Every sport has its own immortal questions.
Is there more to Spygate than we were told? Were the 1981 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships fixed by the Soviets and East Germans? And, in figure skating: exactly what happened in Canton between Igor Shpilband and Marina Zueva in June 2012?
One year, they annexed the podium at Worlds. The next, everything began falling apart.
The coaching divorce remains a mystery that we don't have a clear answer for - as mysterious in hindsight as it was surprising at the time. It'd be like if, in a few months, Romain Haguenauer announced that he's leaving Marie-France Dubreuil's Ice Academy of Montreal and setting up his own school ten minutes down the road. Only a handful of coaches in history have ever reached Zueva and Shpilband's level of dominance, and only Natalia Dubova would see her own empire crumble so dramatically.
Years later, the scars still hadn't healed. During Sochi 2014, Zueva would tell Sport-Express that "if there is no unity in the coaching team, it is impossible to win", in a barely-veiled snipe at her former partner. Shpilband was even less civil when Time Magazine asked him about Zueva:

“I don’t have any relationship with her."

After Sochi's ice dance competition, Adrianne Lenda - Shpilband's co-coach and fiancee - offered her own uncharitable thoughts on Zueva:

“Did you see the articles today?” she asked. “Virtue and Moir felt their coach, Marina, was not in their corner, and they didn’t feel she wasn’t putting in the same effort she did in Vancouver.
“It’s probably true, because she tends to gravitate toward the more winning team, for selfish reasons.”

For people watching the Dubreuil-Lauzon-Haguenauer triumvirate crush all opposition beneath their blades, could you imagine Patrice Lauzon telling the media in Milan that Haguenauer was a glory hunter who undeservedly took all the credit for Papadakis/Cizeron's Olympic title?
While we might not fully know the truth behind Shpilband and Zueva's spilt, there's no reason not to try and piece the kaleidoscopic fragments of the story together. A combination of the passage of time, gradual internet link decay and a general effort to obscure the actual details mean it's nigh-impossible to create a full history, but there's enough left over to assemble the broader picture.

The backstory

For anyone who isn't familiar with the people we're about to discuss, refer to this fantastic writeup by Lionclaw21, on the leading coaches in the American ice dance scene.
Over their extensive careers, both of Arctic Edge's coaches - Marina Zueva and Igor Shpilband - became well known for their mastery of skating's behind-the-scenes games. After Zueva joined Shpilband in Michigan in the early-2000s, their partnership used his technical expertise, her artistic brilliance and their shared political cunning as the foundations for their rise to supremacy.
Of course, unlike their primary coaching rivals at Vancouver 2010 - the then-married Natalia Linichuk and Gennady Karponosov - Zueva and Shpilband's alliance was purely one of mutual self-interest. For a while, both parties got exactly what they wanted from the arrangement, as their work in Canton raised the bar for everyone else who came after them, both technically and artistically. Our eyes and souls were purified after a decade defined by the dubious stylings of Linichuk and Alexander Zhulin. Without their rise, we might have been living in the world where the diabolical Aboriginal Dance earned an Olympic gold medal.
After breaking North America's Olympic glass ceiling in 2010, Arctic Edge became the first rink to sweep the ice dance podium at Worlds the following year. Meryl Davis / Charlie White and Tessa Virtue / Scott Moir were light years ahead of the rest of the pack, and siblings Maia and Alex Shibutani were the youngest world medalists in half a century.
But the rink's environment was also infamously toxic behind the mirage of perfection, and it's telling that many Canton skaters who pursued a coaching career themselves (such as Moir, or White and his wife Tanith Belbin) have spoken of the importance of building a supportive and healthy training environment for their students to thrive in.
Because the only thing capable of ending Arctic Edge's supremacy was Arctic Edge itself.

Catalysts and context

How did we go from a Worlds podium lockout in 2011 to internecine implosion one year later?
It was because Arctic Edge was always a ticking timebomb, and the decisions Shpilband and Zueva made only accelerated the inevitable meltdown. It's not a secret that Canton was a vicious environment - Virtue's spoken of bullying, Belbin's spoken of draconian body standards and disordered eating, and everyone's mentioned the constant cut-throat tension between the skaters - but the coaches' actions just poured petrol on a bonfire.
Both coaches were known for favouring particular teams at the expense of others, providing them with more attention and better programs. And to make things worse, Zueva's favouritism was often correlated with whichever Canton woman her son Fedor happened to be dating at any particular point. He was linked to Belbin circa 2005, Virtue from 2008 to late 2009, and Davis from 2012 onward. There were also rumours of him pursuing Maia Shibutani at some point, as well as his 2010-11 on-ice partner Jana Khokhlova. And coincidence or not, it's impossible to dispute that Belbin/Agosto were Zueva's top team for 2005-06, or that Virtue/Moir had the superior 2009-10 season, or that Davis/White were perceived as Zueva's favoured ones as Sochi approached. He'd ultimately marry Davis in 2017.
It's difficult enough to create a civil behind-the-scenes atmosphere between top ice dancers under normal circumstances. Having a situation where the coach's favour was nepotistic while her son saw the rink as his own personal Tinder isn't "normal".
Not that Shpilband was any better. An oft-repeated rumour is that, during the 2011-12 season, he began favouring the newly-created American team of Madison Chock / Evan Bates (and, according to one version of the story, Shpilband arranged secret tryouts between Chock and her new partner behind the back of Bates' previous partner, Emily Samuelson). The Shibutanis - who'd fall from 3rd at 2011 Worlds to 8th at 2012 Worlds - blamed their poor season on Shpilband's lack of attention, and the Shibutani family would allegedly play a major, behind-the-scenes role in getting rid of him. Everything in this paragraph is second-hand rumour and hearsay, but the fact that it's even plausible speaks of the cloak-and-dagger machinations behind each and every move in Canton.
And while this was all happening, Shpilband and Zueva's own relationship was rapidly deteriorating. Several sources from the time mentioned Shpilband's own dissatisfaction with the broader situation at Arctic Edge, and with Zueva's public primacy within their coaching tandem. A Moscow News article mentioned that even before their partnership dissolved, he was considering going solo himself at some point. The Detroit Free Press said Shpilband thought Zueva wasn't consulting him when drawing up training schedules. A 2021 RIA Novosti interview with Shpilband referenced rumours about his spouse, Adrianne Lenda, interfering in the training process and sparking internal conflict with Zueva as a result. Russian journalist Elena Vaitskehovskaya asked Shpilband at 2012 Worlds whether he was offended that Zueva gave more media interviews than him, only for him to "bitterly" answer that the journalists were paying more attention to Zueva's opinions than his own.
Something had to give.

Civil war

On June 3, 2012, fresh off of yet another Canton cakewalk at that year's World Championships, an earthquake tore through the power structures of global ice dance.
The Detroit Free Press broke the story, saying that Shpilband had been fired from Arctic Edge. Their article also discussed how, like a failing marriage, there had been interventions to try and save it: US Figure Skating (USFS) had been informed of problems between Shpilband and Zueva weeks before, and Shpilband mentioned talking to USFS about the "issue I had with Marina".
Shpilband said that Zueva should have waited until after Sochi 2014 to dissolve their partnership, instead of breaking up a winning machine two years before the Olympics. Zueva's response, as quoted in Russian media, was interesting.

"It's better than two months."

European medalist John Kerr spoke for everyone with his brilliant reaction on Twitter.
Now, what actually happened that day?
Well, we don't know for sure. Even a decade later, everything remains shrouded in a veil of secrecy that would make the CIA proud. All we have to go on are the various moments that made it into the media, which are naturally influenced by how everyone involved in the saga wants to make themselves look better and their foes look worse.

Zueva's perspective

The Associated Press quoted from Zueva's official statement:

"Igor and I built this program together, and it was great. Unfortunately, we are going in different directions," Zoueva said in a statement released by U.S. Figure Skating. "The skaters are very talented and focused. They have very strong work ethics, and together we will move forward."

Although Shpilband turned his rink into a national ice dance powerhouse before Zueva's arrival, it's fair to say that her involvement was essential to Canton becoming the all-conquering superpower it was.
Immediately after the split, she told RIA Novosti that the breakdown had nothing to do with their current students, but rather that it was because Shpilband wanted to train personal students of his own separately from her, in what she called a "conflict of interest" that showcased his desire to "start his own business inside our shared business".
Later in 2012, at the Rostelecom Cup, she would offer slightly more insight into the breakup:

When you parted ways with your coaching partner Igor Shpilband in the summer, there were many predictions that this breakup would provoke a decrease in the quality of your pairs' performances. Did you have to face any negative consequences in connection with this whole story?
"Of course. It was a tragedy for me that we broke up. However, I did not think it was possible for me to continue working on the terms Igor offered."
Do you mean Igor's desire to work with new couples separately from you?
"Yes. He wrote to me about it in a letter. That he wanted to have a separate group with which he planned to work at the rink at the best time - and so on. I tried to negotiate, to explain that in my understanding there is no such thing in collaborative work, where some students are one's own and others are shared, but Igor said that he had already made his decision and wasn't going to change it. So initially it was his decision, not mine."
^{Source: November 10, 2012, from a sport-express.ru interview, titled "Марина Зуева: "Чемпионы обязаны двигать свой вид спорта вперед"."}

Her now-former coaching partner would naturally tell a different story.

Shpilband's perspective

In the initial Detroit Free Press article, Shpilband said he was blindsided by his dismissal. Although it was known that there was some behind-the-scenes turmoil between him and Zueva, he appeared to believe their mutually-successful partnership was worth salvaging (or at least preserving until Sochi 2014), and she clearly disagreed.
The Detroit Free Press quoted Arctic Edge's general manager Craig O'Neill as saying that the rink's "three top teams" - Virtue/Moir, Davis/White and the Shibutanis - felt "Igor wasn't there anymore for them", and Shpilband added "he told me the kids don't want me at the rink anymore. For what reason, I don't know."
Shpilband said he left a message with Davis and White, but didn't mention Virtue/Moir or the Shibutanis. Online observers back then noted it fit the pattern of the latter two teams being considered Zueva-aligned teams at the time, rather than Shpilband-aligned ones.

The skaters' perspective

Because Tessa Virtue is not Oksana Grishuk, the teams at Canton gave us all the polite, stage-managed civility you'd expect, thanking Shpilband for his presence on their sporting journeys.
O'Neill tried to pin the responsibility for Shpilband's ouster upon the skaters:

“What [rink owner] John (Stansik) and I did today was all based on the kids," O'Neill said of Virtue and Moir, Davis and White, and 2011 world bronze medalists Maia and Alex Shibutani. "Igor did talk about starting his own program, and coaching some of his own kids, and we didn't have issues with that. Our main focus has to be the top three teams.
“There was a lot of issues. This has been going on for a couple of months. He's not focused with the kids. What it came down to was the kids didn't want to skate there (in Canton) anymore with Igor. Either they were leaving or Igor was leaving.
“We told him that the kids weren't going to come back to the rink until we had this meeting with you."

But perhaps the most transparent look behind the curtain was offered by Charlie White's mother Jacqui, who gave us some insights of her own, in reply to a Facebook commenter who called the skaters "spoiled brats":

“...I’m afraid you don’t know what you are talking about. This wasn’t initiated by the skaters, they are obviously only trying to hang on by the skin of their teeth to continue training while the coaches battle to the death and when convenient, use them as pawns in the fight. This is an old story of ‘who has control,’ where egos come into play and team cooperation erodes. The skaters in this scenario are not brats, but victims caught in the crossfire.”

Squaring the circle

This entire situation has echoes in history, and it actually is possible to reconcile these differing stories. It wouldn't be the first time that Marina Zueva had used her own athletes as cover to force out a coach she had problems with.
There's notable parallels with an incident following the 1985-86 season, where Zueva - then an ambitious neophyte choreographer working with newly-minted pairs world champions Gordeeva/Grinkov - organised a campaign against the skaters' tyrannical coach Stanislav Zhuk, accusing him of chronic alcoholism, moral depravity and missing training sessions in a denunciation letter to Soviet officials. There are various conflicting accounts of the letter, its authors and its signatories, but the constant in every single version is that Zueva played a key role.
She did have legitimate reasons for it. Gordeeva's memoir My Sergei has an entire chapter called "The Miserable, Pitiless Zhuk", while his training methods were notorious for a monomaniacal focus on micromanaging athletes, controlling their body weight, and doing the most difficult jumps and elements regardless of the wreckage left behind. He was basically a spiritual ancestor of Eteri Tutberidze, with some additional tales of sexual assault. Gordeeva recalled Zhuk making sexual advances on her roommate Anna Levandi (née Kondrashova) and "many girls over the years", while various Russian sources relate similar, independent rumours of Zhuk pursuing Kondrashova, Elena Buyanova and even the at-most-15-years-old Gordeeva while they trained at CSKA (though My Sergei explicitly rejects the last one).
Despite being one of the most powerful coaches in the entire Soviet skating scene, Zhuk was ultimately removed from his post as a coach at the Red Army-aligned CSKA Moscow club, and his students were reallocated to other coaches. Gordeeva/Grinkov and Kondrashova were assigned to the young Stanislav Leonovich, who wasn't even 30 when Gordeeva/Grinkov won the 1988 Olympic pairs title in Calgary. Naturally, their programs were choreographed by Zueva, who would get much of the credit for Gordeeva/Grinkov's brilliance.
Igor Shpilband might not be as monstrous as Zhuk, but it's rather telling that both instances involve a coach with a somewhat toxic reputation being on the receiving end of a political defeat at the hands of Marina Zueva.
For, however you look at it, it's unarguable that Shpilband was the one left in a weaker political position after the split.

The fallout

One day after the breakup, USFS confirmed that Davis/White and the Shibutanis would be staying in Canton as part of Zueva's group. The Shibutanis' decision wasn't seen as a surprise, but many thought Davis/White were the closest to Shpilband and the likeliest ones to follow him elsewhere. A few days later, it was confirmed that Virtue/Moir would be remaining with Zueva too.
Russian Figure Skating Federation (FFKKR) general director Valentin Piseev told Russian press that he would gladly offer Shpilband whatever he wanted if it would see the coach working in his homeland again, but Shpilband preferred to stay in Michigan. According to Ice Musings, he reportedly checked out the Compuware Ice Arena in Plymouth, about ten miles from Canton.
The following week, Shpilband announced that he'd now be working out of the Novi Ice Arena, just twenty minutes away from Arctic Edge. IceNetwork reported that the first Canton skaters to follow him there were Chock/Bates, a team who had finished fifth at US Nationals in their debut season together. Lithuanians Isabella Tobias / Deividas Stagniūnas would join them a day later.
Zueva went on the hunt for a technical expert to replace Shpilband. After being turned down by Margarita Drobiazko and Povilas Vanagas, she eventually lured Oleg Epstein to Canton to serve as her Igor substitute. Italy's Maurizio Margaglio also came onboard as a consultant for a while.
In a poetic twist of fate, Shpilband brought on Margalio's former on-ice partner Barbara Fusar-Poli as his own coaching collaborator. It was fitting that ice dance's most high-profile coaching divorce would also involve the artists behind ice dance's most legendary death stare.
Some time after the divorce, Shpilband would take Zueva to court. The exact details are buried behind a mountain of non-disclosure agreements. The only information I could find was a reference in a Time Magazine article, where they mentioned that Davis and White were deposed as part of it, the case was settled out of court, and the acrimony remained.

The aftermath

There's a persistent rumour that USFS paid Zueva's legal bills during the whole mess. It's brought up as a possible explanation for her actions over the next two years, alongside the coach potentially wanting multiple Olympic champions on her CV, and her son Fedor's romantic relationship with Davis from 2012 onward.
We all know how this story ends. Davis/White would go on to win the world title in 2013 and Olympic gold in 2014, while Virtue/Moir battled injury and lost the ephemeral concept known as momentum to their rivals. The Canadians also felt as if they lost Zueva's favour: Virtue allegedly wanted to leave Arctic Edge after a disappointing 2012-13 season, and while Moir talked her out of it at the time, he would later publicly lambast Zueva for not being "in our corner" following their silver medal in Sochi. When Virtue/Moir announced their comeback in 2016, they would move to train with Dubreuil in Montreal, a school that would become an even more dominant force in the sport than Arctic Edge at their zenith.
Shpilband continuously failed to find an artistic collaborator capable of replacing Zueva, becoming known for the artistic bankruptcy of his choreography, and his star team Chock/Bates would only become world champions after leaving him for Dubreuil.
Zueva, meanwhile, had similar difficulties finding a technical expert who could fill Shpilband's shoes, and her teams would consistently bleed away points by missing levels. The Shibutani family would reportedly acquire a stake in Arctic Edge, and more pointed rumours say that they effectively bought Zueva's services as a de facto private coach for the Shibutani siblings as Pyeongchang 2018 approached. They would win Olympic bronze there - behind the Montreal-coached Virtue/Moir and Papadakis/Cizeron - but it would be Zueva's final bow as a top force in ice dance.
Maybe, some day, we'll learn what truly happened in 2012.

"It's a huge fight at every event. And it's not just us. Our coaches, Tatiana Tarasova and Alexei Mishin, fight against each other, too, using us as weapons." - Alexei Yagudin¹

One of the most amazing quirks of figure skating history is how a generation-defining rivalry featuring genuine accusations of witchcraft at the Winter Olympics didn't even come close to earning top billing that year.
Because this was 2002: the year where The French Judge and the pairs event scandal dominated the airwaves, day after day. The year where Michelle Kwan lost Olympic gold to an American teammate for the second time in a row. It was the year where figure skating decided to showcase its credentials as the most chaotic Olympic sport of them all.
It's fitting that this particular story occurred in Salt Lake City, since the losers are still salty about it to this day. Nobody here is a truly reliable narrator, but we can assemble a beautiful kaleidoscope of madness if we piece all the different fragments of the story together. The man in the blue suit is called the Black Magician, and he's at the core of a legendary figure skating conspiracy theory.
(A short content warning before we begin: there are brief references to abuse in this writeup, with those specific sections marked in advance.)

Magic Formula

The sport:

Figure skating might be the most famous sport at the Winter Olympics, despite the diabolical complexity behind it. It might also be the most dramatic, with storylines often ripped right from a soap opera.
This particular tale focuses on singles skating, perhaps the 'default' version of the sport in the minds of people who don't really follow it. To answer the immortal question, it's what Brian Boitano did to win his Olympic title (although he wasn't wearing a blindfold at the time). Katarina Witt, Michelle Kwan, Yuzuru Hanyu - if you think of them, you're thinking of singles skating.
Split into men's and women's events, the discipline requires athletes to blend iconic jumps - you may have heard of the triple axel, or the triple Lutz - with difficult bladework, complex spins and artistic choreography, all done in eye-catching costumes to accompanying music. When it's done right, it takes your breath away at how the athletes can make everything look so simple, and surpass the boundaries of sport to create moments of pure transcendence.
In 2002, the sport was scored on the famed 6.0 system - a comparative ranking system where you needed a majority of the nine judges on each panel to give you the highest overall marks to win gold. Competitions in singles skating were divided into two segments: a two-and-a-half-minute "short program" (SP), and a four-minute "free skate" (FS), or "long program".

The characters:

Our tale centres itself around two camps - both alike in indignity, in fair Salt Lake City, where we lay our scene.
In the red corner, working out of Saint Petersburg, Russia, we had:

• Evgeni Plushenko, the 2001 world champion. Considered one of the greatest jumpers the sport has ever seen, with one of its dodgiest haircuts. Often had some questionable choreography and stylistic choices for his programs, though he did have his own distinct personality on the ice. His gala program to “Sex Bomb” at 2001 Worlds involved a striptease, a nude muscle suit, and a golden speedo. I wish I made that sentence up.
  
• Alexei Mishin, the coach of the 1994 Olympic champion in men’s singles. Based out of Russia at the time. Known as “the Professor” by many in skating, both due to his massive technical knowledge and his position as an actual university lecturer. Renowned for his expertise on skating biomechanics and jumping technique, and for a generally stoic, droll attitude. Was once blacklisted by the KGB in the mid-1970s for assorted reasons.
  

And in the blue corner, working out of Simsbury, Connecticut, we had:

• Alexei Yagudin, the 1998, 1999 and 2000 world champion. Originally seen as merely a skater with big jumps, but went through a metamorphosis over the four-year leadup to Salt Lake City to become a nuanced artist, too. Also prone to some rather dismal exhibition gala decisions, such as a 1997 performance to African music in this dubious costume. Once rumoured to have had a fling with the openly-gay American skater Rudy Galindo (ask Galindo himself), the Chicago Tribune reported he was kicked off of Tom Collins’ Champions on Ice tour in 1999 for drunkenness and bad behaviour.
  
• Tatiana Tarasova, coach of the 1998 Olympic champion in men’s singles. First a coach of champion pairs skaters and ice dancers in the USSR, before moving to America for better training conditions in the mid-1990s, and successfully working with singles’ skaters too. An interesting figure known for her dramatic proclamations, her eye-catching number of fur coats, and her equally eye-catching choreography.
  
• Rudolf Zagainov, a notorious, controversial sports psychologist known for his work in the Soviet Union. Over several decades, he associated with athletes in an eclectic array of sports, ranging from track-and-field and cycling to chess and figure skating.
  

The Montagues and Capulets were probably more civil.

Destined Rivals

"You must be an artist, too. I still think Plushenko doesn't know what he's doing. Mishin says, 'Do this with your arms,' so he does it. But he doesn't feel the music." - Alexei Yagudin²

“I know Yagudin well, and he wants to be the center of attention even when he loses." – Evgeni Plushenko³

(Content warning: abuse)

The general outline of the story is the one that NBC gave us in their melodramatic Olympic fluff pieces (like this one): Yagudin and Plushenko used to be training partners at Mishin's Yubileiny rink in Russia, until Yagudin left Mishin after the Nagano Olympic season to train with Tatiana Tarasova in the United States. Yagudin couldn't forgive Mishin for favouring Plushenko, and Mishin would famously say that coaching the two was like trying to balance the affections of two wives at the same time. Yagudin and Plushenko would dominate the Salt Lake City Olympic cycle - Yagudin winning the 1999 and 2000 world titles, Plushenko winning the 2001 world title - and entered the 2002 Olympics as the two main contenders for gold.
What's not mentioned so much is that Yagudin would have had every right to despise Mishin. Any of Mishin's skaters would probably have every right to despise him. By all accounts, the training environment he oversaw was horrifically toxic for all involved. Mishin himself told Sport-Express about breaking a young Plushenko's finger in a fit of rage after catching the child playing with a ball while they were in Italy. Yagudin and Plushenko have both mentioned vicious, institutionalised, long-term hazing rituals, where older skaters were encouraged to torment the younger ones; in 2021 a former Yubileiny staff member spoke to fontanka.ru, recalling colleagues telling her that the young Yagudin was being "educated" by his rinkmates when the boy's screams echoed through the building. The dreadful atmosphere continues to this day, since 2022 Olympic pairs skater Alexander Galliamov reportedly received a detached retina from his training mates during his time training with Mishin.
Even putting aside the poisonous internal climate Mishin actively fostered at his rink, there was some real merit to Yagudin's accusations of coaching favouritism. In a Chicago Tribune article, a Yubileiny skater once recalled Tatiana Mishina (Mishin’s wife and coaching partner) saying that the newly-arrived Plushenko had "more ability than Yagudin". A 2001 New York Daily News article said that Mishin was telling people how Plushenko "would become the true star" as early as 1997, while Yagudin was still training with him. Mishin would later abandon the distraught Yagudin in the kiss-and-cry area after the 1998 Olympic free skate, disgusted with his student’s poor performance.
Following Yagudin's departure for Tarasova, Mishin would attempt to explain that moment in a late-1998 interview with Elena Vaitsekhovskaya, showcasing his typical levels of grace.

