Bolshevik antireligious propaganda

Trotsky and the Red Army prepare to storm Heaven

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Almost two years ago, I posted a fairly extensive collection of early Soviet
antireligious propaganda from the 1920s and 1930s, along with some excerpts from
Engels and Lenin on the necessity of atheist agitprop. Recently a comrade, Amber
Frost (who is always brilliant), reblogged it for Dangerous Minds. This post today will
serve to expand on the subject. It features some more rare images, part of a 1923 essay
by Trotsky, as well as a few more of my own thoughts.
Obviously, there is very little original to say. So we begin, as ever, with the classics.
Marx’s essential views on religion can be summed up in the following famous lines
from the introduction to his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right(1843):

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Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of
man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract
being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man — state, society. This state and this society produce
religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the
general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point
d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and
justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any
true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose
spiritual aroma is religion.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real
suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless
conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the
demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on
them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the
criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
As Marx began to turn his studies away from the critique of German classical
philosophy toward the critique of British political economy, he no longer concerned
himself with lengthy diatribes against religion. This is not at all because he changed
his mind about it; rather, he considered the issue more or less settled. In an 1879
interview he granted to the Chicago Tribune, Marx once again affirmed: “We know
that violent measures against religion are nonsense. But this is an opinion: as
socialism grows, religion will disappear. Its disappearance must be achieved by social
development, in which education must play a part.” (Socialists today evidently do not
share Marx’s conviction. With respect to the lengthier passage cited above, Bhaskar
Sunkara of Jacobin has stated in an interview:“Everyone completely misinterprets that
Marx quote. It’s the conditions that, in Marx’s formulation, force people to turn to
religion for solace in the first place that need to be combated. But even that is
patronizing! I believe religion will always exist in some form. People are drawn to it
for existential reasons.”)

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For the leaders and theoreticians of the Second International, religious faith was
rightly considered a private matter to be left up to personal conscience. One’s political
conduct must of course be thoroughly atheistic, however, as this occurs within the
broader realm of public affairs, where men are answerable to each other (and cannot

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be seen taking orders from on high). Sometimes socialists grant membership in the
party to believers, sometimes for tactical reasons, but as a rule they preferred devout
unbelievers. Countering the philistine notion that Marxism was in any way
“compatible” with religion, Trotsky wrote in June 1923: “We will admit into our
ranks those comrades who have yet to break with religion not in order to reconcile
Marxism with Islam, but rather tactfully but persistently to free the backward
members’ consciousnesses of superstition, which in its very essence is the mortal
enemy of communism.”
Generally, however, Marxists prefer devout unbelievers. The goal is not always to
“meet them where they’re at,” as the vulgar expression goes. Pannekoek explained in
a 1907 text on “Socialism and Religion”: “In declaring that religion is a private matter,
we do not mean to say that it is immaterial to us, what general conceptions our
members hold. We prefer a thorough scientific understanding to an unscientific
religious faith, but are convinced that the new conditions will of themselves alter the
religious conceptions, and that religious or anti-religious propaganda by itself is
unable to accomplish or prevent this.”
Rationalism does indeed tend to fall flat in the face of the objective irrationality of
society. Science and education can pierce the enchanted circle of religious mysticism
and superstition only to a point. Deeper desiderata remain undispelled because reality
itself lies fractured. God is dead, as Nietzsche said, but something of Its shadow
survives, much as the shadow of the Buddha livcd on, cast in a cave for centuries after
the Siddhartha died. While Lenin would later call for a program of “militant atheism”
in 1922, as part of a broader materialist initiative, he understood by this both direct
propaganda against religious teachings and institutions as well as
the indirect alleviation (or, better yet, annihilation) of those miserable social and
economic conditions which give rise to religious ideology in the first place.
Trotsky’s piece, reproduced below, highlights precisely this “dialectical” character of
Marxism’s struggle against religion. Enjoy!

