the Metropolitan Sergei-the first occasion of its kind since October 1917. In the course of their meeting, it was head, Stalin had "reacted sympathetically to the proposal to elect a Patriarch, and said that no obstacles would be put in its way by the government" Pages 472-473 Radzinsky Stalin

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Timothy Fitzpatrick