A HISTORY OF MARXIST-LENINIST ATHEISM AND

SOVIET ANTIRELIGIOUS POLICIES

Also by Dimitry V. Pospielovsky
A HISTORY OF SOVIET ATHEISM IN THEORY AND
PRACTICE, AND THE BELIEVER
Volume 2: ANTIRELIGIOUS CAMPAIGNS AND
PERSECUTIONS (forthcoming)
Volume 3: SOVIET STUDIES ON THE CHURCH AND THE
BELIEVER'S RESPONSE TO ATHEISM (forthcoming)
THE RUSSIAN CHURCH UNDER THE SOVIET REGIME
(2 volumes)
RUSSIAN POLICE TRADE-UNIONISM: EXPERIMENT OR
PROVOCATION?
RUSSIA'S OTHER POETS (co-editor and co-translator)
A History of Marxist-
Leninist Atheistn and
Soviet Antireligious
Policies
Volume 1 of A History of Soviet Atheism in
Theory and Practice, and the Believer

Dimitry V. Pospielovsky
Professor in Modern European and Russian History
University ofWestem Ontario, Canada

Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-0-333-43440-6 ISBN 978-1-349-18838-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18838-3
©DimitryV. Pospielovsky, 1987
Reprint of the original edition 1987
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly & Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1987
ISBN 978-0-312-38132-5 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-312-38133-2 (pbk.)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pospielovsky, Dimitry, 1935-
A history of Marxist-Leninist atheism and Soviet
antireligious policies.
(A History of Soviet atheism in theory and
practice, and the believer; v.l)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Persecution-Soviet Union-History-20th century.
2.SovietUnion-Religion-1917- . 3.Atheism-
Soviet Union-History-20th century. I. Title.
II. Series: Pospielovsky, Dimitry, 1935- . History
of Soviet atheism in theory and practice, and the
believer;v.l.
BL2765.S65P67 vol. I [BR1608.S65]
BL2765.S65P67 vol.l 210' .8'0947 s 86-14623
[BR1608.S65] vol.l [272' .9'0947]
ISBN 978-0-312-38132-5
ISBN 978-0-312-38133-2 (pbk.)
To my mother, Mariamna nee Ushinskaia
Contents
General Introduction to the Three-Volume Work IX

Acknowledgements XVI

Introduction 1

1 The Philosophical Foundations of

Soviet Atheism 6

2 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 27

In Search of a Strategy 27
PhaseOne: 1917-20 27
PhaseTwo: 1921-28 29
Phase Three: 1929-40 41
The League of the Militant Godless 49

3 The Post-War Atheistic Scene: A Renewal

of the Offensive 69
From the War to Khrushchev 69
Streamlining for Persecutions 82
Revival of the 'God-Building' Heresy 91

4 Antireligious Policies after Khrushchev 98

A Retreat?: 1964 to Early 1970s 98
Renewal of the Attack Ill
Atheism's New Offensive ... or Defensive? 121
The Millennium and the Soviets 125

Appendix 132
Notes and References 154
Bibliography 179
Index 187

VII
General Introduction to the
Three-Volume Work
Religious belief and the Churches have survived in the Soviet
Union in the face of some sixty-five years of continuous
persecution, unprecedented in history in intensity, although
varying in degree and thrust, depending on the external and
internal circumstances. According to approximate calcula-
tions, given in our book on the history of the Russian Orthodox
Church under the Soviets, the toll of Orthodox clergy has been
in the region of 40 000 priests, probably as many monks and
nuns, and incalculable millions oflay believers. The number of
functioning Orthodox churches has been reduced from over
60 000 (this includes parish and monastic churches and
institutional chapels) before the revolution to less that 7000 in
the late 1970s. Other religions, except perhaps the Baptists,
have seen the numbers of their churches and temples reduced
by at least the same proportion. And yet in the last decade and a
half or so, more and more voices in the Soviet Union have been
heard claiming not only religious survival but even revival,
primarily of Christianity. According to all oral evidence, both
of Soviet-Russian clergy remaining in the Soviet Union and of
recent emigres, this neophytic phenomenon is almost entirely
limited to those under 40 years of age, while their parents
mostly remain outside any religion. Hence, whatever the
numbers and proportions, the current 'churchification' of the
intelligentsia is largely not a carry-over from one generation to
the next, nor is it a simple revival of a tradition, because the
tradition of the Russian intelligentsia, at least since the 1860s,
has been predominantly one of a rather passionate atheism and
positivism. 1
The main purpose of this study is a step-by-step presentation
and analysis of the changing styles, strategies and tactics of the

1. See Vekhi, a collection of essays on the Russian intelligentsia by N. A. Berdiaev, S. N.

Bulgakov, M. 0. Gershenzon, A. S. Izgoev, B. A. Kistiakovsky, P. B. Struve, S. L.
Frank (Moscow, 1909; repr.: Frankfurt/M.: Possev, 1967). Also: Jeffrey Brooks,
'Vekhi and the Vekhi Dispute', Survey, vol. 19, no. 1 (86) London, Winter 1973.

IX
x General Introduction to the Three-Volume Work

never-ending Soviet attack on religion and on believers. This

will include as detailed and documented an account as possible
of the direct persecutions, of which the most massive occurred
in the following periods and under the following pretexts:
February 1918 to late 1920. A bloody attack on the clergy and
active laity was conducted under the pretext of their opposition
to communism, their real or alleged sympathy for the Whites,
and the resistance of lay believers to the nationalization of all
church property in accordance with the Soviet decree of 23
January 1918.
1921 to 1923. This wave of arrests of clergy and laity, with
executions of some of the most influential and popular church
leaders, was officially motivated by their resistance to the
confiscation of all church plate of any value, including
liturgical vessels.
1922 to 1926. Persecution of the traditional Orthodox
Church and her faithful clergy and laity for their refusal to join
the state-supported Renovationist schism.
1926 to 1927. Arrests, exile and imprisonment of masses of
bishops, as well as some regular parish clergy faithful to them,
for an attempt to elect a patriarch secretly.
1928 to 193 4. Arrest and liquidation of clergy and lay activists
for refusing to accept Metropolitan Sergii's wording of the
Declaration of Loyalty to the Soviet State and for breaking
administrative connections with him.
1929 to 1930. The beginning of mass liquidation of rural
parishes and their clergy and lay supporters under the guise of
the collectivization and 'dekulakization' campaign.
1933 to 1934. Destruction of the remaining monastic
communities and the liquidation of monks and nuns, along
with many members of the urban and rural clergy, particularly
renowned preachers and spiritual fathers.
1936 to 1939. Almost total liquidation of religious temples,
clergy and active lay believers of all faiths.
1959 to 1964. Khrushchev's physical attack on the Church
and all other religious faiths, closure and destruction of the
majority of the temples reopened during the religiously
'tolerant' era of 1941 to 1957, arrests and deportations oflarge
numbers of clergy and laity- all under the pretext of imminent
construction of communism, incompatible with faith in the
Supernatural.
 General Introduction to the Three-Volume Work xi

These are just highlights of the most massive attacks, which

will be accounted for and discussed in greater detail in their
proper context in this volume.
The other aim of this study is to trace the continuing religious
life in the country: how the believers preserve their faith and
even multiply their numbers in these conditions; how, if at all,
they are affected by this aggressive state atheism and anti-
religious propaganda; finally, how and why there is a growing
movement of adult baptisms and return to the Church after all
these years of concerted attack, and this despite the absence of
any organized religious education.
Finding sources for this study was a complex and uneven
process. There was no problem in locating masses of the
officially printed Soviet antireligious propaganda of all cate-
gories: from the allegedly scholarly studies of the Soviet
'religiologists' to the primitive attacks on religion in the mass
press and, in particular, in the Soviet specialized general
circulation antireligious journals, newspapers, brochures and
books. The available data in the direct Soviet persecutions of
the Church are more difficult to assemble. Only a very small
percentage can be obtained from official Soviet publiCations.
Official admissions of persecutions have been made only
where they could be blamed on the Church's hostility 'to the
young Soviet republic' (the Civil War Years), or on the
believers' resistance to the implementation ofSovietlaws on the
nationalization of church property or confiscation of church
valuables (1918 to 1922), or, finally, on Stalin's excesses. But
even here gross understatement is the rule. Therefore, most of
the material on persecutions comes from testimonies of
witnesses, unofficial letters and secret diocesan reports smug-
gled abroad, the multiple samizdat publications .of the last two
decades (which even include, on occasion, internal secret party
documents not meant for print, with open admissions of
persecutions) and statements (written and oral) by the emigres
from the Soviet Union of all periods.
Most of the existing Western studies of Soviet atheism limit
themselves to the official Soviet sources. Only a small minorty
of Western scholars, such as Professor Bohdan Bociurkiw, the
Rev. Michael Bourdeaux and his co-workers at Keston l'0llege,
make wide use of samizdat in reporting persecutions of religion
in the Soviet Union; however, in most cases these relate to the
xu General Introduction to the Three-Volume Work

post-Stalin era. This study uncovers a considerable volume of

direct witness and documentation on the persecutions of the
1920s and 1930s, dispersed mostly in masses of Russian emigre
publications and archival collections pertaining to the time,
and largely forgotten and ignored until now. This author
firmly believes that only a combination of the material from the
official Soviet literature with the information collected in the
above fashion, followed by a systematic study of the persecu-
tions during each separate period of Soviet history in question,
will enable the reader to gain a realistic picture of the true
horrors and magnitude of the permanent Soviet war against
the Church.
As for the life of the Church and the believer under these
conditions, their attitudes, and the religious revival of the last
decades, here again most of the information comes from
samizdat 1 from all decades of the Soviet era, as well as from
interviews with Russian churchmen and religious intelligent-
sia, both those who remain in the USSR and recent emigres.
The wartime emigres and documents of the German occupy-
ing forces during the Second World War are also very
important sources for the religiosity and the life of the Church
from the 1920s to 1940s.
Soviet-Russian fine literature (the belles-lettres), particularly
of the last decade-and-a-half, has ever more frequently
reflected the growing interest in matters spiritual, the Church,
and Christian ethics of times past and present. This source has
also been tapped for the current study.
The objective Western reader may be bewildered occasional-
ly by the obvious 'disproportion' of credibility rendered by this
author on the one hand to the official Soviet data, and on the
other, to the unofficial data of samizdat and the testimonies of
Soviet believers. The 'bias' of this book is to give more credence
to the latter and to doubt the former, even to present evidence
showing its mendacity whenever possible. There are several
reasons for this 'inequity'. First of all, there is the old Russian
saying: the one who has not been caught by the hand is not a

1. Although the term samizdat appeared only in the early 1960s, the Church, the
theologians and other church authors have used similar methods for the writing
and dissemination of their literature from the early 1920s, after the regime had
deprived the Orthodox Church of printing presses, to the present day.
 General Introduction to the Three-Volume Work xm

thief. The reader will soon see that the official Soviet claims,
declarations, the writings of the Soviet 'scientists' of atheism or,
as the Soviets call them, 'religiologists', will constantly be
'caught by the hand', mostly by comparing contradictory and
mutually exclusive statements and claims made by such
authors and institutions in different years, under different
circumstances although relating to the same events or periods.
Second, the believers, and the dissidents with their samizdat, are
the parties under attack; they have to weigh carefully every
statement they make. They are taking tremendous responsibil-
ity for every one of them. One is not likely to make frivolous
irresponsible statements when the price for any 'disseminated
information' that contradicts the general line of the communist
party of the given moment is loss of a job, of the right to receive
education, of liberty, and even of life on occasion. Although
errors of transmission of information and even errors of
judgement may still occur, deliberate misinformation emanat-
ing from the religious 1 and samizdat circles in general is very
unlikely.
The study will be far from exhaustive in its coverage, for the
following reasons. First, there is no way to achieve a quantita-
tive analysis or to assess the degree of religious or atheistic
penetration in the whole country, categories of believers, etc.,
our sample of interviewees being too limited in numbers and
categories. Second, we have extremely little information on the
parallel processes (if there are any on any comparable scale)
among the common workers and peasants. Further, as our
interviewees as well as samizdat writings are limited almost
exclusively to the intelligentsia, and predominantly to that of
Moscow, Leningrad and half a dozen other major cities, we are
forced to concentrate our study and analysis predominantly on
the Russian Orthodox Church, for this is the Church which
most of the neophytic intelligentsia join; and it is her theology,
traditions and legacy which are discussed and deliberated in
almost all samizdat religious and religio-philosophic docu-
ments, as well as in the Christian-orientated works of some
officially tolerated literary and artistic figures. In addition,
although there are plenty of samizdat documents of the

