Khrushchev additionally banned all services held outside of church walls, renewed enforcement of the 1929 legislation banning pilgrimages, and recorded the personal identities of all adults requesting church baptisms, weddings, or funerals. He also disallowed the ringing of church bells and services in daytime in some rural settings from May to the end of October under the pretext of field work requirements. Non-fulfillment of these regulations by clergy would lead to disallowance of state registration for them (which meant they could no longer do any pastoral work or liturgy at all, without special state permission). According to Dimitry Pospielovsky, the state carried out forced retirement, arrests, and prison sentences on clergymen for "trumped up charges", but he writes that it was in reality for resisting the closure of churches and for giving sermons attacking atheism or the anti-religious campaign, or who conducted Christian charity or who made religion popular by personal example.
Anti-religious campaign
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev | Anti-religious campaign
He banned all services held outside of church walls, renewed enforcement of the 1929 legislation banning pilgrimages, and recorded the personal identities of all adults requesting church baptisms, weddings, or funerals Mass closures of churches, monasteries, convents, restriction of parental rights for teaching religion to their children, pastoral courses would be banned in general etc Through an anti-religious campaign that was carried out through mass closures of churches ,monasteries, and convents, as well as of the still-existing seminaries. Through multiple measures carried out during his time, like mass closures of churches, monasteries and convents; prevention of parents from teaching religion to children; ban on the presence of children at church services; and ban on all services outside walls among many others.
who was the leader of the soviet union when sputnik was launched
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Nikita Khrushchev
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when was this satellite launched?
user
4 October 1957
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which place was it launched from?
user
Site No.1/5, at the 5th Tyuratam range, in Kazakh SSR
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which was the organization behind this launch?
user
Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context.
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where was the leader mentioned above born?
user
Kalinovka village in what is now Russia's Kursk Oblast
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was he against any religion?
user
Yes. He was anti-religious
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in what way did he push this belief forward?
user
The anti-religious campaign of the Khrushchev era began in 1959, coinciding with the 21st Party Congress in the same year. It was carried out by mass closures of churches (reducing the number from 22,000 in 1959 to 13,008 in 1960 and to 7,873 by 1965), monasteries, and convents, as well as of the still-existing seminaries (pastoral courses would be banned in general). The campaign also included a restriction of parental rights for teaching religion to their children, a ban on the presence of children at church services (beginning in 1961 with the Baptists and then extended to the Orthodox in 1963), and a ban on administration of the Eucharist to children over the age of four.
Nikita Khrushchev | Anti-religious campaign
Nikita Khrushchev's anti-religious campaign was the last large-scale anti-religious campaign undertaken in the Soviet Union. It succeeded a comparatively tolerant period towards religion which had lasted from 1941 until the late 1950s. As a result, the church had grown in stature and membership, provoking concerns from the Soviet government. These concerns resulted in a new campaign of persecution. The official aim of anti-religious campaigns was to achieve the atheist society that communism envisioned. Khrushchev had long held radical views regarding the abolition of religion, and this campaign resulted largely from his own leadership rather than from pressure in other parts of the CPSU.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964) | Introduction
Khrushchev claimed that communist education intends to free consciousness from religious prejudices and superstitions. One of the first manifestations of the campaign, like as occurred in the 1920s, was the removal of practicing believers from the teaching profession. In 1959, reports appeared 'unmasking' secret believers in faculties of education. In one case a Christian student was asked how she would teach in an atheistic school system, and she replied "I'll give all answers in accordance with Marxism. What are my personal convictions is no one's business." The same article also took concern that atheist students felt that they could not win in a discussion with believers.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964) | Education
Khrushchev's campaign, while being the most brutal episode of persecution after Stalin's death in Soviet history, largely went unnoticed in the Western world, partly as a result of poor coverage in the Western media, which often instead attempted to portray Khrushchev as a more liberal figure, and partly also as a result of a lack of resemblance between this campaign and the campaigns under Lenin or Stalin. Khrushchev and his regime fostered a false image of himself as being tolerant towards religion to foreigners. In an interview with American journalists in 1957 he stated:
USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964) | Foreign reaction
The official line that believers’ feelings should not be insulted continued to be widely violated in practice. The antireligious propaganda after Khrushchev was still very much influenced by the policy set down by the 21st CPSU congress in 1959. The Soviet press began to sound an alarm in 1972 on account of Communist party and Komsomol members who were not only participating in religious rites, but even initiating them. The volume of anti-religious literature grew in the 1970s, partly due to a hardening general line towards religion formed as a result of more people turning to religion. The press and special conferences complained about the insufficiency of atheistic propaganda.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Anti-religious propaganda
After Khrushchev left office, the anti-religious campaign led under him was criticized. The same anti-religious periodicals that had participated in the campaign criticized the articles of past contributors. The anti-religious propaganda in those years was criticized for failing to understand that causes of religious of belief as well as similarly failing to understand that religion did not simply survive as a legacy of the past but that it continued to attract new people to it. It was criticized for reducing religion to simply a mass of swindling of credulous fools and failing to acknowledge the notion of faith. It was criticized for misrepresenting religious societies as being composed of evil and immoral people who were working against the Soviet Union.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Criticism of Khrushchev's campaign
It was also criticized for misrepresenting believers as mentally handicapped enemies who were worthy of all contempt. It was criticized for being counter-productive, immoral (by telling lies about believers and encouraging hatred for them thereby) and for being false. The propaganda had not adequately explained why people really practiced religion nor had it given an accurate portrayal of what occurred. Many criticized it for having done more harm than good, because rather than eliminating religious belief, it instead simply pushed it underground where the state would have more difficulty trying to control it. The persecution had also attracted popular sympathy for believers, both in the USSR and abroad, as well as to increase interest in religious faith among non-believers.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Criticism of Khrushchev's campaign
Khrushchev additionally banned all services held outside of church walls, renewed enforcement of the 1929 legislation banning pilgrimages, and recorded the personal identities of all adults requesting church baptisms, weddings, or funerals. He also disallowed the ringing of church bells and services in daytime in some rural settings from May to the end of October under the pretext of field work requirements. Non-fulfillment of these regulations by clergy would lead to disallowance of state registration for them (which meant they could no longer do any pastoral work or liturgy at all, without special state permission). According to Dimitry Pospielovsky, the state carried out forced retirement, arrests, and prison sentences on clergymen for "trumped up charges", but he writes that it was in reality for resisting the closure of churches and for giving sermons attacking atheism or the anti-religious campaign, or who conducted Christian charity or who made religion popular by personal example.
