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.
Anti-religious campaign
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev | Anti-religious campaign
Yes. He was anti-religious Yes, he carried out a mass closures of churches, monasteries, and convents, as well as of the still-existing seminaries. Yes, against Christianity. Yes, he was anti-religious.
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?
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Kalinovka village in what is now Russia's Kursk Oblast
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was he against any religion?
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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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
This was the high point of the church hierarchy's resistance to the campaign, and it resulted in the forced retirement of the speech writer (Bishop Nikolai) and his mysterious death a few months later, as well as the Patriarchate's later submission to the new pressures. The hierarchy in Russia was often criticized in Samizdat documents by people suffering persecution for its cooperation with the authorities.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964) | Orthodox Church
For some of them he was a friend; for others, a godfather; for many (including Yakunin), a spiritual father.
Russian Orthodox Church | Persecution under Khrushchev
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
He also preached "Christ's socialism". Originally he had been praised in official propaganda, but the failure of the state's collective farms to compete with his communes produced an ideological need to eliminate him. As a result, his character was maligned in a long press campaign and he was finally executed in 1930 along with his chief lieutenants. His communes were dissolved, along with all the other religious farming communes in the country.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) | Agricultural communes
This fact, I believe, is a very important point to stress in debating with many of those who claim that the then-Patriarch or the Church leadership as a whole [...] did nothing [to resist the regime]."
Alexandru Drăghici | Against the religious revival
He wrote a letter to Zhdanov, secretary of the Central Committee of the AUCP (b), proposing again to launch an anti-religious campaign. He sent a report to the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Central Committee of the AUCP (b), in which he assessed the patriotic activities of the Russian Church during the German-Soviet War as "self-advertisement and deception," condemned the leaders of the Council for the Russian Orthodox Church Affairs and the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults for "repetition of priests' allegations", demanded that the party organs "move from complacency to fighting against churchmen". In the official response of the Office of Propaganda and Agitation, it was pointed out that Kandidov "lives with old views." His work as a lecturer was sharply criticized in the newspaper "Pravda", after which Kandidov was removed from the propaganda work.
Boris Kandidov | Career
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
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
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
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
Boris Talantov, a mathematics teacher in Kirov diocese in the north-eastern part of European Russia was one of the first voices to sound the alarm of the mass closures of churches. He sent reports to Soviet newspapers and the central government in Moscow, all of which ignored them, and then he resorted to secret illegal literature sent to the West, for which he was caught and imprisoned. Talantov lost his job as a teacher, and he died in 1971 in prison. A layperson named Levitin-Krasnov spoke out against the persecution during its height in samizdat tracts. He lost his job as a high-school teacher in 1959.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964) | Notable events
Two priests named Nikolai Eshliman and Gleb Yakunin received worldwide fame after issuing a brave memoranda to the Soviet government and to Patriarch Alexii in 1965, which protested the persecution, the forced closure of churches and the inactivity of the Patriarchs and bishops in defending the church. Shortly afterwards the atheist press conducted a campaign of character assassination. They claimed that Yakunin had become a priest for purely pecuniary reasons. Yakunin and Eshliman had, like many other Christian evangelists in the USSR, attempted to acquire illegal religious publications, including from the west. This fact allowed the state to then brand the men as well laity connected with them as criminals, black-marketeers and even being connected with Western intelligence services (who were allegedly sending religious and theological literature into the USSR for purposes of ideological subversion).
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Notable atrocities and victims
The members of the group regarded Khrushchev's attacks on Stalin, most famously in the Secret Speech delivered at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 as wrong and hypocritical, given Khrushchev's complicity in the Great Purge and similar events as one of Stalin's favorites. They believed that Khrushchev's policy of peaceful coexistence would jeopardize struggle against capitalist powers internationally.