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Antireligious propaganda
Leon Trotsky
Pravda [Truth]
July 22, 1924

Let us pause once again on the question of antireligious propaganda, as one of the
most important tasks in the sphere of everyday life. Here too I quote from the
thirteenth congress resolution. It is brief: “Considerable attention should be paid to
propaganda promoting the natural sciences (antireligious propaganda).” I don’t
remember whether this kind of formulation has been used before, putting antireligious
propaganda in parenthesis after “propaganda promoting the natural sciences.” Even if
it was, it has now been authoritatively confirmed. This constitutes a demand for a new
and different approach to an old problem.
Under the beneficial influence of the impetus generated by your congress, by the very
fact of its being called, I have been forced to look through a great deal of published
material which ordinarily I would not have had time to review, in particular the
satirical journal Bezbozhnik [Godless], where there are a great many cartoons,
sometimes quite effective ones, by some of our best cartoonists, a magazine
which surely has its positive role to play within certain, primarily urban, circles, but
which nevertheless is hardly following the right track in the struggle against religious
superstitions. Issue after issue one finds in its pages an ongoing, tireless duel being
conducted with Jehovah, Christ, and Allah, hand-to-hand combat between the talented
artist [Dmitrii] Moor[11] and God. Of course, we are to a man on Moor’s side
completely. But if this was all we were doing, or if this was our main work, then I am
afraid the duel would end up as a draw…

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At any rate, it is perfectly evident and beyond dispute at the present time that we
cannot place our antireligious propaganda on the level of a straightforward fight
against God. That would not be sufficient for us. We supplant mysticism by
materialism, broadening first of all the collective experience of the masses,
heightening their active influence on society, widening the horizon of their positive
knowledge, and with this as our basis, we also deal blows at religious prejudice
(wherever necessary).
The problem of religion has colossal significance and is most closely bound up with
cultural work and with socialist construction. In his youth, Marx said: ” The criticism
of religion is the basis of all other criticism. ” In what sense? In the sense that religion
is a kind of fictitious knowledge of the universe. This fiction has two sources: the
weakness of man before nature, and the incoherence of social relations. Fearing nature
or ignoring it, being able to analyze social relations or ignoring them, man in society
endeavored to meet his needs by creating fantastic images, endowing them
with imaginary reality, and kneeling before his own creations. The basis of this
creation lies in the practical need of man to orient himself, which in turn springs from
the conditions of the struggle for existence.
Religion is an attempted adaptation to the surrounding environment in order
successfully to meet the struggle for existence. In this adaptation there are practical
and appropriate rules. But all this is bound up with myths, fantasies,
superstitions, unreal knowledge.

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Just as all development of culture is the accumulation of knowledge and skill, so is the
criticism of religion the foundation for all other criticism. In order to pave the way for
correct and real knowledge, it is necessary to remove fictitious knowledge. This is
true, however, only when one considers the question as a whole. Historically, not only
in individual cases, but also in the development of whole classes, real knowledge is
bound up, in different forms and proportions, with religious prejudices. The struggle
against a given religion or against religion in general, and against all forms of
mythology and superstition, is usually successful only when the religious ideology
conflicts with the needs of a given class in a new social environment. In other words,
when the accumulation of knowledge and the need for knowledge do not fit into the
frame of the unreal truths of religion, then one blow with a critical knife sometimes
suffices, and the shell of religion drops off.
The success of the antireligious pressure which we have exerted during the last few
years is explained by the fact that advanced layers of the working class, who went
through the school of revolution, that is, acquired an active attitude
toward government and social institutions, have easily shaken off the shell of religious
prejudices, which was completely undermined by the preceding developments. But the
situation changes considerably when antireligious propaganda extends its influence to
the less active layers of the population, not only of the villages, but also of the cities.
The real knowledge that has been acquired by them is so limited and fragmentary that
it can exist side by side with religious prejudices. Naked criticism of these prejudices,
finding no support in personal and collective experience, produces no results. It is
necessary, there fore, to make the approach from another angle and to enlarge the
sphere of social experience and realistic knowledge.
The means towards this end differ. Public dining halls and nurseries may give a
revolutionary stimulus to the consciousness of the housewife and may enormously
hasten the process of her breaking off from religion. Chemical crop-dusting methods
for destroying locusts may play the same role in regard to the peasant. The very fact
that the working man and woman participate in club life, which leads them out of the
close little cage of the family flat with its icon and image lamp, opens one of the ways
to freedom from religious prejudices. And so on and so forth. The clubs can and must
accurately gauge the tenacious power of religious prejudices, and find indirect ways to
get around them by widening experience and know ledge. So also in antireligious
struggle, periods of frontal assault may alternate with periods of
blockading, undermining, and encircling maneuvers. In general, we have just entered
such a period; but that does not mean that we will not resume a direct attack in the
future. It is only necessary to prepare for it.