Nikita Khrushchev | Anti-religious campaign
In 1932 he had been the First Moscow City Party Secretary and had demolished over 200 Eastern Orthodox churches including many that were significant heritage monuments to Russia's history. He was initiator of the July 1954 CPSU Central Committee resolution hostile to religion. He was not able to implement his ideas in practice until he achieved greater consolidation of his control in the late 1950s. The anti-religious campaign of the Khrushchev era began in 1959, coinciding with the twenty first Party Congress in the same year. It was carried out by mass closures of churches (reducing the number from 22,000 in 1959 to 13,008 in 1960 and to 7,873 by 1965), monasteries, and convents, as well as of the still-existing seminaries (pastoral courses would be banned in general).
USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964) | Introduction
As the years progressed, it became increasingly clear that the old Marxist assumption that religion would die away quickly and easily was highly mistaken as resistance to the anti-religious policies was found across the country. In 1924, Trotsky, who originally had thought that the Russian masses were only superficially religious, warned that the struggle against religion would be a long and arduous battle and he spoke of religion as a cultural phenomena to be attacked on all fronts with every means except the forced closure of churches. Trotsky considered printed anti-religious material to be of little use in a largely illiterate nation and he emphasized the potential of the cinema in being able to replace the religiosity of the peasantry (which he thought was only a matter of habit in absence of other entertainment).
USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) | Debate on Methodology
Different parts of the Soviet leadership disagreed with each other on how best to combat religion, with positions ranging from the 'rightist' belief that religion would die on its own naturally with increasing education, and the 'leftist' belief that religion needed to be attacked strongly. The Marxist notion that human beliefs were determined by material conditions had been used to support the 'rightist' argument that religion would go away on its own once the state developed, and that rather than teaching people atheism and giving anti-religious propaganda, people should instead be taught natural sciences and they would then lose their religion.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) | Debate on Methodology
He also expressed patronage for scientists whose research fitted within his preconceived interpretation of Marxism; he for instance endorsed the research of agrobiologist Trofim Lysenko despite the fact that it was rejected by the majority of Lysenko's scientific peers as pseudo-scientific. The government's anti-religious campaign was re-intensified, with increased funding given to the League of Militant Atheists. Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist clergy faced persecution. Many religious buildings were demolished, most notably Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, destroyed in 1931 to make way for the (never completed) Palace of the Soviets. Religion retained an influence over much of the population; in the 1937 census, 57% of respondents identified as religious.
Joseph Stalin | Cultural and foreign policy
The campaign also included a restriction of parental rights for teaching religion to their children, a ban on the presence of children at church services (beginning in 1961 with the Baptists and then extended to the Orthodox in 1963), and a ban on administration of the Eucharist to children over the age of four. Khrushchev additionally banned all services held outside of church walls, renewed enforcement of the 1929 legislation banning pilgrimages, and recorded the personal identities of all adults requesting church baptisms, weddings or funerals. He also disallowed the ringing of church bells and services in daytime in some rural settings from May to the end of October under the pretext of field work requirements.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964) | Introduction
Much of the 'Old Guard' of the anti-religious work pre-World War II had died or they were no longer in condition to help with the new campaign. The Central Committee issued anti-religious measures with carefully worded euphemisms. In 1958 Khrushchev published his Theses on Educational Reform that called for the development of a materialistic (i.e. atheism) world-view in youth. The Soviet Council of Ministers issued an instruction on 16 October 1958 that cancelled the tax exemptions on monasteries and which also instructed local governments to cut the sizes of land plots being owned by monasteries and to work towards closing open monasteries.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964) | Official policies and the CPSU Central Committee
There was support for the Soviet system in the Muslim community for adopting laws dictated by Allah through Muhammad, even though the government were atheists. Circumcisions, like Christian baptisms, were often done in secret.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Muslims
The instruction also emphasized that the state was fighting against all forms of religious belief and not simply individual religions (like the Orthodox church). It was after the 10th congress that the authorities began to take measures against the public debates, which were eventually formally suspended in 1929 and replaced with public lectures by atheists. The reason given for their cessation was that they did not satisfy public demand and that people preferred to solidify their atheism with study. Martsinkovsky was arrested and sent to exile in 1922 on account of his religious preaching that attracted people to religion and told he could return in a few years once the workers had become wiser (he was in fact never allowed to return).
USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) | Legislative Measures
The climate of the campaign against religion was changing in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The regime slowly became more moderate in its approach to religion. Yaroslavsky, in 1941 warned against condemning all religious believers, but said that there were many loyal Soviet citizens still possessing religious beliefs. He called for patient and tactful individual work without offending the believers, but "re-educating" them. He claimed that religion had disappeared in some parts of the country but in other parts (especially in the newly annexed territories) it was strong, and he warned against starting brutal offensives in those areas. He alleged that there were very few attempts to re-open churches and that this was a sign of the decline in religion.
League of Militant Atheists | Disbandment
But the one thing we really need is to be guided by God's Holy Spirit. That is the Force we ought to study... The Holy Spirit will teach us how to think and live, and provide a working basis of our national service... The true battle line in the world today is not between class and class, not between race and race. The battle is between Christ and anti-Christ." After Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 denunciation of Stalinism and the apparent thawing of relationships with the West, MRA produced a pamphlet, "Ideology and Co-Existence," alerting the West to the strategies and tactics of Communism.
Frank Buchman | Buchman and communism
A new and more aggressive phase of anti-religious persecution in the Soviet Union began in the mid-1970s after a more tolerant period following Nikita Khrushchev's downfall in 1964. Yuri Andropov headed the campaign in the 1970s when it began to rise. This new persecution was following upon the 1975 amendments to the 1929 anti-religious legislation and the 25th party congress. The CC resolution in 1979 would play a key role in this period as well. The intensification of anti-religious activities had continued since the early 1970s; between 1971 and 1975 over 30 doctoral and 400 magisterial dissertations were defended on the subjects of atheism and criticism of religion.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Introduction
The press called for more aggressively atheistic curriculum at pedagogical institutions.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964) | Education
After Khrushchev's fall, Soviet writers began to cautiously question the effectiveness of his anti-religious campaign. They came to a general conclusion that it had failed in spreading atheism, and that it had only antagonized believers as well as pushed them underground, where they were more dangerous to the state. It had also drawn the sympathies of many unbelievers and indifferent people. The mass persecutions stopped after Khrushchev, although few of the closed churches would be re-opened, and the few that did matched those closed by local authorities. The two main anti-religious serials, "Yearbook of the Museum of History of Religion and Atheism" and "Problems of History of Religion and Atheism" soon ceased publication.
Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union | 1964–1970s
Furov, the CRA, vice-chairman wrote a report ca. 1975 (smuggled to the west 1979) wherein he claimed the existence of ‘irrefutable evidence’ of a decline in religion in the USSR. His evidence was a decrease in Orthodox clergy from 8252 in 1961 to 5994 in 1974 (he did not cite the pre-Khrushchev figure of 30,000 in 1958). In his conclusion that this was a natural decline he did not take account for the masses of priests who were de-registered, imprisoned, executed, etc. The CRA had also during this period prevented more clergy from being registered or enrolling at seminaries. Furov's report provided a great deal of information about the church.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Revived interest in religion
There were no radical revisions of official state policies after Khrushchev (much of his campaign was carried out under secret unpublished instructions anyway). Most of the closed churches would remain closed and none of the closed seminaries or monasteries would be reopened. Believers tried unsuccessfully to reopen many churches. In the late 1970s and into the 1980s the state did begin to allow more churches to be built and reopened. Those convinced of religious crimes in the Soviet Union were given especially harsh treatments and were classed (along with political dissidents) as "especially dangerous state criminals", which disqualified them from amnesty or leniency.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Activities
Old Believer sects (Orthodox who had split from the Orthodox church in the 17th century) were still treated as anti-social and criminal institutions. Many distortions of them still occurred in the official press after Khrushchev. A sect called Skrytniki (concealers) led by Khristofor Zyrianov was accused of engaging in mass suicides through self-immolation in the woods of Northern Russia in the pre-war period. Zyrianov had been suspected of this at the time and was oddly given a brief sentence of administrative exile in 1932 (which may make the allegations to be probably untrue, since if he really did this, he would have been shot).
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Orthodox sects
The failure of the propaganda war was evident in the increasing reliance on terror tactics by the regime in the antireligious campaign in the 1930s. However, by the end of the decade it may have become apparent to the leadership of the antireligious campaign that the previous two decades of experience had shown that religion was a much deeper rooted phenomena than originally thought. Anti-religious museums began to be closed in the late 1930s and chairs of "scientific atheism" were abolished in universities. The average figures for those who attended atheist lectures was dropping to less than 50 per lecture by 1940.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) | Drop in enthusiasm for the anti-religious campaign
He told the parishioners not to lose heart in the wake of the atheist persecution, and that one should not expect both an easy life on earth and a reward in heaven. After this sermon, he was de-registered and sent to a monastery, and his superiors said they could do nothing to help because of KGB pressure upon them. He was recommended to get a secular job, because there was no longer any position in the church that would be allowed to him.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Notable atrocities and victims
Particular cases of this that are known include: The religious nationalist was interred for two and half months in 1962 in a psychiatric hospital that administered insulin shock therapy to cure him of his religious belief. He was interred again in 1969 for a few weeks after which he was released as a result of public attention of his incarceration.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Psychiatric abuse
At the third Znanie congress, it was reported that there were 15 inter-republican and republican as well as 150 provincial, conferences and seminars for promoting atheism in the year 1959, with the total participation of 14,000 propagandists. At one conference organized at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, up to 800 scholars and atheist propagandists participated. The congress also criticized the lack of education among many atheist propagandists, and cited an example of a cartoon in Nauka i religii ('Science and Religion') of Seventh-day Adventists praying before a religious icon as well as another example of an article in the same paper that referred to the Talmud as a Hebrew prayer book that believers held in their hands during Synagogue services.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964) | Activities
The USSR anti-religious campaign of 1928–1941 was a new phase of anti-religious campaign in the Soviet Union following the anti-religious campaign of 1921–1928. The campaign began in 1929, with the drafting of new legislation that severely prohibited religious activities and called for an education process on religion in order to further disseminate atheism and materialist philosophy. This had been preceded in 1928 at the fifteenth party congress, where Joseph Stalin criticized the party for failure to produce more active and persuasive anti-religious propaganda. This new phase coincided with the beginning of the mass collectivization of agriculture and the nationalization of the few remaining private enterprises.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) | Introduction
In their influential book "The ABC of Communism", Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhensky spoke out strongly against religion, writing that "Communism is incompatible with religious faith". However, importance was placed on secularism and non-violence towards the religious: 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.
Marxism and religion | Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhensky on religion
Convinced atheists were considered to be more politically astute and virtuous individuals. The state established atheism as the only scientific truth. Soviet authorities forbade the criticism of atheism and agnosticism until 1936 or of the state's anti-religious policies; such criticism could lead to forced retirement. Soviet law never officially outlawed the holding of religious views, and the various Soviet Constitutions always guaranteed the right to believe. However, since Marxist ideology as interpreted by Lenin and his successors regarded religion as an obstacle to the construction of a communist society, putting an end to all religions (and replacing them with atheism) became a fundamentally important ideological goal of the Soviet state.
Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union | Official Soviet stance
The old Marxist theory was pragmatically questioned as it became apparent that religion was not going away, and more active means were thought necessary.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) | Debate on Methodology
Religious crimes such as circulating a petition or organizing religious classes for children could be punished with strict terms in concentration camps (assault, robbery and rape had lesser sentences in the USSR) and could not be considered for parole without a formal confession. In the entire region of Sakha-Yakutia (about half the size of the continental United States) there was only one functioning church left open after Khrushchev until the fall of communism, which meant that many believers needed to travel up to 2000 kilometres in order to get the nearest church.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Activities
It was decreed that such members, however, should be submitted to 'special re-education work' in order to make them atheists. The instruction warned against rash actions in anti-religious propaganda, against giving too much publicity to 'anti-religious agitation' and it stressed 'serious scientific cultural-enlightenment work, building up natural-scientific foundation for a proper historical analysis of the question of religion'. This meant that the anti-religious campaign was to be directed at building up a non-religious culture and educational system, rather than subjecting religion to ridicule and attack. It directed the Central Committee Agitation Department, "Revolution and the Church" and Glavpolitprosvet to conform to this.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) | Legislative Measures
Stalin called "to bring to completion the liquidation of the reactionary clergy in our country". Stalin called for an "atheist five year plan" from 1932–1937, led by the LMG, in order to completely eliminate all religious expression in the USSR. It was declared that the concept of God would disappear from the Soviet Union. Some of the tactics that had been used early on and discarded in the 1920s due to their crude nature or providing too much offense to the feelings of believers. Included in these tactics were the anti-Christmases and anti-Easters that were organized by groups such as the Komsomol.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) | Activities
In 1928 the Soviet People's Commissar for Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky, pressured by leftist Marxists, agreed to an entirely anti-religious education system from the first grade up, however, he still warned against a general expulsion of teachers with religious beliefs due to the shortage of atheist teachers. In 1929 an Agitprop conference resolved to intensify anti-religious work throughout the education system. This led to the setting-up of anti-religious sections at all research and higher-education teaching institutions. A special anti-religious faculty was instituted at the Institute of Red Professors in 1929. A campaign was led against schoolteachers of the old intelligentsia who were asserted to be working against the system and were even allowing priests to spiritually influence schoolchildren.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) | Education
The circulation of anti-religious journals was dropping as was membership in the League of the Militant Godless. There are different reasons that may have caused this, including some moral alienation of people from the brutality of the campaign as well as the fact that the centralized terror did not have much tolerance for autonomous organizations, and even those who worked for anti-religious purposes could find themselves criticized in the campaign or subject to purge for deviating from the established line. Stalin's mind may have changed as well; he may have lost patience with the campaign, alternatively he may have thought that it had reached its goals once organized religion had ceased to exist in any public way throughout the country or he may have thought that the looming war clouds needed a more unified country.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) | Drop in enthusiasm for the anti-religious campaign
The school question proved troublesome initially for Soviet policies. They had outlawed religious instruction for schoolchildren or youth. In 1925 the delegates of the first congress of Soviet schoolteachers refused to endorse the principle of separation of church and state, and sought to retain religious teaching in school.The majority of school-teachers (as well as much of the Russian population) were reportedly still religious believers in the 1920s. Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Commisar of Enlightenment, was forced to accept that the school system would have non-religious rather than anti-religious education, due to the shortage of atheist teachers and the fear that such a system would provoke a hostile reaction by the religious masses.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) | Education
He produced three declarations of loyalty to the Soviet state, in 1919, 1923 and in his last testament in 1925.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) | Persecution against the Orthodox Church
A new period of persecution began in the late 1950s under Nikita Khrushchev. The church had advanced its position considerably since 1941, and the government considered it to be necessary to take measures in response. The two state organizations for overseeing religion in the country (one for the Orthodox, the other for everyone else), changed their functions between 1957 and 1964. Originally Stalin had created them in 1943 as liaison bodies between religious communities and the state, however, in the Khrushchev years their function was re-interpreted as dictatorial supervisors over the religious activities in the country. New instructions were issued in 1958 attacked the position of monasteries, by placing them under high taxation, cutting their land and working to shut them down in order to weaken the church.
Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union | Resumption of the anti-religious campaign
Despite the part of the August 1921 instruction about combating all religions, the state took a particular hardline against the Orthodox church on the pretext that it was a legacy of the Tsarist past (this difference in practice and policy may also have reflected internal disagreement among the party leadership, particularly between Stalin and Trotsky). This may also have been a pragmatic consideration in the belief that the state was not yet strong enough in order to broaden its anti-religious activities beyond the Orthodox church. When church leaders demanded freedom of religion under the constitution, the Communists responded with terror.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) | Persecution against the Orthodox Church
In February 1962, the 'All-Union Conference on Scientific Propaganda' was held in Moscow. Among the ideas discussed it was suggested that 'Religious people should be educated in the principles of communist morality and ethics, religious customs and traditions are to be replaced by religious feasts and rituals to satisfy the aesthetic and emotional needs of believers' In 1965, as Khrushchev's attack on religion had appeared to produce no effective results, more suggestions began to appear in the Soviet press that pseudo-religious rites should be instituted that would create a mystical link between people and the promised Communist society of the future, glorified in the labour of the present.
God-Building | Revival of God-Building
It differentiated between religious believers and uneducated believers, and allowed the latter to have party membership if they were devoted to Communism, but that they should be re-educated to make them atheists. It also called for moderation in the anti-religious campaign and emphasized that the state was fighting against all religion and not simply individual ones (such as the Orthodox church)
Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union | Anti-religious campaign 1921–1928
After 1941 in the Stalin era, religious persecution was greatly reduced. To gather support from the masses during World War II, the Stalin government re-opened thousands of temples and extinguished the league of militant atheists. Atheist propaganda returned to a lesser extent during the Khrushchev government and continued in a less strict way during the Brezhnev years. The role of religion in the daily lives of Soviet citizens varied greatly, but two-thirds of the Soviet population were irreligious. About half the people, including members of the ruling Communist Party and high-level government officials, professed atheism. For the majority of Soviet citizens, religion seemed irrelevant.
Marxism and religion | Religion in the Soviet Union
This was part of the purges that characterized the 1930s as well as Stalin's efforts to submit all marxist institutions to himself. Marxist leaders who took either position on this issue would find themselves attacked by a paranoid Stalin who did not tolerate other authorities to speak as authorities on public policy. Trotsky, Bukharin and other "traitors" were condemned as well as their ideas on the antireligious struggle.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) | Resolution of debate
Under the doctrine of state atheism in the Soviet Union, there was a "government-sponsored program of forced conversion to atheism" conducted by Communists. This program included the overarching objective to establish not only a fundamentally materialistic conception of the universe, but to foster "direct and open criticism of the religious outlook" by means of establishing an "anti-religious trend" across the entire school. The Russian Orthodox Church, for centuries the strongest of all Orthodox Churches, was violently suppressed. Revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin wrote that every religious idea and every idea of God "is unutterable vileness... of the most dangerous kind, 'contagion of the most abominable kind".
Forced conversion | Eastern Bloc
Late in 1922, Yaroslavsky created a new role for himself, as the Soviet Union's foremost anti-religious propagandist. He performed this function for nearly two decades, until the German invasion of the USSR when Stalin turned to the Russian Orthodox church for help in the war effort. In the fall of 1922, the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party established a new standing committee, the "Committee on the Execution of the Decree Separating Church and State" (unofficially known as the "Anti-Religious Commission"), granted "full authority in general leadership and policy in regard to religion and the church and development of party directives on issues of anti-religious propaganda." Although a body of limited power, the Anti-Religious Commission marked the first step towards an official Bolshevik policy of systematic religious extermination and anti-religious propaganda.