Anti-Party Group | Motives
He was expelled in 1974 and he went to Switzerland. Archbishop Iov of Kazan was arrested in 1960 after libellous articles written against him in the press. He had lived under the German occupation and was accused of anti-Soviet activities. He was accused of lechery and misappropriating church funds. It was alleged he was hated by his parishioners for a luxurious lifestyle. The press calculated his salary, but failed to mention the upwards of 81% tax rate on clerical salaries. His case was very similar to Archbishop Andrei of Chernigov. He resisted the closure of churches and he was sentenced to three years' hard labour for tax evasion.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964) | Notable events
In the early 1960s, Nikita Khrushchev's regime escalated anti-Islamic propaganda. Then, on several occasions in the 1970s and 1980s, the Kremlin leadership called for renewed efforts to combat religion, including Islam. Typically, such campaigns included conversion of mosques to secular use; attempts to reidentify traditional Islamic-linked customs with nationalism rather than religion; and propaganda linking Islam to backwardness, superstition, and bigotry. Official hostility toward Islam grew in 1979 with Soviet military involvement in nearby Afghanistan and the increasing assertiveness of Islamic revivalists in several countries. From that time through the early post-Soviet era, some officials in Moscow and in Tajikistan warned of an extremist Islamic menace, often on the basis of limited or distorted evidence.
Islam in Tajikistan | Soviet era
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 leadership of the Communist Party found refuge in Tashkent. However, following the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, Zachariadis clashed with the new Soviet leadership, as he opposed the new direction taken by the CPSU under Nikita Khrushchev. In May 1956, during the 6th Plenum of the Central Committee of the KKE, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union intervened to expel Zachariadis from the post of General Secretary. In February 1957 Zachariadis was also expelled from the KKE, as were many of his supporters. Zachariadis spent the rest of his life in exile in Siberia, initially in Yakutia and later in Surgut, Russian SFSR.
Nikos Zachariadis | Post-war
Anti-clericalism, and attempting to divide religions by pitting laity against their hierarchy was still encouraged. Most of the clergy arrested and imprisoned in the 1920s and onwards never had trials. The maximum sentence for administrative exile in the 1920s had been three years, but this was extended to four years in 1934 when the NKVD was created and given the power to issue such sentences. After serving such terms, most clergy would return their dioceses. Those whose terms ran out around 1930 were often transported later under surveillance to an isolated village in the far north or north-east, never to return.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) | Activities
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
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
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
A new and widespread persecution of the church was subsequently instituted under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. A second round of repression, harassment and church closures took place between 1959 and 1964 when Nikita Khrushchev was in office. The number of Orthodox churches fell from around 22,000 in 1959 to around 8,000 in 1965; priests, monks and faithful were killed or imprisoned and the number of functioning monasteries was reduced to less than twenty. Subsequent to Khrushchev's overthrow, the Church and the government remained on unfriendly terms until 1988. In practice, the most important aspect of this conflict was that openly religious people could not join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which meant that they could not hold any political office.
Russian Orthodox Church | Persecution under Khrushchev
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
The young Georgi was brought up by his mother Lydia, with his various siblings. After the Second World War they moved to Kiev, where Vins qualified as an electrical engineer. Georgi Vins became involved in Baptist churches in Kiev. As Nikita Khrushchev's anti-religious persecutions began in 1959, the state imposed new regulations on the Baptist church that drastically curtailed the small measure of independence they had enjoyed. As the Baptist movement split acrimoniously, Vins became one of the leading figures in the campaign to resist state pressure. He publicly opposed the pastor of his own congregation, in Kiev, who had accepted the new measures.
Georgi Vins | Life in the Soviet Union
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
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
At least fifteen of their activists were arrested in 1984, of which seven received prison sentences. The Russian Jehovists were a sect similar to the Jehovah's Witnesses, founded by Russian artillery captain, NS Il’insky in the 19th century. It was characterized by its radical condemnation of all state power as the kingdom of Satan, which was a message that attracted many people in the USSR, leading to the growth in the movement.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Illegal religions
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
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
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
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
This persecution became especially harsh in the latter part of the decade once the state began to take manoeuvres to destroy local nationalist movements. The leader of the Autocephalists was imprisoned in 1926, and the church was forced to declare its self-liquidation in 1930. Almost all of its bishops, and most clerical and lay activists, were incarcerated and many were also executed.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) | Ukrainian Church
Among famous participants of these debates included on the atheist side, Commissar for Enlightenment Anatoly Lunacharsky. People would line up for hours in order to get seats to see them. The authorities sometimes tried to limit the speaking time of the Christians to ten minutes, and on other occasions the debates would be called off at last minute. Professor V.S. Martsinkovsky, raised as orthodox but who had become an evangelical Protestant was one of the best on the religious side, and Lunacharsky reportedly canceled one of his debates with him after having lost in a previous debate. On one occasion in 1921 a large crowd of Komsomol hecklers arrived at one of Martsinkovsky's debates and occupied the two front rows.