"Alexei was very well prepared. But after one of the practices, he took a shower and sat in the stands right under the ventilation pipe without buttoning up. As I found out later, Artur Dmitriev came to him first and advised him to move so he wouldn't get a cold. Then the same thing was said by Andrei Bushkov. Then Ekaterina Gordeeva, who was just passing by. Yagudin listened to no one. And on the eve of the start he had a temperature of 39.5. I was frightfully offended at that. I think that anyone can get sick or get injured, but I will never understand that anyone can be so stupid as to knowingly fail at the competition for the sake of which all this crazy work is being done. It's very hard to forgive."
Is that why your relationship has fractured? Or was Yagudin broken by internal competition?
"I've always been aware of the fact that it's very difficult to withstand the work in my group. And that someone could break. That, alas, is life. But I'm glad we parted with Yagudin without any fights or mudslinging. After all, I made him the world champion and he made me the coach of the champion."

Yagudin, for his part, categorically denied all of this. But it's interesting that Mishin praised the lack of mutual mudslinging directly after calling Yagudin "stupid" for supposedly choosing to sabotage his own Olympics on purpose.
Russian Figure Skating Federation (FFKKR) president Valentin Piseev threatened that Yagudin would never win anything if he left Russia to train with Tarasova in the US; Russian Nationals became the only major competition Yagudin would never win, and both he and Tarasova were fully aware of their comparative pariah status in the eyes of Piseev and the federation. Swathes of the FFKKR and Russian media viewed Yagudin as a traitor for leaving to train in America, and his mother told Moskovskij Komsomolets in 2002 that “cheering for Yagudin was considered bad form” in Russia. On the eve of Salt Lake City, Yagudin would tell ESPN that the federation's dislike of him was "pretty sad".
Tarasova and Mishin were predictably at one another's throats, due to that and other reasons. Mishin was rather contemptuous of Tarasova and everything she represented: Vaitsekhovskaya wrote (in her memoir Tears On Ice) that even after Ilya Kulik won the 1998 Olympic gold medal under Tarasova's tutelage, Mishin didn't see Tarasova as a "serious opponent" in men's skating until the turn of the millennium. Whereas Tarasova was primarily known for her work as a coach and choreographer for ice dancers, and once walked away from Olympic competition altogether in the late-1980s to lead a touring ice ballet, Mishin told Vaitsekhovskaya that the idea of bringing "music to life on the ice" was the childish prattling of coaches who weren't thinking about the "one goal in sport - to win".
Naturally, all of this provided the fuel for a vicious rivalry. Vaitsekhovskaya recalled Mishin making disparaging remarks in the 1999-2000 season about how Yagudin’s programs disguised poor technique with ostentatious artistry, and he only upped the intensity of his scorn as the Olympics approached. In 2001, Plushenko told the Chicago Tribune that he learned nothing from Yagudin while they were training together, and Yagudin compared the situation between them to that of Michelle Kwan and Tara Lipinski four years earlier.
And then the hypnotist arrived.

The Black Magician

Yagudin actually contemplated walking away from figure skating in the lead-up to the Olympics, after losing the world title to Plushenko in April 2001, and having a calamitous performance at September’s Goodwill Games. Tarasova talked him out of it, and decided that her star pupil needed a sports psychologist to make sure he was in the right frame of mind to achieve his Olympic dream.
Enter Rudolf Maximovich Zagainov, psychologist to the stars.
Or, as many people in the Russian sporting world dubbed him, the Black Magician.
Zagainov’s grasp of the concept of professional ethics was nonexistent. He would help his clients, and then publish tell-all books detailing exactly what he did and what his clients needed. Vaitsekhovskaya called his personality “odious”, and she was far from alone in thinking so. His former client Sergei Bubka – who broke with him in acrimonious fashion – said Zagainov demanded every client adhere to three guiding principles:

1) You must hate your opponent; never give him a hand when you meet him.
2) One should strive for wealth, because wealth is power.
3) Go to the goal by any means, without regard to morality.

In the eyes of many, what turned Zagainov from an ordinary sports psychologist into a diabolical figure of Rasputinian malevolence was his reputation, and the stories of witchcraft that trailed in his wake. After Zagainov began publicly working with Yagudin, Plushenko recalled in his memoir Another Show that he received concerned letters from people, and that his mother was warned about the prospect of him being hexed by the psychologist’s magical powers. According to Vaitsekhovskaya, Zagainov's reputation derived from his involvement in the Soviet chess scene, where he became known as “the magician who hypnotised Anatoly Karpov” during his world title matches.⁴ At various points, he reportedly worked with top Soviet grandmasters Karpov, Viktor Korchnoi, Boris Spassky and Garry Kasparov, where he'd take the secrets of his past clients to his new employer for the right price.
Crucially, Plushenko’s coach actually believed that Zagainov had genuine magical powers. Mishin discussed why he thought so in his 2021 memoir The Secrets of the Ice:

"One incident allowed me to believe in Zagainov's extraordinary abilities. Many years ago, at a training camp in Leselidze, my eldest son Andrei suddenly developed a fever of 40°C. We did not know what to do. Rudolf Maximovich, who was at the training camp at that time, found out about it and volunteered to help. He sat down over Andrei and began to say something or make some gestures with his hands. As a result, the child's temperature dropped to normal in half an hour.”

Despite his own private beliefs about Zagainov's magical powers, Mishin was still publicly disdainful about Yagudin hiring him. Nevasport recalled how Mishin, as Salt Lake City approached, said that athletes who needed a psychologist were weak and didn't belong in elite sport.
By November 2001’s Cup of Russia, rumours were already swirling about how Zagainov’s appointment may have been a deliberate ploy by Tarasova to destabilise Yagudin’s greatest opposition. In a contemporary article, journalist Anna Raikova said that a possible explanation for Plushenko’s subpar long program performance may have been Zagainov trying “his charms” on Plushenko.
When asked about the Black Magician’s presence, Tarasova was more circumspect. She told Vaitsekhovskaya that she just needed someone who could enter the men’s locker room and be with Yagudin before competitions, and dismissively waved away the rumours without a care in the world:

“Let them talk.”

Black Magic Ritual

Salt Lake City 2002 arrived, and it was considered a foregone conclusion that Russia’s two leading men would be the only real contenders for the gold medal.
Skating to a medley of four different Michael Jackson songs within two minutes and forty seconds – “Earth Song”, “Childhood”, “Billie Jean” and “They Don’t Care About Us” – the most consistent jumper in the world promptly botched his first jump, crashing to the floor. Or crashing to Earth.
Plushenko gave a dramatic retelling of the moment in his memoir.

"I fell on a quadruple jump, which I know as well as the Lord's Prayer. It seems to me: you can wake me up in the middle of the night and I'll jump it without a single mistake.
Everything went great in training. And suddenly... going out for a quadruple jump, I saw Zagainov's silhouette. He was right across from me. I caught his heavy gaze.
I pushed off very well and flew out smoothly. But then something inexplicable happened.
It was as if someone ordered me: "Open up! Go to the landing!" And I obeyed, although it was still early. I still can't figure out where this signal came from, how it reached my brain.
After the Olympics, I replayed the video many times, my fall from the quadruple jump. In fact, I was in great shape at that moment. And I have never had such falls in my life. In any case, I couldn't turn around the wrong way. And I still have the feeling that I was dragged along by an incomprehensible force.”

The judges ultimately placed Plushenko in fourth after the short program, with several field-leading 5.9 marks for presentation, which some felt was excessively generous. American coach Frank Carroll snidely asked the Chicago Tribune whether it meant you could now get a 6.0 by simply standing up.
Plushenko would recover to finish in the silver medal position - fitting, given his shiny silver short program bodysuit - but Yagudin took the gold, with clean, difficult, well-executed, artistic performances to "Winter" in the short program and The Man In The Iron Mask in the long program. Zagainov sat with his client and Tarasova in the kiss-and-cry area, in place of choreographer Nikolai Morozov due to the official limit of two companions per performer. According to Tarasova, Zagainov had blackmailed her into allowing this, threatening to abandon Yagudin on the eve of the competition altogether if she didn't allow him to be present by the skater at all times.
It was this sort of behaviour that led to Tarasova's growing unease about Zagainov's methods: reportedly, she felt her job was to ensure that Yagudin was strong enough to always be in the right frame of mind for competition, while Zagainov wanted Yagudin to rely completely upon him.
Yagudin definitely embodied Zagainov's first maxim after the competition was over.

Bond Between Teacher And Student

It’s standard procedure for an Olympic event to be followed by a press conference, where the medalists answer questions. Usually, these are pretty low-key affairs – but usually, the media aren’t covering figure skating. So in a recipe for pure, undiluted chaos, the 2002 Olympics decided that this conference would be attended by each of the medalists and their respective coaches.
Predictably, it degenerated into a Russian farce from the moment it got underway. Throughout the whole press conference, ESPN noted bronze medalist Tim Goebel exchanging baffled looks with his coach Carroll, perhaps wondering if they'd both stumbled into a Chekhov play.
Yagudin had an axe to grind, after the years of pain, mudslinging and general scorn that his former coach had sent his way. He spoke at length to the world’s media about unnamed figures who didn’t believe in him, and how much he felt he’d improved as a skater since leaving Mishin – who he refused to mention by name – for Tarasova.
Mishin tried claiming a slice of the credit for Yagudin's triumph, saying that the audience could judge how much of the medal was owed to him and how much was owed to Tarasova, and that he was proud to have "two of my skaters" on the podium. Yagudin instantly shut that down, cutting in to say the medal belonged entirely to himself and Tarasova.
When asked about his emotions after the free program, Yagudin was less than conciliatory, as quoted in ESPN:

"I was like in a good dream. I just remembered how many hard times and happy times I had for four years. And how much crap was thrown in my face about how I am not such a good skater. I was keeping that within myself until I won. It was really hard, but that's what was in my life for four years. And I am so lucky to have such a good coach who changed me."

And asked by a Russian reporter for Express Gazeta whether he could forgive and forget, and make up with Plushenko and Mishin, Yagudin simply said “probably not, because my coach is Tatiana now.” That reporter wrote of later being accosted by Zagainov, who asked him “How much did Mishin pay you for this question?”
The Russian Olympic Committee planned to hold a celebration afterwards, to honour their new medalists and the coaches who worked with them. Supposedly, Yagudin made his excuses and didn’t show up. His actions were understandable, for Tarasova told Vaitsekhovskaya that Yagudin's triumph was considered an embarrassment for the FFKKR, and that foreigners literally asked her why the Russians would have preferred a non-Russian to win if it meant Yagudin didn't.
According to Zagainov (talking to Express Gazeta), a toast was made in honour of the triumphant Tarasova, who had celebrated her 55th birthday that week. Everyone up to and including Piseev stood, with the exception of Mishin – who gestured for Plushenko to remain seated too, as the entire room applauded Tarasova’s success. Zagainov and Mishin allegedly almost came to blows afterward, between what the psychologist saw as Mishin’s disrespect, and what the coach saw as Zagainov’s responsibility for Plushenko not winning gold.

Magical Dimension

The reason for Mishin’s rage can actually be seen in the Olympic broadcast: the unexpected presence of Zagainov rinkside, during Plushenko’s short program.
According to Yagudin, quoted in a 2020 Sport24 article, there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for this:

“Mishin claimed that in the short program Zagainov hypnotised Plushenko to make Zhenya fall on the quadruple jump. This is complete nonsense! Here's what happened. After my skate in the second warm-up, we were backstage. And when Zhenya was called onto the ice, we didn't know where to run to watch the performance of our main competitor.
We didn't have time to get up to the grandstands. So Tarasova ran in one direction to find the television, and Zagainov ran in the other and jumped out beside the rink, where the ice resurfacers came out during the break. He just happened to be in that spot. You know, accidentally!
Nevertheless, Zhenya and his entourage now had a logical reason to blame someone else for their troubles. What can I say? For God's sake, say what you want, if you really believe it and it makes you feel better."

According to Mishin, Zagainov’s presence was evidence of a diabolical plot by the perfidious psychologist to undermine Plushenko. Express Gazeta reported that Mishin complained to FFKKR president Piseev after the short program, who later spoke with Zagainov at length and at volume; Zagainov was subsequently absent from the rinkside during Plushenko’s free program. In a 2002 interview with Sport-Express, Tarasova mentioned that both Plushenko and Mishin were saying "they were influenced by the psychologist Zagainov".
In Mishin's own memoir two decades later, he still maintained that Zagainov was to blame for Plushenko’s defeat, in a very “I could say it, but…” fashion.

"I can't say with certainty that Plushenko's mistake, completely uncharacteristic of him, occurred because of the hypnotic influence of this man. But the episode, in which Zagainov stood behind Evgeni when he stepped onto the ice and continued to stand in that position for the entire program, raises questions. It is telling that his charge Alexei Yagudin had already performed and there was no reason for him to stay near the rink.
Only God may know what exactly happened then. Either the young psyche failed, or it was the pernicious influence of Zagainov, but Evgeni made a mistake, which was uncharacteristic for him. Never before had Plushenko performed a quadruple toe loop in such a way - as well as afterwards, by the way. I can only say one thing: being in the flight, at a good, confident push, for some reason he changed his mind to continue spinning, regrouped and fell face-first.”

In a way, Plushenko was probably fortunate that such a convenient scapegoat existed for his failure to win gold. Based on how Mishin handled Yagudin's Olympic errors in 1998, the coach might have otherwise told the press that Plushenko was an imbecile who chose to screw up on purpose.
Per Sport24, Yagudin thought that Mishin's whining about Zagainov's malignant presence was the sign of a hypocritical sore loser who couldn't handle his own tricks being turned against him.

"In fact, I can also tell you something about the evil spells with which my former coach tried to entangle me. This was the case, for example, at the 2000 European Championships in Vienna, which I lost to Zhenya via the vote of the Russian judge. After warming up, Zhenya skated first, and after a certain period of time - me. When I went into the locker room to not hear the noise of the stands and to get away from it all, I saw Mishin there. He, too, came into the locker room, sat across from me and, staring uninterruptedly into my eyes, moved his lips like a shaman. Every time I did a quadruple jump at all the competitions where Plushenko took part, Mishin stood by the boards. It was only at the Olympics that I noticed Mishin in his usual place and smiled at him."

As for the psychologist himself, he was even less charitable.

Thousand Knives

In April 2002, Zagainov publicly flayed Mishin in a merciless interview with Express Gazeta, giving what can only be described as a gloating monologue.

“But I never got tired of repeating that Plushenko is not a machine, and as soon as he starts to fall, he will break at once. Knowing perfectly well that psychologically Mishin is not able to support his athlete in a difficult situation, because he belongs to the category of cowardly coaches.”
Apparently, you are not too ‘gentle’ towards Alexei Mishin.
“On the contrary, I am extremely grateful to him. It was his amazing illiteracy that helped me set Yagudin up for victory. Professor Mishin's main mistake was that he frightened Plushenko... with me. When Alexei Nikolaevich found out that Tarasova turned to me, he said literally the following in one of his interviews: ‘We know the psychologist Zagainov from the Karpov-Kasparov matches, during which he was removed from the hall for hypnotizing his ward's opponent...’ When I read that, I laughed for a long time. And I told Lesha [Yagudin] that we have almost no reason to worry now. In my opinion, Mishin should have either not answered such a question at all, or turned everything into a joke.
I'm pretty sure, by the way, that it's time for Mishin to finish his coaching career. Today he's more of a businessman than an expert in figure skating. I saw his pupil at four tournaments this year, and not once was Plushenko at the peak of his form. And that is the art of coaching.
I don't see any particular results in the 30 years he has been in charge of Leningrad figure skating. What did a man who always had his own ice, a [university] department, and who has the most talented skaters from all over the country sent to him every year, manage to achieve? Raised the Olympic champion Urmanov, who only won because all his opponents fell? Raised the insanely gifted Evgeni Plushenko, who became world champion but won nothing in his Olympic season? Reached the point where Yagudin left him?”

In comparison, Tarasova's own public comments on the affair were tame.
And she didn't even hold back. When interviewed by Vaitsekhovskaya, Tarasova suggested several decidedly non-supernatural factors were responsible for Plushenko losing to Yagudin, including:

• Mishin's deliberate efforts to throw petrol on the Plushenko/Yagudin rivalry, culminating in daily interviews about Yagudin's flawed skating, which Tarasova felt were indicative of a "coaching psychosis" that Plushenko found "impossible to withstand".
  
• Poor Olympic season preparation from Mishin's team, as exemplified in the saga of Plushenko's long programs. The initial one - set to a medley featuring "El Tango de Roxanne" from Moulin Rouge! - was prepared "too late", before they went back to the drawing board and designed a new program to Carmen for Salt Lake City.⁵
  
• Mishin's myopic focus on intimidating the opposition through Plushenko's jumping superiority and rumoured quadruple Lutz jump, while ignoring what Tarasova observed to be consistent technical flaws in his jumping. Plushenko didn't perform the quadruple Lutz in either Olympic program.
  

Tarasova then offered a few final thoughts to Sport-Express, tinged with glacial disdain.

"In principle, it's not for me to discuss their work. I always respect other people's work. But I don't like it when they blaspheme mine. Each of us does what we can do. We did better. But they tried too. Although it was a complete defeat. Plushenko did not go to the European or World Championships. And as far as I know, he will go to Collins' tour where he will perform 90 times. And it is unlikely that he will refer to injuries."

Amazingly, it's still - by far - the most level-headed perspective among the three non-skaters, even with her calling Plushenko's season a total failure from start to finish.

Dark Magic Curtain

(Content warning: abuse)

Yagudin won the season-ending World Championships in Plushenko's absence, but it was the last competition he'd ever win. Chronic hip problems led to his retirement several months later. His reputation would be shattered among skating fans in the social media age, when he made some viciously bigoted public remarks about openly-queer skaters. One of his targets - America's Jason Brown - idolised Yagudin so much growing up that he once competed in an homage to Yagudin's "Winter" costume.
2002 was the last time Tarasova would coach an Olympic champion, and she gradually faded away from competitive relevance over time. The years have definitely loosened her tongue, and now she's skating's equivalent of the one loud-mouthed grandmother you have at every family gathering, interjecting her opinion on everything whether you want to hear it or not. This year alone, she's busied herself with speculation about the romantic status of a teenage girl and whether ice dancer Tessa Virtue wants to murder people.
Plushenko would remain with Mishin for his entire career, going on to win Olympic gold in 2006, and silver in 2010 (not "platinum"). According to Vaitsekhovskaya, Zagainov tried offering his services to Plushenko and Mishin in the lead-up to the 2006 Games, despite having called Mishin a hack and Plushenko a failure - he was turned down, and Plushenko took gold without the psychologist's assistance. He'd ultimately retire after the 2014 Olympics, and now works as a coach at the modestly-named "Angels of Plushenko" academy. His wife, Yana Rudkovskaya, has deep connections in the Russian underworld, making him a cross between a trophy husband and a mob wife; they're also hideously abusive parents to their son.
In 2007, Zagainov's reputation went up in smoke after a horrific scandal involving the death of one of his patients - 24-year-old cyclist Yulia Aroustamova - who was also the 67-year-old Zagainov's live-in domestic partner at the time. Vaitsekhovskaya said that it wasn't the first time Zagainov had preyed on one of his clients, mentioning a patient who lived with him in a civil marriage back in the mid-1980s. He would die in 2014, largely forgotten and unmourned.
Mishin is still relevant in Russian skating, despite being well into his eighties, and coaches the most recent Russian national men's champion. Fittingly, that skater's name is also Evgeni.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Endnotes

1: From a February 2002 ESPN article.
2: From a February 2002 Sports Illustrated article.
3: From a February 2002 ESPN article.
4: Zagainov was not the infamous hypnotist among Karpov’s delegation during the 1978 World Chess Championship in Baguio, however; that was Vladimir Zukhar. Hypnotism was clearly in fashion back then. Korchnoi's chosen defence against such threats was a pair of mirrored glasses, which would have been somewhat impractical in figure skating.
5: Tarasova doesn't explicitly mention this, but for context, Plushenko's Moulin Rouge! program got an abysmal reception when it was unveiled. Scrapping a planned Olympic program entirely and making a new one is always a decision of last resort, because it takes valuable time for athletes to train and become comfortable with performing it. Carmen was very much a "break glass in case of emergency" concept, with Mishin picking the safest of safe ideas for the Olympics after his first plan failed. Ironically, Yagudin (speaking to Vaitsekhovskaya in 2000) practically predicted this when he said it was inevitable that Mishin's skaters would perform to Carmen at some point; his own program to Bizet's opera was in the 1996-97 season.

Merry Christmas everyone! And with Japanese and Russian Nationals over, the next exciting events on the horizon are Canadian and American Nationals!
I would argue that US Ice Dance is the most exciting discipline this season, and u/summerjoe45 already did a great overview at the possible rankings, but I wanted to do a deeper dive into each of the teams. It would be impossible to give an adequate understanding of ice dance without talking about the coaches and politics behind it, so this is part one of the series on US Ice Dance, covering the coaches and a bit of the history of US Ice Dance.