Yemelyan Yaroslavsky | Atheist activist
Soviet scholars estimated that 10 to 25% of the traditional Muslim minority in the USSR were still active believers, but this was contradicted by Western observers and Soviet Islamic leaders who claimed that almost all of the traditional Muslim minority were active believers. In 1965 an investigation into mosque attendance in the Kazakh SSR revealed that 10% of worshippers were Komsomol members. A further study in 1985 found that 14 percent of the Uzbek Communist Party and 56 percent of the Tajik Communist Party were believing Muslims. A considerable amount of reconciliation existed between Muslims in the USSR and the state.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Muslims
Russian Orthodox religious life experienced a revival: thousands of churches were reopened; there were 22,000 by the time Nikita Khrushchev came to power. The regime permitted religious publications, and church membership grew.
Religion in the Soviet Union | Policy towards Orthodoxy
In 1922, the 11th party congress turned the publishing house "Glavpolitprosvet, Krasnaia nov" and the journal by the same name into a special party publishing enterprise for Marxist and anti-religious literature. The 12th (1923) and 13th (1924) party congresses called for 'moderation'. The 12th party congress called for the expansion of anti-religious propaganda and warned against insulting religious feelings by 'primitive methods' and of ridiculing the objects and ceremonies of faith; claiming that these methods strengthen 'religious fanaticism'. Instead it called for more publication of anti-religious literature of a popular scientific nature, and more analysis of the history of religion.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) | Anti-Religious Propaganda
Nonetheless, Lenin allowed Christians and other religious people in the Bolshevik Party. While critical of religion, Lenin also specifically made a point to not include it in "Our Programme" or his ideological goals, arguing: But under no circumstances ought we to fall into the error of posing the religious question in an abstract, idealistic fashion, as an "intellectual" question unconnected with the class struggle, as is not infrequently done by the radical-democrats from among the bourgeoisie. It would be stupid to think that, in a society based on the endless oppression and coarsening of the worker masses, religious prejudices could be dispelled by purely propaganda methods.
Marxism and religion | Vladimir Lenin on religion
The leadership may also have concluded that a long-term, deep, insistent and patient persuasion would be needed in light of religion's perseverance. In 1937, Grekulov, a Soviet historian published an article in an official journal that praised Russia's conversion to Christianity in the 10th century as a means that culture and learning entered the country. This was in contrast to years earlier when the League of the Militant Godless had attacked school teachers who claimed that the church benefitted Russia in this way. What Grekulov wrote would become the official Soviet position until the fall of communism.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) | Drop in enthusiasm for the anti-religious campaign
He stated: "Perhaps if I am to do my profile in relation to the Catholic Church, I would end up better off than any MP of the KDH." He also described growing up with his grandfather, a man who "very strictly respected the rules of standard Christian life," stating that it profoundly impacted him. However, historian and former researcher of the National Memory Institute Patrik Dubovský consider it being an attempt to manipulate public opinion, because "confirmation was in direct conflict with Communist Party membership, which political programme was based on atheism." As Dubovský stated, religiously active people were severely persecuted, especially after the Charta 77 incident.
Robert Fico | Religion
Against the background of this extreme range of attitudes toward religion by various Russian thinkers, Kline concluded by examining three dominant attitudes toward religion in the then contemporary Soviet Union. They were:
George Kline | Attitudes toward religion
The Soviet Union adopted the political ideology of Marxism–Leninism. It officially adopted the policy of state atheism. It directed varying degrees of antireligious efforts at varying faiths, depending on what threat they posed to the Soviet state, and their willingness to subordinate itself to political authority. These antireligious campaigns were directed at all faiths, including Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Jewish, and Shamanist religions. In the 1930s, during the Stalinist period, the government destroyed church buildings or put them into secular use (as museums of religion and atheism, clubs or storage facilities), executed clergy, prohibited the publication of most religious material and persecuted some members of religious groups.
Antireligion | State atheism
The Soviet regime had an ostensible commitment to the complete annihilation of religious institutions and ideas. Communist ideology could not coexist with the continued influence of religion even as an independent institutional entity, so "Lenin demanded that communist propaganda must employ militancy and irreconcilability towards all forms of idealism and religion", and that was called "militant atheism". "Militant" meant an uncompromising attitude toward religion and the effort of winning the hearts and minds of believers from a false philosophy. Militant atheism became central to the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and a high priority policy of all Soviet leaders.
Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union | Official Soviet stance
The USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) was a campaign of anti-religious persecution against churches and believers by the Soviet government following the initial anti-religious campaign during the Russian Civil War. The elimination of most religion and its replacement with deism, agnosticism and atheism supported with a materialist world view was a fundamental ideological goal of the state. To this end the state conducted anti-religious persecutions against believers that were meant to hurt and destroy religion. It was never made illegal to be a believer or to have religion, and so the activities of this campaign were often veiled under other pretexts (usually resistance to the regime) that the state invoked or invented in order to justify its activities.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) | Introduction
The attack on the Orthodox became more generally an attack against all religions around 1927. Sects that had originally been praised in the official press for their loyalty and hard-work, despite their religious convictions that were problematic to implementing Communism, began to be demonized in the late 1920s. Even when these other religions tried to reaffirm their compatibility with Marxism and their loyalty to the state, but this was rejected in the official propaganda that increasingly depicted all religious activity as harmful and in contradiction with Communism.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) | Revisal of Renovationist Policy and Policies to Non-Orthodox Religions
On 4 April 1964, the Russian newspaper Pravda - the newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party - announced an official change in policy. The statement read, "The author of the book and the authors of the preface wrongly interpreted some questions concerning the emergence and development of this religion. ... [A] number of mistaken propositions and illustrations could insult the feelings of believers and might even be interpreted in the spirit of anti-Semitism." The paper continued "There is no such thing as anti-Semitism in the USSR and cannot be." The Soviet Communist Party's ideological committee withdrew the work from circulation and destroyed all copies.
Judaism Without Embellishment | Reaction
Ginzburg was an avowed atheist, both under the militantly atheist Soviet government and in post-Communist Russia when religion made a strong revival. He criticized clericalism in the press and wrote several books devoted to the questions of religion and atheism. Because of this, some Orthodox Christian groups denounced him and said no science award could excuse his verbal attacks on the Russian Orthodox Church. He was one of the signers of the Open letter to the President Vladimir V. Putin from the Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences against clericalisation of Russia.