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Has our attack on religion been legitimate or illegitimate? Legitimate. Has it had
results? It has. Whom has it drawn to us? Those who by previous experience have

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been prepared to free themselves completely from religious prejudices. And further?
There still remain those whom even the great revolutionary experience of October did
not shake free from religion. And here the formal methods of antireligious
criticism, satire, caricature, and the like, can accomplish very little. And if one presses
too strongly, one may even get an opposite result. One must drill the rock — it is true,
Lord knows, it’s hard enough rock! — pack in the dynamite sticks, run back the wires
for the fuses, and…after a while there will be a new explosion and a new fall-off, that
is, another layer of the people will be torn from the large mass…The resolution of the
party congress tells us that in this field we must at present pass from the explosion and
the attack to a more prolonged work of undermining, first of all by way of
promoting the natural sciences.
To show how an unprepared frontal assault can sometimes give an entirely unexpected
result, I will cite a very interesting example, which is quite recent, and which I know
about from comrades only by word of mouth, since unfortunately it has not been
brought to light in the press yet It comes from the experience of the Norwegian
Communist Party. As you probably recall, in 1923 this party split into an opportunist
majority under the direction of Tranmael,[2] and a revolutionary minority faithful to
the Communist International. I asked a comrade who lived in Norway how Tranmael
succeeded in winning over the majority — of course, only temporarily. He gave me as
one of the causes the religious character of the Norwegian fishermen. Commercial
fishing, as you know, has a very low level of technology, and is wholly dependent
upon nature. This is the basis for prejudices and superstitions; and religion for
the Norwegian fishermen, as the comrade who related this episode to me wittily put it,
is something like a protective suit of clothes.
In Scandinavia there were also members of the intelligentsia, academicians who were
flirting with religion. They were, quite justly, beaten by the merciless whip of
Marxism. The Norwegian opportunists have skillfully taken advantage of this in
order to get the fishermen to oppose the Communist International. The fisherman, a
revolutionary, deeply sympathetic with the Soviet Republic, favoring the Communist
International with all his heart, said to himself: “It comes down to this. Either I must
be for the Communist International, and go without God and fish [laughter] or I must,
with heavy heart, break from it.” And break he did…This illustrates the way in which
religion can sometimes cut with a sharp edge even into proletarian politics.

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Of course, this applies in a greater degree to our own peasantry, whose traditional
religious nature is closely knit with the conditions of our backward agriculture. We
shall vanquish the deep-rooted religious prejudices of the peasantry only by bringing

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electricity and chemistry to peasant agriculture. This, of course, does not mean that we
must not take advantage of each separate technical improvement and of each
favorable social moment in general for antireligious propaganda, for attaining a partial
break with the religious consciousness. No, all this is as obligatory as before, but we
must have a correct general perspective. By simply closing the churches, as has been
done in some places, and by other administrative excesses, you will not only be unable
to reach any decisive success, but on the contrary you will prepare the way for a
stronger return of religion.
If it is true that religious criticism is the basis for all other criticism, it is also no less
true that in our epoch the electrification of agriculture is the basis for the liquidation of
the peasant’s superstitions. I would like to quote some remarkable words of Engels,
until a short time ago unknown, concerning the potential importance of electrification
for agriculture.
Recently, Comrade Riazanov has brought out Engels’s correspondence with Bernstein
and Kautsky for the first time letters that are extraordinarily interesting.[3] Old Engels
proves to be doubly fascinating, as more and more new materials of his come to light,
revealing his character ever more clearly, from both an ideological and a personal
point of view. I shall now cite his quotation touching directly on the question of
electrification and on overcoming the gulf between town and country.

