Not to judge, to assume

This article offers a critical reflection on Western representations of the situation of believers in the USSR, based on a reading of André Martin's work devoted to this subject. Adopting a posture of theological meditation informed by anonymous testimonies, the author challenges the simplistic framework opposing persecuted believers, an oppressive State, and a compromised official Church. The central idea is that only those who fully assume from within the Church-State-believers situation have the legitimacy to judge it, while the silence of the committed may be read as participation in a mediating suffering. On the theological level, the article questions the confusion between first truths and second truths, critiques the claiming of constitutional rights as a distortion of Christianity, and recalls that the Church cannot withdraw into itself without betraying its universal vocation.