1. This, of course, excludes official public statements by the official spokesmen of the
Churches, especially when they are made for the Western media.
xtv General Introduction to the Three-Volume Work

unofficial branch of the Baptist Church and of the Pentacostal-

ists coming from the Soviet Union, they are limited to petitions
against persecutions, reports on persecutions and imprison-
ments, collections of prayers and hymnals. Being neither an
intellectual nor a theological phenomenon, the sects simply
have not provided us with material which could be analyzed,
generalized and conceptualized.
Although in the chapters on religious persecutions and
antireligious propaganda the study will give brief accounts of
attacks on religions other than the Orthodox Church, the
concentration is on the Orthodox Church in all parts of the
book, whether it is the study of Soviet atheism and its attitudes
to the Orthodox Church or of the life of the Church and the
believers. The reason is that Orthodoxy is the national and
historical Church of the three core peoples of the Soviet Union:
the Great Russians (or Muscovites), the Ukrainians (or the
Little Russians), 1 and the Belorussians. In contrast to the
multireligious scene in North America and to the supra-
natural character of the Roman Church in the traditionally
Roman Catholic nations of western Europe, Orthodoxy (using
the vernacular and possessing no extra-territorial centralized
Church administration) is not only a religion but a way oflife,
the very cultural matrix of the daily life in the countries where it
has become the national Church. Russian literature, art, folk
traditions, habits (where they survive), and attitudes have been
formed or at least saturated by Orthodoxy from within.
Therefore, the atheistic revolt of Marxist Bolshevism had to
match Orthodoxy in its totality in order to crush it as the
national way oflife. Being only institutionally and ideologically
antireligious as is Marxism in most other East European states,
to allow a broader scope of religious toleration than in the
USSR (in all cases except Albania) would not be effective. The
attack had to be so total as to shatter the entire national culture
in all its aspects. Hence the attempts of contemporary Russian
nationalists to reconstruct Russian culture, Russian art and
literature, inevitably brings a revival of Orthodoxy, of elements
of Orthodox culture. That is why Orthodoxy is so central to any

l. The terms 'Great' and 'Little' Russians are of Byzantine origin, wherein the core
area of a nation was called 'Little' while the zones of its later imperial expansion
received the appellation 'Great'.
 General Introduction to the Three-Volume Work xv

study of Russian nationalism. In fact this work, along with its

predecessor, The Russia,n Church Under the Soviet Regime (St
Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984), is a rather bulky 'introduc-
tion' to a study of Russian nationalism and its relationship to the
Orthodox religious revival, which is yet to be written.
This study is historical, hence the philosophy and the
philosophical legacy and ideology of Marxist-Leninist atheism
are only briefly discussed in a single chapter in the first volume.
A philosophically inclined reader interested in a more pro-
found study of the philosophical and ideational roots and
concepts of Marxist-Leninist atheism is strongly advised to
read James Thrower's Marxist-Leninist 'Scientific Atheism' and the
Study of Religion and Atheism in the USSR. Dr Thrower's use of
inverted commas in the title of his book has the same
connotation as this author's preference for the term 'High
Brow' Atheism instead of'Scholarly' or 'Scientific' (see Volume
3 of this study).
Acknowledgements
Although all the errors and shortcomings in this work are solely
my own responsibility, a number of individuals and institutions
have greatly contributed to its 'delivery' if not to its 'birth'.
Without their help the 'child' would have had many more
defects and the birth would have been much more painful.
First, I owe my thanks to Dr Edward Manukian. Chapter 1 of
this book is largely his work. As a professional Marxologist with
the equivalent of a doctoral degree in philosophy from
Leningrad University, he was the right person to write the
theoretical chapter. My son, Andrew Pospielovsky, a fourth-
year Russian history honours student at the University of
Western Ontario at the time of this writing, compiled the
bibliography and the Appendix on Soviet antireligious legisla-
tion, wherefore I owe him many thanks. I should also express
my deep gratitude to the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada and The University of Western
Ontario Academic Development Fund, without whose grants
the research that went into writing this study would have been
impossible. I owe my thanks to the administration and staff of
the Hoo':er Institution Library and Archives, the Bakhmeteff
Russian Emigre Archives at Columbia University, the Dr Lieb
Archiv at the Basel University Library, the Widener Library
and the Russian Research Center at Harvard University, the
Library of Congress and the Kennan Institute for Advanced
Russian Studies. Much of the first-hand information in this
study would simply not have been there had it not been for the
willing co-operation of scores of recent Russian emigres and
other persons directly involved in the life of the contemporary
Church in the USSR, who had granted interviews or wrote
letters about their experiences to this author.
Last but not least, I owe my thanks to Mrs Pamela Hutchins-
Orr for her excellent style-editing and proof-reading of the
manuscript, to Miss Joanne Lemon for having speedily and
efficiently typed it, and to my wife, Mirjana, for helping me
very importantly with bibliographical research at the partial
cost of her summer holidays and for compiling the index.

XVI
 Acknowledgements xvn

SOME TECHNICAL POINTS

Italics. Unless otherwise noted, all italics within quotations are

in the original. The exceptions are the normal use of italics to
indicate a title or a foreign term.

Transliterations. Generally, the Library of Congress system is

used, with the following exceptions:
In personal names 'sky' ending is used instead of 'skii'; 'ya'
and 'yu' are used in personal names to depict 'w' and 'a', instead
of'ia' and 'iu', e.g. Yaroslavsky, not Iaroslavskii.
'X' is used to transliterate the Russian 'ks' throughout.
A single apostrophe (') is used for both the soft (b) and the
hard (b) signs.

The Calendar. Prior to February 1918 the Julian Calendar was

used in Russia, which was thirteen days behind the Western
Gregorian one in the twentieth century. Wherever the Old
Calendar is used, it is indicated as o.s., i.e. old style.

Abbreviations. These are noted in the appropriate places in the

main text and in the notes and references whenever a certain
title is used more than two or three times. For example,
Bezbozhnik u stanka becomes Bezbust. Similarly, such oft-
repeated publication cities in bibliographical references as
Moscow, Leningrad, St. Petersburg, Petrograd, New York
become respectively: M., L., Pbg., P., N.Y.

DIMITRY V. POSPIELOVSKY
Introduction
'Communism begins at the outset ... with atheism.'
(Karl Marx)
This volume sets the scene, as it were, for a study and systematic
presentation of the antireligious propaganda and persecution
of believers in the Soviet Union. It presents the Marxist-
Leninist rationale for such policies, by outlining the relation-
ship between the Marxist philosophical tradition and atheism,
and then follows this up with a chronological and thematic
account of the official antireligious policies of the Soviet State.
Many Western scholars have underestimated the role that
aggressive and intolerant atheism plays in the political be-
haviour of the Soviet government. Others have uncritically
accepted the formal but inaccurate allegations often mady by
church leaders from the Soviet Union in official declarations
abroad, according to which it is only the Communist Party
which is militantly atheistic and is in conflict with the Church,
whereas the government takes a neutral stand towards re-
ligion. Yet such outstanding specialists on the subject as
Bohdan Bociurkiw and james Thrower strongly warn against
such a fallacy and show that militant atheism, suppression and
persecutions for faith have had a high priority in the policies of
all Soviet leaders, being an organic legacy of the whole Marxist
philosophical tradition, intensified in Lenin by the militantly
atheistic legacy of the nineteenth-century Russian radical
intelligentsia, such as Belinsky, Chernyshevsky and others. 1
This thesis is substantiated amply by Dr Edward Manukian, a
professional philosopher and Marxologist.
As for the attempt to separate the policies and powers of the
Communist Party from those of the Soviet government, any
informed student of Soviet affairs knows that the government
is only a subordinate executor of the will and policies of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Central Com-
mittee Politburo and its Secretariat. Moreover, the current
Constitution (1977), Article 6, plainly states:
The leading and guiding force of Soviet society and the
nucleus of its political system, of all state organizations and

1
2 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

public organizations, is the Communist Party of the Soviet

Union.

And Article 51 adds, 'citizens of the USSR have the right to

associate in public organizations' only inasmuch as this is 'in
accordance with the aims of building communism'. Thus,
although the very next (5 2nd) Article declares, 'Citizens of the
USSR are guaranteed freedom of conscience ... [and] the right
to profess or not to profess any religion', the preceding articles
make it plain that the choices, priorities and policies of the
Communist Party are inseparable from those of the govern-
ment, and, second, as the Church is not aiming at building
communism (at least not the Marxian one) she is not a public
organization, hence cannot logically be a legal person in the
context of the Soviet Constitution. 2 Therefore, although Soviet
citizens may have the theoretical right to profess any religion,
they have not a constitutionally guaranteed right to belong to a
religous organization or church. This is fully in accord with the
1929 legislation 'On Religious Associations' and its amend-
ments of 1975, which forbid the establishment of genuine
parishes (not to mention any other religious groups or
associations, which are all banned) with lists of members and
regular dues. Since this legislation, as well as the Constitutions
of 1936 and 1977, explicitly forbid all forms of 'religious
propaganda', but allow 'atheistic propaganda' (the latter
according to two constitutions), the legal and constitutional
right to profess any religion, if strictly interpreted, becomes the
right to a secret personal religion without any external and
visible manifestations. Whereas prior to 1929 - when both
believers and atheists enjoyed the right to the propagation of
their views, and the Communist Party had not been mentioned
in the earlier Constitutions of 1918 and 1924 -there was still
some meaning in distinguishing between the Communist Party
and its subordinate organizations (the Komsomol, the Young
Pioneers, and their press) on the one hand, and the Soviet
government on the other, and in blaming the antireligious
struggle on the Party alone, such claims lost all meaning after
1929, and definitely since 1936.8 The above constitutional
clauses have only made final on paper the aims of the
Communist theory going back to the very origins of Marxism-
Leninism, particularly in the writings of Friedrich Engels. 4
 Introduction 3
A textbook of the methodology of teaching 'scientific
atheism' within the context of the study of the CPSU and its
history, published by the Moscow amalgamated universities'
press in 1975 in order to convince the party lecturer how
important it is to attack religion in his lectures on communism,
constantly stresses the actively antireligious accent in the whole
history of Marxism, from Marx's famous statement that
'religion is a sign of an oppressed creature ... a soul of the
soulless order of things. Religion is the opiate of the people', to
L.l. Brezhnev's statement at the 24th Party Congress about the
necessity of a 'permanent and uncompromising struggle with
the survivals of the past' which the textbook immediately
interprets as struggle against religion. 5 It stresses that because
the shortage of funds and the difficulty of illegal transporta-
tion into Russia of the first Lenin newspaper Iskra, published in
Switzerland, dictated the necessity of using as little paper for
each issue as possible, only the most urgently important
subjects were printed, and among these, 'already in the first few
issues of Iskra, sixteen articles were dedicated to atheism'. The
Russian Social Democratic Workers Party Programme
adopted at the Second Party Congress under Lenin's leader-
ship, in 1903, already promised the 'confiscation of all land
belonging to monasteries and churches'. The same congress
had adopted a resolution on the necessity of work among
religious sectarians, and a paper was published by the Bolshe-
viks in Geneva in 1904 especially for the sectarians under the
editorship ofV. D. Bouch-B ruevich. 6 The purpose of this work
was to turn the sectarians and the Old Believers against the
Orthodox (State) Church to weaken and if possible split her-a
policy that was carried out by the Soviets during the first decade
of their reign. 7
This temporary differentiation of antireligious policies was
reflected in Lenin's writings of 1909: 'A Marxist,' he wrote,
'must be a materialist, i.e. an enemy of religion; but he must be a
dialectical materialist, i.e. his struggle against religion ought
not to be an abstract one ... purely theoretically based ... but a
concrete one, based on class struggle.' 8 This 'dialecticism' was
interpreted later, both by Lenin and his heirs, as making the
character, intensity and style (methodolgy) of antireligious
policies dependent on the practical possibilities and needs of
the party and its policies of the given moment. In the later
4 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