Arctic Edge - Canton, Michigan: Marina Zueva and Igor Shpilband (Defunct)

Past Notable Teams: Tanith Belbin / Ben Agosto, Tessa Virtue / Scott Moir, Meryl Davis / Charlie White, Maia Shibutani / Alex Shibutani
Starting the list off with the now-defunct school of Marina and Igor. Even though this school no longer exists, any guide to American ice dance would be wholly incomplete without describing the school that turned it into a powerhouse in the first place.
Marina Zueva rose to fame in Russia for choreographing programs for Ekaterina Gordeeva / Sergei Grinkov, and she's widely seen as one of the best choreographers in the sport. As many say, "Marina Zueva programs are forever." Some of her masterpieces include Virtue/Moir's 2010 Mahler Olympic Free Dance, Virtue/Moir's 2008 Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Davis/White's 2014 Scheherazade, and many many more. She started coaching in the United States in the 90s, but the era really kicked off when she teamed up with Igor Shpilband in the early 2000s.
They had their major breakthrough with Tanith Belbin / Ben Agosto. Belbin/Agosto put American ice dance on the map, as they were the first American ice dance team to medal at Worlds and won silver at the 2006 Olympics. They were almost unable to go to the Olympics because Tanith is Canadian, and it required special Congressional approval with the backing of one of Michigan's senators to get Tanith citizenship in time.
At the same time that Belbin/Agosto were succeeding at the senior level, Marina and Igor also had two extremely promising junior teams, the American team of Meryl Davis/Charlie White and the Canadian team of Tessa Virtue/Scott Moir. Both these teams became incredibly successful, with the two teams occupying the top two spots on the 2010 Olympic podium. Not only did they have their marquee senior teams, Marina and Igor also had many junior teams who were achieving great success, including Madison Chock/Greg Zuerlein and the Shibutanis. Arctic Edge reached the peak of its power at 2011 Worlds, where their teams occupied all three spots on the podium.
Things came crashing down quickly, as in June 2012, Marina abruptly fired Igor. It's still incredibly unclear as to what was happening between the coaches for everything to get so icy. Their relationship was so toxic that Igor later sued Marina, and several of their skaters were deposed in the lawsuit. Everyone involved signed NDAs, so we will never really know exactly what happened.
After Igor left Canton, Marina continued as the main coach for Davis/White, Virtue/Moir, and the Shibutanis. Davis/White won the 2014 Olympics and retired, while Virtue/Moir felt like Marina wasn't in their corner and did not return to her during their comeback. The Shibutanis won bronze at the 2018 Olympics, and Marina moved from Michigan to Florida. Now, Marina is essentially soft-retired, as her only senior team is the Japanese team of Kana Muramoto/Daisuke Takahashi.
The success of the Arctic Edge training camp is what made American ice dance relevant and their streak of successful teams inspired many other American skaters to switch to ice dance. Despite all this success, it's super important to mention that Marina and Igor ran an incredibly toxic training environment. Each coach is known for picking favorites. Marina's son, Fedor, dated Tanith, Tessa, and is now married to Meryl. It was pretty disturbing to see how Marina's favored team switched from Belbin/Agosto to Virtue/Moir to Davis/White depending on which partner her son was dating at the moment. The teams that were out of favor were given worse programs and just generally less attention.
They were also incredibly toxic towards the women in their school. Tessa Virtue has an eating disorder while training with Marina and Igor. They were very much subscribers to the idea that ice dance women should be as thin as possible. After Belbin/Agosto left Marina and Igor, Tanith was told by their new coaches to gain muscle, which improved their skating skills and made lifts easier for Ben because Tanith was more capable of holding herself up.
Marina and Igor's Arctic Edge Academy is dead, and it's probably for the better that it is, considering how toxic the training environment was, but it has also left an undeniable legacy on US ice dance. None of the other coaches on this list or any of the current teams be where they are without the legacy of Arctic Edge.

IAM - Montreal: Marie-France Dubreuil, Patrice Lauzon, and Romain Haguenauer

Current American Teams: Madison Chock / Evan Bates, Kaitlin Hawayek / Jean-Luc Baker
Past American Teams: Madison Hubbell / Zachary Donohue
The most powerful and famous school on this list, it would be hard to follow ice dance without getting to know the Ice Academy of Montreal. Ice dance fans have affectionately dubbed the coaches as jacket collectors, since they have team jackets from seemingly ever single federation. They got on the map when Papadakis/Cizeron won their surprise World title in 2015, and gained even more attention when Virtue/Moir came back to competition in 2016 and chose to train with them. Hubbell/Donohue also switched to training at IAM in 2016.
After their success at the 2018 Olympics, where they almost swept the Olympic podium, IAM really became the United Nations. So many teams announced that they were moving to Montreal that it almost became a meme format. Having teams from every federation really helped push Montreal ahead in the political game. Just looking at SkatingScores.com gives a pretty clear picture as to which judges favor Montreal teams, and it lines up almost identically with teams from federations who are coached by IAM.
With the additions of Chock/Bates and Hawayek/Baker, IAM swept the top 3 places of the US podium for the entire quad after 2018. Despite all this success, there is of course some backlash to IAM. The most common complaint is that they aren't good at teaching the technical side of ice dance. The technically proficient teams at IAM are generally the teams who were strong technically before moving.
IAM also commonly face the complaint that they have too many teams and thus aren't able to truly devote their time to all of them. This is not something that any IAM team has complained about, and IAM has managed to avoid the favoritism problems that come up when one coaching team has so many teams. They are very transparent to their teams about ice-time and coach-time, which is probably a major reason why this has not been an issue. However, even if time is divided evenly, it is humanly impossible for all thirty teams to get precisely equal attention from their coaches, and it is often clear from the program quality when the coaches felt more inspired by certain teams compared to others.
IAM is also undeniably one of the healthiest coaching environments that has come out of skating (which admittedly isn't saying much). Many of the female ice dancers have talked about feeling more secure in their bodies and just gained so much more self-confidence from training at IAM and the philosophy that the coaches have. It is also very sweet that many of the skaters at the school are close friends despite being direct competition (see Madi Chock and Madi Hubbell getting matching tattoos).
However, IAM is obviously still not perfect. In a documentary earlier this year, Gabi Papadakis talked about how unsupported she felt by the coaching team and her partner during a really tough time for her mental health. IAM has also had a somewhat disturbing amount of concussions among their female ice dancers (both Madison Chock and Kaitlin Hawayek have had concussions while training in Montreal, though Madi Chock's wasn't a training injury).
If you're interested in learning more about IAM, because what I wrote only scratches the surface, the Olympic channel filmed a docuseries called On Edge which followed 6 of the IAM teams (Papadakis/Cizeron, Hubbell/Donohue, Chock/Bates, FeaGibson, Fournier-Beaudry/Sorensen, and Smart/Diaz) across their Olympic journey in the 21-22 season. It's a great look into their training/competitive lives.

IAM - London, Ontario - Scott Moir, Madison Hubbell, and Adrian Diaz

Current American Teams: Christina Carreira / Anthony Ponomarenko
Most ice dance fans didn't quite know what to make of IAM - London when it was announced in early 2021. On the one hand, many fans were very excited to see how Scott Moir, arguably the greatest ice dancer of all time, would do as a coach. However, it did feel interesting that IAM - London was supposed to be a subsidiary school of the already well-known IAM - Montreal. Plus, Scott Moir had extremely limited coaching experience, and when IAM - London started, they didn't have any senior teams. At first, many perceived IAM - London to be somewhat of a feeder school for IAM - Montreal.
IAM - London got their first major senior ice dance team when Christina Carreira / Anthony Ponomarenko announced their switch to Scott Moir after the pandemic season. With the additions of Madison Hubbell and Adrian Diaz to the coaching team after the 21-22 season, IAM - London is starting to find its footing. It's still a very new school trying to find its identity, and its teams have not gotten the same political boost that the teams at the Montreal school get, but they're definitely on the right track.

MIDA - Canton, Michigan - Charlie White, Tanith White, and Greg Zuerlein

Current American Teams: Caroline Green / Michael Parsons, Emily Bratti / Ian Somerville, Katarina Wolfkostin / Jeffrey Chen, Molly Cesanek / Yehor Yehorov, Angela Ling / Caleb Wein
MIDA was announced in early 2022 to much fanfare and hype. They are located in the same arena where Marina and Igor had their legendary ice dance school, which catapulted North American ice dance into the spotlight. Tanith White is one half of the partnership which put American ice dance on the map, the first ever American ice dance team to medal at the Olympics. Charlie White is one half of the greatest American ice dance team of all time, winning gold at the 2014 Olympics. Greg Zuerlein may not have the same competitive accolades as Charlie and Tanith (though he's certainly no slouch, having won 2009 Junior Worlds with Madison Chock), but he's the most experienced coach of the three. After retiring, Greg coached with Igor Shpilband for years, before moving to coach at another school on this list that I will talk about later, WISA. Thanks to his year coaching at WISA, MIDA have been able to take many teams who have left the Maryland school.
Their first team was Bratti / Somerville, who found quick success in the American ice dance field last year, placing fifth and getting an assignment to Four Continents. In the off-season, they poached three more American ice dance teams, Cesanek/Yehorov, Wolfkostin/Chen, and their biggest coup, Green/Parsons.
Still, it's hard to know what to make of MIDA. They're such a new school that they don't have an identity yet. Obviously, many ice dance fans hold a lot of affection for the coaches from when they competed, but MIDA is really just one big question mark because it's still so new. The programs they've given their teams this season haven't been standout, but this is also their first full season. Overall, it's hard to know how MIDA is going to turn out.
They do look like the school that's most likely to challenge Montreal's dominance largely because they could be anything, and their coaches have such a strong competitive reputation. They also seem dedicated to providing a healthy coaching environment for their students, but again, it's too soon to say whether that's been created or not.

WISA - Leesburg, Virginia - Alexei Kiliakov and Elena Novak

Current American Teams: Lorraine McNamara / Anton Spiridonov, Diana Davis / Gleb Smolkin
Previous American Teams: Caroline Green / Michael Parsons, Molly Cesanek / Yehor Yehorov, Lorraine McNamara / Quinn Carpenter, Angela Ling / Caleb Wein, Katarina DelCamp / Ian Somerville, Rachael Parsons / Michael Parsons, Caroline Green / Gordon Green
This is the school that probably had the most off-season drama in the last year. For many years, the Wheaton Ice Skating Academy was located in Wheaton, Maryland. They moved to the Ion Training Center in Leesburg, Virginia a few years ago, but are still largely referred to as WISA by fans. WISA has been one North America's ice dance powerhouses, particularly in the junior field, for a while. However, this team is also known for failing to achieve senior success due to bad packaging and general mismanage.
The quintessential team that probably shows how they mismanage is Lorraine McNamara/Quinn Carpenter. A very talented junior team, they were the 2016 Junior World Champions. After this win, instead of moving up to seniors, they decided to stay in juniors for another season. This essentially killed any momentum that they had, as the next season, they finished 7th at Junior Worlds and were surpassed by their training mates, Rachael Parsons/Michael Parsons.
Despite bad packaging, they are able to train extremely technically skilled ice dancers. Some of the teams with the best skating skills in the USA come from WISA. WISA seemed to finally find senior success last season when Caroline Green / Michael Parsons won Four Continents with a creative and well-received free dance and almost made the Olympic team.
And then the drama of the summer happened. You may have noticed that Green/Parsons are no longer training at WISA and that Davis/Smolkin, a team who may or may not be American, are now listed as training with them. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Diana and Gleb were vocally opposed to the war, and since Diana was born in the United States, she has American citizenship. She and Gleb have always trained in America, and especially once the Russians were banned, there was a lot of speculation that Diana and Gleb were going to switch federations to represent USFSA.
They left Igor, and then went to train at WISA. Alexei Kiliakov is one of Eteri's old ice dance partners, which is probably why he was willing to take them despite the fact that Diana and Gleb are very controversial. There's speculation that part of the reason Caroline and Michael left WISA so late in the off-season is the Diana/Gleb drama. Regardless of why, it's definitely a massive blow to WISA that their marquee senior team left them.
As of now, Diana/Gleb have not switched federations, and they have vocally said that they are not going to. However, they did get married right after the invasion, leading to speculation that they're trying to get Gleb an American green card. They have also not competed at a single Russian competition this season. What Diana/Gleb plan to do is anyone's guess, but as many can probably tell from the number of teams in US Ice Dance, switching to USFS would probably be a strategic blunder.

Novi Ice Arena - Novi, Michigan - Igor Shpilband and Pasquale Camerlengo

Current American Teams: Eva Pate / Logan Bye, Emilea Zingas / Vadym Kolesnik
Previous American Teams: Madison Chock / Evan Bates, Christina Carreira / Anthony Ponomarenko, Katarina Wolfkostin / Jeffrey Chen, Diana Davis / Gleb Smolkin, Avonley Nguyen / Vadym Kolesnik
Marina may be retired, but Igor is still in the business. After getting fired by Marina in 2012, Igor set up shop down the street at Novi Ice Arena with some of the teams that chose him over Marina (most notably Chock/Bates). Getting fired by Marina didn't change any of Igor's training methods, and Igor has a very specific style of team that he tries to curate. He expects a small woman who is performing and is carried around the ice by a stronger male partner. This has created a pretty toxic environment at Novi as well, and the sheer list of teams which have left Igor over the years to find healthier training environments and more success is pretty staggering.
Igor also heavily plays favorites and is incapable of balancing the needs of all his teams. After splitting from Marina, his preferred team was Chock / Bates for years, until they left him in 2018. Carreira/Ponomarenko were then his focus for another year before he found the heir to the Chock/Bates style in Nguyen / Kolesnik. After N/K split, he went all in on his partnership with Eteri Tutberidze and is an underrated aspect of why Davis/Smolkin were able to get such crazy scores in the 21-22 season. Igor is still a political machine. Davis/Smolkin left him at the end of the 21-22 season, and he seems to have found his new favorites in Zingas/Kolesnik.
Ice dance fans also joke that Igor is very "eco-friendly". He loves to recycle programs from old teams, and while Marina Zueva programs may be forever, Igor is not a creative genius. Chock/Bates skated to Rachmaninoff in the 2015-16 season, and then in the 2019-20 season, he gave the Rachmaninoff piece to Nguyen/Kolesnik. Chock/Bates skated to Dr Zhivago in the 2012-13 season, and CPom showed up in 2020-21 skating to Dr Zhivago. He even copies from programs that he didn't help choreograph, as Davis/Smolkin showed up last season with a Moulin Rouge program just like Virtue/Moir's 2017-18 free dance. Any original programs he comes up with are hardly original, as it's usually just a warhorse.
In 2019, Pasquale Camerlengo joined the coaching team at Novi. Pasquale is also a famed ice dance coach, as he used to coach at the Detroit Figure Skating Club and was the coach of Hawayek / Baker. But, he's no better than Igor when it comes to body positivity or healthy coaching environments. I will definitely talk more about it in my deep dive on Hawayek / Baker, but Kaitlin Hawayek has talked about her old coaches would encourage her to lose weight.
There just aren't many positive things to say about Igor. His teams routinely leave him because of his vile training methods, and he's mostly useful because of his politicking, but he's nowhere near as powerful as he was in his heyday.

Anyone have any good ice skating recommendations? I haven’t read one before. I just discovered the two gold Olympic wining pair skaters Sergei Grinkov and Ekaterina Gordeeva. Their love story is so beautiful but ended tragically. I just finished watching a film/documentary on their lives together and now I’m in tears. I need a good ice skating romance - happy ending is a must. Thank you!

I HAVE NOTHING is a show about amateur abilities and enormous ambitions. The returnable series follows Carolyn Taylor (BARONESS VON SKETCH) on her eternal quest to escape the familiar and pursue her wildest dreams. Even when she doesn’t have the talent or skills (or basic knowledge) to realize them.
Season One is fuelled by her (unhealthy) obsession with the 1988 Calgary Olympics. The season follows Carolyn on a quixotic quest to choreograph the perfect full length pairs figure skating routine to Whitney Houston’s 1992 iconic and hit song “I Have Nothing”. What begins as a light hearted, nostalgic comedy quickly morphs into a high stakes, real life mission - with a few wild detours along the way. The season culminates in an exhibition performance of Carolyn’s routine, performed by professional skaters in front of an audience of discerning figure skating fans and Olympic heavyweights.
Skating legends such as Sandra Bezic, Brian Orser, Kurt Browning, Paul Martini, Barbara Underhill, Katarina Witt, Tara Lipinski, Kristi Yamaguchi, Adam Rippon, David Pelletier, Ekaterina Gordeeva, Elladj Baldé, Elizabeth Manley and other gold medalist athletes will be part of this show as well as award winning comedian, actor and writer Mae Martin.
WHEN? - NOVEMBER 3 2022 - EVENING TAPING TIMNG TBC (ESTIMATED 530PM - 8PM)
WHERE? CAA Centre - Sports and Entertainment Complex - BRAMPTON, ONTARIO
TICKETS ARE FREE!!
EMAIL [audience.team@blueantstudios.com](mailto:audience.team@blueantstudios.com) your name, how many tickets you would like to request!

I love Blank Check, and I also love figure skating. So, with the Beijing Olympics around the corner, I thought that I'd create a list of my favorite programs that use music from movies discussed on Blank Check. Programs are listed in episode/miniseries order, from Star Wars all the way to the this week's episode, The Piano.

1. Adam Siao Him Fa 2021-22 SP (Star Wars)- We will actually be seeing this gentleman and his amazing lightsaber choreography at the Olympics. One of the best new programs of the season!
2. Satoko Miyahara 2016-17 FS (Star Wars)- We have a fun Star Wars program, and also an artsy fartsy Star Wars program. This program uses selections from the Gustav Holst's Planets, which inspired John Williams' score, before transitioning into Princess Leia's theme.
3. Elena Radionova, 2015-16 FS (Titanic)- Titanic is, unsurprisingly, very popular among figure skaters. But this Titanic program is my favorite. Radionova was teetering on the brink of irrelevance in the crowded Russian ladies field in 2015-16 season, but every time she skated this gloriously tacky program, she performed with blinding sincerity and charisma, and dared us all to write her off. When Celine Dion starts singing, and then when Kate whispers "I'll never let go" (yes, this program includes voiceovers!) as Elena performs to the rafters, I always get emotional. And if you felt like that program didn't include enough voiceovers, you should watch Jorick Henrcickx's equally iconic free skate from the same season. It truly tells the whole story, and covers several important scenes, complete with sound effects.
4. Kamila Valieva, 2021-22 Exhibition (Avatar)- I like Kamila Valieva, who, barring any acts of God or COVID, will win the ladies Olympic Gold Medal in a few weeks, but I do not like her programs. This lovely and rather nerdy Avatar exhibition is the exception. Fun fact: Valieva was 3 years old when Avatar came out.
5. Kaori Sakamoto, 2019-2021 FS (The Matrix)- This outstanding program includes bullet time choreography and an iconic moment in which Kaori almost slices off the judges heads (the resulting gif gets a lot of use on skating twitter).
6. Peng Cheng/Jin Yang, 2019-2021 FS (Cloud Atlas)- I think that choreographer Lori Nichol must have watched Cloud Atlas on Netflix in the summer of 2019 and fallen in love, since she choreographed 2 Cloud Atlas programs that year (the other one was for Vincent Zhou, and it's not as good but it used the M83 trailer music!). This program tells the story of Hae-Joo and Somni 451, and it is magnificent. One of my favorite programs of the past 4 years.
7. Aliona Savchenko/Robin Szolkowy, 2008-9 SP (Lost in Space)- 2018 Olympic champion Aliona and her former (and better) partner Robin had lots of weird and amazing programs over the years, and this program might be their weirdest. Worth a watch for the costumes alone.
8. Mandy Woetzel/Ingo Steuer, 1993-4 FS (Basic Instinct)- And here is Aliona and Robin's coach Ingo Steuer skating to Basic Instinct. Skating to Basic instinct in when it was nice and fresh in everyone's minds was quite a choice, and it foretold a career of big choices and awesome programs for Ingo, both as a skater and a choreographer.
9. Eun-Soo Lim, 2019-20 exhibition (Is That Alright, A Star is Born) There were so, so many A Star is Born programs in 2019. This one was the best.
10. Shawn Sawyer, 2010-11 FS (Alice in Wonderland)- Sawyer portrays the Mad Hatter in this incredible free skate, choreographed by Marie-France Dubreuil, who coaches about a third of the 2022 Olympic Ice Dance field. To say that it is merely better than the Tim Burton movie would damn a masterpiece with faint praise.
11. Keiji Tanaka, 2016-18 Exhibition (Spirited Away)- There have been quite a few Miyazaki programs over the years, but this is my favorite.
12. Josefin Taljegard, 2010-22 FS (Joker)- There have been a truly alarming number of Joker programs in the past few years. But this one from fan-favorite Swedish underdog Taljegard is definitely the most fun. And if she qualifies for the free skate, we'll get to see this program in Beijing!
13. Ekaterina Gordeeva/Sergei Grinkov (Aladdin)- Katia and Sergei skating to A Whole New World surrounded by fake snow and in full costume in Disneyland for the TV special Disney's Christmas Fantasy on Ice, costarring Bronson Pinchot as himself, was such a Moment in Time.
14. Kaori Sakamoto 2018-19 FS (The Piano)- Kaori is the only skater to appear on this list twice, with her gorgeous free skate to The Piano.
15. Alena Kostornaia, 2019-20 FS (Twilight)- I originally wasn't going to put programs from Patreon episodes on here, but I simply had to share Alena's Twilight free skate. She starts by skating to Desplat's score for New Moon and landing 2 triple axels, and then things just get more and more fun.

I actually edited this list down quite a bit, so if you want more recommendations for programs, Blank Check adjacent or not, I have them!

Let's look back at some memorable moments and interesting insights from last year.
Your top 10 posts:

• "White British air passenger (Louis Mann, 27) on a Wizz Air flight from Warsaw, Poland to Liverpool, England goes on racist rant and makes Nazi salute; shouts, “Anglo-Saxon race, we are superior,” “’know your place, don’t answer back, you’re a Slavic race traitor n----r lover.”" by u/DisruptSQ
• "Anti-masker, 39, in Singapore who refused to wear mask on MRT arrested for allegedly flouting Covid-19 safe distancing measures; “Have you researched Freemasons? Have you researched Jesuits? Have you researched the UN? Have you researched the World Health Organization?”" by u/DisruptSQ
• "Canadians (Rodney 'Rod' Baker, 55 and Ekaterina Baker, 32) from VancouveToronto break COVID-19 quarantine rules, charter plane to fly to remote northern community and lie about being local workers in order to receive vaccine intended for locals, including vulnerable and elderly Indigenous people" by u/DisruptSQ
• "American tourist in Bali, Indonesia arrested by village security officers on Nyepi, a Balinese "Day of Silence"; after locals explained the day of fasting, silence and meditation, the tourist still insisted on jogging and that is when they chained the man while waiting for authorities to arrive" by u/DisruptSQ
• "In June 2006, 4 months after his third divorce, Rush Limbaugh and four other men returned from a two-day trip to the Dominican Republic, flying on a private jet owned by the radio network which syndicated his radio program. He was detained for possessing 29 Viagra pills not prescribed in his name." by u/DisruptSQ
• "White American air passenger (Sierra Nicole McClinton, 25) on a Jacksonville-Houston United Express flight forces plane to be diverted to Alabama; got drunk, threw up on herself prompting her to take off her pants, spit on another passenger; had to be detained by attendant and another passenger" by u/DisruptSQ
• "Foreigners in Bali, Indonesia ignore the closure of tourist destinations due to COVID-19 and remove a sign stating “closed for visitor” to gain access to Karang Boma Cliff in Pecatu, South Kuta" by u/DisruptSQ
• "American evangelical Christian street preacher (Phillip Blair) in Auckland, New Zealand accuses attendees of gay pride rally of 'celebrating sin', gets heckled by marchers; days later, asks a 16-year-old girl for an 'intelligent discussion' about drinking and sex before her mother intervenes" by u/DisruptSQ
• "Convicted Norwegian pedophile (Kim Vegar Kristoffersen, 29) who was set to visit his Filipino boyfriend, 16, refused entry into the Philippines; used e-mail and Facebook to hunt for his victims; had been convicted four times in Norway for sexually molesting underaged children" by u/DisruptSQ
• "Tourists Taking Photographs, South Africa, 1968. [850 x 509]" by u/DisruptSQ

The following essay is x-posted from /Christianity here I figured that its a good idea to spread it far and wide as it gives what I hope is a comprehensive critique of the evils of Marxism.
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Hello all. In light of recent discussions that I have had here along with the political state of the world, I think that it is of the utmost importance for me to demonstrate that at its core, Marxism is inherently antagonistic to the core values and beliefs of Christianity. The goal of this post is not to attack anyone personally but to educate and warn faithful Christians of all persuasions and denominations of the pervasive anti-Christian tenets, goals, practices, and ideologies of Marxism and prominent Marxist leaders, theorists, and thinkers.

