The Russian Orthodox Church suffering one of the greatest martydoms in Christian history at the hands of the Soviets.
They were specifically targeted for these mass murders.
During the purges of 1937 and 1938, church documents record that 168,300 Russian Orthodox clergy were arrested. Of these, over 100,000 were shot. (This doesn’t count many monks & nuns)
Alexander Yakovlev, the head of the Commission for Rehabilitating Victims of Political Repression (in the modern Russian government) has stated that the number of monks, nuns and priests killed in the purges is over 200,000.
About 600 bishops of both the Orthodox and the Renovationists were killed.
Despite all of this carnage, Stalin had ingeniously kept alive a handful of bishops and priests as trump cards for possible use in the future. These were not clergymen noted for their forthright resistance to communism. Quite the contrary. For the most part, and especially in the higher ranks, they were the "Sergianists," the followers of Metropolitan Sergius, who had stated in 1927 that the Russian Orthodox Church must maintain absolute loyalty to the Soviet State and Soviet leadership: "Your joys are our joys, your sorrows our sorrows," he wrote in his infamous declaration of submission to Soviet control
>>During the purges of 1937 and 1938, church documents record that 168,300 Russian Orthodox clergy were arrested. Of these, over 100,000 were shot. (This doesn’t count many monks & nuns)
It is worth noting that the same thing was happening to Spanish Catholic clergy at about the same time at the hands of the Soviets’ friends the Spanish Reds, who were getting a lot of advice and armaments from the Soviets. The Spanish Civil War, like most, wasn’t (civil).