attacks of the so-called 'mechanicists' by the dialectical

materialists and by the official party line on militant material-
ism and militant atheism, the subordination of both to the
concrete needs and policies of the party at the given moment
was termed partiinost' in their philosophy and in the antireli-
gious struggle. 9
Lenin never really ceased his war against religion. The
Leninist legal Petersburg monthly Prosveshchenie (The Enlight-
enment}, from its first issue in 1912 and throughout, paid
considerable attention to attacks on religion. Studies appeared
with detailed calculations of the proportion of taxpayer's
money going to the Church, protesting that this was money
wasted, implying that the Church and the clergy were
parasites, although actually most of the state funds transferred
to the Church went to its huge network of primary schols.
There were vaguely veiled blasphemous poems by the Bolshe-
vik poet Demian Bedny in every issue. One issue contained a
story by Gorky with an open attack on the monastic clergy,
presenting it as greedy, gluttonous, drunk, and dishonest. 10
Another attacked the 'god-building' theories ofLunacharsky,
a Bolshevik ideologist and a future Commissar of Education
(Enlightenment), because Lunacharsky dared to see Marxism
as a religion or counter-religion, a religion deifying man and
man's ability to build a perfect society of communism. The
attacking article concluded: 'Lunacharsky's ideas are a force
hostile to the enlightenment of the working masses in the spirit
of Marxism.' This was in accord with Lenin's later reprimand to
Lunacharsky's ideological confrere, Gorky: 'any religious idea,
any idea of any god at all, any flirtation even with a god, is the
most inexpressive foulness . . . it is the most dangerous
foulness, the most shameful "infection"'. 11
The high priority that Lenin attached to combating religion
is demonstrated not only by the early antireligious legislation
which will be discussed later, but also by the fact that he found it
appropriate to organize political education courses in the
middle of the Civil War (October 1918) when the very survival
of the communist regime was very much in question and when
antireligious education and the training of atheistic propagan-
dists were of utmost importance. 12
Thus there is a continuity in these policies from the time
when the party had been only a tiny group of revolutionary
 Introduction 5

conspirators to the era of its seizure of power and control of the

state. The fact that, from the very first days in power to the
present, government agencies in charge of overseeing the
Church have been formally or informally a part of the secret or
political police organization, further illustrates how much
importance the Communist leadership has always attached to
the struggle against religion. Indeed, the very first top Soviet
supervisors over Church affairs included, among other com-
munist leaders, Leon Trotsky, and Tuchkov the real operator
and planner of church policies, who was one of the leading
figures in the GPU . 13 In view of all these factors this study will
not be occupied with the hair-splitting differentiation between
the Soviet State and the Communist Party, but will treat all the
attacks and campaigns against religion in the Soviet Union as
official policy, and such organizations as The League of the
Militant Godless or the Znanie Society (Knowledge) as expressions
of the official policies of the Soviet State in regard to the
Church. The very fact that these have been executed by such
societies rather than directly by the State always gives the Soviet
government or its governing Communist Party the option of
changing its position on the religious front by accusing
individual authors or societies of abusing power or using
wrong methods. This duality also gives the Church and
believers the possibility of occasionally gaining some respite by
appealing to the central authorities against the local ones.
Needless to say, it is obvious to scholars that any distinction
between the Soviet government and the Communist Party is
purely artificial.
1 The Philosophical
Foundations of Soviet
Atheism
'Only one secular doctrine in the modern world retains the
scope of traditional religion in offering an interpretation
of human existence ... and direct[ing] their actions which
transcend those offered by their immediate situation:
Marxism.'
(Macintyre, cited by Thrower)

To many people interested in understanding present realities

in the Soviet Union a theoretical analysis of Marxist philosophy
may seem at first to be an abstract scholarly enterprise,
irrelevant to everyday life in the Soviet Union today. We will try
to prove, however, that such an analysis is actually the only
efficient way to gain an insight into the processes that have been
taking place in Soviet society for the last seven decades. Soviet
leadership sees itself as a political force normatively guided by
the principles of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Hence an under-
standing of this ideology provides us with an understanding of
the actual processes of policy formation in the USSR.
Simple observations of daily events within the Soviet system
are far short of helping us make sense of what is going on, or
what is still to happen in that country. Outside observations do
not and cannot reveal the intricacies of the political motivations
that drive Soviet authorites towards ideological goals alien to
Western views. A very important point is missed by empiricist-
minded foreign observers. This is the fact that in the world of
Communism every social event is placed in a broader context of
concerns and premeditated manipulation of the whole system
of existing social structures and institutions, a manipulation
justified in the name of the great goals of Marxism-Leninism. It
is only by studying the world-view of Communist leaders that
one can reconstruct the rationale of their actions which along
with their means are invariably chosen with a view to ideologi-
cal ends.

6
 The Philosophical Foundations of Soviet Atheism 7

For us in the West it is important to realize the basic fact that

in the USSR all state policies, with no exception whatsoever, are
designed and carried out as an implementation of the world-
view commitments of the Communist Party. The Party has an
unlimited and unquestionable authority over every aspect of
social life. This state of affairs is explicitly stated and hence
legitimized in the content of the Soviet Constitution. The Party
openly defines itself as the political force determined to
implement the social and cultural models developed initially by
Marxism-Leninism; hence all Soviet policies emerge from a
complicated, controversial process of rationalization and
readjustment of the Communist world-view to the realities of
the twentieth century.
The general point we want to make in this chapter is that a
genuine insight into any particular aspect of policy formation
in the USSR can be properly achieved only when we under-
stand the specific Marxist-Leninist ideological frame of mind
that is characteristic of the Soviet decision-makers.

* * *
This exercise is devoted to the analysis of the nature of Soviet
atheism. In the larger scheme of things state-enforced atheism
in the USSR turns out to be merely one of the many ways in
which the Soviet leadership ensures continuous reorganiza-
tion of the existing social structures. This is, generally
speaking, the functional result of atheistic policies that an
entire succession of governments in the Soviet Union pursued
after the October Revolution of 1917. However, the issue of
why these policies were designed in the first place and how
exactly they were carried out in real life deserves a detailed
historical analysis. It should not be brushed away by stating
simplistic generalizations.
The actual history of Soviet atheism is an enormously
interesting story of the grand ambition of Marxist-Leninist
ideology to reshape existing forms of social consciousness, to
reorganize and redirect people's beliefs. In addition, it is the
story of the actual failure of the Communist Party to eradicate
the faith in God and organized religions in the USSR. In spite of
the efforts of several generations of militant and fully state-
8 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

supported communist propagandists, religion is still practised

in that country.
Indeed, the history of Soviet atheism is the story of
intellectual, political and physical struggle, the implications of
which have a profound world importance.
It is a fundamental fact that in every single detail Marxism is
incompatible with views emanating from a faith in the
Supernatural. Furthermore, Communism is persistently and
openly hostile to them. This hostility is not a matter of
secondary importance, it is not a contingently developed
interaction between competing intellectual systems. This
hostility towards religion is the core of the teaching of historical
and dialectical materialism - the philosophical doctrine of the
Communist Party of the USSR.
Marxist philosophy takes pride in proclaiming itself the most
fundamental, thoroughly scientific critique of religion.
Marxism-Leninism aims at the so-called 'demystification' and
'destruction' of religious beliefs and sentiments. In addition, it
openly elaborates an educational-administrative offensive
intended to methodically dismantle the instructional base of
religious life, namely the Church.
Some observers of the Soviet system have pointed out that
temporary historical compromises can exist between Marxist
atheism and Church administrations in the USSR, and others
state that religion still exists in that country after more than six
decades of persecution. Sometimes there is co-operation
between the Soviet state and the Orthodox Church on issues
concerning world peace and the prevention of nuclear war.
It is our intention to prove that whatever these concrete
compromises might be, Marxism-Leninism is determined to
destroy religious consciousness and to eradicate the existing
forms of religious practices in the long run. The tactical
manoeuvres introduced by Soviet authorities under the
pressure of political circumstances should not be perceived as a
possibility for peaceful co-existence between atheism and
religion. A closer analysis of basic Soviet strategies will reveal
conclusively that any attempts at mutual tolerance are uncon-
vincing and short-lived. Co-existence between atheistic
materialism and the religious interpretation of reality is
theoretically and practically impossible. Hostility towards
religion is not a matter of contingency, but a profound,
 The Philosophical Foundations of Soviet Atheism 9

fundamental world-view commitment of the official ideology

of Communism.

* * *
As we stated earlier, it is theoretically important to trace the
formation and trends of the development of Marxist atheism.
Understanding where Marx comes from helps us see where he
ends intellectually. From the very outset of his philosophical
career, Karl Marx was deeply involved in the debates sur-
rounding the philosophy of religion in early-nineteenth-
century Germany. The maturing of Marx's thought took place
among bitter controversies concerning the proper interpreta-
tion of the Hegelian philosophical legacy. For the Hegelians,
philosophy as a reflective analytical enterprise was bound to
serve the superior insights of a religious comprehension of the
world. Hegel's rationalizations of the fundamentals of Christ-
ian faith, as expressed in his elaborate philosophy of Spirit,
were substantially reinterpreted after his death in 1831.
Hegel's philosophical heritage was heavily debated by the so-
called Young Hegelians (B. Bauer, M. Stirner, D. Strauss)·on
the one hand, and Ludwig Feuerbach on the other. In this
crossfire between materialism and idealism, young Marx lined
up with materialism. Thus, from the very start, he initiated an
atheistic teaching which could never compromise even with the
most unorthodox, most liberal forms of religious philosophy.
Feuerbach became the intellectual mentor of Marx's profound
hatred for all Christian principles. It is enlightening to examine
some further detail on the intellectual affiliation of Marx with
Feuerbach. Although he was not a blind follower ofFeuerbach,
Marx was profoundly inspired by his ideas at the onset of his
career.
This story once again starts with Hegel. Hegel often
criticized the dogmatic theology of his day, meanwhile retain-
ing a deep intellectual interest in the ontological and epistemo-
logical assumptions of Christianity. His philosophical theory of
reality as well as his theory of knowledge were in principle
compatible with the system of theological views held at the time.
Religious explanations of the deepest questions of Being were
viewed as unquestionably valuable, but needing some ad-
ditional clarification, systematization and argumentative justi-
10 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

fication. Their validity was taken for granted. In short, the

enterprise of philosophy was viewed by the great German
dialectician only as an exercise in the conceptualjustification of
unquestionable truths of faith.
Feuerbach, on the contrary, tried hard to dissociate phil-
osophy from religion. He wished to give philosophers intellec-
tual autonomy in the high matters of ontology (that is, in the
interpretation of reality). This independence was to be sought
by way of an outright rebellion against the conceptual
foundations of theology. The decisive intellectual blow against
the intellectual strongholds of the traditional Christian
Church, so ancient in time, was to be delivered, in Feuerbach's
opinion, by substituting for traditional religion the new and
much more sublime religion of humanity.
Feuerbach argued that this move would undermine Christ-
ianity's intellectual monopoly on such fundamentals as human
dignity, the meaning of life, morality and purposefulness of
existence. He believed that the new religion would manage to
redirect man's need for worthwhile goals in life into the
mainstream of materialism. This would provide a freedom of
human action, which faith and professional theology, in his
view, had suppressed for ages.
Feuerbach took a critical stand regarding Hegel's rationalis-
tic explanation ofhuman behaviour. Hegel's view that rational-
ity of human action emerges from the hidden determinations
of the Spirit of History (Zeitgeist) was in Feuerbach's opinion
nothing more than a subservience by means of a theory to the
Weltanschauung of rational theology, which he saw as wrong in
principle. In his view it was an empty speculative expression of
the religious conception of the divine Providence which
Feuerbach considered to be simply nonsensical.
The materialist philosopher believed that human nature can
be truly dignified only if it is appreciated in its own right,
independent of any relation to the notion of the Almighty.
Human nature, conceived of being itself divine or of supreme
perfection, was to be elevated to the rank of a new subject of
worship. Feuerbach thought that this new worship would be
much more sincere and worthy of its idol. Temples should be
built for Man's consciousness of himself, while old churches as
Houses of the Lord should be demolished without any regret
or mercy. As a materialist he believed that religious 'deceptions'
 The Philosophical Foundations of Soviet Atheism 11

were not worthy of any compromise or tolerance. They had to

be destroyed.
Feuerbach himself understood that individual men were
indeed undeserving of the effort and the enthusiasm needed
for a new religion. He thought, however, that mankind was
worthy at least as a collective entity. Humanity transcends
individual idiosyncrasies, and human nature, as such, com-
promises the worthy subject of a new admiration.
Feuerbach wrote that 'the antithesis of divine and human is
altogether illusory, that it is nothing more that the antithesis
between human nature in general and the human individual' .1
Christianity, in Feuerbach's view, emerged as an early,
primitive, unsophisticated, rather distorted self-knowledge of
man. He stated that in Christian religion man simply extra-
polated and projected onto the Heavens the attributes of the
human race as such. This act, however, gradually made man a
subservient slave of his own illusory creation. The philosopher
states:
All divine attributes, all the attributes which make God God,
are attributes of the (human) species-attributes which in the
individual are limited, but the limits of which are abolished in
the essence of the species. 2
Feuerbach insisted that the liberation of intrinsic human
dignity from the reign of illusory images by the human mind in
the form of religious beliefs could be achieved only if
traditional faith was mercilessly attacked by a more decent and
humanizing intellectual system. Religious commitments
should be intellectually and emotionally destroyed by the
catharsis of an intensive hatred towards the old God. All
previous religious institutions should be ruthlessly eradicated
from the face of the earth and from the memory of coming
generations, so that they could never regain power over
people's minds through deception and the promotion of fear
from the mystical forces of the Heavens. At this point young
Marx was completely fascinated by Feuerbach's 'humanistic
zest', and he adopted Feuerbach's open rebellion against the
powerful tradition of Christianity unconditionally as an
intellectual revelation. Very early in his career, Marx bought
the seductive idea that the higher goals of humanity would
justify any radicalism, not only the intellectual kind but the
12 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

social and political as well. The extremes of political action

could be forgiven if the cause were right. The fact that most of
the higher goals of Feuerbach were totally Utopian in nature
did not bother Marx in the least. At this point in his intellectual
development, the materialistic alternative to Hegel's legacy in
Germany was all that mattered to him. He wrote with full
ad~iration for Feuerbach's intellectually destructive enter-
pnse:

I advise you, you theologians and speculative philosophers,

to rid yourselves of the concepts and prejudices of the old
speculative philosophy ... and there is no other road toward
truth and freedom than this 'stream of fire' (Feuerbach).
Feuerbach is the purgatory of our time. 3

Obviously Marx began his own theory of reality with a

complete intellectual disdain for everything that religious
thought, represented, theoretically, practically or emotionally.
The cultural contributions of religion over the centuries were
dismissed as unimportant and irrelevant to the well-being of
the human mind. It is important to make a specific point about
the relationship between Feuerbachian and Marxian thought.
Although influenced by Feuerbach, Marx was in no way his
orthodox follower. He related to Feuerbach more as a fellow
member of the intellectual brotherhood of atheistic-
materialists. They had a common enemy, in all forms of
idealistic interpretation.
The necessity for the autonomy of Man and his world from
the realm of supernatural forces was perceived by Marx not as a
Utopian dream conjured up by Feuerbach in isolation, but as
the axiomatic ontological truth formulated by the materialist
school of thought since ancient times. This tradition of
philosophy dated back to ancient Greek atomism, and hence it
had in Marx's eyes not only and equal but an even more
respectable history than Christianity. The great intellectual
value of even the most naive forms of early materialism
emerged in Marx's view from the fact that materialist philo-
sophers had in principle liberated human beings from the
necessity to suppress their natural potential for action and
domination over reality. Materialism does not constrain
human expansion, it does not preach modesty or obedience to
 The Philosophical Foundations of Soviet Atheism 13

any idols of omnipotent and omniscient gods. And that

appealed to Marx enormously.
In his doctoral thesis entitled On the Differences Between the
Natural Philosophy of Democritus and the Natural Philosophy of
Epicurus Marx embarked on atheism not as an intellectual
accident, but as a conscious choice to affiliate professionally
with the method and the world-view of materialism as such. It
was obvious at this point that reading Feuerbach was not the
only source of inspiration for Marx's atheism. The fascination
with Feuerbach's war against Christianity was for young Marx
nothing more than an expression of his own readiness to
pursue in an antireligious struggle all the social and political
extremes that materialistic determination required in prin-
ciple.
Yet, as David Aikman, in his most profound and erudite
study of Marx and Marxism, notes, the clue to Marx's
passionate and violent atheism, or rather anti-theism, cannot
be found in an intellectual tradition alone. He traces Marx's
anti-theism to the young Marx's preoccupation with the
Promethean cult of 'Satan as a destroyer ... emphasis on
destruction for its own sake [is present] in so much of the
Marxist tradition.' 4
Aikman traces Marx's passionate hatred for Christianity in
particular to his fascination with Satan as a liberator by means
of destruction of everything created by God or by a Christ-
oriented historical tradition. The inspiration for this cult of the
Satan, Aikman sees in the cult of Prometheus characteristic of
such eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century figures as
Goethe, Shelley and Byron, as well as in the various strains of
radical socialism, particularly in the communistic-Utopian
religious sects. Aikman follows the Igor' Shafarevich thesis that
all socialistic-communistic doctrines, from the extreme sects to
Marxism, share three fundamental aims: (i) abolition of private
property; (ii) destruction of religion (an established Church in
particular); (iii) destruction of the family. 5
Marx was primarily a revolutionary, ready from the outset of
his philosophical career to demolish the established cultural
and political order of things without compromise. Intellectu-
ally Marx rationalized his hatred for religion as a symptomatic
expression of the alienation of humans from their own real
world. Religious consciousness had to be wiped out along with
14 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

the conditions that brought about that alienation. For F~uer­

bach and theN eo-Hegelians of the left, religious consciousness
remained the main target of passionate intellectual attacks in
nineteenth-century Germany. For Marx, religion, like all other
forms of consciousness, was a superstructure determined by
the economic base, which would be destroyed after the
economic liberation of man from exploitation had been
achieved. Yet in the high priority given to the aim of destroying
religion can be seen from the fact that even before he devised a
political programme the destruction of religion by that as-yet-
undesigned state had already been proclaimed by Marx in the
following violently revolutionary terms:

When the political state as political state comes violently into

being ... the state can and must proceed to the abolition of
religion, to the destruction of religion. 6

Marx's understanding of religion as a distorted representa-

tion of the real world suggested that the struggle against the
'opium of Christian faith' had to be reinforced by a more
fundamental struggle against the conditions that produced
religious consciousness in the first place. He was convinced
that:

to abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to

demand their real happiness; the demand to give up illusions
about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a
state of affairs that needs illusions. 7

Marx proclaimed the necessity to turn the 'critique of

heavens' carried out by young Hegelians and Feuerbach into
the grandiose enterprise of the 'critique of the earth': that
meant, to abolish the complex conditions that had required the
illusory consolations, which in Marx's opinion religion had
tried to offer for thousands of years.
Marx writes in his thesis on Feuerbach that to criticize
religion without criticizing the secular base of religion is only a
futile exercise. In this document of the mature Marxist view, a
departure from Feuerbach's thinking is offered and a new
vision of militant materialism is openly stated. Marx writes
explicitly:
 The Philosophical Foundations of Soviet Atheism 15

Feuerbach starts out from the fact of religious self-

estrangement, of the duplication of the world into a
religious, imaginary world and a real one. His work consists
in resolving the religious world into its secular basis. He
overlooks the fact that after completing his work, the chief
thing remains to be done. For the fact that the secular basis
lifts off from itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an
independent realm, can only be explained by the inner strife
and intrinsic contradictoriness of this secular basis. The
latter must, therefore, first be understood in its contra-
dictoriness and then, by the removal of the contradiction,
revolutionized in practice. 8

Thus Marx further elaborates Feuerbach's idea that religion

is an illusory form of human fulfilment. He turns the naive
atheism of his times into a more complicated world-view to be
remembered as Marxism. Friedrich Engels is another promi-
nent contributor to the ideas of Communism. Over a period of
over five decades he collaborated with Marx in every major
aspect of the formation of the dialectical-materialistic outlook
on reality. Actually it is Engels who popularized 'dialectical
materialism' and tried to systematize the principles of the new
teaching. At the time when Marx gradually became pre-
occupied with the problems of political economy Engels
emerged as the thinker who was much more open to the
burning political and cultural controversies of the day, who was
willing and able to take up practical issues and analyze them in
relation to the fundamentals of Communist ideology. Since
debates about the history and the nature of Christianity were
widespread in the nineteenth century in almost all the West
European countries, Engels became more and more interested
in religion and in religious controversies. He published a
number of books independently of Marx. In these works he
tried to deal with the issues he treated in a somewhat popular
but much more explicit manner than the analysis provided
earlier in co-authorship with Marx in The German Ideology.
In his works Anti-During and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of
Classical German Ideology ( 1886), Engels elaborated on criticism
of the idealistic world-view in general, including religious
outlooks on reality. He insisted that idealism stems from the
inability of men to cope with the forces of nature and the chaos
16 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

of social life, that religion constitutes nothing more than a

fantastic reflection in the human mind of those powers which
determine the miserable conditions of human existence in the
earlier stages of history. Engels underlines the materialistic
position which holds that with the increase of man's control
over natural and social processes, religion will vanish from the
society of the future, since the very causes of human despera-
tion that bring about religious views in the first place, will
gradually disappear. He wrote:
When ... man no longer merely proposes, but also disposes-
only then will the last alien force which is still reflected in
religion vanish; and with it will vanish the religious reflection
itself, for the simple reason that there will be nothing left to
reflect. 9
Since a religious outlook on life and reality was rationalized
by Engels only as a false consciousness, bound to disappear as
mankind's understanding of the world and of society deepens,
he considered religious sentiments and beliefs totally incom-
pati~le with the moral and intellectual standards of com-
munism.
All his life Engels kept in close contact with the leaders of
Social Democratic and Communist parties in Europe and with
the founders of the First International (the political union of
communist movements in the nineteenth century), urging
them to spread and cultivate atheism as the only admissable
alternative to the 'old idealistic nonsense'. He insisted that the
truly successful antidote to the deceptions of theology can be
found in science.
Engels suggested that the scientific education of the masses
on a large scale is an effective way to overcome all the fears,
illusions, and desperations associated with a religious outlook
on nature and life. In his view, sciences are intrinsically
materialistic; they explain away all the mysteries on which
religion thrives. They therefore restore the confidence of man
in himself, and his own powers encourage him to control his life
and dominate in his interaction with nature, instead of being
left to the whim of its blind and cold mercy.
Engels became a relentless proponent of the wider spread of
scientific knowledge. He wrote about the great scientific
discoveries ofthe nineteenth century and their support for the
 The Philosophical Foundations of Soviet Atheism 17
principles of dialectical materialism in all his popular works
intended for the ordinary ranks of the Communist movement.
In biology, physics, chemistry, anthropology and psychology
in the second half of nineteenth-century culture Engels looked
for arguments in favour of materialism and against any
theological explanations of the world.
In his Anti-During he proposed to the ordinary German
Social Democrats a 'scientifically substantiated' exposition of
the dialectical method and the Communist world outlook in
general. The book was considered by several generations of
Marxists to be a concise encyclopedia of dialectical and
historical materialism. In Engels's view, modern science
provided sufficient confirmation of the profound philo-
sophical insights of the materialistic tradition; they exempli-
fied the ontological and epistemological principles stated by
Marxism as a monistic system. Engels wrote:
The real unity of the world consists in its materiality and this
is proved not by a few juggled phrases, but by a long and
wearisome development of philosophy and natural
sciences. 10
For him, speculative philosophy so prominent in the
tradition of idealism and rational theology had become totally
obsolete in view of the magnificent success of positive scientific
knowledge. Even materialism, much more open to the facts of
the world of practice and experience, had to change its form,
although it should preserve its sound content. Engels pro-
claims that:
Modern materialism ... is not a philosophy but a simple
conception of the world which has to establish its validity and
be applied not in a science of sciences standing apart, but
within the actual sciences. Philosophy is, therefore, 'sub-
lated' here, that is, both overcome and preserved; overcome
as regards its form, and preserved as regards its real
content. 11
Engels's deep conviction that materialistic atheism gains
profoundly by relying on the achievements of the sciences
spread quickly among Communist followers. Later it became
the basic idea guiding the strategy and providing the content of
the Soviet educational offensive against all manifestations of
18 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

religious consciousness in the USSR. The fact that scientific

views are often accepted by religious thinkers never bothered
Marxist atheists.
The third major person who contributed profoundly to the
shaping of modern Communist ideology in the USSR was
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Lenin's chief source of philosophical
education was the writings of Marx and Engels. His views,
however, evolved in the unique cultural context of Russia and
hence they were substantially influenced by the intellectual
traditions of that country. As far as atheism is concerned Lenin
made it the immediate political task of the party. Since he
considered that in Russia religion was the basic ideological tool
used by the ruling classes to keep the exploited masses in
subordination, Lenin believed atheistic propaganda to be an
urgent necessity. It had to be used as effectively as possible to
weaken the influence of the Orthodox religion among the
workers and peasants in the Russian empire. The intention was
to prepare the transition of the exploited classes to new forms
of materialistic consciousness, which were believed to be more
appropriate for the builders of the new social order of
Communism.
Lenin considered theoretical ideas important not in and for
themselves, but as guidelines and weapons in the relentless
class struggle raging in society. He took upon himself the
responsibility of organizing an intellectually enlightened Party
as the vanguard of the oppressed and hence 'to apply
practically the materialist analysis and the materialist estimate
of all aspects oflife and activity of all classes, strata and groups
of the population' .12
For Lenin, theoretical debates, even abstract philosophical
systems, could never be comprehended in isolation from the
totality of social life. He could not admit in principle the idea of
objective, neutral academic research, since he was rationalizing
within the tradition of historical materialism all intellectual
activity as being perpetrated by and subjected to class interest.
He was so deeply convinced of the partisan nature of
philosophical debates that, amidst the acute daily political
battles he had to fight constantly, he found time and energy to
produce his book Materialism and Empirio-criticism and to keep
extensive notes from his readings of the works of Aristotle,
Descartes, Kant and Hegel. He believed that in those works he
 The Philosophical Foundations of Soviet Atheism 19