First of All, What is Marxism?

At its core, beyond being an economic or political system, Marxism is a materialist ideology and interpretation of world history, conceptualizing all of history as class struggle. It is descriptive as well as prescriptive. It proposes that material conditions of the day, not the ideas of the great men and women of history. Marxism is an atheist ideology in its conception and practice. In a Marxist context, Jesus, his life, his ministry, and his sacrifice upon the cross would not be seen in the context of God sending his only begotten Son, who so loved us, He suffered the worse tortures and humiliations to save and redeem us. Instead, a Marxist sees Jesus as a failed revolutionary, a victim of a class struggle against the ruling powers, See Herzog, William R. Parables as subversive speech: Jesus as pedagogue of the oppressed. Westminster John Knox Press, 1994, pg. 104 or Moreland, Milton. "The Jesus Movement in the Villages of Roman Galilee." Oral Performance, Popular Tradition, and Hidden Transcript in Q 60 (2006): 159.. This understanding, so rooted in the world, so narrow in its concept, divorces all of the divinity from Christ, and steals the massive weight of His burden and undermines the enormity of His sacrifice.
Furthermore, Marx was a Hegelian, but he took Hegel's dialectic and rewrote it in, atheist, materialist terms, and rejected the idealism of Hegel.
"At the time of Hegel's death, he was the most prominent philosopher in Germany. His views were widely taught, and his students were highly regarded. His followers soon divided into right-wing and left-wing Hegelians. Theologically and politically the right-wing Hegelians offered a conservative interpretation of his work. They emphasized the compatibility between Hegel's philosophy and Christianity. Politically, they were orthodox. The left-wing Hegelians eventually moved to an atheistic position. In politics, many of them became revolutionaries. This historically important left-wing group included Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, Friedrich Engels, and Karl Marx. Engels and Marx were particularly influenced by Hegel's idea that history moves dialectically, but they replaced Hegel's philosophical idealism with materialism"
The Marxists of the Socialist Worker further flesh out Marx's view on Christianity

The most important point for Marx and Engels was that human beings created religion--so religious beliefs must have social causes.
In early societies, humans didn't yet have the means to understand the forces of nature. So they imagined that these forces had a conscious power--inventing human-like gods that governed the wind and the weather, the rivers, the stars and the earth. Modern religions like Christianity likewise contain stories designed to reconcile people to conditions that seem beyond their control.
With the rise of hierarchy and classes in human society, religion became the means for rulers to justify the system that they presided over--often, by declaring themselves gods, or at least in close communication with them. Thus, while Christianity first emerged as the religion of a persecuted minority, it was later transformed into the official ideology of the Roman Empire and numerous other societies since.
This is why the effect of religion is generally conservative, providing a justification for the status quo. But the appeal of religion for the have-nots in society isn't its conservatism, but the fact that it seems to be a solution to the suffering and oppression of this world--in a distant afterlife, but a solution nonetheless.
The only way that masses of people will reject the future imaginary solution offered by religion is if they see a real solution in the here and now--in the form of a struggle that challenges oppression and injustice.

At its best, Christianity to Marx and his disciples is a coping mechanism of the oppressed underclasses, something that may become obsolete after the introduction of Communism. At worst, however, it was something that was false, superstitious, reactionary, and must be destroyed, root and stem.

What do prominent Marxists have to say about Christianity?

To understand the anti-Christian sentiment inherent to Marxism, one need only let the worlds of prominent Marxists speak for themselves.

[Religion] is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

-Karl Marx

when society, by taking possession of all means of production, and using them on a planned basis, has freed itself, and all its members, from the bondage in which they are now held, by these means of production, which they, themselves, have produced, but which confront them as an irresistible alien force, when, therefore, man no longer merely proposes, but also disposes — only then will the last alien force, which is still reflected in religion, vanish; and with it will also vanish the religious reflection itself, for the simple reason that then there will be nothing left to reflect

-Friedrich Engels
Lenin was especially anti-Christian in his views, and as will sadly be shown later, his deeds.

Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism.
Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class.

-Vladimir Lenin
Lenin was particularly hateful of religion. The man didn't mince words:

“Religion is a sort of spiritual booze.”
“there is nothing more abominable than religion,”
“all worship of a divinity is a necrophilia.”

In their influential book The ABC of Communism, Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhensky spoke out strongly against religion. They wrote:

"Communism is incompatible with religious faith"

This book was quite influential, described as "an elementary textbook of communist knowledge." It was among the most read books in the Soviet Union. (Cohen, Stephen F. (1980). Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938. Oxford University Press US. pp. 64–65.) And it is still viewed favorably by Marxists today, as shown in The Socialist Worker.
Bukharin and Preobrazhensky went on to criticize religion and Christianity by extension. They weren't as hateful of Christianity as Lenin, but still viewed it as a false dogma and ultimately sought to extinguish it:

But the campaign against the backwardness of the masses in this matter of religion, must be conducted with patience and considerateness, as well as with energy and perseverance. The credulous crowd is extremely sensitive to anything which hurts its feelings. To thrust atheism upon the masses, and in conjunction therewith to interfere forcibly with religious practices and to make mock of the objects of popular reverence, would not assist but would hinder the campaign against religion. If the church were to be persecuted, it would win sympathy among the masses, for persecution would remind them of the almost forgotten days when there was an association between religion and the defence of national freedom; it would strengthen the antisemitic movement; and in general it would mobilize all the vestiges of an ideology which is already beginning to die out.

The Fruits of Communism

Matthew 7:15-20 is one of the most important passages in the bible, a dire warning from Christ himself. We are warned of false prophets, wolves in sheep's clothing. And how we know a true prophet from false is by their fruits, for a bad tree bears bad fruit.
Marx certainly bears striking resemblance to a prophet. He warns of the imminent collapse of society, the rising, apocalyptic tide of the proletariat destroying the bourgeois for their many sins in a epic battle of the coming world-wide class war as relevatory as Armageddon or Ragnarok. He promises a paradise on Earth that will last forever, a classless, stateless society, an era of justice and peace for all, the end of history. But the poison fruits of communism show that this promise is not to be. Marx is a false prophet, while his ideology promises to deliver heaven, Marxism, time and again brings hell on earth.

Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union

Russia was the first country to fall under the yoke of Marxism and to have its people enslaved by its ideology. Seizing upon the weakness of a country devastated by years of war, with starving people and unpopular monarchy, Marxist revolutionaries launched a civil war. They launched the Red Terror, a brutal campaign of atrocities and reprisals against their perceived enemies to cement their power. Not even supposed allies of Marxism were safe; peasants who were forcibly conscripted into the Red Army who deserted and factory workers who went on strike were brutally executed by the infant Marxist regime. Werth, Bartosek et al. Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression.(1999), Chapter 4: The Red Terror. But particularly egregious were their actions towards Christians, simply for their profession of faith.
In the Soviet Union, tens of thousands of churches were destroyed or converted to other uses, and many members of the clergy were murdered, publicly executed and imprisoned for what the government termed "anti-government activities." An extensive educational and propaganda campaign was launched in order to convince people, especially children and youths, to abandon their religious beliefs. This persecution resulted in the intentional murder of 500,000 Orthodox followers by the government of the Soviet Union during the 20th century. See World Christian trends, AD 30-AD 2200, pp. 230–246 Tables 4–5 & 4–10 By David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson, Christopher R. Guidry, Peter F. Crossing (NOTE: They define 'martyr' on p235 as only including Christians killed for faith and excluding other Christians killed)
State atheism was instituted, church property was seized. It became illegal to even question the doctrine of atheism under threat of imprisonment. Froese, Paul (6 August 2008). The Plot to Kill God: Findings from the Soviet Experiment in Secularization. University of California Press. p. 122. Children were made to inform on their parents if they practiced religion at home. See Ramet, Sabrina P. (1990). Catholicism and Politics in Communist Societies. Duke University Press. pp. 232–33.
Along with execution, some other actions against Orthodox priests and believers included torture, being sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals. In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed. In the period between 1927 and 1940, the number of Orthodox Churches in the Russian Republic fell from 29,584 to less than 500. Between 1917 and 1940, 130,000 Orthodox priests were arrested.

War on the Clergy

The exceptional cruelty of the Bolsheviks' actions, methods, and goals were especially sickening and best demonstrates how much they hated Christianity. To see the extents the nascent Marxist state would go to during the civil war and its early administration to see the complete eradication of the Orthodox church as an institution, and the crimes committed against the clergy and laity, we must turn to Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. "A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory, and Practice, and the Believer", vol 2: A History of Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1988).
Metropolitan Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky) of Kiev was the first bishop martyred by the Bolsheviks on January 25, 1918. Unfortunately, he will be far from the last. He had consistently opposed the revolution, and he was severely beaten as well as tortured before being shot outside the Monastery of the Caves. Before being shot by his murderers, in a exceptionally Christian manner, he prayed to God for them to be forgiven (pg. 9-10). In the Don region in February 1918 the Reds were killing every priest they could find. (pg. 10) An 80-year-old monk-priest named Amvrosi was beaten with rifle butts before being killed. A priest named Dimitri was brought to a cemetery and undressed, but when he tried to make the sign of the cross before being killed, a soldier chopped off his right arm. An old priest who tried to stop the execution of a peasant was beaten and cut to pieces with swords. In the Holy Saviour Monastery, Red soldiers arrested and killed the 75-year-old abbot by scalping him and beheading him. In the Kherson province a priest was crucified. (pg. 10-11).
Bishop Hermogenes (Dolganyov) of Tobolsk, was killed along with other detainees on 16 June 1918 by drowning. He had organized a religious procession the day after the Tsar had come through Tobolsk on their way to Ekaterinburg (April 28), in which he blessed the Royal family. He was arrested the following week and the Soviets promised to release him for 10,000 roubles, and later 100,000 roubles. When the ransom was collected and submitted, the delegation of notables and clergy that had delivered it were arrested as well and later executed. (pg. 2-3). In Voronezh, seven nuns who had prayed for a White victory in the civil war were reportedly boiled in a cauldron of tar (pg. 11). In Crimea, one priest named Ugliansky was killed by Red forces on grounds that he used green ribbons instead of red ribbons on the church icon lamps. Churches in Simferopol, Feodosia and other parts of the region were desecrated and their clergy were brutally murdered (pg. 3).
Filosof Ornatsky, a priest in Petrograd, was arrested in the spring of 1918 after giving a public requiem for victims of the Bolsheviks. He and thirty-two others were driven to a cliff overlooking the Gulf of Finland, where the priest was allowed to perform a brief funeral service and bless the victims, before they were all shot and dropped into the sea. Archpriest John Vostorgov in Moscow, a famous Orthodox missionary and church activist, preached against the Bolsheviks and as a result he was blackmailed by the Bolsheviks, arrested and executed. He was executed along with Roman Catholic priest Lutoslawski and his brother, two tsarist ministers (N. Maklakov and Alexei Khvostov), an Orthodox bishop Efren, former State Council Chairman Ivan Shcheglovitov and Senator S. Beletsky. Fr Vostorgov conducted a short funeral service and preached to his victims to face death as a sacrifice of atonement, after which each victim came forward to be blessed by Fr Vostorgov and the Bishop; then they were shot. (pg. 3-4)
During the Red occupation of Stavropol diocese in 1918, the Bolsheviks killed at least 52 Orthodox priests, four deacons and four lectors. Priest Alexander Podolsky was tortured and killed for giving a Te Deum service for a Cossack regiment before it attacked the Bolsheviks. When a peasant came to collect his body, the peasant was shot dead on the spot. Fr Alexei Miliutinsky was tortured, scalped and killed for preaching to Red army soldiers that they were leading Russia to disaster and for offering prayers for the Cossacks. Not even left-wing priests were safe, such as Ivan Prigorsky who was taken out of church on Holy Saturday into the street, where Red soldiers cursed him, mutilated his face and then killed him (pg. 5).
Bishop Leontius (von Wimpffen) was murdered along with most of the diocesan clergy in 1919 after he made a sermon that quoted Jesus' words "I was naked and you have clothed me, I was ill and you looked after me" and this quotation was interpreted as an attack against the Bolsheviks (pg. 8).
Bishop Macarius (Gnevushev) of Vyazma, who was beloved by the local population, was arrested as a result of his popularity in the summer of 1918. He was executed along with fourteen others in a field near Smolensk, whom he ministered and attempted to comfort with blessings before their execution. One of the soldiers who executed him afterward confessed on his deathbed that he had killed a saint (pg. 7).
Lenin's decree on the separation of church and state on January 23, 1918 deprived the formerly official church of its status of legal person, the right to own property or to teach religion in both state and private schools or to any group of minors. This order to seize property was carried out with ruthless violence by Red soldiers. They often opened fire on crowds that surrounded churches in an attempt to defend them and on religious processions in protest against Church persecution. Thousands were killed in this way, especially in the spring of 1918. Shooting down of religious processions are well documented in Voronezh, Shatsk (Tambov province), and Tula (where thirteen were killed and many wounded, including Bishop Kornilii) (pg. 12).
In Moscow over 400 churches and monasteries were dynamited, including the famous Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. (Haskins, Ekaterina V. "Russia's post-communist past: the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the re-imagining of national identity." History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past 21.1 (2009)).

Suppression of Miracles

For a supposedly atheist state, the Soviet Union was terrified of miracles and did everything in their power to disprove them. Believers could also be arrested in association with claiming or honoring miracles. Miracles needed to be suppressed in the eyes of the state due to their contradiction of the atheism of the official state ideology. However, it was not yet legal to prosecute people simply for making such claims (it would become so in 1929), so the miracle claims were prosecuted instead under the pretext that they were acts of resistance meant to strengthen believers in their resistance to hold on to church valuables. The government issued a decree on March 1, 1919, regarding "the complete liquidation of the cult of corpses and mummies", which ordered the public exposure of saints' relics in order to show them to be frauds (to counter the belief that the saints' bodies were miraculously preserved). In 1918 there were even calls to outlaw the sacrament of the Eucharist on account of its miraculous transformation as believed by Orthodox and Catholic Christians Letters from Moscow, Gleb Yakunin and Lev Regelson
However, the bungling Soviet state often undermined its own goals and at times the persecutions drove people into the arms of the church as Bukharin feared. The body of St Sergius of Radonezh was exhumed and declared as fraudulent. The Soviet media eagerly spread this news that there was nothing but rotten bones and dust in his shrine. Revolution and the Church wrote: "Believers no longer weep, don't fall into fits of hysteria, and don't hold a grudge against the Soviet government anymore. They see there has been no blasphemy… Only an age-old fraud has been made naked in the eyes of the nation." (Pospielovsky pg. 19). From the St Sergius-Trinity Monastery where these relics came from, an entirely different story was circulated that when the relics were exposed it was found that the saint's body was in excellent condition (he had lived in the 14th century), and when the crowd of believers that had come there saw this they fell on their knees in prayer, while the Bolshevik commander was pulled off his horse and beaten by the crowd. A similar event occurred in the city of Vladimir when the relics of two saints were exposed and the doctor who had acted as medical state witness reconfirmed his faith according to his own testimony. (pg. 20).
The Sretenskaia church at the Sennoi marketplace in Kiev had two gold-plated domes that had for been completely tarnished after many years. These domes experienced a similar renovations one day when light shone so brightly from the domes that it was at first thought to be on fire, and a huge crowd gathered to see it with an atmosphere of religious euphoria. The light reportedly moved in patches around the dome for three days as they were progressively "renovated". The local communist newspaper then printed two articles, one of them signed by members of the Academy of Sciences, which stated that the phenomenon was caused by a rare air wave containing a peculiar electric discharge. A witness claimed it later became known that the GPU had forced the Academy to say this, and that there were other gold-plated things in the area that were not similarly renovated. Several months later the church was dynamited by government authorities. (pg. 21-22)
One of the most famous of these supposed miracles occurred in the village of Kalinovka near Vinnitsa in the Ukraine. A detachment of mounted police had come to the village in order to close the local church, but they were met by hostile crowds. The crowds were too big for the police to force their way through and so they retreated. Not far from the church, however, there was a traditional Crucifix standing at a crossroads, and the policemen in frustration fired at the crucifix. One of the bullets hit the crucifix in Christ's side and suddenly blood gushed out of the hole reportedly. One of the policemen lost control of himself and fell off his horse, while the others took off. The crowd went on its knees and prayed in front of the bleeding crucifix. The news spread and thousands of people came to see it. The blood reportedly kept running out for several days. Soon after more police came with orders to hack down the crucifix but each time they returned in failure under the claim that some force was preventing them from approaching it. The local communist press tried to explain the phenomena by claiming that there had been an accumulation of water in the wooden cross behind the metallic figure, and that once the bullet hit the metal, the water, which had turned red from the metal's rust, must have seeped through. The crowds brought crosses with them that they set up beside it, prayed before it and dipped cloths in the miraculous blood. For days and nights they sang hymns as well as burned candles. Priests were absent in fear. Many atheists reportedly converted after seeing this. (pg. 22-23) At the very first opportunity the Soviets destroyed the bleeding Crucifix and all adjacent crosses. It was later claimed that a commission of experts had reported that the fluid coming out of the bullet hole was not blood. The people who had gathered there that day were later depicted as drunkards, fools and scum, and it was claimed that the kissing of the Crucifix had resulted in an outbreak of syphilis as well as mass robberies (pg. 23).
As you can see, Marx's first daughter, the Soviet Union brutally suppressed Christianity and the rights, property, liberty, and lives of all of the faithful, as at its core, Christianity challenges Marxism's need for sole authoritarian supremacy in every facet of life where it holds sway. However, as brutal as the atrocities were in the Soviet Union, they did little to stem the flow of this toxic anti-Christian ideology across the globe.

Terror in Spain

By no means do I want anyone to believe that Marxism is monolithic. In fact, Marxists brutally quarrel with themselves almost as badly as they do their enemies. In the modern era, the Soviet Union has lost a great deal of popularity since its collapse. Many Marxists are wont to claim that the regime that arose in the USSR "wasn't true communism". I am not here to argue what true communism is. But what I am going to demonstrate is that whatever the flavor of Marxism, it is brutally anti-Christian and will suppress Christianity whenever it is able.
Noam Chomsky is a prominent left-wing academic, one of the most cited people in all of academia in fact He is also a leading supporter of the "anarchist" faction in the Spanish civil war and their short lived "stateless society." And while these "anarchists" were opposed to the particular flavor of Marxism in practice in the Soviet Union, they committed the same brutal atrocities against Christians because of their faith.
Atrocities were committed by "by sections of nearly all the leftist groups" Payne, Stanley G. A History of Spain and Portugal, Vol. 2, Ch. 26, p. 650 (Print Edition: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973) and Beevor, Antony (2006), The Battle For Spain; The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, p. 81 Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
The violence consisted of the killing of tens of thousands of people (including 6,832 Roman Catholic priests) as well as the desecration and burning of monasteries and churches. (Cueva, Julio de la (1998), "Religious Persecution, Anticlerical Tradition and Revolution: On Atrocities against the Clergy during the Spanish Civil War", Journal of Contemporary History, XXXIII (3): 355–369, JSTOR 261121)
The failed coup of July 1936 set loose a violent onslaught on those that revolutionaries in the Republican zone identified as enemies; "where the rebellion failed, for several months afterwards merely to be identified as a priest, a religious or simply a militant Christian or member of some apostolic or pious organization, was enough for a person to be executed without trial". (Hilari Raguer, Gunpowder and Incense, p. 115)
According to Julio de la Cueva, the toll of the Spanish Red Terror was 72,344 lives.

Mexico

Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles was another flavor of Marxist that oppressed the rights of Christians. While he did not consider himself a Marxist, he had close relations with the Soviet Union, where Mexico hosted its first foreign embassy. When the Soviet Union opened its first embassy in Mexico, the Soviet ambassador remarked that "no other two countries show more similarities than the Soviet Union and Mexico". The Mexican government's campaign against the Catholic Church after the Mexican Revolution culminated in the 1917 constitution which contained numerous articles which Catholics perceived as violating their civil rights: outlawing monastic religious orders, forbidding public worship outside of church buildings, restricted religious organizations' rights to own property, and taking away basic civil rights of members of the clergy (priests and religious leaders were prevented from wearing their habits, were denied the right to vote, and were not permitted to comment on public affairs in the press and were denied the right to trial for violation of anticlerical laws). This all culminated in the Cristero War where Christians took up arms against the government.

Red China

During the Cultural Revolution, a crime against humanity in and of itself, Christian churches, monasteries, and cemeteries were closed down and sometimes converted to other uses, looted, and destroyed..
The persecution continues in modern times. The Chinese Communist Party and government try to maintain tight control over all religions, so the only legal Christian Churches (Three-Self Patriotic Movement and Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association) are those under the Communist Party of China control. Churches which are not controlled by the government are shut down, and their members are imprisoned. Gong Shengliang, head of the South China Church, was sentenced to death in 2001. Although his sentence was commuted to a jail sentence, Amnesty International reports that he has been tortured. A Christian lobby group says that about 300 Christians caught attending unregistered house churches were in jail in 2004.
In January 2016, a prominent Christian church leader Rev Gu Yuese who criticised the mass removal of church crucifixes by the government was arrested for "embezzling funds". Chinese authorities have taken down hundreds of crosses in Zhejiang Province known as "China's bible belt". Gu led China's largest authorised church with capacity of 5,000 in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang.
The Associated Press reported in 2018 that China's leader and Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping "is waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982.", which has involved "destroying crosses, burning bibles, shutting churches and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith". A Catholic church was forced to replace a painting of the Virgin Mary and religious couplets with portraits of Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong replaced them

North Korea

North Korea's Juche state is yet another permutation of Marxist ideology, and North Korea is yet another Atheist state. By its very authoritarian nature, it is difficult to even get information out of North Korea. However, it is listed as the country with the most Christian persecution in the entire world by Open Doors, a non-denominational mission supporting persecuted Christians in over 70 countries. It is currently estimated that more than 50,000 Christians are locked inside concentration camps because of their faith, where they are systematically subjected to mistreatment such as unrestrained torture, mass-starvation and even imprisonment and death by asphyxiation in gas chambers.. This means that 20% of North Korea's Christian community lives in concentration camps.. According to one report at least 200,000 Christians have gone missing since 1953

Poisonous Fruit

As you can see, the fruits of Marxism are poison. The promises of a better world are replaced with the reality of constant persecution for your faith. I could go on and on with more examples but will hit the character limit. All you need to know is that their crimes are so common that Wikipedia needed to have a disambiguation page for Red Terror).
You might think that the only threat of Marxism poses to Christianity is when it gains state power. To an extent that is true in that the greatest atrocities are only possible when complete authoritarian control is assumed. However, Marxists seek to destroy the Christian way of life however possible, whether by force of arms or death by a thousand cuts. Even in a liberal democracy like America, with freedom of speech and religion enshrined in the constitution, Christianity is always under threat. Marxists in America today are tearing down Christian statues all across the country. Statues of Junipero Serra, a canonized Saint are being torn down. Protesters tried to tear down a statue of King Louis IX, commonly known to the rest of us as St. Louis, in the city that bears his name Shaun King, affiliated with the BLM movement, itself founded by self admitted "trained Marxists" wants to destroy all Christian art with the "white" Jesus and Mary. Statues of the blessed virgin have been desecrated. Recently churches have been burned to the ground and desecrated by these rioters, including the 249-year-old San Gabriel Mission in California. Historical St. John's church, an Episcopalian church in Washington DC was burnt down.
Marxists, academics, politicians, and activists say and push for plenty of anti-Christian things, and often try to use the state to do it. From abolishing the nuclear family, banning homeschooling used by many Christian parents, banning private schools entirely, from hate speech laws that make it a crime to criticize Mohammed where such protections would never apply to Jesus, taxing property returned to churches after it was stolen by communists, from taxing churches if they oppose gay marriage while other left wing non profits and NGOs would be immune, from having courts take children away from parents who 'misgender' them or refuse to consent to hormone therapy. Whatever your views are on these political topics, there is a concerted authoritarian effort to prevent Christians from practicing their faith how they see fit.