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The letter was written by Engels to Bernstein in the year 1883. You remember that in
the year 1882 the French engineer, Deprez, found a method of transmitting electrical
energy through a wire. And if I am not mistaken, at an exhibition in Munich — at any
rate, one in Germany — he demonstrated the transmission of electrical energy of one
or two horsepower for about fifty kilometers. It made a tremendous impression
on Engels, who was extremely sensitive to any inventions in the field of natural
science, technology, etc. He wrote to Bernstein:
The newest invention of Deprez…frees industry from any local limitations, makes possible the use of even the most distant water
power. And even if at the beg inning it will be used by the cities only, ultimately it must become the most powerful lever for the
abolition of the antagonism between town and country.
Vladimir Ilyich did not know of these lines. This correspondence has appeared only
recently. It had been kept under a hat, in Germany, in Bernstein’s possession, until
Comrade Riazanov managed to get hold of it. I don’t know whether you comrades
realize with what strict attention, and yet with what strong affection, Lenin used to
pore over the works of his masters and elders, Marx and Engels, finding ever
new proof of their insight and penetration, the universality of their thought, their
ability to see far ahead of their times. I have no doubt that this quotation — in which
Engels, on the day after a method has been demonstrated, basically in
laboratory terms, for transmitting electrical energy over long distances, looks over
industry’s head and sees the village and says that this new invention is a most
powerful lever for abolishing the antagonism between town and country — I have no
doubt that Lenin would have made this quotation a commonplace of our party’s
thinking. When you read this quotation, it is almost as if old Engels is conversing from
the bottom of the sea (he was cremated and his ashes buried at sea, by his wish)
with Lenin on Red Square…

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Comrades! The process of eliminating religion is dialectical. There are periods of
different tempos in the process, determined by the general conditions of culture. All

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our clubs must be points of observation. They must always help the party orient itself
in this task, to find the right moment or strike the right pace.
The complete abolition of religion will be achieved only when there is a fully
developed socialist system, that is, a technology that frees man from any degrading
dependence upon nature. It can be attained only under social relationships that are free
from mystery, that are thoroughly lucid and do not oppress people. Religion translates
the chaos of nature and the chaos of social relations into the language of fantastic
images. Only the abolition of earthly chaos can end forever its religious reflection. A
conscious, reasonable, planned guidance of social life, in all its aspects, will
abolish for all time any mysticism and devilry.[4]
Notes

[1] Moor was the pseudonym of Dimitri S. Orlov (1883-1946), a prominent caricaturist and cartoonist. After
the October Revolution, he worked for the State Publishing House. In 1920 he did posters for the Red Army
and the Chief Political Administration, and in 1921 to combat the famine. After 1 922 , he was a regular
cartoonist for Pravda.
[2] Martin Tranmael ( 1879- 1 967 ) was the leader of the Norwegian Labor Party and editor of its major
newspaper. After resisting the demands of the Executive Committee of the Comintern to expel dissidents, he
broke completely with the International and later helped bring the Norwegian Labor Party into affiliation with
the Socialist International.
[3] David B. Riazanov ( 1870-1938) was an historian and philosopher who joined the Bolsheviks in 1917.
He organized the Marx and Engels Institute and later withdrew from political activity. But his scholarly and
scrupulous attitude toward party history made him offensive to Stalin, who ordered him to be implicated with
the defendants at the 1931 trial of a so-called “Menshevik Center,” which was accused of plotting to restore
capitalism in the Soviet Union. He was dismissed as director of the Marx and Engels Institute, later found guilty
of treason, and eventually shot.
[4] Compare with Marx’s claim in the first chapter of Capital: “The religious reflections of the real world can,
in any case, vanish only when the practical relations of everyday life between man and man, and man and
nature, generally present themselves to him in a transparent and rational form. The veil is not removed from the
countenance of the social life-process, i.e. the process of material production, until it becomes production
by freely associated men, and stands under their conscious and planned control.”

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