could find an answer to the deepest questions concerning the

ideological class struggle of the day and therefore be much
more forceful and efficient in the political arena of his own
historical period.
For Lenin, even the smallest traces of idealism in the views of
his political opponents or collaborators were equivalent to
concessions to the mystical religious view of reality, and
therefore, directly or indirectly, supported ideological domi-
nance over the exploited classes. Since he believed that religion
preaches preservation of the existing status quo and subordi-
nation and humility on the part of the faithful, he ascribed
political significance to every idealistic or religious claim and
thus made them the primary target of ideological attacks.
Convinced of the fundamental argument of militant material-
ism, Lenin went far beyond the Russian tradition of political
atheism of Belinsky, Herzen and Pisarev and became the
proponent of a systematic, aggressive and uncompromising
movement of atheistic agitation, organized and fully
supported by the party. He became the founder of a whole
institution of professional atheistic propagandists, who spread
all over the country after the revolution and played a very
important role in the attack on the churches and the conversion
of the faithful to the beliefs of the 'science-based materialistic
world-view' of the communists.
Lenin's unequivocally hostile attitude toward religion grew
into a distinctive feature of the Bolshevik version of atheism.
Compared with much milder views popular within the Social
Democratic Party for example, Bolshevik atheism allowed for
no compromise whatsoever with widely held religious views
and sentiments even if this meant alienating some of the
sympathetic, leftist-minded yet religiously believing intellec-
tuals, workers or peasants. In this respect Lenin directed some
severe criticism at Anatoli Lunacharsky. The latter was a
Marxist Bolshevik, who, however, tried, unlike the hard-line
followers of Lenin, to accommodate religious sentiments to the
world-view of Communism.
Lunacharsky's views on the relationship between atheism
and religion carried a substantial resemblance to the Utopian
ideas ofFeuerbach of'a new religion of humanity' -a religion
compatible with the sciences and different from the Christian
tradition. Lunacharsky articulated the so-called programme of
20 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

bogostroitel'stvo god-building. In it he proclaimed that

although traditional religion was conceptually wrong and
ideologically biased towards the interests of the exploiting
classes, it still cultivated in the masses emotion, moral values,
desires which revolutionaries should take over and manipu-
late. Those should be gradually transformed into the positive
humanistic values of a communist morality instead of oppos-
ing them and trying to destroy the basis of the psychological
and moral integrity of millions of religious people. Lunachar-
sky believed that by gradually replacing the traditional idea of
God with a new vision of humanity- in his view, a worthy object
for love and admiration- socialism would achieve the greatest
possible success. This would come with the least possible
confrontation, without abuse of the cultural status quo and the
whole historical tradition of European civilization. Lenin was
infuriated by these ideas, by what he perceived as giving in to
religious obscurantism. He considered Lunacharsky's position
harmful in the extreme, since, according to Lenin, it dissolved
Marxism into a mild liberal reformism. He thought that this
position obscured the fact that the Church is a servant to the
state, that religion all along has been a tool of ideological
suppression of the masses. Lenin tried to expose the god-
building programme as a dangerous and totally unnecessary
compromise with the most reactionary forces in the Russian
empire. Under the circumstances, he appealed to militant
atheism as a criterion for the sincerity of Marxist commitments,
as a testing principle. It was his view that ideological and
political conformism would weaken the theoretical principles
of the party and the revolution, ifleft unpunished.
In his response to Lunacharsky, Lenin writes:
Those who toil and live in want all their lives are taught by
religion to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and
to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward. But those
who live by the labour of others are taught by religion to
practice charity whilst on earth, thus offering them a very
cheap way of justifying their existence as exploiters and
selling them at a very modest price tickets to well-being in
Heaven. Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of
spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their
human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of
man. 13
 The Philosophical Foundations of Soviet Atheism 21

So Lenin refused to allow for any compromise in the

theoretical heritage of Marxism. He had the example of Marx's
earlier rejection of Feuerbach's proposals for a religion of
humanity, but in addition he had the conviction that under the
confrontation of intense political pressures even the slightest
deviation from the principles of materialism and atheism could
degenerate into a betrayal of the cause of Communism
altogether. The purity of the Marxist world-view had to be
preserved at any cost, in Lenin's opinion.

* * *
Up to now we have been relying on the reader's intuitive
understanding of the notion of world-view. It is appropriate at
this point to introduce some conceptual clarifications and show
explicidy why materialism is in principle incompatible with
religion.
Any world-view, the Marxist-Leninist one included, can be
analyzed as a system of ideas, beliefs and tacit assumptions
about the nature of reality. The elements of the world-view
have for man the status of firm convictions. They are perceived
as the truth about the world. In fact, the world-view is only a
historically concrete, time- and culture-bound way of ration-
alizing our limited experiences and attempts to understand
reality. Marxism-Leninism suggests what it believes to be the
true alternative to the religious oudook. This includes at least
these three major facets of the world-view:
( 1) A certain vision of the relationship between man and
nature.
(2) A concrete understanding of the relationship between
man and society or groups of men and society.
(3) A certain understanding of the meaning of life, of human
nature and its destination.
Dialectical and historical materialism serves as the theor-
etical core of the Marxist-Leninist world-view. Dialectical
materialism, being a philosophical ontology (that is, a theory
about the true nature of reality), has taken upon itself the task
of elaborating an alternative to the religious view of creation.
Marxism views human beings as natural products of the
interplay of material forces, where there is no place whatsoever
22 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

for any supernatural involvement. The ontological model of

materialism posits the existence of an objective, self-sufficient
world in which laws regulate the order of things. The
contingent interaction of the forces of evolution produces the
human species, the latter being but another element of the
grand scheme of the unconscious universe.
Epistemologically speaking, Marxism considers human ex-
perience as cognitively unreliable. Knowledge is viewed as a
reflection upon the natural world. Causal relationships
between human beings and their physical reality are objective
and independent of preferences and desires. Marxism views
thought processes as emergent from and based on material
practice, the prime form of which is economic. Those thought
processes are believed to be bound directly or indirectly to the
concrete, practical activities of men. Hence they represent,
ideally, the content and the form of those activities. Even logical
forms and the rationality of the moral and the aesthetic goals of
humankind are derived, for the dialectical materialist, from
the historical content of praxis. Cognitive illusions and fantasies
comprise, from the point of view of Marxism, a distorted, an
exaggerated vision of the otherwise objective material experi-
ences of individuals. The latter simply interact with nature and
society and create fantasies as a by-product of daily life. Marx
writes with pride:
Communism as fully developed naturalism equals human-
ism; and fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is
the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and
nature and between man and man. 14
The second major aspect of Marxism, the so-called historical
materialism, aims at extending the materialist approach to the
sphere of culture and society. A materialistic interpretation of
history was indeed something that had never been suggested
before.
Marx views the development of the human race as a law-like,
objective process. It follows that basic economic activities
determine the structure of sophisticated socio-political and
intellectual achievements. Human culture is the result of
economic production. The history of civilization is seen as a
pattern of more or less rigid socio-economic formations. The
latter are composed of a specific production base and an
 The Philosophical Foundations of Soviet Atheism 23

institutional and spiritual superstructure related to this base.

Immersed in the context of a specific socio-economic forma-
tion, generation after generation are toiling relentlessly, in
Marx's view, to produce and sustain the prosaic fact of human
existence. In this sociological model, the human race is
motivated by material necessity. The higher products of the
human spirit are merely a direct or indirect representation of
the bitter realities of life.
The history of mankind is understood by Marx to be a history
of the exploitation of the labouring classes. The vested interest
of the rulers, spread in the form of different ideologies, serves
to reinforce and gloss over the existing order of inequality and
injustice. Religion, which according to Feuerbach and Marx
emerged initially as an illusory escape from daily tragedies and
frustrations, is to be treated, according to Marx, as a Utopian
form of compensation and consolidation for the disappoint-
ments of life. It had been taken over, however, by the ruling
classes, says Marx, and gradually turned into a tool for the
intellectual and emotional control of the masses. Marx insists
on perceiving the history of Christianity as an enterprise for the
preservation of the status quo, as an elaborate deception of
humankind. Being a form of ideology, it has to be attacked with
no degree of compromise by the purifying outrage of the
revolutionary masses. As a materialist, Marx states:
It is self-evident ... that 'spectres', 'bonds', the 'higher being',
'concept', 'scruple' are merely idealist, speculative mental
expressions, the concepts of apparently isolated individuals,
the mere images of very empirical fetters and limitations,
within which move the mode of production of life, and the
form of intercourse coupled with it. 15
In Marx's view religion has undergone an evolution from a
spiritual protest against social and natural conditions oflife to a
false consolation for the desperate, and finally into a form of
ideological subjection of the exploited classes to the social
power of the exploiters. Actually, within the value system of
Marxism-Leninism, this evolution is nothing but a deteriora-
tion of the initial goals of the whole movement in which the
dominating social and cultural elite has perverted in the course
of history the higher ideals of the early forms of religion.
Thus historical materialism provides the moral justification
24 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

for the extremes of revolutionary action against Christianity. It

theoretically substantiates and motivates atheism in its relent-
less pursuit of the destruction of Christian faith and practice.
Historical materialism, together with the dialectical
teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin, make an attempt to
justify the educational and administrative offensive of Com-
munism against religion. Humans, being themselves perceived
only as a product of the socio-cultural environment of their
time, have to undergo fundamental changes parallel to the
changing social order. Early Marxism believed that the
revolutionary reorganization of society would ultimately result
in the quick decay and the eventual disappearance of religious
forms of consciousness.
If humans are indeed ensembles of social relations, the
reconstruction of these social relations will naturally result in
the reforming of the human personality. Logically, therefore,
it is to be expected that once Marx had elaborated an economic
and socio-political doctrine of a society which should bring
religion to its natural death, the preoccupation with the subject
of direct struggle against religion would disappear from his
writings. And indeed Marx's interest gradually shifted toward
the areas of sociology and political economy. His initial
enthusiasm for enforcing atheism through propaganda wars
against theology and idealism gradually faded away. It seems
that later in his career Marx began to believe that if economic
and social change were to be carried out successfully, the new
richness of ideas which emerged from a rationalized order of
communistic social life would gradually replace the 'dream-
world' of European Christianity. As shall be shown in later
chapters, such relatively 'passive' attitudes to antireligious
struggle would be picked up and promoted in the Soviet Union
by the so-called 'mechanicists', causing Lenin's wrath, violent
attacks on them by the main line of Soviet Establishment
atheism and periodic destruction of that school of thought.
But even the mature Marx never consistently pursued this
'passive' attitude. Although in his later constructs of his future
socialist state he only spoke about the necessity of separation of
the Church from the State, 'the problem of religious belief
continued to trouble him ... throughout his life Marx persisted
in a view that belief in God was ... deeply wicked and anti-
human'. When a silly, totally unscholarly, diatribe by a German
 The Philosophical Foundations of Soviet Atheism 25