What Christianity Says about Marxism

Now that you know what prominent Marxists say and think about Christianity, and the horrible atrocities they commit on Christians, it is also important to know what Christianity says about Marxism.
The Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination in the world, specifically declared in the Decree Against Communism that Catholics who professed Communist doctrine to be excommunicated as apostates from the Christian faith. Similar proclamations against Communism were made in Divini Redemptoris (1937) Nostis et nobiscum (1849), Quanta cura (1864), and Rerum novarum (1891).
The Orthodox Church anathematized communists after suffering such brutal calamities in the Red Terror. The Patriarch of Russia stated:

Christ’s precept to love our neighbor is forgotten and trampled tinder foot. Every day we learn that innocent people, not excluding those lying sick in bed, are being frightfully and brutally murdered for the sole offense that they have honestly discharged their duty to the country and have devoted all their energies to serve the welfare of the people. These crimes are committed … in broad daylight with unprecedented effrontery and outrageous brutality … in almost every city of our native land …
These crimes fill our heart with deep sorrow and compel us to denounce sharply these monsters of the human race … in accordance with the precept of the Holy Apostle: “Them that sin reprove in the sight of all, that the rest also may be in fear.” (I Tim. 5: 20.)
Think what you are doing, you madmen! Stop your bloody reprisals. Your acts are not merely cruel, they are the works of Satan for which you will burn in Hell fire in the life hereafter and be cursed by future generations in this life.
By the authority given me by God I forbid you to partake of the Christian Mysteries. I anathematize you if you still bear a Christian name and belong by birth to the Orthodox Church.
And you, faithful children of the Orthodox Christian Church, I beseech you to have nothing to do with this scourge of the human race: “Put away the wicked man from among yourselves.” (I Corinthians 5: 13.).

The following essay is x-posted from /Christianity here I figure that I do not have to convince anyone of the evils of communism on this subreddit, but I figured it would be a good idea to share what I compiled in case you ever need to convince friends and family about the evils of Marxism.
Hello all. In light of recent discussions that I have had here along with the political state of the world, I think that it is of the utmost importance for me to demonstrate that at its core, Marxism is inherently antagonistic to the core values and beliefs of Christianity. The goal of this post is not to attack anyone personally but to educate and warn faithful Christians of all persuasions and denominations of the pervasive anti-Christian tenets, goals, practices, and ideologies of Marxism and prominent Marxist leaders, theorists, and thinkers.

First of All, What is Marxism?

At its core, beyond being an economic or political system, Marxism is a materialist ideology and interpretation of world history, conceptualizing all of history as class struggle. It is descriptive as well as prescriptive. It proposes that material conditions of the day, not the ideas of the great men and women of history. Marxism is an atheist ideology in its conception and practice. In a Marxist context, Jesus, his life, his ministry, and his sacrifice upon the cross would not be seen in the context of God sending his only begotten Son, who so loved us, He suffered the worse tortures and humiliations to save and redeem us. Instead, a Marxist sees Jesus as a failed revolutionary, a victim of a class struggle against the ruling powers, See Herzog, William R. Parables as subversive speech: Jesus as pedagogue of the oppressed. Westminster John Knox Press, 1994, pg. 104 or Moreland, Milton. "The Jesus Movement in the Villages of Roman Galilee." Oral Performance, Popular Tradition, and Hidden Transcript in Q 60 (2006): 159.. This understanding, so rooted in the world, so narrow in its concept, divorces all of the divinity from Christ, and steals the massive weight of His burden and undermines the enormity of His sacrifice.
Furthermore, Marx was a Hegelian, but he took Hegel's dialectic and rewrote it in, atheist, materialist terms, and rejected the idealism of Hegel.
"At the time of Hegel's death, he was the most prominent philosopher in Germany. His views were widely taught, and his students were highly regarded. His followers soon divided into right-wing and left-wing Hegelians. Theologically and politically the right-wing Hegelians offered a conservative interpretation of his work. They emphasized the compatibility between Hegel's philosophy and Christianity. Politically, they were orthodox. The left-wing Hegelians eventually moved to an atheistic position. In politics, many of them became revolutionaries. This historically important left-wing group included Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, Friedrich Engels, and Karl Marx. Engels and Marx were particularly influenced by Hegel's idea that history moves dialectically, but they replaced Hegel's philosophical idealism with materialism"
The Marxists of the Socialist Worker further flesh out Marx's view on Christianity

The most important point for Marx and Engels was that human beings created religion--so religious beliefs must have social causes.
In early societies, humans didn't yet have the means to understand the forces of nature. So they imagined that these forces had a conscious power--inventing human-like gods that governed the wind and the weather, the rivers, the stars and the earth. Modern religions like Christianity likewise contain stories designed to reconcile people to conditions that seem beyond their control.
With the rise of hierarchy and classes in human society, religion became the means for rulers to justify the system that they presided over--often, by declaring themselves gods, or at least in close communication with them. Thus, while Christianity first emerged as the religion of a persecuted minority, it was later transformed into the official ideology of the Roman Empire and numerous other societies since.
This is why the effect of religion is generally conservative, providing a justification for the status quo. But the appeal of religion for the have-nots in society isn't its conservatism, but the fact that it seems to be a solution to the suffering and oppression of this world--in a distant afterlife, but a solution nonetheless.
The only way that masses of people will reject the future imaginary solution offered by religion is if they see a real solution in the here and now--in the form of a struggle that challenges oppression and injustice.

At its best, Christianity to Marx and his disciples is a coping mechanism of the oppressed underclasses, something that may become obsolete after the introduction of Communism. At worst, however, it was something that was false, superstitious, reactionary, and must be destroyed, root and stem.

What do prominent Marxists have to say about Christianity?

To understand the anti-Christian sentiment inherent to Marxism, one need only let the worlds of prominent Marxists speak for themselves.

[Religion] is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

-Karl Marx

when society, by taking possession of all means of production, and using them on a planned basis, has freed itself, and all its members, from the bondage in which they are now held, by these means of production, which they, themselves, have produced, but which confront them as an irresistible alien force, when, therefore, man no longer merely proposes, but also disposes — only then will the last alien force, which is still reflected in religion, vanish; and with it will also vanish the religious reflection itself, for the simple reason that then there will be nothing left to reflect

-Friedrich Engels
Lenin was especially anti-Christian in his views, and as will sadly be shown later, his deeds.

Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism.
Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class.

-Vladimir Lenin
Lenin was particularly hateful of religion. The man didn't mince words:

“Religion is a sort of spiritual booze.”
“there is nothing more abominable than religion,”
“all worship of a divinity is a necrophilia.”

In their influential book The ABC of Communism, Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhensky spoke out strongly against religion. They wrote:

"Communism is incompatible with religious faith"

This book was quite influential, described as "an elementary textbook of communist knowledge." It was among the most read books in the Soviet Union. (Cohen, Stephen F. (1980). Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938. Oxford University Press US. pp. 64–65.) And it is still viewed favorably by Marxists today, as shown in The Socialist Worker.
Bukharin and Preobrazhensky went on to criticize religion and Christianity by extension. They weren't as hateful of Christianity as Lenin, but still viewed it as a false dogma and ultimately sought to extinguish it:

But the campaign against the backwardness of the masses in this matter of religion, must be conducted with patience and considerateness, as well as with energy and perseverance. The credulous crowd is extremely sensitive to anything which hurts its feelings. To thrust atheism upon the masses, and in conjunction therewith to interfere forcibly with religious practices and to make mock of the objects of popular reverence, would not assist but would hinder the campaign against religion. If the church were to be persecuted, it would win sympathy among the masses, for persecution would remind them of the almost forgotten days when there was an association between religion and the defence of national freedom; it would strengthen the antisemitic movement; and in general it would mobilize all the vestiges of an ideology which is already beginning to die out.

The Fruits of Communism

Matthew 7:15-20 is one of the most important passages in the bible, a dire warning from Christ himself. We are warned of false prophets, wolves in sheep's clothing. And how we know a true prophet from false is by their fruits, for a bad tree bears bad fruit.
Marx certainly bears striking resemblance to a prophet. He warns of the imminent collapse of society, the rising, apocalyptic tide of the proletariat destroying the bourgeois for their many sins in a epic battle of the coming world-wide class war as relevatory as Armageddon or Ragnarok. He promises a paradise on Earth that will last forever, a classless, stateless society, an era of justice and peace for all, the end of history. But the poison fruits of communism show that this promise is not to be. Marx is a false prophet, while his ideology promises to deliver heaven, Marxism, time and again brings hell on earth.

Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union

Russia was the first country to fall under the yoke of Marxism and to have its people enslaved by its ideology. Seizing upon the weakness of a country devastated by years of war, with starving people and unpopular monarchy, Marxist revolutionaries launched a civil war. They launched the Red Terror, a brutal campaign of atrocities and reprisals against their perceived enemies to cement their power. Not even supposed allies of Marxism were safe; peasants who were forcibly conscripted into the Red Army who deserted and factory workers who went on strike were brutally executed by the infant Marxist regime. Werth, Bartosek et al. Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression.(1999), Chapter 4: The Red Terror. But particularly egregious were their actions towards Christians, simply for their profession of faith.
In the Soviet Union, tens of thousands of churches were destroyed or converted to other uses, and many members of the clergy were murdered, publicly executed and imprisoned for what the government termed "anti-government activities." An extensive educational and propaganda campaign was launched in order to convince people, especially children and youths, to abandon their religious beliefs. This persecution resulted in the intentional murder of 500,000 Orthodox followers by the government of the Soviet Union during the 20th century. See World Christian trends, AD 30-AD 2200, pp. 230–246 Tables 4–5 & 4–10 By David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson, Christopher R. Guidry, Peter F. Crossing (NOTE: They define 'martyr' on p235 as only including Christians killed for faith and excluding other Christians killed)
State atheism was instituted, church property was seized. It became illegal to even question the doctrine of atheism under threat of imprisonment. Froese, Paul (6 August 2008). The Plot to Kill God: Findings from the Soviet Experiment in Secularization. University of California Press. p. 122. Children were made to inform on their parents if they practiced religion at home. See Ramet, Sabrina P. (1990). Catholicism and Politics in Communist Societies. Duke University Press. pp. 232–33.
Along with execution, some other actions against Orthodox priests and believers included torture, being sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals. In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed. In the period between 1927 and 1940, the number of Orthodox Churches in the Russian Republic fell from 29,584 to less than 500. Between 1917 and 1940, 130,000 Orthodox priests were arrested.

War on the Clergy

The exceptional cruelty of the Bolsheviks' actions, methods, and goals were especially sickening and best demonstrates how much they hated Christianity. To see the extents the nascent Marxist state would go to during the civil war and its early administration to see the complete eradication of the Orthodox church as an institution, and the crimes committed against the clergy and laity, we must turn to Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. "A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory, and Practice, and the Believer", vol 2: A History of Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1988).
Metropolitan Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky) of Kiev was the first bishop martyred by the Bolsheviks on January 25, 1918. Unfortunately, he will be far from the last. He had consistently opposed the revolution, and he was severely beaten as well as tortured before being shot outside the Monastery of the Caves. Before being shot by his murderers, in a exceptionally Christian manner, he prayed to God for them to be forgiven (pg. 9-10). In the Don region in February 1918 the Reds were killing every priest they could find. (pg. 10) An 80-year-old monk-priest named Amvrosi was beaten with rifle butts before being killed. A priest named Dimitri was brought to a cemetery and undressed, but when he tried to make the sign of the cross before being killed, a soldier chopped off his right arm. An old priest who tried to stop the execution of a peasant was beaten and cut to pieces with swords. In the Holy Saviour Monastery, Red soldiers arrested and killed the 75-year-old abbot by scalping him and beheading him. In the Kherson province a priest was crucified. (pg. 10-11).
Bishop Hermogenes (Dolganyov) of Tobolsk, was killed along with other detainees on 16 June 1918 by drowning. He had organized a religious procession the day after the Tsar had come through Tobolsk on their way to Ekaterinburg (April 28), in which he blessed the Royal family. He was arrested the following week and the Soviets promised to release him for 10,000 roubles, and later 100,000 roubles. When the ransom was collected and submitted, the delegation of notables and clergy that had delivered it were arrested as well and later executed. (pg. 2-3). In Voronezh, seven nuns who had prayed for a White victory in the civil war were reportedly boiled in a cauldron of tar (pg. 11). In Crimea, one priest named Ugliansky was killed by Red forces on grounds that he used green ribbons instead of red ribbons on the church icon lamps. Churches in Simferopol, Feodosia and other parts of the region were desecrated and their clergy were brutally murdered (pg. 3).
Filosof Ornatsky, a priest in Petrograd, was arrested in the spring of 1918 after giving a public requiem for victims of the Bolsheviks. He and thirty-two others were driven to a cliff overlooking the Gulf of Finland, where the priest was allowed to perform a brief funeral service and bless the victims, before they were all shot and dropped into the sea. Archpriest John Vostorgov in Moscow, a famous Orthodox missionary and church activist, preached against the Bolsheviks and as a result he was blackmailed by the Bolsheviks, arrested and executed. He was executed along with Roman Catholic priest Lutoslawski and his brother, two tsarist ministers (N. Maklakov and Alexei Khvostov), an Orthodox bishop Efren, former State Council Chairman Ivan Shcheglovitov and Senator S. Beletsky. Fr Vostorgov conducted a short funeral service and preached to his victims to face death as a sacrifice of atonement, after which each victim came forward to be blessed by Fr Vostorgov and the Bishop; then they were shot. (pg. 3-4)
During the Red occupation of Stavropol diocese in 1918, the Bolsheviks killed at least 52 Orthodox priests, four deacons and four lectors. Priest Alexander Podolsky was tortured and killed for giving a Te Deum service for a Cossack regiment before it attacked the Bolsheviks. When a peasant came to collect his body, the peasant was shot dead on the spot. Fr Alexei Miliutinsky was tortured, scalped and killed for preaching to Red army soldiers that they were leading Russia to disaster and for offering prayers for the Cossacks. Not even left-wing priests were safe, such as Ivan Prigorsky who was taken out of church on Holy Saturday into the street, where Red soldiers cursed him, mutilated his face and then killed him (pg. 5).
Bishop Leontius (von Wimpffen) was murdered along with most of the diocesan clergy in 1919 after he made a sermon that quoted Jesus' words "I was naked and you have clothed me, I was ill and you looked after me" and this quotation was interpreted as an attack against the Bolsheviks (pg. 8).
Bishop Macarius (Gnevushev) of Vyazma, who was beloved by the local population, was arrested as a result of his popularity in the summer of 1918. He was executed along with fourteen others in a field near Smolensk, whom he ministered and attempted to comfort with blessings before their execution. One of the soldiers who executed him afterward confessed on his deathbed that he had killed a saint (pg. 7).
Lenin's decree on the separation of church and state on January 23, 1918 deprived the formerly official church of its status of legal person, the right to own property or to teach religion in both state and private schools or to any group of minors. This order to seize property was carried out with ruthless violence by Red soldiers. They often opened fire on crowds that surrounded churches in an attempt to defend them and on religious processions in protest against Church persecution. Thousands were killed in this way, especially in the spring of 1918. Shooting down of religious processions are well documented in Voronezh, Shatsk (Tambov province), and Tula (where thirteen were killed and many wounded, including Bishop Kornilii) (pg. 12).
In Moscow over 400 churches and monasteries were dynamited, including the famous Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. (Haskins, Ekaterina V. "Russia's post-communist past: the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the re-imagining of national identity." History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past 21.1 (2009)).

Suppression of Miracles

For a supposedly atheist state, the Soviet Union was terrified of miracles and did everything in their power to disprove them. Believers could also be arrested in association with claiming or honoring miracles. Miracles needed to be suppressed in the eyes of the state due to their contradiction of the atheism of the official state ideology. However, it was not yet legal to prosecute people simply for making such claims (it would become so in 1929), so the miracle claims were prosecuted instead under the pretext that they were acts of resistance meant to strengthen believers in their resistance to hold on to church valuables. The government issued a decree on March 1, 1919, regarding "the complete liquidation of the cult of corpses and mummies", which ordered the public exposure of saints' relics in order to show them to be frauds (to counter the belief that the saints' bodies were miraculously preserved). In 1918 there were even calls to outlaw the sacrament of the Eucharist on account of its miraculous transformation as believed by Orthodox and Catholic Christians Letters from Moscow, Gleb Yakunin and Lev Regelson
However, the bungling Soviet state often undermined its own goals and at times the persecutions drove people into the arms of the church as Bukharin feared. The body of St Sergius of Radonezh was exhumed and declared as fraudulent. The Soviet media eagerly spread this news that there was nothing but rotten bones and dust in his shrine. Revolution and the Church wrote: "Believers no longer weep, don't fall into fits of hysteria, and don't hold a grudge against the Soviet government anymore. They see there has been no blasphemy… Only an age-old fraud has been made naked in the eyes of the nation." (Pospielovsky pg. 19). From the St Sergius-Trinity Monastery where these relics came from, an entirely different story was circulated that when the relics were exposed it was found that the saint's body was in excellent condition (he had lived in the 14th century), and when the crowd of believers that had come there saw this they fell on their knees in prayer, while the Bolshevik commander was pulled off his horse and beaten by the crowd. A similar event occurred in the city of Vladimir when the relics of two saints were exposed and the doctor who had acted as medical state witness reconfirmed his faith according to his own testimony. (pg. 20).
The Sretenskaia church at the Sennoi marketplace in Kiev had two gold-plated domes that had for been completely tarnished after many years. These domes experienced a similar renovations one day when light shone so brightly from the domes that it was at first thought to be on fire, and a huge crowd gathered to see it with an atmosphere of religious euphoria. The light reportedly moved in patches around the dome for three days as they were progressively "renovated". The local communist newspaper then printed two articles, one of them signed by members of the Academy of Sciences, which stated that the phenomenon was caused by a rare air wave containing a peculiar electric discharge. A witness claimed it later became known that the GPU had forced the Academy to say this, and that there were other gold-plated things in the area that were not similarly renovated. Several months later the church was dynamited by government authorities. (pg. 21-22)
One of the most famous of these supposed miracles occurred in the village of Kalinovka near Vinnitsa in the Ukraine. A detachment of mounted police had come to the village in order to close the local church, but they were met by hostile crowds. The crowds were too big for the police to force their way through and so they retreated. Not far from the church, however, there was a traditional Crucifix standing at a crossroads, and the policemen in frustration fired at the crucifix. One of the bullets hit the crucifix in Christ's side and suddenly blood gushed out of the hole reportedly. One of the policemen lost control of himself and fell off his horse, while the others took off. The crowd went on its knees and prayed in front of the bleeding crucifix. The news spread and thousands of people came to see it. The blood reportedly kept running out for several days. Soon after more police came with orders to hack down the crucifix but each time they returned in failure under the claim that some force was preventing them from approaching it. The local communist press tried to explain the phenomena by claiming that there had been an accumulation of water in the wooden cross behind the metallic figure, and that once the bullet hit the metal, the water, which had turned red from the metal's rust, must have seeped through. The crowds brought crosses with them that they set up beside it, prayed before it and dipped cloths in the miraculous blood. For days and nights they sang hymns as well as burned candles. Priests were absent in fear. Many atheists reportedly converted after seeing this. (pg. 22-23) At the very first opportunity the Soviets destroyed the bleeding Crucifix and all adjacent crosses. It was later claimed that a commission of experts had reported that the fluid coming out of the bullet hole was not blood. The people who had gathered there that day were later depicted as drunkards, fools and scum, and it was claimed that the kissing of the Crucifix had resulted in an outbreak of syphilis as well as mass robberies (pg. 23).
As you can see, Marx's first daughter, the Soviet Union brutally suppressed Christianity and the rights, property, liberty, and lives of all of the faithful, as at its core, Christianity challenges Marxism's need for sole authoritarian supremacy in every facet of life where it holds sway. However, as brutal as the atrocities were in the Soviet Union, they did little to stem the flow of this toxic anti-Christian ideology across the globe.

Terror in Spain

By no means do I want anyone to believe that Marxism is monolithic. In fact, Marxists brutally quarrel with themselves almost as badly as they do their enemies. In the modern era, the Soviet Union has lost a great deal of popularity since its collapse. Many Marxists are wont to claim that the regime that arose in the USSR "wasn't true communism". I am not here to argue what true communism is. But what I am going to demonstrate is that whatever the flavor of Marxism, it is brutally anti-Christian and will suppress Christianity whenever it is able.
Noam Chomsky is a prominent left-wing academic, one of the most cited people in all of academia in fact He is also a leading supporter of the "anarchist" faction in the Spanish civil war and their short lived "stateless society." And while these "anarchists" were opposed to the particular flavor of Marxism in practice in the Soviet Union, they committed the same brutal atrocities against Christians because of their faith.
Atrocities were committed by "by sections of nearly all the leftist groups" Payne, Stanley G. A History of Spain and Portugal, Vol. 2, Ch. 26, p. 650 (Print Edition: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973) and Beevor, Antony (2006), The Battle For Spain; The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, p. 81 Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
The violence consisted of the killing of tens of thousands of people (including 6,832 Roman Catholic priests) as well as the desecration and burning of monasteries and churches. (Cueva, Julio de la (1998), "Religious Persecution, Anticlerical Tradition and Revolution: On Atrocities against the Clergy during the Spanish Civil War", Journal of Contemporary History, XXXIII (3): 355–369, JSTOR 261121)
The failed coup of July 1936 set loose a violent onslaught on those that revolutionaries in the Republican zone identified as enemies; "where the rebellion failed, for several months afterwards merely to be identified as a priest, a religious or simply a militant Christian or member of some apostolic or pious organization, was enough for a person to be executed without trial". (Hilari Raguer, Gunpowder and Incense, p. 115)
According to Julio de la Cueva, the toll of the Spanish Red Terror was 72,344 lives.