Anti-religious campaign during the Russian Civil War | Anti-religious propaganda
In a letter, Fr. Kovch wrote: "I understand that you are trying to free me. But I am asking you not to do anything. Yesterday they killed 50 people here. If I were not here, who would help them to endure these sufferings? I thank God for his kindness to me. Apart from Heaven, this is the only place I'd like to be.Here were are all equal: Poles, Jews, Ukrainians Russians, Latvians, and Estonians. I am only a priest here. I couldn't even imagine what would happen here without me. Here I see God, Who is the same for everybody, regardless of the religious distinctions which exist among us.
Omelyan Kovch | Quote
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
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
However, among the general population, large numbers remained religious. Some Orthodox believers and even priests took part in the dissident movement and became prisoners of conscience. The Orthodox priests Gleb Yakunin, Sergiy Zheludkov and others spent years in Soviet prisons and exile for their efforts in defending freedom of worship. Among the prominent figures of that time were Father Dmitri Dudko and Father Aleksandr Men. Although he tried to keep away from practical work of the dissident movement intending to better fulfil his calling as a priest, there was a spiritual link between Fr Aleksandr and many of the dissidents.
Russian Orthodox Church | Persecution under Khrushchev
Pfaus, and the American Jewish press spoke of him in the same breath as American anti-Semites; but the journalist John Roy Carlson, who spent years under cover in the American right, wrote that Christians was anti-Catholic but not anti-Semitic. In 1938, he described himself as so "red" (communist) that he made Russian "reds" look yellow, and planned a new American revolution for a visit by President Roosevelt to Chattanooga, which would take place under cover of darkness and during which his men would raise the red flag from the city court house.
George W. Christians | Introduction
Dimitar Stoyanov, a member of the extremist political party Ataka and a new Member of the European Parliament as of January 1, 2007, stated that he opposed the "Jewish establishment" and was quoted saying, "There are a lot of powerful Jews, with a lot of money, who are paying the media to form the social awareness of the people. They are also playing with economic crises in countries like Bulgaria and getting rich."
Freedom of religion in Bulgaria | Anti-semitism
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
However, it was after his conversion that he suspected everyone he disliked to be of Jewish origin, and that he hated the Jews in general because they had crucified Christ. He became belligerent in his religious conversations with friends, insistent that they cross themselves and attend church with him. "All this medley of Christian meekness, backbiting, fondness for beasts, misanthropy, artistic interests, and a triviality worthy of an old maid from a hospice, all these struck everyone who saw him in those days", Rimsky-Korsakov wrote, adding that these traits intensified further in subsequent years.
Mily Balakirev | Personal life
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
Many places of worship were closed, transformed into museums of atheism, or other-use facilities (bars, theaters, warehouses, garages); in very many cases, they were utterly destroyed. Those who dared to attend the services of the Church were under constant scrutiny by the authorities as being "enemies of the people" or otherwise "undesirables".
Ksenia Pokrovsky | Religious repression under Communism
When the leader tried to heckle, he found himself unsupported by his boys, and afterwards they told the Komsomol leader that he hadn't said what they were told he was going to say.
Anti-religious campaign during the Russian Civil War | Anti-religious propaganda
By 1987 the number of functioning churches in the Soviet Union had fallen to 6893 and the number of functioning monasteries to just 18. The Church and the government remained on unfriendly terms until up to the fall of communism. In practice, the most important aspect of this conflict was that openly religious people could not join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which meant that they could not hold any political office. However, among the general population, large numbers remained religious. In 1987 in the Russian SFSR, between 40% and 50% of newborn babies (depending on the region) were baptized and over 60% of all deceased received Christian funeral services.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Conclusion
Zyuganov is a Christian communist. According to Zyuganov, Jesus Christ was the first communist, claiming the Bible may be read through a socialist perspective. Zyuganov also stated that Communism does not need to antagonize the Christian Orthodox Church. Zyuganov, numerous times, during his 1996 campaign spoke of his appreciation for the Russian Orthodox Church, seeking to earn the vote of religious voters. In his first campaign visit to Siberia, Zyuganov proclaimed that he, "like Josef Stalin", had great respect for the Russian Orthodox Church.