atheist appeared, claiming that early Christians had been

cannibals, ritualistically drinking human blood and eating
human flesh, Marx was overjoyed, and said of the author:
'Daumer has proved ... that the Christians really did slaughter
people ... offering human sacrifices .... Daumer's book ...
deals Christianity a death-blow.'
Aikman aptly concludes:
That Marx believed that Christianity's days were numbered
on the basis of a venomously critical explanation of Christian
origins suggests . . . anything but total confidence that
Christianity would pass away primarily through economic
changes in society. 16
Later in the development of the Marxist movement, not
without the help of Engels and Plekhanov, the activist atheist
sentiments grew stronger and stronger, once again becoming a
top priority in the Leninist version of Marxism. Marx himself
started with the following general view:
Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of
man. But the essence of man is not obstruction inherent in
each single individual. In its reality, it is the ensemble of social
relations. Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of
this real essence, is hence obliged to abstract from the
historical process and to define the religious sentiment
(Gemiit) regarded by itself, and to presuppose an abstract
isolated individual. ... Feuerbach, consequently does not
see that the religious sentiment is itself a social product, and
that the abstract individual that he analyzes belongs to a
particular society. 17
The Revolution in his view was still some distance away.
By contrast, Lenin developed a more pragmatic atheism,
which later became the core of the Soviet attempt to annihilate
Orthodox Christianity once and for all. It should be pointed
out that while for Marx the critique of religion was but one of
many revolutionary acts, for Lenin and the Soviet Marxists this
critique was the first and most profound step towards Com-
munist self-determination. The work ofbuilding up the world-
view of the new socialist man had to start, in Lenin's opinion,
with the conscious rejection of any affiliation to religious faith.
Leninism turns Marxist atheism into a catharsis for awakening
26 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

revolutionary souls, into a precondition and a test for the

sincerity of any affiliation to the Communist Party. Commun-
ists, as the avant-garde of the working class, had to be devoted,
and a measure of their devotion was to be introduced by a
commitment to atheism.
Another issue that should be emphasized is the gradual shift
to the present-day Soviet stand on religion, where a new
transformation of ideas has taken place. Since the old view
maintained that with the abolition of exploitation religion
would surely die, and since this did not actualy happen after the
act of expropriation, even after six decades of re-education,
Soviet atheism felt compelled to introduce a convincing
explanation. Ideological authorities did not give up the major
principles of historical materialism, but they had to admit that
religion is a much more enduring form of social consciousness
than they had previously suspected. Communism could not
possibly take upon itself the blame for any social malaise that
according to the old theory produced the consolations of faith
in God. Official ideologists therefore had to relate the existence
of the tenacious religious world-view to the conditions of the
pre-revolutionary world. Being deeply embittered by the
endurance of the phenomenon of faith, they made the tactical
move of proclaiming religion as the cause and not merely the
symptom of social problems. Thus present-day religious
practices became the scapegoat of the Soviet ideological
machine, they became the only readily admissible reason for
the failure of the complete re-education of the masses. The
course of events did not quite follow the patterns predicted by
the founders of Communism.
In the analysis to follow, we will review historically the
sequence of measures and policies that emerged from the
concrete interpretations of the Marxist-Leninist legacy.
2 Antireligious Policies,
1917-41
IN SEARCH OF ASTRATEGY

A Soviet historian-religiologist, G. V. Vorontsov, distin-

guishes three phases in the assault on religion in the USSR in
the period prior to the Second World War. 1 We shall follow his
divisions but with some chronological alterations.

Phase One: 1917-20

This was a period of'Storm and Push', in the words ofEmelian

Yaroslavsky, one of its leaders. The most lasting landmark of
that period was Lenin's Decree of 23 January 1918 depriving
the Church of the status of legal person, of the right to own
property, or to teach religion in both state and private schools
or to any groups of minors. 2 The deprivation of the Church of
all property, income-generating enterprises and bank
accounts was pursued by the regime in its youthfully dogmatic
faith in the Marxian doctrine of materialistic determinism,
according to which the Church should have collapsed once she
had lost her material base. Not accidentally, therefore, the
Eighth Department of the People's Commissariat of Justice,
headed by Piotr A. Krasikov, was officially known as 'The
Liquidation Department'. 3 These three years were marked by
a brutal campaign by government representatives to take over
the possession of Church properties (including religious
temples and monasteries), encountering stubborn resistance
from the faithful. Much blood was shed during these years. On
19January 1918 (Old Calendar, henceforthO.S. for Old Style)
Patriarch Tikhon anathematised Soviet leaders for their
desecration of churches and for their campaign of bloody
terror. The regime retaliated by arrests and brutal murders of
dozens of bishops, thousands of the lower clergy and monas-
tics, and uncounted thousands of lay believers. 4 During these
years the first professionally atheistic journal began publica-
tion under the name Revolution and the Church (Revolutsiia i

27
28 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

tserkov'). It was then that the priorities for relentless struggle

against religion were firmly established in fundamental party
documents, as will be seen below. Lenin apparently soon lost
confidence in the inevitability of the disappearance of religion
when it was deprived of its material base, for he told one of his
chieflieutenants for religious affairs, V. D. Bonch-Bruevich,
that the education of the new Soviet man cannot be a
spontaneous process. 'Propaganda "in the ranks of broad
masses of all sorts of cultural, scientific, antireligious ...
knowledge and achievements" will be of overwhelming
importance.' 5 Towards the end ofthis period it was decided to
consolidate atheistic work centrally under the Agitation and
Propaganda Department of the CP Central Committee (Agit-
prop for short, established in 1920), using the guidelines of
Article 13 of the Russian Communist Party Programme, as it
was then called (RCP for short), adopted by the 8th Party
Congress, which stated:

As far as religion is concerned, the RCP will not be satisfied by

the decreed separation of Church and State [alone] .... The
Party aims at the complete destruction of links between the
exploiting classes and . . . religious propaganda, while
assisting the actual liberation of the working masses from
religious prejudices and organizing the broadest possible
education-enlightening and anti-religious propaganda. At
the same time it is necessary carefully to aviod any insult to
the believers' feelings, which would only lead to the harden-
ing of religious fanaticism. 6

This clumsily worded Article led to debates within the party

and its press, to subsequent party congresses' resolutions on the
correct strategy for atheism, to the setting-up of special
periodicals of militant atheism and organizations of the same
type, and even served the needs of power struggle intrigues
behind the scenes. 7 The differences between the multiple
resolutions on atheism then and now are directly related to the
importance given to the cautious proviso contained in the last
sentence of the above article, whether it was stressed or
deliberately ignored. This is equally true of the waverings of
the party line vis-a-vis religion: whenever the above warning is
ignored, active persecutions mount; they subside when for
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 29

some internal reasons the warning is suddenly remembered

and reappears in a party policy statement.
But before we go on, it is necessary to clarify a Soviet
euphemism: not every Soviet document which aims at combat-
ing religion mentions the word 'atheism'; political or scientific
'enlightenment', dissemination of 'scientific knowledge',
'socialist internationalism', are other euphemisms for atheistic
propaganda. Thus, adoption of the 1919 Party Programme
was preceded by the establishment in November 1917 of the
People's Commissariat of Enlightenment, which in turn set up
a month later (December 1917) the All-Russian Union of
Teachers-Internationalists in order to overcome the resistance
of the All-Russian Teachers' Union to the forced removal of
religious instruction from the school curricula. It was to
intensify the atheistic propaganda that in addition to these
measures a Chief Administration for Political Enlightenment
(Glavpolitprosvet) was formed in November 1920 as a special
department of the Commissariat of Enlightenment. Lenin's
wife, Krupskaia, became the first head of that department.

Phase Two: 1921-28

Phase Two, in accordance with Vorontsov's periodization, lasts

from 1921 to 1926. More appropriately it should be extended
to the end of 1928, that is, up to and preceding the April1929
legislation 'On Religious Associations'. A vivid illustration of
the atmosphere prevailing in the atheistic circles of those days is
the fact that such publications as Bezbozhnik counted their years
from the year of the Bolshevik coup d'etat, 'The Great October
Revolution' of 1917. Thus, for instance, the first issue of the
newspaper for 1925 came out with the dateline '4th January,
8th year', instead of 1925. And it contained a cartoon with a
priest inviting a young pioneer to serve a New Year Te Deum,
but the pioneer responds: 'Our New Year is on 7th November.
We live after Il'ich [Lenin]'. 8
The 1Oth Party Congress, meeting at the height of the
Kronstadt and the Antonov Rebellions, when Petrograd and
many other indus trial centres were practically paralyzed by the
industrial workers' unrest and strikes and when Trotsky
himself thought that the Soviet regime was on the verge of
collapse, in addition to its resolutions 'On Party Unity' and 'On
30 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

the NEP' also issued a resolution 'On Glavpolitprosvet and the

Agitation- Propaganda Problems of the Party'. The resolution
called for 'widescale organization, leadership, and cooperation
in the task of anti-religious agitation and propaganda among
the broad masses of the workers, using the mass media, films,
books, lectures, and other devices'. 9 Only five months after the
Congress a plenary meeting of the Party Central Committee
(August 1921) issued an 11-pointinstruction on the question of
interpretation and application of Article 13 of the Party
Programme.
It established a clear differentiation between the un-
educated and the educated believer. Any person performing
any clerical duties in any religious association may not be a
party member; neither may an intellectual who does not fully
and completely subscribe to Article 13 of the Programme or
evades direct participation 'in the cultural-enlightenment
work directed against religion'. As for the uneducated peasants
and workers, 'religious believers may in individual cases, as an
exception, be admitted into the party if by their revolutionary
struggle or work for the revolution and its defence in its most
dangerous moments, they have proved their devotion to
Communism'. The necessity to make such a compromise
contradicts Trotsky's (and, a century earlier, Belinsky's)
assertion that the Russian people are predominantly atheists or
non-believers. 10 Its implication is the very reverse: religious
convictions are so universal in the nation that even a militantly
atheistic ideology has to make exceptions if it wants to have a
mass party.
This provision does not mean the laying-down of arms by the
party, for the decree then prescribes 'special re-education
work' for such members, which would eventually turn them
into consistent atheists. Moreover, this is the beginning of the
New Economic Policy of pragmatic reconstruction of the
national economy and temporary ideological retreat. There-
fore the instruction warns against rash actions in regard to
atheistic propaganda, against giving too much publicity to
'anti-religious agitation', and it stresses 'serious scientific
cultural-enlightenment work, building up a natural-scientific
foundation for a proper historical analysis of the question of
religion', rather than the noisy antireligious public debates,
which should continue but with less publicity that before. In
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 31

short, the directive suggests a 'constructive-educational'

rather than a 'destructive-negative' approach. Its aim was to
build up an educational system and develop a materialistic
Weltanschauung in the citizenry at large in which there would be
no room for religion, rather than to ridicule and attack. The
Central Committee Agitation Department and Glavpolitprosvet
were instructed to study the published antireligious output and
to improve it accordingly. The line and quality ofRevolution and
the Church was to be subjected to the same scrutiny.
In conclusion, the Instruction requests that in all anti-
religious lectures and publications it ought to be 'systematically
emphasized that the RCP is struggling against all forms of
religious Weltanschauung and not against individual religious
groups'. This statement was very much in the line of
Lunacharsky who saw religion as a much more complex
cultural phenomenon, rather than a mere tool and product of
class interests in accordance with the classical Marxist legacy
shared by such theorists as the early Trotsky and the Bolshevik
radical left. I. Skvortsov-Stepanov, a leading Soviet theorist of
atheism, representing what would later be labelled 'the rightist'
position of 'mechanicism', began with the same premise as the
left, but placed the emphasis on religion as an expression of
ignorance of the 'laws of nature'. He believed that the mass
dissemination of natural sciences combined with the
withering-away of class difference would result in the gradual
disappearance of religion on its own- mechanically, as it were.
Trotsky's position is more difficult to define. In 1923 he
thought that the Russian masses were only superficially
religious, but a year later he warned that the struggle against
religion would be a long and arduous battle and spoke of
religion as a very powerful cultural phenomenon to be attacked
on all fronts and by every means except the forced closure of
churches. He differed from Lunacharsky in stressing the
advance of applied science in peasants' and workers' lives as the
panecea against religion: electrification, cinema, mechaniza-
tion and collectivization of work processes, communal kitchens
and outside work for women - these, according to him, were
more effective tools against religion than propaganda and
direct attack. Although the Soviets constantly used the labels
'leftists' and 'rightists' in attacking each other, I feel very
uncomfortable with these confusing terms, especially since
32 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