Vitaly Ginzburg | Stance on religion
This legislation, drafted in 1961 during the height of a renewal persecution under Nikita Khrushchev, was designed to assist the anti-religious campaign especially with regard to the massive number of church closures that were conducted. It gave the state tight control over religious practices. Instruction on the Application of the Legislation on Religious Cults. Approved on 16 March 1961: I General
Soviet anti-religious legislation | Supervision over the Fulfillment of Legislation on Religious Cults of the USSR
They murdered the metropolitan of Kiev and executed twenty-eight bishops and 6,775 priests. Despite mass demonstrations in support of the church, repression cowed most ecclesiastical leaders into submission. Tikhon produced an encyclical on political neutrality and disengagement of the Church from worldly politics, and the official propaganda depicted it as a form of camouflage to hide his real aim of support for autocratic bourgeois-aristocracy. Tikhon emphasized the freedom of the Church in the separation of Church and State and the duty of believers to be loyal to the state in civic matters, in as much as this did not contradict a Christian's primary loyalty to God.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) | Persecution against the Orthodox Church
The government of the Soviet Union followed an unofficial policy of state atheism, aiming to gradually eliminate religious belief within its borders. While it never officially made religion illegal, the state nevertheless made great efforts to reduce the prevalence of religious belief within society. To this end, at various times in its history it engaged in anti-religious persecutions of varying intensity and methodology. Believers were never officially attacked for being believers, but they were officially attacked for real or perceived political opposition to the state and to its policies. These attacks, however, in the broader ideological context were ultimately meant to serve the ultimate goal of eliminating religion, and the perceived political opposition acted as a legal pretext to carry this out.
Soviet anti-religious legislation | Introduction
Arrests and persecution of believers continued under Gorbachev, although some who had been arrested previously were released. The volume of antireligious propaganda did not decrease under Gorbachev in contrast to the general Soviet literary and cultural scene. This received reprimands from the party ideological department as well as a counter-campaign in the antireligious press wherein such writers were criticized.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Conclusion
He cited cases of people prevented from attending theological institutes including people who would have been greatly embarrassing to the state had they become clergy (e.g. children of highly placed Soviet leaders). With the slow erosion of the Church's institutional strength, the extinction of the Church as an institution seemed possible. Only 4% of parents attended church in 1970 and many of them did not bring their children with them. There were rumours in the late 1970s that a comprehensive scientific study was done by Pisarov that blatantly contradicted the official figures of people abandoning religion, but was never published for that reason.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Revived interest in religion
He had been imprisoned from 1949–1956 and he was imprisoned again from 1969–1972. He had taken monastic vows in secret, but lived 'in the world'. He was painted as a hypocrite by the press for teaching Russian literature at school while publishing theological articles under a pseudonym that the press claimed were 'full of spite and arrogance'. He was made out to be a scion of a wealthy Russian aristocratic family and was bitter over the loss of its estate. In actuality, Levitin-Krasnov was a Christian Marxist; he was also an opponent of some Russian nationalists who wanted to turn the USSR into a Christian theocracy.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964) | Notable events
The state established atheism as the only scientific truth. Soviet authorities forbade the criticism of atheism and agnosticism until 1936 or of the state's anti-religious policies; such criticism could lead to forced retirement. Militant atheism became central to the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and a high priority policy of all Soviet leaders. Christopher Marsh, a professor at the Baylor University writes that "Tracing the social nature of religion from Schleiermacher and Feurbach to Marx, Engles, and Lenin...the idea of religion as a social product evolved to the point of policies aimed at the forced conversion of believers to atheism."
Persecution of Christians | Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact Countries
The debate on how to best exterminate religion was argued among the Soviet leadership, until in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when it was resolved by Stalin who condemned the extremes of both sides, and Yaroslavsky followed suit. The do-nothing approach of the rightists who thought religion would die away naturally and the leftist approach to attack all forms of religion as class enemies were both condemned as deviations from the party line. Yaroslavsky argued against the leftists (who had earlier criticized him) that if religion was simply a class phenomenon there would be no need to combat it if a classless society was truly being produced.
League of Militant Atheists | Authority on antireligious methodology
A Constantinople-based conservative journal declared him a heretic. Nalbandian's religious views have been described by Vardan Jaloyan as being essentially deistic and liberal Christian. Although he never self-identified as such, Soviet historians widely called him an atheist. Nalbandian, along with other secular and, usually, anti-clerical writers such as Raffi, contributed to the secularization of the Armenian public life. Hacikyan et al. note that his anti-clericalism did not mean that he was anti-Christian. In fact, he considered Christianity a means of abolishing despotism and a source of love and freedom. However, he argued that religion is distinct from national identity and cannot be pivotal to human existence.
Mikayel Nalbandian | Religion
Putin states, "I did as she said and then put the cross around my neck. I have never taken it off since." When asked in 2007 whether he believes in God, he responded, "... There are things I believe, which should not in my position, at least, be shared with the public at large for everybody's consumption because that would look like self-advertising or a political striptease." Putin's rumoured confessor is Russian Orthodox Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov. However, the sincerity of his Christianity has been rejected by his former advisor Sergei Pugachev.
Vladimir Putin | Religion
In order to print their own material, believers often used ‘samizdat’ (do-it-yourself press), which became increasingly widespread in the later years of the USSR. Samizdat was illegal publishing of works carried out by religious groups, dissidents, and many others who wanted to avoid the official censors. For believers this often took the form of some text from the scriptures, prayers or writings of the church fathers, which were handwritten with an attached instruction to make nine more copies and to send these copies to other addressees, or else God would punish them (and those addressees would then copy and send another nine, and so on).
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Samizdat
The Church thereby lost any public voice and was limited strictly to religious services that took place in the walls of churches. Atheist propaganda continued to have an unlimited right of propagation, which meant that the Church could not respond to the arguments used against it any longer. The Church was not permitted to run study groups for religious adults, organize picnics or cultural circles, or organize special services for groups of believers, such as schoolchildren, youth, women or mothers. Any pursuit of the true pastoral duties by clergymen became punishable by law. These laws also forbade Christian charity efforts, participation of children in religious activities, and religious functionaries were restricted to the area associated with them.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) | Legislative measures
The anti-religious education in the school system was accused of laxity.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Anti-religious propaganda
Practicing Orthodox Christians were restricted from prominent careers and membership in communist organizations (e.g. the party and the Komsomol). Anti-religious propaganda was openly sponsored and encouraged by the government, to which the Church was not given an opportunity to publicly respond. Seminaries were closed down, and the church was restricted from publishing materials. Atheism was propagated through schools, communist organizations, and the media. Organizations such as the Society of the Godless were created.
