Konstantin Budkevich

Konstantin Budkevich, also known as Konstanty Romuald Budkiewicz; June 19, 1867, – March 31, 1923) was a Catholic priest executed by the OGPU for organizing nonviolent resistance against the First Soviet anti-religious campaign.

At the time, St. Petersburg was the center of the Empire's largest Polish community outside of Congress Poland and Budkiewicz desired to prevent the children of his parish from the anti-Polish and anti-Catholic propaganda of the State-run school system.

[3] Following the February Revolution, then Archbishop Eduard von der Ropp, decreed that all his priests would take a role in organizing a Christian Democratic Party to participate in the planned Russian Constituent Assembly.

According to Francis McCullagh, The Bolsheviks were not long in power before they realized that this polite and gentle-mannered Monsignor was the backbone of all the legitimate resistance offered to some of their impossible decrees by the Catholic clergy of Petrograd.

Normal judicial procedures did not restrict revolutionary tribunals at all; in fact, the prosecutor N.V. Krylenko, stated that the courts could trample upon the rights of classes other than the proletariat.

Western observers found the setting – the grand ballroom of a former Noblemen's Club, with painted cherubs on the ceiling – singularly inappropriate for such a solemn event.

[7]New York Herald correspondent Francis McCullagh, who was present at the trial, later described its fourth day as follows: Krylenko, who began to speak at 6:10 PM, was moderate enough at first, but quickly launched into an attack on religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular.

Circumstances compelled him to restrain himself, but he conveyed, somehow, the impression of having it in him to pierce Bolshevism with a satire keener than a rapier; and it surely is one of the ironies of life that while Leninism is being dealt with almost exclusively by non-Russians who do not know much about it, or by Russians whose absence abroad has made them equally ignorant, this accomplished man, who knew Red Russia through and through, should first have been prevented by his position from telling all he knew about it, and should then have had his brains blown out by an official assassin.

According to Christopher Lawrence Zugger, The Vatican, Germany, Poland, Great Britain, and the United States undertook frantic efforts to save the Archbishop and his chancellor.

In Moscow, the ministers from the Polish, British, Czechoslovak, and Italian missions appealed "on the grounds of humanity," and Poland offered to exchange any prisoner to save the archbishop and the monsignor.

These appeals were for naught: Pravda editorialized on March 30 that the tribunal was defending the rights of the workers, who had been oppressed by the bourgeois system for centuries with the aid of priests.

Some secular prisoners who were with us, Russians and non-Catholics, and who had continually observed his behavior, wondered with great admiration at him because he was so peaceful; they called him happy because he suffered and died for a good cause.

[12] According to Christopher Zugger, On Easter Sunday, the world was told that the Monsignor was still alive, and Pope Pius XI publicly prayed at St. Peter's that the Soviets would spare his life.

In reply to an appeal from the rabbis of New York City to spare Budkiewicz's life, Pravda wrote a blistering editorial against 'Jewish bankers who rule the world' and bluntly warned that the Soviets would kill Jewish opponents of the Revolution as well.

To make matters worse, Cardinal Gasparri had just finished reading a note from the Soviets saying that "everything was proceeding satisfactorily" when he was handed the telegram announcing the execution.

[13]News of Budkevich's execution caused turmoil in France, whose Catholic population deplored the incident and saw it as an example of the police state tactics of the new Soviet Union.

[15] On 10 April 1923, Soviet Foreign Commissar Georgy Chicherin wrote a letter to fellow Politburo member Joseph Stalin, in which he described the political fallout from the death of Budkiewicz.

In Westminster, Labour MPs had been flooded by petitions "demanding the defense of Cieplak and Budkiewicz", by "worker's organizations", "dying socialists", and "professionalists".

Due to Budkevich's execution, the meeting had been cancelled and the senator had been forced to indefinitely postpone the founding of a committee to press for diplomatic negotiations.