'Johnists'

In muddy bleak Tiomne, near Uman, a church was crowded last week. Dingy communicants, bearded, bright-eyed, breathless, gazed in fascination at a plain wooden table which stood before the altar. A young man lay across the table. His throat was bared.

The churchgoers of Tiomne do not belong to Russia's Greek Orthodox Church. They are "Johnists," followers of John Kronstadsky, an obscure ecstatic whose chief tenet was that life is intolerable in this worst of all possible worlds, and that the coming of the Soviet was God's punishment for the sins of this world.

Chief of the "Johnists" in Tiomne was Ivan Skripnik, onetime policeman. Igor Serednitzky, a slow-witted peasant, was his chief disciple. So black did life seem to "Johnists" Skripnik and Serednitzky and their followers last week that it wa's decided to send a messenger to heaven. Looking about him, Ivan Skripnik chose young Gregory Romashevsky to act as this messenger. Romashevsky blanched but accepted, prepared to die. He lay down on the table in the mean wooden house that serves the Johnists for a church. By his head was laid an old butcher knife, carefully sharpened.

Ivan Skripnik prayed and chanted over him. Igor Serednitzky mumbled responses. The rest of the Johnists bit their lips and waited.

Ivan Skripnik took up the knife. Gregory Romashevsky said: "I am strangely torn between the desire of my soul for heaven, and the desire of my body for earth. Please pray once more."

Ivan Skripnik slowly laid down the knife, prayed again. Gregory Romashevsky's mental conflict ceased, he desired to live. Springing up, he plunged the sacrificial knife into Ivan Skripnik and also into Igor Serednitzky. Both were dead when Soviet police arrived.