Human rights in the Soviet Union | Freedom of religion
Sultan Galiev, the Central Asian Marxist leader who had advocated for an independent Marxist state in Central Asia, began to be attacked in 1927. From 1927-1940 he and his supporters were purged from the CPSU. Galiev was arrested and sent to penal servitude; he was later executed in 1940. Many Muslims who had supported a united Muslim state in Central Asia were targeted and liquidated in the 1930s as traitors. Much of the communist party in Central Asia was composed of believing Muslims, and the state found that it was not pragmatic to eliminate all of them, because of the lack of experience that Russian communist replacements had with Central Asia and the shortage of sufficient numbers of atheist members of the CPSU in those territories.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) | Muslims
The Soviet government instead pursued a policy of demanding the Vatican to grant it recognition without a concordat or any conditions, and held out the prospect that doing so could result in priests being released from prison.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) | Foreign Relations
All forms of behaviour and policies of the Churches were treated in the official propaganda as insincere and aiming to overthrow Communism (including both believers that were pro-soviet and anti-soviet). Even acts of loyalty by religious leaders to the system were considered to be insincere attempts to curry favour in order to retain their influence over the believers and protect religion from its final liquidation as the sworn enemy of the workers.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) | Antireligious propaganda
The LMG called for sectarians to be expelled from farm management in 1929. In 1929 Lunacharsky, made some statements in which he claimed that religious freedom could be suspended "when it is abused for the direct class struggle against the proletarian dictatorship". While Lunacharsky had urged moderation, this quotation would be taken out of context in order to justify the intense anti-religious persecution carried out in the next decade. The church's successful competition with the ongoing and widespread atheistic propaganda, prompted new laws to be adopted in 1929 on "Religious Associations" as well as amendments to the constitution, which forbade all forms of public, social, communal, educational, publishing or missionary activities for religious believers.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) | Legislative measures
Early in the revolution, atheistic propaganda was pushed in an attempt to obliterate religion. Regarding religion more as a class enemy, a cause of hate, than a contender for people's minds, the government abolished the prerogatives of the Orthodox Church and targeted with ridicule. This included lurid anti-religious processions and newspaper articles that backfired badly, shocking the deeply religious population. It was stopped and replaced by lectures and other more intellectual methods. The Society of the Godless organized for such purposes, and the magazines "Bezbozhnik" ("The Godless") and "The Godless in the Workplace" promulgated atheistic propaganda. Atheistic education was regarded as a central task of Soviet schools.
Propaganda in the Soviet Union | Anti-religious
He generally adopts a hardline Orthodox Christian point-of-view, being critical of various groups, including atheists (whom he names "weasels"), communists (naming communism a "social cancer") and Jews (whom he finds responsible for the existence of Anti-Semitism).
Petre Țuțea | After the revolution
Muslims nevertheless were attacked along with the believers of other religions during this period. The 1929 law on religious associations for the whole country was implemented in Central Asia by the dissolution of all Islamic courts that oversaw rulings on both Sharia and customary law.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) | Muslims
According to him, Khrushchev was: at once a Stalinist and an anti-Stalinist, a communist believer and a cynic, a self-publicizing poltroon and a crusty philanthropist, a trouble-maker and a peacemaker, a stimulating colleague and a domineering boor, a statesman and a politicker who was out of his intellectual depth.
Nikita Khrushchev | Legacy
On 28 March 1982 he gave a sermon at a Passion service on the Passion of Christ and the suffering of the church in the world, and he claimed that a persecuted Church was spiritually stronger and closer to God than a triumphant Church, and in this context he condemned the post-Constantine legacy of national and state churches, and he praised the Bolshevik Revolution for having once again raised persecution against the Church, which therefore purified the Church of all but those who were truly dedicated to it. In the same sermon he discussed the persecutions of the state and condemned the hierarchy for disowning the martyrs, to whom he claimed the Church owed its survival.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Notable atrocities and victims
The antireligious propaganda was critical in order to demonize active believers and foster a mindset of hostility against them as 'vermin' or 'scum', and it was in some ways similar to the contemporary anti-Semitic propaganda of Nazi Germany. Creating this mindset was critical in order to make the public accept the campaign. The published anti-religious propaganda was not as conspicuous as it was during the 1920s, but this did not bear reflection on the level of actual persecution. The verbal propaganda was increasingly relegated to public organizations, such as party branches, the Komsomol, the Young Pioneers, the League of the Militant Godless, Museums of Scientific Atheism, Workers' Evening Universities of Atheism under the auspices of Trade Unions, and others.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) | Antireligious propaganda
He observed that religion is more about how people relate to each other in relation to religious beliefs, than about the nature of these beliefs. Tokarev's view that religions are more than a theology, and comprise a social force affecting many aspects of people's lives, was controversial among Soviet scholars of religion. He challenged the prevalent negative view at the time, which perceived Islam as a potential tool for the bourgeoisie and reactionaries, and not one that could be used to solve the problems of the masses. He showed that Islam could be used effectively by politicians with secular goals, and that Islamic socialism could be a positive force in the development of contemporary Muslim states.
Sergei Tokarev | Religion
Despite being of Jewish heritage, Zhirinovsky has a history of adopting antisemitic stances. Zhirinovsky is also reported to have once declared, "Jewish children are going to school, while our children are hungry and forlorn. If you vote for me, it will stop." Zhirinovsky has proposed placing barbed wired fences along areas of southern Russia where significant Muslim populations live and banning Muslims from entering Russia.
