The most convenient thing for the government would be to kill the non-resistant flogging him to death or some other means, as was done in former days. But to put a man openly to death because he believes in the creed as we all confess is impossible. To let a man alone who has refused obedience is also impossible. And so the government tries either to compel the man by ill-treatment to renounce Christ, or in some way or other to get rid of him unobserved, without openly putting him to death, and to hide somehow both the action and the man himself from other people. And so all kinds of shifts and wiles and cruelties are set on foot against him. They either sent him to the frontier or provoke him to insubordination, and then try him for breach of discipline and shut him up in the prison of the disciplinary battalion, where they can ill-treat him freely unseen by anyone, or they declare him mad and lock him up in a lunatic asylum.

The Kingdom of God is Within You (1893)

 

 

by Jonathan Kalmakoff
Doukhobor Genealogy Website