Mexico

Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles was another flavor of Marxist that oppressed the rights of Christians. While he did not consider himself a Marxist, he had close relations with the Soviet Union, where Mexico hosted its first foreign embassy. When the Soviet Union opened its first embassy in Mexico, the Soviet ambassador remarked that "no other two countries show more similarities than the Soviet Union and Mexico". The Mexican government's campaign against the Catholic Church after the Mexican Revolution culminated in the 1917 constitution which contained numerous articles which Catholics perceived as violating their civil rights: outlawing monastic religious orders, forbidding public worship outside of church buildings, restricted religious organizations' rights to own property, and taking away basic civil rights of members of the clergy (priests and religious leaders were prevented from wearing their habits, were denied the right to vote, and were not permitted to comment on public affairs in the press and were denied the right to trial for violation of anticlerical laws). This all culminated in the Cristero War where Christians took up arms against the government.

Red China

During the Cultural Revolution, a crime against humanity in and of itself, Christian churches, monasteries, and cemeteries were closed down and sometimes converted to other uses, looted, and destroyed..
The persecution continues in modern times. The Chinese Communist Party and government try to maintain tight control over all religions, so the only legal Christian Churches (Three-Self Patriotic Movement and Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association) are those under the Communist Party of China control. Churches which are not controlled by the government are shut down, and their members are imprisoned. Gong Shengliang, head of the South China Church, was sentenced to death in 2001. Although his sentence was commuted to a jail sentence, Amnesty International reports that he has been tortured. A Christian lobby group says that about 300 Christians caught attending unregistered house churches were in jail in 2004.
In January 2016, a prominent Christian church leader Rev Gu Yuese who criticised the mass removal of church crucifixes by the government was arrested for "embezzling funds". Chinese authorities have taken down hundreds of crosses in Zhejiang Province known as "China's bible belt". Gu led China's largest authorised church with capacity of 5,000 in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang.
The Associated Press reported in 2018 that China's leader and Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping "is waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982.", which has involved "destroying crosses, burning bibles, shutting churches and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith". A Catholic church was forced to replace a painting of the Virgin Mary and religious couplets with portraits of Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong replaced them

North Korea

North Korea's Juche state is yet another permutation of Marxist ideology, and North Korea is yet another Atheist state. By its very authoritarian nature, it is difficult to even get information out of North Korea. However, it is listed as the country with the most Christian persecution in the entire world by Open Doors, a non-denominational mission supporting persecuted Christians in over 70 countries. It is currently estimated that more than 50,000 Christians are locked inside concentration camps because of their faith, where they are systematically subjected to mistreatment such as unrestrained torture, mass-starvation and even imprisonment and death by asphyxiation in gas chambers.. This means that 20% of North Korea's Christian community lives in concentration camps.. According to one report at least 200,000 Christians have gone missing since 1953

Poisonous Fruit

As you can see, the fruits of Marxism are poison. The promises of a better world are replaced with the reality of constant persecution for your faith. I could go on and on with more examples but will hit the character limit. All you need to know is that their crimes are so common that Wikipedia needed to have a disambiguation page for Red Terror).
You might think that the only threat of Marxism poses to Christianity is when it gains state power. To an extent that is true in that the greatest atrocities are only possible when complete authoritarian control is assumed. However, Marxists seek to destroy the Christian way of life however possible, whether by force of arms or death by a thousand cuts. Even in a liberal democracy like America, with freedom of speech and religion enshrined in the constitution, Christianity is always under threat. Marxists in America today are tearing down Christian statues all across the country. Statues of Junipero Serra, a canonized Saint are being torn down. Protesters tried to tear down a statue of King Louis IX, commonly known to the rest of us as St. Louis, in the city that bears his name Shaun King, affiliated with the BLM movement, itself founded by self admitted "trained Marxists" wants to destroy all Christian art with the "white" Jesus and Mary. Statues of the blessed virgin have been desecrated. Recently churches have been burned to the ground and desecrated by these rioters, including the 249-year-old San Gabriel Mission in California. Historical St. John's church, an Episcopalian church in Washington DC was burnt down.
Marxists, academics, politicians, and activists say and push for plenty of anti-Christian things, and often try to use the state to do it. From abolishing the nuclear family, banning homeschooling used by many Christian parents, banning private schools entirely, from hate speech laws that make it a crime to criticize Mohammed where such protections would never apply to Jesus, taxing property returned to churches after it was stolen by communists, from taxing churches if they oppose gay marriage while other left wing non profits and NGOs would be immune, from having courts take children away from parents who 'misgender' them or refuse to consent to hormone therapy. Whatever your views are on these political topics, there is a concerted authoritarian effort to prevent Christians from practicing their faith how they see fit.

What Christianity Says about Marxism

Now that you know what prominent Marxists say and think about Christianity, and the horrible atrocities they commit on Christians, it is also important to know what Christianity says about Marxism.
The Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination in the world, specifically declared in the Decree Against Communism that Catholics who professed Communist doctrine to be excommunicated as apostates from the Christian faith. Similar proclamations against Communism were made in Divini Redemptoris (1937) Nostis et nobiscum (1849), Quanta cura (1864), and Rerum novarum (1891).
The Orthodox Church anathematized communists after suffering such brutal calamities in the Red Terror. The Patriarch of Russia stated:

Christ’s precept to love our neighbor is forgotten and trampled tinder foot. Every day we learn that innocent people, not excluding those lying sick in bed, are being frightfully and brutally murdered for the sole offense that they have honestly discharged their duty to the country and have devoted all their energies to serve the welfare of the people. These crimes are committed … in broad daylight with unprecedented effrontery and outrageous brutality … in almost every city of our native land …
These crimes fill our heart with deep sorrow and compel us to denounce sharply these monsters of the human race … in accordance with the precept of the Holy Apostle: “Them that sin reprove in the sight of all, that the rest also may be in fear.” (I Tim. 5: 20.)
Think what you are doing, you madmen! Stop your bloody reprisals. Your acts are not merely cruel, they are the works of Satan for which you will burn in Hell fire in the life hereafter and be cursed by future generations in this life.
By the authority given me by God I forbid you to partake of the Christian Mysteries. I anathematize you if you still bear a Christian name and belong by birth to the Orthodox Church.
And you, faithful children of the Orthodox Christian Church, I beseech you to have nothing to do with this scourge of the human race: “Put away the wicked man from among yourselves.” (I Corinthians 5: 13.).

Hello all. In light of recent discussions that I have had here along with the political state of the world, I think that it is of the utmost importance for me to demonstrate that at its core, Marxism is inherently antagonistic to the core values and beliefs of Christianity. The goal of this post is not to attack anyone personally but to educate and warn faithful Christians of all persuasions and denominations of the pervasive anti-Christian tenets, goals, practices, and ideologies of Marxism and prominent Marxist leaders, theorists, and thinkers.

First of All, What is Marxism?

At its core, beyond being an economic or political system, Marxism is a materialist ideology and interpretation of world history, conceptualizing all of history as class struggle. It is descriptive as well as prescriptive. It proposes that material conditions of the day, not the ideas of the great men and women of history. Marxism is an atheist ideology in its conception and practice. In a Marxist context, Jesus, his life, his ministry, and his sacrifice upon the cross would not be seen in the context of God sending his only begotten Son, who so loved us, He suffered the worse tortures and humiliations to save and redeem us. Instead, a Marxist sees Jesus as a failed revolutionary, a victim of a class struggle against the ruling powers, See Herzog, William R. Parables as subversive speech: Jesus as pedagogue of the oppressed. Westminster John Knox Press, 1994, pg. 104 or Moreland, Milton. "The Jesus Movement in the Villages of Roman Galilee." Oral Performance, Popular Tradition, and Hidden Transcript in Q 60 (2006): 159.. This understanding, so rooted in the world, so narrow in its concept, divorces all of the divinity from Christ, and steals the massive weight of His burden and undermines the enormity of His sacrifice.
Furthermore, Marx was a Hegelian, but he took Hegel's dialectic and rewrote it in, atheist, materialist terms, and rejected the idealism of Hegel.
"At the time of Hegel's death, he was the most prominent philosopher in Germany. His views were widely taught, and his students were highly regarded. His followers soon divided into right-wing and left-wing Hegelians. Theologically and politically the right-wing Hegelians offered a conservative interpretation of his work. They emphasized the compatibility between Hegel's philosophy and Christianity. Politically, they were orthodox. The left-wing Hegelians eventually moved to an atheistic position. In politics, many of them became revolutionaries. This historically important left-wing group included Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, Friedrich Engels, and Karl Marx. Engels and Marx were particularly influenced by Hegel's idea that history moves dialectically, but they replaced Hegel's philosophical idealism with materialism"
The Marxists of the Socialist Worker further flesh out Marx's view on Christianity

The most important point for Marx and Engels was that human beings created religion--so religious beliefs must have social causes.
In early societies, humans didn't yet have the means to understand the forces of nature. So they imagined that these forces had a conscious power--inventing human-like gods that governed the wind and the weather, the rivers, the stars and the earth. Modern religions like Christianity likewise contain stories designed to reconcile people to conditions that seem beyond their control.
With the rise of hierarchy and classes in human society, religion became the means for rulers to justify the system that they presided over--often, by declaring themselves gods, or at least in close communication with them. Thus, while Christianity first emerged as the religion of a persecuted minority, it was later transformed into the official ideology of the Roman Empire and numerous other societies since.
This is why the effect of religion is generally conservative, providing a justification for the status quo. But the appeal of religion for the have-nots in society isn't its conservatism, but the fact that it seems to be a solution to the suffering and oppression of this world--in a distant afterlife, but a solution nonetheless.
The only way that masses of people will reject the future imaginary solution offered by religion is if they see a real solution in the here and now--in the form of a struggle that challenges oppression and injustice.

At its best, Christianity to Marx and his disciples is a coping mechanism of the oppressed underclasses, something that may become obsolete after the introduction of Communism. At worst, however, it was something that was false, superstitious, reactionary, and must be destroyed, root and stem.

What do prominent Marxists have to say about Christianity?

To understand the anti-Christian sentiment inherent to Marxism, one need only let the worlds of prominent Marxists speak for themselves.

[Religion] is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

-Karl Marx

when society, by taking possession of all means of production, and using them on a planned basis, has freed itself, and all its members, from the bondage in which they are now held, by these means of production, which they, themselves, have produced, but which confront them as an irresistible alien force, when, therefore, man no longer merely proposes, but also disposes — only then will the last alien force, which is still reflected in religion, vanish; and with it will also vanish the religious reflection itself, for the simple reason that then there will be nothing left to reflect

-Friedrich Engels
Lenin was especially anti-Christian in his views, and as will sadly be shown later, his deeds.

Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism.
Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class.

-Vladimir Lenin
Lenin was particularly hateful of religion. The man didn't mince words:

“Religion is a sort of spiritual booze.”
“there is nothing more abominable than religion,”
“all worship of a divinity is a necrophilia.”

In their influential book The ABC of Communism, Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhensky spoke out strongly against religion. They wrote:

"Communism is incompatible with religious faith"

This book was quite influential, described as "an elementary textbook of communist knowledge." It was among the most read books in the Soviet Union. (Cohen, Stephen F. (1980). Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938. Oxford University Press US. pp. 64–65.) And it is still viewed favorably by Marxists today, as shown in The Socialist Worker.
Bukharin and Preobrazhensky went on to criticize religion and Christianity by extension. They weren't as hateful of Christianity as Lenin, but still viewed it as a false dogma and ultimately sought to extinguish it:

But the campaign against the backwardness of the masses in this matter of religion, must be conducted with patience and considerateness, as well as with energy and perseverance. The credulous crowd is extremely sensitive to anything which hurts its feelings. To thrust atheism upon the masses, and in conjunction therewith to interfere forcibly with religious practices and to make mock of the objects of popular reverence, would not assist but would hinder the campaign against religion. If the church were to be persecuted, it would win sympathy among the masses, for persecution would remind them of the almost forgotten days when there was an association between religion and the defence of national freedom; it would strengthen the antisemitic movement; and in general it would mobilize all the vestiges of an ideology which is already beginning to die out.

The Fruits of Communism

Matthew 7:15-20 is one of the most important passages in the bible, a dire warning from Christ himself. We are warned of false prophets, wolves in sheep's clothing. And how we know a true prophet from false is by their fruits, for a bad tree bears bad fruit.
Marx certainly bears striking resemblance to a prophet. He warns of the imminent collapse of society, the rising, apocalyptic tide of the proletariat destroying the bourgeois for their many sins in a epic battle of the coming world-wide class war as relevatory as Armageddon or Ragnarok. He promises a paradise on Earth that will last forever, a classless, stateless society, an era of justice and peace for all, the end of history. But the poison fruits of communism show that this promise is not to be. Marx is a false prophet, while his ideology promises to deliver heaven, Marxism, time and again brings hell on earth.

Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union

Russia was the first country to fall under the yoke of Marxism and to have its people enslaved by its ideology. Seizing upon the weakness of a country devastated by years of war, with starving people and unpopular monarchy, Marxist revolutionaries launched a civil war. They launched the Red Terror, a brutal campaign of atrocities and reprisals against their perceived enemies to cement their power. Not even supposed allies of Marxism were safe; peasants who were forcibly conscripted into the Red Army who deserted and factory workers who went on strike were brutally executed by the infant Marxist regime. Werth, Bartosek et al. Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression.(1999), Chapter 4: The Red Terror. But particularly egregious were their actions towards Christians, simply for their profession of faith.
In the Soviet Union, tens of thousands of churches were destroyed or converted to other uses, and many members of the clergy were murdered, publicly executed and imprisoned for what the government termed "anti-government activities." An extensive educational and propaganda campaign was launched in order to convince people, especially children and youths, to abandon their religious beliefs. This persecution resulted in the intentional murder of 500,000 Orthodox followers by the government of the Soviet Union during the 20th century. See World Christian trends, AD 30-AD 2200, pp. 230–246 Tables 4–5 & 4–10 By David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson, Christopher R. Guidry, Peter F. Crossing (NOTE: They define 'martyr' on p235 as only including Christians killed for faith and excluding other Christians killed)
State atheism was instituted, church property was seized. It became illegal to even question the doctrine of atheism under threat of imprisonment. Froese, Paul (6 August 2008). The Plot to Kill God: Findings from the Soviet Experiment in Secularization. University of California Press. p. 122. Children were made to inform on their parents if they practiced religion at home. See Ramet, Sabrina P. (1990). Catholicism and Politics in Communist Societies. Duke University Press. pp. 232–33.
Along with execution, some other actions against Orthodox priests and believers included torture, being sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals. In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed. In the period between 1927 and 1940, the number of Orthodox Churches in the Russian Republic fell from 29,584 to less than 500. Between 1917 and 1940, 130,000 Orthodox priests were arrested.

War on the Clergy

The exceptional cruelty of the Bolsheviks' actions, methods, and goals were especially sickening and best demonstrates how much they hated Christianity. To see the extents the nascent Marxist state would go to during the civil war and its early administration to see the complete eradication of the Orthodox church as an institution, and the crimes committed against the clergy and laity, we must turn to Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. "A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory, and Practice, and the Believer", vol 2: A History of Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1988).
Metropolitan Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky) of Kiev was the first bishop martyred by the Bolsheviks on January 25, 1918. Unfortunately, he will be far from the last. He had consistently opposed the revolution, and he was severely beaten as well as tortured before being shot outside the Monastery of the Caves. Before being shot by his murderers, in a exceptionally Christian manner, he prayed to God for them to be forgiven (pg. 9-10). In the Don region in February 1918 the Reds were killing every priest they could find. (pg. 10) An 80-year-old monk-priest named Amvrosi was beaten with rifle butts before being killed. A priest named Dimitri was brought to a cemetery and undressed, but when he tried to make the sign of the cross before being killed, a soldier chopped off his right arm. An old priest who tried to stop the execution of a peasant was beaten and cut to pieces with swords. In the Holy Saviour Monastery, Red soldiers arrested and killed the 75-year-old abbot by scalping him and beheading him. In the Kherson province a priest was crucified. (pg. 10-11).
Bishop Hermogenes (Dolganyov) of Tobolsk, was killed along with other detainees on 16 June 1918 by drowning. He had organized a religious procession the day after the Tsar had come through Tobolsk on their way to Ekaterinburg (April 28), in which he blessed the Royal family. He was arrested the following week and the Soviets promised to release him for 10,000 roubles, and later 100,000 roubles. When the ransom was collected and submitted, the delegation of notables and clergy that had delivered it were arrested as well and later executed. (pg. 2-3). In Voronezh, seven nuns who had prayed for a White victory in the civil war were reportedly boiled in a cauldron of tar (pg. 11). In Crimea, one priest named Ugliansky was killed by Red forces on grounds that he used green ribbons instead of red ribbons on the church icon lamps. Churches in Simferopol, Feodosia and other parts of the region were desecrated and their clergy were brutally murdered (pg. 3).
Filosof Ornatsky, a priest in Petrograd, was arrested in the spring of 1918 after giving a public requiem for victims of the Bolsheviks. He and thirty-two others were driven to a cliff overlooking the Gulf of Finland, where the priest was allowed to perform a brief funeral service and bless the victims, before they were all shot and dropped into the sea. Archpriest John Vostorgov in Moscow, a famous Orthodox missionary and church activist, preached against the Bolsheviks and as a result he was blackmailed by the Bolsheviks, arrested and executed. He was executed along with Roman Catholic priest Lutoslawski and his brother, two tsarist ministers (N. Maklakov and Alexei Khvostov), an Orthodox bishop Efren, former State Council Chairman Ivan Shcheglovitov and Senator S. Beletsky. Fr Vostorgov conducted a short funeral service and preached to his victims to face death as a sacrifice of atonement, after which each victim came forward to be blessed by Fr Vostorgov and the Bishop; then they were shot. (pg. 3-4)
During the Red occupation of Stavropol diocese in 1918, the Bolsheviks killed at least 52 Orthodox priests, four deacons and four lectors. Priest Alexander Podolsky was tortured and killed for giving a Te Deum service for a Cossack regiment before it attacked the Bolsheviks. When a peasant came to collect his body, the peasant was shot dead on the spot. Fr Alexei Miliutinsky was tortured, scalped and killed for preaching to Red army soldiers that they were leading Russia to disaster and for offering prayers for the Cossacks. Not even left-wing priests were safe, such as Ivan Prigorsky who was taken out of church on Holy Saturday into the street, where Red soldiers cursed him, mutilated his face and then killed him (pg. 5).
Bishop Leontius (von Wimpffen) was murdered along with most of the diocesan clergy in 1919 after he made a sermon that quoted Jesus' words "I was naked and you have clothed me, I was ill and you looked after me" and this quotation was interpreted as an attack against the Bolsheviks (pg. 8).
Bishop Macarius (Gnevushev) of Vyazma, who was beloved by the local population, was arrested as a result of his popularity in the summer of 1918. He was executed along with fourteen others in a field near Smolensk, whom he ministered and attempted to comfort with blessings before their execution. One of the soldiers who executed him afterward confessed on his deathbed that he had killed a saint (pg. 7).
Lenin's decree on the separation of church and state on January 23, 1918 deprived the formerly official church of its status of legal person, the right to own property or to teach religion in both state and private schools or to any group of minors. This order to seize property was carried out with ruthless violence by Red soldiers. They often opened fire on crowds that surrounded churches in an attempt to defend them and on religious processions in protest against Church persecution. Thousands were killed in this way, especially in the spring of 1918. Shooting down of religious processions are well documented in Voronezh, Shatsk (Tambov province), and Tula (where thirteen were killed and many wounded, including Bishop Kornilii) (pg. 12).
In Moscow over 400 churches and monasteries were dynamited, including the famous Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. (Haskins, Ekaterina V. "Russia's post-communist past: the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the re-imagining of national identity." History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past 21.1 (2009)).

Suppression of Miracles

For a supposedly atheist state, the Soviet Union was terrified of miracles and did everything in their power to disprove them. Believers could also be arrested in association with claiming or honoring miracles. Miracles needed to be suppressed in the eyes of the state due to their contradiction of the atheism of the official state ideology. However, it was not yet legal to prosecute people simply for making such claims (it would become so in 1929), so the miracle claims were prosecuted instead under the pretext that they were acts of resistance meant to strengthen believers in their resistance to hold on to church valuables. The government issued a decree on March 1, 1919, regarding "the complete liquidation of the cult of corpses and mummies", which ordered the public exposure of saints' relics in order to show them to be frauds (to counter the belief that the saints' bodies were miraculously preserved). In 1918 there were even calls to outlaw the sacrament of the Eucharist on account of its miraculous transformation as believed by Orthodox and Catholic Christians Letters from Moscow, Gleb Yakunin and Lev Regelson
However, the bungling Soviet state often undermined its own goals and at times the persecutions drove people into the arms of the church as Bukharin feared. The body of St Sergius of Radonezh was exhumed and declared as fraudulent. The Soviet media eagerly spread this news that there was nothing but rotten bones and dust in his shrine. Revolution and the Church wrote: "Believers no longer weep, don't fall into fits of hysteria, and don't hold a grudge against the Soviet government anymore. They see there has been no blasphemy… Only an age-old fraud has been made naked in the eyes of the nation." (Pospielovsky pg. 19). From the St Sergius-Trinity Monastery where these relics came from, an entirely different story was circulated that when the relics were exposed it was found that the saint's body was in excellent condition (he had lived in the 14th century), and when the crowd of believers that had come there saw this they fell on their knees in prayer, while the Bolshevik commander was pulled off his horse and beaten by the crowd. A similar event occurred in the city of Vladimir when the relics of two saints were exposed and the doctor who had acted as medical state witness reconfirmed his faith according to his own testimony. (pg. 20).
The Sretenskaia church at the Sennoi marketplace in Kiev had two gold-plated domes that had for been completely tarnished after many years. These domes experienced a similar renovations one day when light shone so brightly from the domes that it was at first thought to be on fire, and a huge crowd gathered to see it with an atmosphere of religious euphoria. The light reportedly moved in patches around the dome for three days as they were progressively "renovated". The local communist newspaper then printed two articles, one of them signed by members of the Academy of Sciences, which stated that the phenomenon was caused by a rare air wave containing a peculiar electric discharge. A witness claimed it later became known that the GPU had forced the Academy to say this, and that there were other gold-plated things in the area that were not similarly renovated. Several months later the church was dynamited by government authorities. (pg. 21-22)
One of the most famous of these supposed miracles occurred in the village of Kalinovka near Vinnitsa in the Ukraine. A detachment of mounted police had come to the village in order to close the local church, but they were met by hostile crowds. The crowds were too big for the police to force their way through and so they retreated. Not far from the church, however, there was a traditional Crucifix standing at a crossroads, and the policemen in frustration fired at the crucifix. One of the bullets hit the crucifix in Christ's side and suddenly blood gushed out of the hole reportedly. One of the policemen lost control of himself and fell off his horse, while the others took off. The crowd went on its knees and prayed in front of the bleeding crucifix. The news spread and thousands of people came to see it. The blood reportedly kept running out for several days. Soon after more police came with orders to hack down the crucifix but each time they returned in failure under the claim that some force was preventing them from approaching it. The local communist press tried to explain the phenomena by claiming that there had been an accumulation of water in the wooden cross behind the metallic figure, and that once the bullet hit the metal, the water, which had turned red from the metal's rust, must have seeped through. The crowds brought crosses with them that they set up beside it, prayed before it and dipped cloths in the miraculous blood. For days and nights they sang hymns as well as burned candles. Priests were absent in fear. Many atheists reportedly converted after seeing this. (pg. 22-23) At the very first opportunity the Soviets destroyed the bleeding Crucifix and all adjacent crosses. It was later claimed that a commission of experts had reported that the fluid coming out of the bullet hole was not blood. The people who had gathered there that day were later depicted as drunkards, fools and scum, and it was claimed that the kissing of the Crucifix had resulted in an outbreak of syphilis as well as mass robberies (pg. 23).
As you can see, Marx's first daughter, the Soviet Union brutally suppressed Christianity and the rights, property, liberty, and lives of all of the faithful, as at its core, Christianity challenges Marxism's need for sole authoritarian supremacy in every facet of life where it holds sway. However, as brutal as the atrocities were in the Soviet Union, they did little to stem the flow of this toxic anti-Christian ideology across the globe.