Political positions of Vladimir Zhirinovsky | Religious freedom
The two state organizations for overseeing religion in the country (one for the Orthodox, the other for everyone else), changed their functions between 1957–1964. Originally Stalin had created them in 1943 as liaison bodies between religious communities and the state; however, in the Khrushchev years their function was re-interpreted as dictatorial supervisors over the religious activities in the country. This control was not officially legislated, but it was created by secret instructions. Prior to this campaign, the famous St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow had been turned into a museum. In 1958, only 38 Orthodox churches were open in Moscow. Patriarch Alexii made a speech in the Kremlin at a Soviet peace conference in 1960 in which he openly admitted persecutions, praised the role of the Church in Russia's history especially in times of crisis, and warned the Soviet government that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964) | Orthodox Church
The judges were proletarian Komsomol, and they handed down the verdict that all deities and clergy must be burned at the stake. The whole mass then poured out into the streets with torches and scarecrows in their hands saying 'Away with the churches, away with the synagogues!" The effigies were then publicly burned in the city square. They often organized their parades at the same time as celebration of religious holidays such as Christmas and Easter, and they placed them right outside churches that were holding services. This often prevented traditional Orthodox processions to occur at the same time. Appeals were made to bakeries not to bake traditional foods for these feast-days.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) | Activities of Public Institutions
During a process of collectivization of land, Orthodox priests distributed pamphlets declaring that the Soviet regime was the Antichrist coming to place "the Devil's mark" on the peasants, and encouraged them to resist the government. Political repression in the Soviet Union was widespread and while religious persecution was applied to numerous religions, the regime's anti-religious campaigns were often directed against specific religions based on state interests. The attitude in the Soviet Union toward religion varied from persecution of some religions to not outlawing others. From the late 1920s to the late 1930s, such organizations as the League of Militant Atheists ridiculed all religions and harassed believers.
State atheism | Soviet Union
As a witness to the Great Purge and the Soviet Union's totalitarianism, he became highly critical first of Stalinism and then of communism and socialism in general. While remaining atheist, he became an advocate of free market economics and anti-communism. In 1955, he published "Reflections on the Failure of Socialism." He published more frequently in "National Review" and other conservative journals in later life, but he always remained independent in his thinking. For instance, he publicly opposed United States involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s, earlier than most.
Max Eastman | Introduction
Several religions had been completely outlawed and practicing members of them could be arrested if caught. These included Eastern Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Russian Jehovists, Buddhists (Buriats and Kalmuks were permitted to be Buddhists but no one else), Pentecostals and the unofficial or ‘Initiative’ Baptists (Baptists who had broken from the Baptist community in 1962 because they did not accept state control of their church). Any religion that was not registered with the Soviet government was automatically considered illegal and the state could pursue a policy of open persecution of these groups (for other religions it was a hidden policy using other guises).
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Illegal religions
While ostensibly permissive of religion compared to other Soviet states, in practice all religions, including Catholicism, were persecuted and repressed. The state institutionalized this suppression & propagation of atheistic principles through the creation of the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults. Some efforts were institutionalized across the Soviet Union. For example, one publishing company started an atheist magazine, Nauka i Religiya, “Science and Religion.” The first issue, which included articles on the origins of the universe and a report on contemporary Russian Orthodoxy, ran an article attacking Pope John XXIII. Following World War II, the Soviets took over Catholic news sources, scholarly journals, and other means of communication to spread their message.
Anti-Catholicism in the Soviet Union | Propaganda
In 1974 there was a conference in Leningrad dedicated to 'The Topical Problems of the History of Religion and Atheism in the Light of Marxist–Leninist Scholarship'.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Introduction
Many priests were killed and imprisoned. Thousands of churches were closed, some turned into hospitals. In 1925 the government founded the League of Militant Atheists to intensify the persecution. Christopher Marsh, a professor at Baylor University writes that "Tracing the social nature of religion from Schleiermacher and Feurbach to Marx, Engels, and Lenin...the idea of religion as a social product evolved to the point of policies aimed at the forced conversion of believers to atheism." Jonathan Blake of the Department of Political Science at Columbia University elucidates the history of this practice in the USSR, stating that: Across Eastern Europe following World War II, the parts of the Nazi Empire conquered by the Soviet Red Army, and Yugoslavia became one party Communist states and the project of coercive conversion continued.
Forced conversion | Eastern Bloc
Many protests occurred in Western countries against the wild persecutions in the USSR, and there were mass public prayers in the United Kingdom, Rome and other places on behalf of the persecuted Church. These activities contributed greatly to the temporary halt in persecution in the early years of the 1930s and to the decision to run the anti-religious terror campaign covertly; Stalin could not afford total alienation of the West as he still needed its credits and machines for industrialization.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) | Foreign criticism
Soviet policy toward religion was based on the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, which made atheism the official doctrine of the Communist Party. However, "the Soviet law and administrative practice through most of the 1920s extended some tolerance to religion and forbade the arbitrary closing or destruction of some functioning churches", and each successive Soviet constitution granted freedom of belief. As the founder of the Soviet state, Lenin, put it: 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.
Religion in the Soviet Union | Policy toward religions in practice
In response to his statement, a journalist asked Mikhalkov: "Which is better, McDonald's or Stalinism?" Mikhalkov answered: "That depends on the person". Mikhalkov has described himself as a monarchist.
Nikita Mikhalkov | Political views
Despite this, minority religions were still being persecuted in many parts of the world. Theodore Roosevelt condemned the Kishinev pogrom in 1903, establishing a history of U.S. presidents commenting on the internal religious liberty of foreign countries. In Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address, he outlined Four Freedoms, including Freedom of worship, that would be foundation for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and future U.S. diplomatic efforts. Jimmy Carter asked Deng Xiaoping to improve religious freedom in China, and Ronald Reagan told US Embassy staff in Moscow to help Jews harassed by the Soviet authorities. Bill Clinton established the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom with the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, in order to use diplomacy to promote religious liberty in repressive states.
State atheism | Human rights
Klimovich warned that this was a deception, for socialism was based on Marxism, materialism, and the dialectical method, and diametrically opposed to religion and its idealism. Atheist propagandists, however, were often helpless in their discussions with the believers. What Klimovich considered necessary, therefore, was basic information on Islam for the anti-religious activist. This was the purpose of his second book of 1929, Soderzhanie korana (“The Contents of the Koran”). This book was basically a compilation of quotations from the Koran. Klimovich explained the book's structure, the Koranic image of God, as well as its narratives on the creation of the world, Judgment Day, Paradise, and Hell.
Soviet Orientalist studies in Islam | Klimovich
The Communist regime targeted religions based on State interests, and while most organized religions were never outlawed, religious property was confiscated, believers were harassed, and religion was ridiculed while atheism was propagated in schools. In 1925 the government founded the League of Militant Atheists to intensify the persecution. Accordingly, personal expressions of religious faith were not in any way privately banned, but a strong sense of social stigma was imposed on them by the official government structures and secular mass media, and it was generally considered unacceptable for members of certain government professions (teachers, state bureaucrats, soldiers) to be openly religious and anti-secular.
Religion in the Soviet Union | Introduction