their pos1Uon, at least regarding religion and methods of

fighting it, varied quite pragmatically-opportunistically,
more in terms of practical consideration than in theoretical
principles. Lunacharsky, however, seems to have been quite
consistent in opposing different policies to different religions.
This was probably a Bonch-Bruevich policy. Lunacharsky
allowed the tactic of attacking the clergy for allegedly diverging
from Christ's teachings, from the Scriptures, only if the
propagandist immediately followed this with an attack on the
original teachings themselves - 'unmask' the 'myths' of the
Scriptures. 11
That instruction, although wholly in the spirit of Lunachar-
sky's writings, was quite incompatible with the practical
antireligious policies of the time, which were directed particu-
larly against the Orthodox Church, under the pretext that it
was a legacy of the tsarist past. On the other hand, the sectarians
were pampered and the Moslems even had their own People's
Commissariat for Moslem Affairs after 20 January (O.S.) 1918,
administered by a mullah, Nur-Vakhitov, the only clergyman
ever to occupy high Soviet state office. 12 Nine months after the
publication of this doctrine the Soviets gave active support to a
schism on the Orthodox Church by granting legal recognition
to and promotion of the schismatic Renovationists, while
terrorizing the Patriarchal Orthodox Church and depriving
her of all legal means of existence. 13
Dr Joan Delaney Grossman is probably right in her opinion
that this contradiction between the instruction and the practi-
cal policies implies serious disagreements in the top party
echelons and represents an aspect of Stalin's power struggle
and rivalry with Trotsky, 14 especially if Trotsky was correct in
his memoirs when he said that in 1922 Lenin had entrusted the
leadership of Soviet church policies to him. As mentioned
before, Trotsky believed that 'religiosity was almost totally
absent in the Russian working class', while in the peasants it was
only a matter of habit and the absence of other entertainment
to replace the singing and theatrical beauty of the service. His
vision of the Church was so primitive that he thought the
cinema could effectively replace it for the masses. As for books
andjournals, they would affect only the reading minority of the
nation. 15 Logically Trotsky's simplistic view tallied with Lenin's
epithet for religion as 'a moonshine' or Marx's 'opium for the
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 33
people'. This notion, however, allows religion to be written off
as a subordinate class phenomenon which would pass away
mechanically with the passing away of certain classes.
Trotsky shows a particular contempt for Orthodoxy, which
he sees only as a series of rituals- an attitude shared by Hitler's
ideological adviser Alfred Rosenberg some years later. 16 But
Trotsky's hatred for Orthodoxy must have gone deeper than
that, for it was he who wanted the Patriarch arrested and shot,
while Lenin was opposed, fearing the danger of creating such a
prominent martyr. It was Trotsky who in 1922 presided over
the manoeuvres pitting the Renovationists against the Patriarch
and the regular Orthodox Church, thus contradicting his own
assertion of the unimportance of the Church for the Russian
people; perhaps he overestimated the possibility of perma-
nently destroying the Church by these actions precisely
because he failed to imagine the scale of the resistance of the
nation to the party's antireligious actions. 17
Returning to the issue of in-fighting, the Grossman thesis
finds further support in the fact that Yaroslavsky, the future
founder and leader of the League of the Godless (Militant
Godless after 1929), was appointed a member of the. all-
powerful Central Committee Secretariat at the 1Oth Party
Congress, already de facto in the hands of Stalin whom a year
later Lenin would name its General Secretary. The above 1921
instruction, inspired by the ideas of Lunacharsky, the most
prominent atheistic public speaker and the Commissar of
Public Enlightenment at the time, was probably physically
issued by Yaroslavsky. Yet it is difficult to see Yaroslavsky or
anyone else there as a moderate. On the contrary, Lunachars-
ky's vision of religion as a complex social and cultural
phenomenon could and would be used by the opportunistic
Yaroslavsky as a rationale for the wholesale destruction of the
Church despite his sometimes moderate language. 18 The
'moderate' Trotsky wanted to execute the Patriarch and
unleashed a mad persecution of the Church in 1922; the
hawkish Yaroslavsky issued a moderate decree on religion in
1921. And what about Lenin? His statement, 'On the Signifi-
cance of the Militant Materialism', which would later be
proclaimed as his philosophical testament, was worded in such
'dialectical' terms as to allow as hawkish or as moderate an
interpretation as the needs of the party required at the time. He
34 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

recalled for a close co-operation of all militant materialists,

whether members of the Communist Party or not, and a wide
use of the writings of the eighteenth-century French material-
ists, in a common promotion of 'militant materialism' and
'militant atheism', treating the two terms as practically synony-
mous. In particular, he stressed the function of the official
Marxist philosophical monthly, Under the Banner of Marxism
(Pod znamenem marxizma ), where the article had first appeared,
as the organ of'an association of sorts, of the materialist friends
of Hegelian dialectics' disseminating 'untiring atheistic prop-
aganda and struggle', which, very symptomatically, he called
'the cause of our state' (nasha gosudarstvennaia rabota ). 19 This
made a mockery of the assertions that the state and the party
ought to be seen as separate entities with different attitudes
towards religion. This phrase also betrays the primary import-
ance which even the 'liberal' Lenin of the NEP era gives to the
subject of combating religion. A much more emphatic cor-
roboration of the policy can be found in Lenin's secret
instruction on how to react to the believers' resistance to the
confiscation of church valuables, in general, and to a bloody
incident in the industrial town of Shuia, in particular:
The incident in Shuia must be correlated to ... resistance to
the confiscation of church valuables ... here our enemy is
committing a great error trying to involve us in a decisive
struggle precisely when it would be particularly hopeless and
unprofitable for them. Contrarywise, for us this is not only
exceptionally beneficial but the only moment when we are
given 99 out of 100 chances to gain a full and crushing victory
over our enemy and assure for ourselves the necessary
positions for decades ahead. It is precisely now and only now,
when there is cannibalism in the famine stricken areas and
hundreds if not thousands of corpses are lying along the
roads, that we can (and therefore must) carry out the
confiscation of valuables with fanatical and merciless energy
and not hesitate to suppress any form of resistance. It is
precisely now and only now that the vast majority of the
peasant mass will either support us or at least will be unable to
give any decisive support to those ... who might and would
want to try to resist the Soviet decree.
We must confiscate in the shortest possible time as much as
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 35

possible to create for ourselves a fund of several hundred

million roubles .... Without this fund the government work
... and the defence of our positions in Genoa are absolutely
unthinkable .... With success we can do this only now ... for
no other opportunity but the current terrible famine will
give us such a mood of wide masses which would provide us
with their sympathies or at least neutrality ... during the
operation of confiscating the valuables ....
. . . Now our victory over the reactionary clergy is guaran-
teed. Moreover the main part of our enemies among the
Russian emigres, i.e. the S-Rs and the Miliukovites, will find it
very hard to carry on their struggle against us ... precisely
because of the famine ....

Therefore . . . it is precisely now that we must wage a

merciless battle against the reactionary clergy and suppress
its resistance with such cruelty that it may remember it for
several decades ....

One of the most efficient members of VTsiK [All-Russian

Executive Committee] should be sent to Shuia ... with an
oral instruction given him by a Politburo member. The
instruction should be that he arrest in Shuia as many people
as possible, and by no means less than several dozens oflocal
priests, craftsmen and members of the bourgeoisie on
suspicion of direct or indirect participation in active resist-
ance to the VIsiK decree on confiscations. Immediately on
his return he makes an oral report to the Politburo. On the
basis of this the Politburo also gives an oral instruction to the
judicial authorities that the trial of the Shuia rioters, resisting
aid to the hungry, be conducted in as short a time as possible
concluding in the maximum possible number of executions
in the ranks of the most influential local reactionaries in
Shuia. If possible similar executions should be carried out in
Moscow and other spiritual centres of the country.

I think we should not touch Patriarch Tikhon, although he is

at the head of this rebellion of the slaveowners .... At the
[next] party congress a secret session should be organized
jointly with leading members of the GPU, the Commissariat
ofJustice, and the Revolutionary Tribunal. A secret decision
36 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

of the Congress should approve a mercilessly decisive

confiscation of church valuables. The more members of the
reactionary bourgeoisie we manage to shoot, the better. It is
precisely now that we must give such a lesson to these
characters that they would not dare to think of any resistance
for at least the next few decades .... Lenin. (TOP SECRET.
NO COPIES TO BE MADE).

This document, addressed to the members of Politburo,

although mentioned in the fifth edition of Lenin's Complete
Works, remains unpublished and has become available through
samizdat, but the style and tone of it leave little doubt as to its
authenticity. The Shuia conflict took place in March-April
1922,just at the time of the publication of Lenin's article above.
A detachment of soldiers with machine guns was brought to
suppress the faithful. In the skirmish four civilians were killed
and ten wounded. The subsequent trial resulted in the
execution of eight priests, two laymen and one lay woman, and
the imprisonment of twenty-five believers. 20
As the document shows, the real aim was to find an excuse to
unleash wholesale terror against the Church and to misrepre-
sent the Church's stand to the population in such a manner as to
antagonize at least a sizeable part of it against the Church. 21 The
final 'catch' ofthe Church treasures, confiscations ofless than
400 kg of gold and some 400 000 kg of silver, even in Izvestia's
words was 'ridiculously insignificant'. As to the precious stones
and pearls used to decorate icons, much was stolen by the
chekists, nicknamed at the time 'pearl divers'. No foreign
buyers were found for them, since they were of very inferior
quality- the 'good Christians' had for centuries been donating
to the Church only that which was of little use to them!
Moreover the prices for precious metals stood very low on the
world markets at the time. 22 Yet the propaganda effect was
achieved, and that is all Lenin was interested in, as his secret
instructions show. Thus began the first full year of the New
Economic Policy era, the most liberal period in the whole
history of the Soviet communist state.
It can be safely stated that although there were differences in
the individual Soviet leaders' approaches to the antireligious
struggle, it was not a question of moderation versus extremism
as a matter of principle, but a choice of methodology, strategy,
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 37
and the tactics of how to liquidate religion most effectively and
'safely'. Vorontsov is probably right when he says that a unified
consolidated policy of combating religion was formulated only
after 1926 and systematically pursued in the decade following
that year. 23 Despite a relative crystallization and cohesiveness of
attack (by divide and rule) in 1922, certain differences in the
approaches to the subject can be detached at least untill929-
30.
The 11th Party Congress ( 1922) resolved to 'turn the
publishing house of the Glavpolitprosvet, Krasnaia nov' and the
journal by the same name into a special party publishing
enterprise for popular Marxist and antireligious literature. 24
Following Lenin's appeal for consolidation of the efforts of
Communist and non-Communist atheists, a non-party pub-
lishing house, Ateist (The Atheist), specializing in translating
works of'bourgeois' atheists, was founded in 1922. Moreover,
the 12th (1923) and 13th (1924) party congresses continued to
promote 'moderation'. A resolution of the former merely calls
for the expansion of antireligious propaganda and warns
against insulting religious feelings by 'primitive methods' ... of
ridiculing the objects and ceremonies of a faith; saying that
these methods only 'strengthen religious fanaticism'. Instead,
it calls for more publication of antireligious literature of a
popular-scientific nature, and more analysis of the origins and
history of religion. 25
At the same time, in accord with this resolution, a number of
specialized antireligious periodicals began to be published in
1922, which, however, in the crudeness of most of their
materials seemed to contradict the calls for moderation. A
N auka i religiia (Science and Religion), edited by a former priest
Mikhail Galkin (literary pseudonym: Gorev) made its appear-
ance in December 1922 and was soon replaced by the weekly
Bezbozhnik (The Godless), edited by Yaroslavsky. Yaroslavsky
then formed a Society of Friends of the Bezbozhnik newspaper
(SFBN/ODGB) which less than three years later was trans-
formed into the Society of the Godless (SB, renamed SVB or
LMG, the League of Militant Godless in 1929), and along with
its publications was marked from the beginning by rude and
crude attacks on religion. A more sophisticated 'Society of
Militant Materialists', renamed in 1928, 'of Militant Dialectical-
Materialists', was founded in 1924, consisting predominantly
38 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