Terror in Spain

By no means do I want anyone to believe that Marxism is monolithic. In fact, Marxists brutally quarrel with themselves almost as badly as they do their enemies. In the modern era, the Soviet Union has lost a great deal of popularity since its collapse. Many Marxists are wont to claim that the regime that arose in the USSR "wasn't true communism". I am not here to argue what true communism is. But what I am going to demonstrate is that whatever the flavor of Marxism, it is brutally anti-Christian and will suppress Christianity whenever it is able.
Noam Chomsky is a prominent left-wing academic, one of the most cited people in all of academia in fact He is also a leading supporter of the "anarchist" faction in the Spanish civil war and their short lived "stateless society." And while these "anarchists" were opposed to the particular flavor of Marxism in practice in the Soviet Union, they committed the same brutal atrocities against Christians because of their faith.
Atrocities were committed by "by sections of nearly all the leftist groups" Payne, Stanley G. A History of Spain and Portugal, Vol. 2, Ch. 26, p. 650 (Print Edition: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973) and Beevor, Antony (2006), The Battle For Spain; The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, p. 81 Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
The violence consisted of the killing of tens of thousands of people (including 6,832 Roman Catholic priests) as well as the desecration and burning of monasteries and churches. (Cueva, Julio de la (1998), "Religious Persecution, Anticlerical Tradition and Revolution: On Atrocities against the Clergy during the Spanish Civil War", Journal of Contemporary History, XXXIII (3): 355–369, JSTOR 261121)
The failed coup of July 1936 set loose a violent onslaught on those that revolutionaries in the Republican zone identified as enemies; "where the rebellion failed, for several months afterwards merely to be identified as a priest, a religious or simply a militant Christian or member of some apostolic or pious organization, was enough for a person to be executed without trial". (Hilari Raguer, Gunpowder and Incense, p. 115)
According to Julio de la Cueva, the toll of the Spanish Red Terror was 72,344 lives.

Mexico

Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles was another flavor of Marxist that oppressed the rights of Christians. While he did not consider himself a Marxist, he had close relations with the Soviet Union, where Mexico hosted its first foreign embassy. When the Soviet Union opened its first embassy in Mexico, the Soviet ambassador remarked that "no other two countries show more similarities than the Soviet Union and Mexico". The Mexican government's campaign against the Catholic Church after the Mexican Revolution culminated in the 1917 constitution which contained numerous articles which Catholics perceived as violating their civil rights: outlawing monastic religious orders, forbidding public worship outside of church buildings, restricted religious organizations' rights to own property, and taking away basic civil rights of members of the clergy (priests and religious leaders were prevented from wearing their habits, were denied the right to vote, and were not permitted to comment on public affairs in the press and were denied the right to trial for violation of anticlerical laws). This all culminated in the Cristero War where Christians took up arms against the government.

Red China

During the Cultural Revolution, a crime against humanity in and of itself, Christian churches, monasteries, and cemeteries were closed down and sometimes converted to other uses, looted, and destroyed..
The persecution continues in modern times. The Chinese Communist Party and government try to maintain tight control over all religions, so the only legal Christian Churches (Three-Self Patriotic Movement and Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association) are those under the Communist Party of China control. Churches which are not controlled by the government are shut down, and their members are imprisoned. Gong Shengliang, head of the South China Church, was sentenced to death in 2001. Although his sentence was commuted to a jail sentence, Amnesty International reports that he has been tortured. A Christian lobby group says that about 300 Christians caught attending unregistered house churches were in jail in 2004.
In January 2016, a prominent Christian church leader Rev Gu Yuese who criticised the mass removal of church crucifixes by the government was arrested for "embezzling funds". Chinese authorities have taken down hundreds of crosses in Zhejiang Province known as "China's bible belt". Gu led China's largest authorised church with capacity of 5,000 in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang.
The Associated Press reported in 2018 that China's leader and Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping "is waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982.", which has involved "destroying crosses, burning bibles, shutting churches and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith". A Catholic church was forced to replace a painting of the Virgin Mary and religious couplets with portraits of Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong replaced them

North Korea

North Korea's Juche state is yet another permutation of Marxist ideology, and North Korea is yet another Atheist state. By its very authoritarian nature, it is difficult to even get information out of North Korea. However, it is listed as the country with the most Christian persecution in the entire world by Open Doors, a non-denominational mission supporting persecuted Christians in over 70 countries. It is currently estimated that more than 50,000 Christians are locked inside concentration camps because of their faith, where they are systematically subjected to mistreatment such as unrestrained torture, mass-starvation and even imprisonment and death by asphyxiation in gas chambers.. This means that 20% of North Korea's Christian community lives in concentration camps.. According to one report at least 200,000 Christians have gone missing since 1953

Poisonous Fruit

As you can see, the fruits of Marxism are poison. The promises of a better world are replaced with the reality of constant persecution for your faith. I could go on and on with more examples but will hit the character limit. All you need to know is that their crimes are so common that Wikipedia needed to have a disambiguation page for Red Terror).
You might think that the only threat of Marxism poses to Christianity is when it gains state power. To an extent that is true in that the greatest atrocities are only possible when complete authoritarian control is assumed. However, Marxists seek to destroy the Christian way of life however possible, whether by force of arms or death by a thousand cuts. Even in a liberal democracy like America, with freedom of speech and religion enshrined in the constitution, Christianity is always under threat. Marxists in America today are tearing down Christian statues all across the country. Statues of Junipero Serra, a canonized Saint are being torn down. Protesters tried to tear down a statue of King Louis IX, commonly known to the rest of us as St. Louis, in the city that bears his name Shaun King, affiliated with the BLM movement, itself founded by self admitted "trained Marxists" wants to destroy all Christian art with the "white" Jesus and Mary. Statues of the blessed virgin have been desecrated. Recently churches have been burned to the ground and desecrated by these rioters, including the 249-year-old San Gabriel Mission in California. Historical St. John's church, an Episcopalian church in Washington DC was burnt down.
Marxists, academics, politicians, and activists say and push for plenty of anti-Christian things, and often try to use the state to do it. From abolishing the nuclear family, banning homeschooling used by many Christian parents, banning private schools entirely, from hate speech laws that make it a crime to criticize Mohammed where such protections would never apply to Jesus, taxing property returned to churches after it was stolen by communists, from taxing churches if they oppose gay marriage while other left wing non profits and NGOs would be immune, from having courts take children away from parents who 'misgender' them or refuse to consent to hormone therapy. Whatever your views are on these political topics, there is a concerted authoritarian effort to prevent Christians from practicing their faith how they see fit.

What Christianity Says about Marxism

Now that you know what prominent Marxists say and think about Christianity, and the horrible atrocities they commit on Christians, it is also important to know what Christianity says about Marxism.
The Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination in the world, specifically declared in the Decree Against Communism that Catholics who professed Communist doctrine to be excommunicated as apostates from the Christian faith. Similar proclamations against Communism were made in Divini Redemptoris (1937) Nostis et nobiscum (1849), Quanta cura (1864), and Rerum novarum (1891).
The Orthodox Church anathematized communists after suffering such brutal calamities in the Red Terror. The Patriarch of Russia stated:

Christ’s precept to love our neighbor is forgotten and trampled tinder foot. Every day we learn that innocent people, not excluding those lying sick in bed, are being frightfully and brutally murdered for the sole offense that they have honestly discharged their duty to the country and have devoted all their energies to serve the welfare of the people. These crimes are committed … in broad daylight with unprecedented effrontery and outrageous brutality … in almost every city of our native land …
These crimes fill our heart with deep sorrow and compel us to denounce sharply these monsters of the human race … in accordance with the precept of the Holy Apostle: “Them that sin reprove in the sight of all, that the rest also may be in fear.” (I Tim. 5: 20.)
Think what you are doing, you madmen! Stop your bloody reprisals. Your acts are not merely cruel, they are the works of Satan for which you will burn in Hell fire in the life hereafter and be cursed by future generations in this life.
By the authority given me by God I forbid you to partake of the Christian Mysteries. I anathematize you if you still bear a Christian name and belong by birth to the Orthodox Church.
And you, faithful children of the Orthodox Christian Church, I beseech you to have nothing to do with this scourge of the human race: “Put away the wicked man from among yourselves.” (I Corinthians 5: 13.).

Blades for the Brave
"Olympic and world champion figure skaters will gather virtually for “Blades for the Brave,” a streaming event to benefit health-care workers fighting the coronavirus.
The one-hour stream is April 17 at 8 p.m. ET, hosted by U.S. Olympic medalists Jason Brown and Gracie Gold and organized by Americares and Fireworks Sports Marketing. The stream will feature skaters’ submitted videos from on and off the ice, detailing how they’re handling life during the pandemic.
The videos will be a “creative variety,” an organizer said, including skating programs.
It airs free on Bladesforthebrave.org and Americares’ Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channels. U.S. Figure Skating is aware of and supports the event.............."
Skaters currently scheduled to appear include:
Jeremy Abbott Brian Boitano Michal Březina Jason Brown Kurt Browning Alexei Bychenko Ashley Cain Sasha Cohen Amber Glenn Gracie Gold Ekaterina Gordeeva Scott Hamilton Nancy Kerrigan Naomi Lang Timothy LeDuc Tara Lipinski Tatiana Navka Viktor Petrenko Evgeni Plushenko Matteo Rizzo Yuka Sato Bradie Tennell Johnny Weir Rohene Ward
More info in link below
https://olympics.nbcsports.com/2020/04/06/blades-for-the-brave-figure-skating/?utm_source=americares&utm_medium=socialih&utm_campaign=twitter&utm_content=040620_01link

I don't know if anyone has posted this before, but there's a list of all the crew and other NPCs in the GameData.pak file that has some mildly interesting stuff in it.
I've cut everything except names and notes. Not all NPCs have notes, some have mini-bios and some just have simple location descriptions. Some of the info refers to cut content (Cazavor, for example) and doesn't reflect the final state of the game.
All typos and spelling mistakes are courtesy of Arkane ;)