Political positions of Gennady Zyuganov | Religion
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
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
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
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
It held ideological similarity and a favourable outlook to the Non-Aligned Movement politics of Jawaharlal Nehru, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Josip Broz Tito and historically opposed affiliation with either the American-led Western Bloc or the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.
Ba'athism | Definition
By 1932, 10 anti-religious newspapers and 23 anti-religious magazines were published in the USSR. The Moscow group tended to support the leftist side of the debate on how to destroy religion (i.e. in favour of attacking religion in all of its forms rather than moderation), and in 1924 it attacked Yaroslavsky, Anatoly Lunacharsky and Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich for differentiation between different religions, instead of genuine godlessness. It accused Yaroslavsky of attacking only the clergy rather than religion in general. Yaroslavsky protested this and affirmed that all religions were enemies of socialism including the Renovationist schism in the Orthodox church, but that the methods of struggle against different religions should vary due to the large number of loyal Soviet citizens with religious beliefs who should be re-educated as atheists rather than treated as class enemies.
League of Militant Atheists | Origins and formation
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
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 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
Many of the key participants also disavowed the resolutions. Mukkadas Bibarsov, mufti of Saratov Oblast stated that the question of who was a true follower of Sunni Islam was resolved "centuries ago". He also added that the fatwa failed to take into account the crucial differences between Russia's Muslims, specifically that some Muslim communities did not follow Sufism. Liz Fuller writing for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty commented that the fatwa seemed to be giving permission to Kadyrov to take any action he likes to punish those whose religious views don't match with his own. Yaroslav Trofimov writing for "The Wall Street Journal" described it as a "new fracture emerging within Islam".
Ramzan Kadyrov | Grozny fatwa
After Iov was released he became archbishop of Ufa (by this fact the charges were likely false, because if he had really been evading taxes neither the church nor the state would have allowed this).
USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964) | Notable events
For more on those times check out pacifist Dave Dellinger's book, "From Yale to Jail ... " At any rate, today I'll apologize for a number of things, such as thinking that Stalin was merely a "hard driver" and not a "supremely cruel misleader." I guess anyone who calls himself a Christian should be prepared to apologize for the Inquisition, the burning of heretics by Protestants, the slaughter of Jews and Muslims by Crusaders. White people in the U.S.A. ought to apologize for stealing land from Native Americans and enslaving blacks. Europeans could apologize for worldwide conquests, Mongolians for Genghis Khan.
Pete Seeger | Reflection on support for Soviet Communism
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). The state carried out forced retirement, arrests and prison sentences to clergymen who criticized atheism or the anti-religious campaign, who conducted Christian charity or who made religion popular by personal example.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964) | Introduction
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
Yemelyan Mikhailovich Yaroslavsky (, born Minei Izrailevich Gubelman, Мине́й Изра́илевич Губельма́н; – 4 December 1943) was a Bolshevik revolutionary, Communist Party member, journalist and historian. An atheist and anti-religious polemicist, Yaroslavsky served as editor of the atheist satirical journal Bezbozhnik (The Godless) and led the League of the Militant Godless organization. Yaroslavsky also headed the Anti-Religious Committee of the Central Committee. In his book "How Gods and Goddesses Are Born, Live, and Die" (1923), Yaroslavsky argued that religion was born under man, lived under man, and would die under communism.
Yemelyan Yaroslavsky | Introduction
On 15 November 1966, the church of the Holy Trinity was demolished in Leningrad. A notable case was reported in Samizdat documents concerning Vladimir Rusak (a.k.a. Vladimir Stepanov), a Russian Orthodox deacon and a graduate of the Moscow Theological Academy who had worked as one of the editors of the Journal of Moscow Patriarchate. In 1980 he complete a manuscript about the history of the Russian church under the Soviet Union, which was critical of the state. His immediate superior, Archbishop Pitirim, discovered this and ordered him to destroy it, but he refused, and he was sent to Vitebsk in Belarus to serve a church there.
USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987) | Notable atrocities and victims
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 the speech, Khrushchev, who was the First Secretary of the Communist Party – in effect, the leader of the country – criticized the lionization and idealization of Joseph Stalin, and by implication, his Communist contemporary Mao Zedong, as being contrary to Marxist doctrine. The speech was later made public and was part of the "de-Stalinization" process in the Soviet Union.
Cult of personality | Introduction