Name	Notes
Aaron Ingram	Prisoner trapped and still alive in Psychotronics. Prisoner # V-090655-13
Abigail Foy	Game master of the RPG group. Danielle Sho's girlfriend. Her belongings are a key in locating Danielle
Adrian Holland	Prisoner # V-110655-27; died in the derelict shuttle
Aime Schmidt	Dead in the Ballistics Lab hallway in Hardware Labs
Akande Benin	Assigned to Deep Storage. Part of Sarai's 'loyal team', reporting back to her.
Alan Bianchi
Alejandro Matad	Died in initial telepath attack on cafeteria. Headless at a table.
Alex Yu
Alfred Rose	Normally a patrol officer, but occasionally he does a shift in the Lobby when one of the others has a day off. Alfred hates sitting in one place, so when posted here he tends to wander the entire section. A few times he's been reprimanded for being away from his desk when an Executive passed by, but he persists in his wandering ways. He may have collected notes on the people that work in the Arboretum At game start: in the Cargo Bay with Sarah
Alice Aiken	Calls Robert Gage urging him to leave the Sim labs.
Allison Brady	Psychotronics Lab
Alika James	Bridge worker dead in Crew.
Alton Weber	Stationed in Life Support
Anastacia Uriegas
Anders Kline	Currently dead in the Magnetosphere chamber in the GUTs.
Andrea Hudson	Psychotronics Lab
Andrew Grey	Used to be Andrew Brown. Dead near Alex's grav Lift in arboretum.
Angela Diaz
Annalise Gallegos	She is the whistleblower who works in Pyschotronics
Anong Lao	Dead at escape pod cluster in Life Support
Anthony Aquilanteue
Argenteno Pero	On board Talos to have his athletic ability duplicated for Neuromods. He was here when the outbreak happened. Now a phantom in his quarters
Anna Goldcrest
April McGuire	Contest winner
Ari Liudnarht
Ash Lasair	Crushed by a collapsing cargo lift
Augusto Vera	Dead at Lobby/Arboretum Elevator
Austin Cool	Alive and holding up in Cargo Bay with Sari. His portrait assignement is not a bug. He and Thadeus York are dead ringers for each other
Bernard Griffith	Is one of the corrupted humans in the Crew Facilities intro sequence.
Beth Ino
Bianca Goodwin	Lobby Level 3
Bill Nixon-Greene
Blaine Cooly	Blaine, normall working the hardward, went to fill in for Jia while was investigating the disapearence of Grant Lockwood. He locked himself inside the security booth without realizing a phantom was lurking behind him.
Brandi Pester	Entered suicide pact with Eva Loveless after the escape pods failed rather than face the alien menace.
Brenda Cabrera
Brett Seydel	Works in GUTs, dead in Crew.
Brittany LaValley	A thermal Phantom in the Fuel Storage room of GUTS. Has the keycard to Shuttle Bay
Bruce Cobb	Dead in rec room.
Caleb Hawethorne	Has a locked workstation in the analysis area of Simulation Labs. Is one of the corrupted humans in the Crew Facilities intro sequence.
Carin Buckley
Carlos Popinga	Is one of the corrupted humans in the Crew Facilities intro sequence.
Carol Sikes	Dead at escape pod cluster in Life Support
Carolyn Wheeler	Workes as a top level executtive for TranStar. Based in London
Chloe Burgess	Sent as a suicide attacker against the Cook's locked doors and shutters. The cook later dragged her corpse into the freezer.
Chris Wade	Died in initial telepath attack in the cafeteria. Headless at a table.
Christopher Smith	Assigned to Psychotronics. Secretly Alex's loyal man. Aware that Volunteers are fed to the Mimics. Does not know why. Was with Sarah when they were locking down Cargo Bay. He decided to flee to Alex rather than be trapped in there with them. He didn't get very far. Has a keycard to reach the GUTs loading terminal
Clarke Rafferty	Dead in front of the theater.
Clive Lawrence	Works in the machine shop in the hardware lab. He is a Phantom with the Psychotronics foyer code.
Colete May-Shultz	Dead in the cafeteria
Colton Houston	On board Talos to have his pilot skills recorded for a neuromod. Some of the shuttle pilots on Talos are star-struck.
Conrad Birchman	Dead in Hardware Labs above the IT Hub.
Cory Richard	Guard sent to Arrest Annalise Gallegos. Found dead in her office.
Crispin Boyer	Dead in psychotronics entrance beneath Kletka
Cynthia Dringus
Daisy White	Dead in the cafeteria
Dan Billingsly	Spawns when player reads the message in the comm terminal
Daniel Landon	Controlled by telepath in Crew Quarters
Danielle Sho	Chief archivist. Player looks for her voice samples to get in Deep Storage. Plays Melinda Shadowcorner in the paper RPG game Has a private room in Crew Quarters
Darcy Maddox	Alive and holding up in Cargo Bay with Sarah
Dayo Igwe	Character the player finds trapped in a crate outside Cargo Bay. Later helps player wipe Dahl's memory by uninstalling his neuromods so they can escape aboard the shuttle Has a private room in Crew Quarters
David Branch	Dead in the cafeteria
David Simmonds	Contest winner
Demetri Bowser	Security guard who lets Morgan into the sim tests at the begining of the game. He is a trained EMT
Demian Linn
Diane Washington	Dead in cargo loading area
Divya Naaz
Donald Hall	Donald was trying to get to the escape pods but found that they weren't working. He noticed Frank rushing a woman to get into one of them and even brandishing a gun so others would stay back. Their launch failed which seemed like justice but then he realized none of the others worked or had the capability to work. The oxygen went off and some people suffocated and others were killed by some of the aliens that made it through the barriers.
Drew Springer	Flight engineer died trying to get into an escape pod. Had an argument with Franklin Jones, who is stuck in the launch tube of an escape pod.
Duncan Krassikoff
Don Davis	Contest winner
Eddie Voss	Made it through the chaos of the station and finally arrived in the escape pod room only to meet his demise.
Edena Burton
Edward Douglas	Dead in the cargo tunnel of GUTS
Ekaterina Mulsaev	Hanging out in the office
Elias Black	Night shift Contrary to the day guard, Elias is silent and moody. The night post suits him well. Since his shift is rarely eventful he spends much of his time reading or playing games. He keeps some books stashed away at his post when he is off duty. Plays Stabfellow in the paper RPG in Crew Quarters
Elizabeth Bay	Stationed in Trauma, dead in Crew
Elle Gold	In a forbidden relationship with Lawrence Berger. They could be fired if it came to light.
Emily Carter	Dead at escape pod cluster in Life Support Saw Mike Broadway fall in the Eel Tank. Left a Transcribe about it.
Emma Beatty	Member of the RPG group. Enslaved by the telepath in crew quarters, hanging out by the pool.
Emmanuel Mendez	Dead at TranStar sign in Exterior
Emmanuella DeSilva
Enoch Kouneva	Rasied as a phantom in Cargo Bay
Eric Berger	Dead just outside Psychotronics in the GUT.
Erica Teague	Died leading a team to the Lobby/Arboretum, only to learn it is locked down. Conversation recorded on a Transcribe with Sari
Eva Loveless	Entered suicide pact with Brenda Handley after the escape pods failed rather than face the alien menace.
Evelyn McCarthy	corpse in arboretum
Eve Coolidge
Evgeni Charzov	Killed while escaping from volunteer area. Prisoner # V-041255-09
Frank Jones	Short version: Trapped in the launch tube of the VIP Shuttle Bay Escape Pods.
Franklin Goode	Test coordinator for the Artax Propulsion system. Currently dead in the Machine Shop in Hardware Labs (showpiece).
Franz Klinger	Telepath thrall harassing Luka
Frederick Steele
Galel Seif	Works w/ Mia in the shuttle bay control room. Gale was in the planning room when all hell broke loose. She stayed in there unable to leave until the oxygen levels depleted.
Gary Snow	Telepath thrall outside the gym. Commits suicide if the player doesn't act fast
Garfield Langly	Lobby Welcome Kiosk Garfield is intimately knowledgeable about all of the 'public' areas on Talos. He knows about all of the social and entertainment events, special features and key people on the station. He is tasked with helping crew members with any non-job related tasks or interests. He jots down notes with people's names and interesting facts about them to help him remember who's who. At Game Start: Dead in front of escape pods in VIP Shuttle Bay Edit: Might be a phantom carrying the code to Psych
Gennady Mironov
Gerald Wildman	Boss of the Cargo Bay
Gordon Bitz
Grant Lockwood	Grant was fired but HR prematurely de-activated before he was put on the shuttle to leave the station. Was attempting to sabotage station. Dead in the exterior.
Gregory Kepner	Dead in the Machine Shop of Hardware Labs.
Grete Mikkelsen	Engineer handling the helcopter simulation stage. Corpse is near the workstation.
Gus Magill	Has a lengthy transcribe convo about what a Reployer does. Dead in Cargo Bay. Has his computer password on him.
Gustav Leitner	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] Was on Talos to have his musical abilities recorded for a neuromod. In recent years age has started to claim his ability to play. In this way he hopes to preserve his talent.
Guy Croal
Guy Jameson	Dead in Crew in the karaoke room of the Yellow Tulip
Hadley Dalton	Hadley is also the voice actor that recorded the pilot conversations for the simulated helicopter ride in the Sim Lab. Hadley is the corpse that Helen Croft is looting in the skill recorder.
Halden Graves
Hank Majors	Dead at Lobby/Arboretum Elevator
Hans Kelstrup	Has a private room in Crew Quarters
Harley Grainger	Lobby Level 2 Harley was briefly a star professional baseball player. He enjoyed two seasons of fame and popularity before an injury cut his career short. His name is still widely known and he leverages this in his sales pitches. People just seem to like Harley. His dreams of being a baseball star faded, but now he clings to thin hopes that someday Alex may reward him with an athletic neuromod that will restore his lost skill. He dreams that he can once again hear the stadium full of people cheering him on, but each year that passes fades that dream a little more. His office has some select memorabilia from his career, and he uses it to charm clients with tales of his glory days. At Game Start: Holed up in Lobby IT supply closet, but ends up corrupted in Life Support if player sides with Dahl.
Harvey Clausen	One of the telepath victims in Crew.
Helen Barker-Combs	She has been researching the paranormal and Psi since it used to be a crackpot subject. Over the course of her career the true nature of Psi has been scientifically proven and developed. She has risen from 'crazy psychic nutjob that believes in ghosts' to become a leading expert in the latent psi powers of human beings.
Heather Bentz
Helen Croft	Works in Sim Lab. Is looting a corpse in the skill recorder when a phantom kills her.
Hendrik DeVries	Works in Trauma and knows about the human sacrifice going on is Psychotronics. Loyal to alex and never says a thing. Has a private room in Crew Quarters
Hope Ellis	Dead in Hardware Labs in the break room.
Hunter Hale	Hunter Hale is one of the pilots who works in the Shuttle Bay. Hunter typically transports 'Volunteers' and sales teams to earth and back. Alex recruited Hale to secretly transport some sets of Volunteers back to the psychotronics lab. The are the volunteers that are fed to mimics for replication and production of exotic materials. Hale was transporting a group of volunteers when the outbreak happened. As he swept around the moon and began making his way back to the station, toward Psychotronics, disaster struck. He tried contacting psychotronics, but no response. Then bridge, but no response. Then he contacted shuttle bay to come back for a landing. He was killed at that point by mimics aboard the ship.
Ian Rolston
Ike Stewart
Indigo Lake	Is one of the corrupted humans in the Crew Facilities intro sequence.
Iris Stein	dead in lobby on way to hardware
Ivy Song	Talks to Anton about trying to hack into Deep Storage. Currently a phantom in Danielle's quarters
Izumi Minami	Izumi is also the voice of all of the Talos public announcements
Jada Marks	Has a private room in Crew Quarters
Jaden Medina	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] VIP visiting Talos to have her abilities recorded for a neuromod.
January
Janos Jozsef	Psychotronics Lab
Jean Faure	Stationed in Life Support, died in Power Plant
Jennifer Lee
Jenny King
Jessica Wiley	Dead in Cargo bay A
Jorgen Thorstein	Age: Late 50's Director of the Hardware (Prototype) Labs PHD in Materials Science Divorced. Grandfather. Swedish family background Was part of the team that created the formula for the goo gun material. Probably what got him promoted / hired. Has a private room in Crew Quarters
Jason Chang	Lobby Level 3 Morgan Karl's Personal Assistant Jason thinks Morgan is the coolest person ever. He is in tight with Morgan and wields a certain amount of authority as his PA. He does not hesitate to drop Morgan's name with veiled and implied threats to get what he wants, and what he wants is always in Morgan's best interests. Recently he had seen distinct changes in Morgan's personality, and then Morgan stopped coming back from the Sim Lab altogether. Jason is neat, organized and efficient.
Jerome Elliot	Psychotronics Lab
Jillian Quigg
Jia Kyung-Ho	Jia is a security officer from Shuttlebay that was headed to Deep Storage to re-activate Grant Lockwoods tracking chip. Grant was fired but HR prematurely de-activated before he was put on the shuttle to leave the station. She died near the guts entrance trying to escape the aliens.
Jiao-Long Heng	Assigned to Sim Lab
Jody Barrett	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] Workes as a top level executtive for TranStar. Based in Stockholm
Joel Weeks	Helmet Head
John Haskins	He is the corpse that provides a shotgun to the player
Johnny Brungen
Jordan Yax
Jose Costa
Joshua Vanstry
Joseph McSorley	Cargo bay employee, dead in karaoke room in Crew Roster
Jovan Gravilovic	Jovan is killed by the mimic in the decontamination scene.
Josh Dalton	Dead in the cargo tunnel of the GUTs
Julien Howard	Also has invented a formulae to make one of the TranStar fruits super amazing. Dr. Julien Howard has come up with a formula (now a blueprint on his body) that is ready to be tested in the Arboretum. This blueprint with create a bio-seed or fertilizer that will rapidly grow a super fruit on the trees in a marked section of trees in the Arboretum. He was on his way to a fabricator to create one but then the alien breakout happened and he tried getting to safety in the Arboretum but met his demise on one of the high up rocks.
Junior Bookman
Kade Mason	Dead in the freezer
Kane Rosito
Karisma Chouhan	She is dead in the exterior portion of Hardware Labs
Keira Whitman	Trauma center security officer. Dead in Crew Roster
Kelly Randolph	Kelly hates being in space. When she went to work at TranStar she never dreamed she would be assigned to Talos. She wanted to say no, but the money is too good. She does everything she can to avoid the vistas of space and forget where she is. Including periodically taking some medication to ease her nerves. She has managed to make some friends in the Trauma Center that have slipped her pharmas before. She almost leaps for joy when it is time to make a trip to Earth for an install, but also dreads the flight. She is contemplating resigning her position after one or two more pay cycles
Kevin Sabian	Referred to as the concierge. Sent as a suicide attacker against the Cook's locked doors and shutters. The cook later dragged his corpse into the freezer.
Kevin Hague	Alive and holding up in Cargo Bay with Sari Married to Nicole Hague
Kimberly Bomo	Dead in GUTS by cystoids.
Kirk Remmer	Is now a Phantom. Led a group of people to the Life Support Escape pods before being killed and converted.
Kolya Korneyev	Prisoner # V-011155-17; died in the derelict shuttle
Kristine Lloyd	Psychotronics Lab, next to the psychoscope in the women's restroom
Lan Nguyen
Lane Carpenter	Dead in Hardware Labs as a Phantom
Laura McAvoy	Dead in Lobby.
Laurel Davis	Dead with a malfunctioning suit in the GUTs.
Lawrence Baxter	Is now a Phantom Was in a forbidden relationship with Elle Gold. They could be fired if it came to light.
Leon Woods	Leon bringing in some food for the sky lounge when the outbreak happened. He helped setup the blockade and headed down to the escape pods.
Lia Macy	Dead in the mail room
Lily Morris	Dead in the hallway leading to the lift in Arboretum.
Lisa Larson	Is one of the corrupted humans in the Crew Facilities intro sequence.
Lizzy Colton	In arboretum. Vessel for shotgun goodies.
Lloyd Thompson
Lorenzo Calvino	Inventor of the Looking Glass Technology. Hides some of his meds in a secret compartment in the Hardware Labs. Later, in the crew counselor's office, there should be more notes/ convos about his mind slipping. Has a private room in Crew Quarters
Lucia Jimenez	Scientist monitoring Morgan as he moves through the test sequence Corpse found in the Trauma Center
Luka Golubkin	Luka is actually a volunteer / prisoner. but he is impersonating Mitchell, the dead cook. Prisoner # V-010655-37
Luther Glass	Dead in the Trauma Center
Lyn Cloyer
Maliah Fowles	Assigned to Crew Facilities. Sent to investigate Annalise Gallegos room. Found dead there.
Marc Sellers	Married to Regina Sellers. They got married on Talos. Morgan officiated.
Marco Simmons	Scientist monitoring Morgan as he moves through the test sequence. Also responsible for helping Morgan install new Neuromods during test prep.
Marietta Kyrkos	Dead in Arboretum. She was on the way to Crew Quarters to fetch the Golden Gun from Captain Mark's quarters. Has a keycard to the room and code to her safe.
Mariana Arias
Martin Giroud	Day shift Kind and likable, quite the looker and always charming. He chats easily with people passing by his station and manages to talk easily to the 'higher ups' that normally ignore security. He has a contraband flower that was given to him as a gift by Iris Stein, a worker in the Arboretum. Martin is tasked with providing information to new recruits and guests aboard Talos. He knows much of the 'soap opera' storylines that happen here as well. At Game Start: Dead in the Lobby. Took a couple of mimics with him.
Mary Malinaro	Works in Hardware Labs, dead in Crew. Defenestrated in the vestibule.
Mary Page
Mary Stevens
Mathias Kohl
Matt Cothron	Assigned to Bridge. Listens in on all sorts of critical communications as part of his job. Part of Sarai's 'loyal team', reporting back to her.
Matthew Connolly
Max Weigel-Goetz
Maxine Ford	At Game Start: Holed up in Lobby IT supply closet, but ends up corrupted in Life Support if player sides with Dahl.
Mia Bayer	Mia stayed in the control room so she could direct her people from there but lost contact with them over time. She had some extra oxygen but it wasn't enough to save her.
Mickey Pitt
Miguel Lopez
Mike Devlin	Dead in Crew Quarters. Works in Neuromod Division
Mike Turner	Original wrench wrangler. Not on duty the day Morgan escaped. Usually the wrench wragler, but he was out sick on the day Morgan escaped. Mike had a nasty shock the day before and Trauma Center cleared him for bed rest.
Mikhaila Ilyushin
Mischa Lazarev	Dead in lobby tunnel
Mitsuko Tokaji	Psychotronics Lab
Miyu Okabe	Female. Assistant to Dr. Calvino. Kind of hates him. Dead in near Grav Shaft.
Morgan Yu
Nash Underwood	Assigned to Executive Offices (Lobby)
Natasha Nikova	DO NOT PLACE!!!
Neil Warnes	Dead in cafeteria.
Neno Nikolic	Killed by fellow inmates during outbreak. Prisoner # V-110655-16
Nicholas Stillwater
Nickie Tannar	Dead in the kitchen of Hardware Labs
Nicole Hague	Married to Kevin Hague, a security officer in Cargo Bay. She is dead now and converted to a phantom
Nils Kjaergaard	Nils tried getting people to the esape pods and expected more people but found out with the rest of the people down there that all but one were not functional. She fought off the aliens until overcome by the lack of oxygen.
Octavia Figgs	Works on keeping the cleaner bots online, serviced, etc.
Oscar Groysman	Prisoner # V-060155-06
Oliver Benoit	Under control of the telepath in Crew Quarters
Omar Bolivar
Otto Lauda
Pablo Meyers
Patricia Varma	Engineer working in the hallway on Morgan's first day.
Patricia Wang	Dead security guard near cafeteria. Conveniently has stun gun w/ammo to deal with corrupted humans
Paul R. Fernandez	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] Works as a top level executtive for TranStar. Based in Houston
Penny Tennyson	Bridge
Perry Fullbright
Peter Coleman	Dead in the Hardware Labs Machine Shop.
Phong Vu
Price Broadway
Quinten Purvis	Is helping Annalise Gallegos smuggle incriminating evidence regarding the volunteers off Talos I. Hiding in a crate in Cargo Bay waiting to be shipped off. Chopped his own hand off and threw it in an eel tank to avoid detection.
Ramon Ridley	Dead near the Magnetosphere entrance. Propulsion system malfunction, similar to Anders Kline.
Randall Wood	Dead in the maintenance crawlspace in Hardware Labs.
Randolf Hutchinson
Rani Chaudhary	Possessed by a Telepath in Arboretum
Regina Sellers	Married to Mark Sellers. They got married on Talos. Morgan officiated. Controlled by the telepath in Crew Quarters.
Rich Ivers	Dead in fabrication
Richard Coveney	Lobby Level 2 Native Londoner, Richard has been intensely homesick. He doesn't lament much about missing London because he doesn't want to introduce any doubts to his commitment to the job, but reminders of home have slowly accrued around him. He envies that his assistant (Yuri Kimura) actually gets to travel to Earth periodically. Richard has a sister in London that sends him postcards and mementos. At Game Start: Holed up in Lobby IT supply closet, but ends up corrupted in Life Support if player sides with Dahl.
Riley Butler	Assigned to Bridge. Was in charge of the deployment of Security Operators. Like a K9 officer, but instead of dogs it's robots. Was in the Cargo Bay adjacent security office when it blew up, now floating in the cave.
Robert Gage	Dead in a conference room. Friends with Alice Aiken.
Rodrigo Diaz
Roger Meir	Dead at Lobby/Arboretum Elevator
Rodney S. Poole
Rory Manion
Ruby Stone	Psychotronics Lab
Raya Leiruat
Sadie Hall
Salman Kapoor	Stationed in Hardware Lab, currently controlled by the telepath in Crew Quarters
Sam Hertz	Alive and holding up in Cargo Bay with Sari
Sanjay Puri
Sarah Elazar
Sean Larsen	Security Guard for Hardware Labs. Dead in the demonstration observation area. Contains employee entrance keycard.
Evan Avery
Scott Parker	Scott turned off the power to the grav lifts in hopes it would slow down the spread of the aliens. He also was turning off the oxygen for a short time but was killed so he was not able to turn the system back on.
Skye Braxton	Member of the crew band. Her transcribe is in her bunk, A04.
Spencer Ogden
Steve Folson	Steve is a bit of an asshole and challenging to work with. He used to work in Deep Storage but the other data engineers grew to despise him. Danielle Sho transferred him to this post to separate him from the others. Now he works among the executives and sees this as a sort of promotion, which has made him even more insufferable. He ruffled a few feathers in the Marketing Department and was ordered to stay at his post at all times. Danielle began the paperwork to have him removed from Talos and assigned Earthside. Steve suspects this and has really let things go. If he spills coffee he doesn't care. Things are kind of a mess at his post right up until an old stale sandwich revealed itself as a mimic and killed him. At Game Start: Holed up in Lobby IT supply closet, but ends up corrupted in Life Support if player sides with Dahl.
Steven Mueller	Psychotronics Lab
Stone Blanchard
Sylvain Bellamy	Dr. Bellamy is seen at the start of the game administering some tests to Morgan. He is all business. An avid coffee drinker. He has an office here but spends almost all of his time in the Sim Lab, so this office is almost pristine. At Game Start: Killed in Sim Lab by a mimic when Morgan is testing. His body is later stashed somewhere TBD
Talia Brooks	Married to Kevin Brooks in Security
Tamiko Hayashi	Alive and holding up in Cargo Bay with Sari
Tana Vale	Sucked out into space when the bay door failed. Her body floats around out there now
Terrance Carlisle	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] Workes as a top level executtive for TranStar. Based in San Francisco
Thaddeus York	Dead in Hardware Labs in Demonstration Room. Phantom battle with goo gun. Right-hand man for the director. He was gathering as many materials as he could before the battle.
Thomas Tucker	Lobby (cube farm) Smooth talking and good looking. And up-and-comer in the TranStar organization. At least that's what he thinks. But there is precious little for a marketing guy to do here on the station. Sometimes he gets to rub elbows with the stars, to make sure they remain convinced that they have made the right choice, but by the time they have arrived a Talos the contracts that prevent them from backing out are already in place. His latest project has been to interview Talos crew for a documentary-style sales tool about Life in Space. A bit that glorifies TranStar and really upsells neuromods. He has gathered lots of notes about the key people of Talos and what they do
Thomas Lutz	Died in initial telepath attack in the cafeteria. Headless at a table.
Tina Snow	dead in lobby foyer
Titus Kromwell	Hardware Labs, dead in the think tank area
Tobias Frost	Worked on a device that makes water restore psi. Has the device on his body.
Todd Matsuyama	Tom made it into the shuttle bay through the exterior airlock. He made it to the escape pods but realized he couldn't breathe and was overcome by a mimic.
Tom Cooper	Tom was trying to get to Mia to help her but was surprised by a mimic while on his way up to the control room. He was trying to use the goo gun to climb up to the upper level near the grav shaft.
Trevor J. Young	This is the worker who walked into an experiment in psychotronics without a psychoscope. He was touched by a telepath and open a containment cell that contained a mimic, starting the outbreak on Talos. He was put under observation in psychotronics, determined to not be suffering under any adverse effects, and had his neuromods uninstalled, wiping his memory. He was put into the quarantine in trauma for further observation until Alex can figure out what to do with him.
Umi Isaka	Dead at escape pod cluster in Life Support
Vitaly Razin	Prisoner # V-060155-05; died in the derelict shuttle
Victor Yablonsky	Prisoner # V-041255-01
Vincent Schubel	Is one of the corrupted humans in the Crew Facilities intro sequence.
Veer Singh	Security guard with the GLOO gun that you first encounter on your way out of neuromod.
Walther Dahl	Leader of the mercenary recovery team.
William Yu	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] Father of Morgan and Alex Yu. Chairman of the Board of TranStar Directors.
Will Mitchell	This is the actual cook. Luka took his place when the shit hit the fan. He's dead in the freezer. Maybe he was found that way? Has also delivered food to a marked cargo container in Cargo Bay to help Quinten Purvis smuggle evidence off the station.
Yuri Andronov	Mikhaila's father. The evidence of his existence and demise is recorded in a final experimental log which the player can dig up in order to give Mikhaila closure.
Yuri Kimura	Lobby Level 2 Yuri was an avid surfer back on Earth, and every time she goes back she manages to squeeze in some time at the beach before returning to Talos. She has a few wave pictures at her desk. He also has a lucky conch shell that she has taken with her on every trip (she's been into the gravity well and back over a dozen times now
Zachary West	Dead guy outside of Deep Storage, trying to hack his way in past the voice lock. Provides the clue that you need to find Danielle Sho or her voice samples.
Zhao Sun	Prisoner # V-071855-21; died in the derelict shuttle
VolunteerB
VolunteerC
VolunteerD
VolunteerE
VolunteerF
VolunteerG
VolunteerH
VolunteerI
VolunteerJ
Station Announcer	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] The person (pre-recorded) who makes all the general announcements thru the PA system of the sation is Izumi Minami, the Communications Chief stationed on the bridge.
Helicopter Pilot	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] The Chopper Pilot voice was recorded by Hadley Dalton, a neural mapping specialist in the Sim Lab.
Suit	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] VO for player state (e.g. when the 02 goes away or the player recieves a trauma)
December	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
October	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
KASPAR	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] Tech Operator who works for Dahl. Locks Alex out of all the station systems.
BrithdayKid	Voice message from a kid on earth talking to his parent on Talos
Skillet	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] Skillet is a kitchen operator (engineer class). the Kitchen Operator is a cheerful, pleasant robot, eager to serve. Mitchell modified the bots voice and personality wthout persmission.
Engineering Operator	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Operator - Medical	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Operator - Military	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Operator - Military Copycat	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]This is a one-off Mil operator that can copy people's voices.
Operator - Science	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
NeuromodDivision_LabTech1	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
NeuromodDivision_LabTech2	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Cinematic_Dr. Calvino	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] Cinematic character in the Hardware Labs
Cinematic_Miyu Okabe	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] Cinematic character in the Hardware Labs
Alarm Clock	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] The voice of Morgan's Alarm Clock
Cazavor	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] A psychic weapon facing an exisential crisis.
Elevator	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] The voice of the automated elevators aboard TranStar Talos 1
AllSimulationWorkers	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
CrewBarSoundSystem
Computer Voice	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] The voice of various computers and machines.
Diagnostic	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] The voice of the Diagnostic VO on LG machines.
Dispenser	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Exhibitor	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] The voice that narrates the museum exhibitions in the lobby was recorded by Izumi Minami, the Communications Chief stationed on the Bridge. She also records the Talos PA announcements.
Group Workstation: Hardware Labs	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] Small Scale Workstation in the Think Tank area in Hardware Labs.
HumanArmed	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] placeholder human
HumanUnarmed	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] placeholder human
Placeholder	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] This is a placeholder that we can stub in in places where we don't know who should be assigned yet, but have to have a character assignment.
Security Login: Neuromod Division	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Security Login: Arboretum	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Security Login: Crew Quarters	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Security Login: G.U.T.	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Security Login: Hardware Lab	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Security Login: Power Plant	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Security Login: Life Support	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Security Login: Lobby	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Security Login: Shuttle Bay	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Security Login: Trauma	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Turret	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Sandro	Reserved for the Sandro email in HR
[Unknown]	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] This is just a proxy for emails from an uknown or encrypted source. Not a real character. For instance, the source of Dahl's orders.
DS_VolunteerStation	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] This is a fake character that owns the mikhaila quest station
Poltergeist	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Phantom	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Phantom - Etheric	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Phantom - Thermal	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Phantom - Voltaic	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Softshell	[NOT A CREW MEMBER] Operator used in robot combat arena
AllAtmosphereControl	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Satellite	[NOT A CREW MEMBER]
Tizzy	Tizzy was the bartender operator in Crew Facilities.

Source
All of these comments were summarized more or less, and each quote does come from a full Russian article
Wonder how the general reaction is in Russia's figure skating community/fandom
Alexander Gorshkov:
“This is Zhenya’s decision. She’s an adult, and she had time to think things over. She came to the final decision,”
Alexei Mishin:
“There is such an uncertain situation right now. There are divorces bringing happiness to both parting people, there are divorces that do not bring happiness to both, and other divorces bring happiness to one person. I think that now the correct position is to take it calmly. We do not lose anyone, we have decent athletes. Brian Orser showed himself as a high-class specialist, so we need to take this calmly and to some extent sympathize with Evgenia, who is now in a very difficult situation."
Tatiana Tarasova: Tutberidze should not have talked about Medvedeva as a traitor:
“He (Orser) is an outstanding coach, very successful in recent years. He trains Olympic champions, champions of Europe. Just like we have Tutberidze, Orser is a world-class coach. As a person who has seen a lot in my life and has gone through many things, I can say that something must have happened, since such a serious transition has occurred. I can understand the athletes, they must think about themselves. They have a short life in sports. Any outstanding coach if he takes an outstanding athlete — and Zhenya is an outstanding athlete, who was brought up Tutberidze — certainly has a serious plan for their development. I cannot understand what happened. I do not know, I can only guess, and doing so in such a situation is wrong.”
Evgeni Plushenko: Medvedeva’s cooperation with Canadian coach can bring good results:
“…the athlete felt that it would be more comfortable for her to train with another coach. I do not rule out that a very good result can be achieved.”
Maxim Trankov: Medvedeva did not want to repeat the path of Lipnitskaya, so she left Tutberidze:
I understand why Zhenya Medvedeva took such a decision. She wants to continue her sports career, because Medvedev, as a champion, a great champion. As history shows, in the group of Eteri Georgievna with the appearance of a new star, the last star becomes unnecessary. At first there was Polina Shelepen, who was all praised, but she always won. Then Lipnitskaya appeared, and Shelepen became useless to anyone. The same story happened to Julia Lipntsika, when Zhenya Medvedeva appeared. Now Tutberidze had Alina Zagitova … Zhenya simply does not want to repeat the path of her predecessors and finish her career, so she took the only right decision for herself — to try to extend her career in another team.Now Tutberidze had Alina Zagitova … Zhenya simply does not want to repeat the path of her predecessors and finish her career, so she took the only right decision for herself — to try to extend her career in another team.
Alexander Zhulin: I know that Tutberidze wanted Medvedeva’s victory in the Olympics:
“Of course, there could be a grudge. After all, this is the relationship between the student and the mentor. But it is wrong to express dissatisfaction with the fact that Tutberidze did not leave Zagitova in juniors. The coach does not choose. She has students, but their age does not play a key role. At the same time, Eteri wanted Medvedeva to win at the Olympic Games. I know this from personal conversation. It would be more correct and fair. But competition can not be cancelled.”
Ekaterina Bobrova said she would support any decision made by her friend:
“Together we skate for the Russian team — we are friends, and I will support any Zhenya decision. This is a sensible woman, whom I absolutely support in all undertakings, no matter what choice she makes in life. I do not consider this step of Zhenya as correct or wrong. It’s her life and she does what she thinks is right. I can not blame anyone. This decision was taken by no means by Evgenia alone. Some meetings and discussions with the federation, and with her mother and grandmother, who have been watching her skating all her life. It was not so that Zhenya woke up in the morning and took this decision. Of course, it was not easy for her, but, nonetheless, it was accepted. It only remains to wish Evgenia to conquer even higher sports peaks. I support her and wish her good luck. I’ve been to Canada often and will come again with pleasure, this time visiting Zhenya, if she invites me.”
Alena Leonova:
“It seems to me that no one will ever know the truth about what actually happened, but since Zhenya expressed the decision to leave for, as far as I know, Brian Orser, it means she was better. The athlete always does what is best for him/her. I think that Evgenia did not just wake up one day and say: ‘I do not want to train with Tutberidze anymore. I’ll go to Canada!'”
Elizaveta Tuktamysheva:
“I love this trainer, his system of work. Orser is a very good option, he is one of the best coaches. As a person, he is also wonderful.”
Maria Butyrskaya:
“Figure skating is a sport in which the athlete and coach have no contracts. As an athlete, I understand Zhenya. For skaters it happens that the limit is reached and it is necessary to change the conditions, to take a breath of fresh air…but as a coach, I feel very sorry for Eteri Tutberidze. So many years, so much energy she gave to Evgenia. She did not have one athlete for so long. Therefore, it is very difficult for me to be on someone’s side in this situation. Evgenia did not just take this decision. I do not even know to whom she could go in our country, because Tutberidze is the leader in our figure skating.”
Ilya Averbukh:
“I do not like Orser’s comments, using a political underpinning…that poor Zhenya did not have the right to vote, that she was so unhappy — she was following only the directions of the coach. I have been the director of Medvedeva’s program for four years, so I’ll see what he will do as a choreographer. Zhenya was always present in the productions, her opinion always influenced the program. If Orser wants to raise the topic once again, that the Russians are robots, and they are so free, then I would answer him so.”