(and, after 1928, apparently exclusively) of the Marxist

philosophers grouped around Under the Banner ofMarxism, and
aiming at combating religious and 'idealistic' views among
scientists, scholars and intellectuals in general. 26
Concerned with the growth of'religious sentiments' among
scholars (especially natural scientists), teachers and the intelli-
gentsia in general, 27 the Soviet government not only launched
the above periodicals in 1922, but also began to interfere
directly in the life of the Church. The Renovationist putsch in
May 1922 was synchronized with the GPU's arrest of the
Patriarch and immediately followed by the Renovationists'
seizure of the Patriarchal chancery under false pretences. 28 As
Lenin's letter above documents, clergy and laity loyal to the
Patriarch were subjected to terror under the pretext of their
resistance to the confiscation of sacramental vessels, often
made of precious metals and adorned by precious stones,
although of dubious commercial value.
With the conclusion of the church-valuables confiscation
campaign it was decided to call off the physical assault on the
Church for a while. On 15 May 1923 the Antireligious
Commission of the CPSU Central Committee ordered the
GPU 'to investigate all cases of closure of churches. Should
these have taken place with abuse of the Soviet legislation on
the cults, the guilty ones ought to be made responsible for their
acts.' The Commission addressed a letter to the Central
Committee suggesting immediate discontinuation of the
closure of churches, and the publication of an article in Pravda
condemning such acts. The CC followed with an internal letter
to all local party organizations on 23 June, calling for a halt to
such abuses which 'cause all sorts of dissatisfaction, made use of
by anti-Soviet elements'. 29 But it is not clear whether any of
those instructions were ever made public and thus could
reassure the believers. A certain moderation in the policies
towards believers, however, was obvious. Since at this stage of
the state's confrontation with religion the 1918 Constitution
promising freedom for religious as well as antireligious
propaganda was still officially valid, lip-service had still to be
paid to some semblance of 'equality' of opportunity for both
camps. Hence the famous public debates between believers
and atheists continued to take place, although from late 1921
the regime began to take steps to curb them. It was only after
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 39

the 1929 legislation banning religious propaganda that the

debates could officially be suppressed.
Among the most famous Communist participants in these
debates was Anatoli Lunacharsky, the first Soviet People's
Commissar for Enlightenment (education and culture). On the
Christian side among the most famous and prolific debaters
were Alexander Vvedensky and V. F. Martsinkovsky, in
addition to the famous mathematician and priest, Professor
Pavel Florensky, and the bishop medical doctors, Anatoli of the
Archdiocese of Odessa (who would later perish in the camps
like Fr. Florensky) and Luka Voino-Yasenetsky, one of the
founders of the University of Tashkent and its first professor
of medicine (who would pay with eleven years in prisons and
camps for remaining a bishop). There were many other
outstanding debaters defending the Church. The debates used
to draw huge crowds. People had to spend hour upon
hour in queues to purchase tickets to university auditoria or
concert halls where the debates took place. According to the
descriptions by religious authors, the debates often began in an
atmosphere of hostility towards the Christian apologists,
because a large part of the audience invariably consisted of
Bolshevik and Komsomol activists brought to the hall in an
organized fashion, but most often ended in applause for the
religious speakers (particularly of the calibre of those men-
tioned above) who showed deeper conviction and greater
erudition than their party-line atheistic opponents. 30 These
observations may have been partial and subjective, but the fate
of Professor Martsinkovsky seems to corroborate them. An
Orthodox lay preacher of evangelization and a member of the
Russian Student-Christian Movement who later joined the
Evangelicals over the issue of adult baptism, Martsinkovsky in
the years 1919-21 was a lecturer of ethics at the recently
founded Samara University, where he attracted capacity
audiences by his lectures on the inseparability of ethics from
the concept of God. During the same period he toured the
country participating in debates on religion and atheism with
leading Communists. He described how after one public
debate with Lunacharsky, the latter, having lost the debate,
cancelled his appearance in another planned debate with
Martsinkovsky. On one occasion early in 1921 a large Komso-
mol team of hecklers arrived and occupied the two front rows
40 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

with the aim of disrupting Martsinkovsky's lecture. Surprising-

ly, when their leader tried several times to heckle, he was not
supported by his boys. Later they explained their behaviour by
claiming that Martsinkovsky was not saying what their instruc-
tor had told them he would. It was in 1921 -that is, soon after
the adoption by the 1Oth Party Congress of the resolution on
Glavpolitprosvet and the Agitation- Propaganda Problems -
that Martsinkovsky and other religious lecturers and debaters
began to experience difficulties. On some occasions the
Communist organizers of the debates tried to limit the time of
religious apologists to ten minutes, but the audiences protested
and the organizers were forced to withdraw the limitation. On
other occasions an agreement to rent a university auditorium
for a religious public lecture would be cancelled at the last
minute. In the same year, in the wake of the Kronstadt
Rebellion, Martsinkovsky was arrested and held in prison
without trial for half a year. At the end of 1922 he was arrested
once again, and told quite openly by his prosecutors:
We know you are not a political enemy .... We know you as a
sincere man dedicated to your ideas ... of God. But your
work is harmful to us. You attract the intelligentsia .... In
about three years, when our workers have become wiser, you
may return with your religious preaching [to Russia] .... But
the main harm of your work is that you attract university
students.
Martsinkovsky was expelled to Czechoslovakia. Apparently,
the workers have not grown 'wiser' to the present day, because
Martsinkovsky was never allowed to return to the Soviet
Union, 31 and public debates on religion with speakers repre-
senting the Church are still not allowed, more than sixty years
later. Such has been the fate of the earliest Christian- Marxist
dialogue in a country of 'triumphant socialism'.
The other attempt to implement this lOth Party Congress
Resolution was made in the form of various Komsomol, and
later LMG, activities: attacks, parades, theatrical perform-
ances,journals, brochures and films. 32
The Komsomol engaged in crude blasphemous 'Komsomol
Christmases' and 'Komsomol Easters' with mock processions
headed by hooligans dressed as Orthodox priests, Protestant
pastors or Jewish rabbis. These carnival processions often
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 41

included the burning of icons, religious books and mock

images of Christ, the Virgin, and so on. According to one Soviet
author, these were not local Komsomol initiatives but they
corresponded to relevant instructions of the CPSU Central
Committee. As always with Soviet official campaigns, first
reports from the provinces were enthusiastic about the success
of these parades with allegedly thousands of participants. But
soon the truth emerged that they were a failure, that people
were not eager to join cells of atheist activists attached to the
Komsomol; for example, in the city of Smolensk with a
population of 173 000 only 35 people joined them. At the same
time they rallied the believers around the Church. The
Church, not deprived of the right to organize Christian youth
groups until the legislation of 1929, responded by organizing
religious study circles, as well as women's church societies,
choral societies, religious retreats, and other religious activi-
ties. A 1924 Leningrad Orthodox clergy conference was
largely devoted to these subjects. The cited official Soviet
author admits, with a hindsight of almost forty years, that the
whole enterprise was a failure. 33 This is a tacit admission that
atheism had failed in its competition with religion on mor~ or
less comparable terms, hence the 1929 legislation banning
'religious propaganda', effectively depriving the Church of the
means to counter atheistic attacks against her. 34

Phase Three: 1929-40

The third phase in the pre-war antireligious offensive, which

Vorontsov places under the heading 'The Communist Party as
the Organizer of the Mass Atheistic Movement in the USSR'
and into the period 1926-37, needs several correctives.
First of all, the factual accuracy of Vorontsov's title is
questionable. The era begins with the 1929 Soviet laws on
'religious associations' which forbid all forms of public, social,
communal (let alone educational, publishing or missionary)
activities for religious believers. Second, the closing of
churches, mass arrests of the clergy and religiously active laity,
and persecution of people for attending church reach unpre-
cedented proportions after 1929. Third, participation of
schoolchildren and teenagers in the actively antireligious
Pioneer and Komsomol organizations, and through them
42 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

almost automatically in the League of Militant Godless, as well

as the coercive pressure exerted by the trade unions and local
party cells to induce industrial workers and employees to join
the League, give a very peculiar ring to the terms 'organizer'
and 'mass movement'.
On the intellectual Marxist level the four-year polemics
between the mechanicists and the dialectical materialists led by
Under the Baner ofMarxism, the philosophical flagship of Soviet
atheism launched with this purpose in 1922, concluded in 1929
with what the chief editors of the journal (Deborin and his
associates) had thought was their victory over the mechanical
materialists at the Second All-Union Conference of Marxist-
Leninist Institutions. The gist of the argument was: whether
human conscious life, man's intelligence and ideas were
entirely derivatives of the material world and environment
surrounding them, as the mechanicists argued; or whether
there was 'a relative autonomy of the life processes in nature',
which was asserted by the dialectical materialists. In fact, James
Thrower, a contemporary British scholar, argues that the
dialectical position stems from Engels, while Marx's ideology
was a naturalistic materialism, but at least ever since Plekhanov
the two classics became a collective person, 'Marx-Engels', and
Soviet scholars have simply been denied the choice of being
Marxists or Engelsians. 35 Now, what has this 'abstract' debate to
do with atheism and religion? Very much, in fact. The
mechanicists argued, or more often implied, that since human
thought, emotions, and life depended on the material environ-
ment, there was no point in spending so much effort on
antireligious struggle. As the building of socialism-
Communism progressed, so religion would die away. More-
over, some of them went so far as to claim that since Marxism-
Leninism was scientific and materialistic, it merged with the
natural sciences, the latter superseding the former as the
philosophy of Marxism, the latter having no independent
philosophy; therefore, instead of atheistic propaganda people
should simply be taught natural sciences, and religion would
die away.
As Lenin had indicated in his programmatic-'philosophical'
article on militant materialism in the March 1922 issue of Under
the Banner of Marxism, he and his 'dialectical materialists' were
simply pragmatics who had realized that religion was anything
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 43

but dying out; hence more active means had to be used against
it, and in order to justify them, room had to be made for the
autonomy of the intellectual and emotional life of man within
materialistic philosopy. This could be done only by resorting to
the all-saving manoeuvres of dialectical thinking.
But the events that followed that 1929 conference, in which
'all the most significant research institutions of the proletarian
dictatorship' had participated, soon showed that the triumph
of Deborin and his 'dialectical materialists' was premature.
Stalin thought otherwise. There were to be no supreme
ideological-philosophical spokesmen in his Soviet Union but
himself. And so, Under the Banner ofMarxism was withheld from
publication from October 1930toFebruary 1931, whenatlasta
triple issue of the journal (no. 10-12) dated October-December
1930 appeared with the text of the Soviet Communist Party's
Central Committee Resolution in the journal, dated 25
January, 1931 (sic). The resolution condemned the mechani-
cists and also attacked the Deborin group for having become
too philisophically abstract in argumentation, too detached
from the needs and interests of 'politics . . . partiinost' and
natural sciences'. The editorial that followed the resolution
attacked the journal for failing to become 'the organ of militant
atheism' as directed by Lenin, having published only twelve
articles in nine years directly related to antireligious struggle;
even then most of them dealt with abstract philosophical issues
pertaining to religion and atheism, rather than aiding the party
in unmasking religion's 'vilest counterrevolutionary role'. 36
Hence, as far as the 'philosophical front' of Soviet atheism was
concerned, the role of the Communist Party as 'organizer' was
in fact to disorganize and discontinue all genuine philosophic
discussion even within the extremely narrow confines to which
it had been limited prior to 1930. Thus, as the details that follow
will indicate, it would be more accurate to call the decade
between 1928 and 1938 not only the decade of the institutional
destruction of the Church, but also the decade of transforma-
tion of all Marxist institutions into bureaucratic branches
totally subordinated to the orders and policies of the CPSU
Central Committee (actually Stalin) and its daily needs.
Of course, on all other levels of the 'antireligious front'
'readjustments' closely reflected this policy.
An 11 February 1929 CPSU Central Committee Resolution
44 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

'On the Party Leadership of the Komsomol' calls on the

Komsomol to raise the political-ideologicallevel of its mem-
bership which often suffers 'from social ailments (alcoholism,
moral license) and alien ideological influences (religious
prejudices, anti-Semitism, nationalism)'. 37 A little over a year
later, the 16th Party Congress mentions the struggle against
religion twice: (i) in the resolution on the Central Committee
political report it mentions the duty of the party to help 'the
emancipation of the masses from the reactionary influence of
religion'; and (ii) in its resolution on the trade unions where the
latter are obligated to 'correctly organize and strengthen
antireligious propaganda', again in combination with 'anti-
semitism, chauvinism, narrow-minded nationalism'. 38 The
chairman of the League of Militant Godless (LMG), Yaroslav-
sky, in his published comments emphatically alleged that
religion was akin to anti-Semitism, and stressed that the
document called religion the number-one prejudice. Never-
theless, the published antireligious attacks of the 1930s were
not as conspicuous as in the preceding decade and did not at all
reflect the unprecedented magnitude of the actual persecu-
tions of the last pre-war decade.
The Church was treated as a private enterprise, and with the
liquidation of the New Economic Policy and introduction of
forced mass collectivization taxes were deliberately raised to
such levels that hardly any private peasant or shopkeeper could
pay them. The same levels of taxation were imposed on the
churches and the clergy, as illustrated by the USSR Council of
People's Commissars Decree of21 May 1929, which stated that
the criteria for qualifying someone for tax purposes as a kulak
were:
participation in trade, usury ... or having any other income
obtained not through labour (included in this category are
members of the clergy).
In the rural areas the taxes were levied mostly in quantities of
agricultural produce, but priests had had no fields to till since
1918, and, in addition to all other problems, with the
liquidation of the wealthier peasants as kulaks they lost those
parishioners who had had the means to help the church and the
priest materially. 39
As to verbal propaganda against the Church, which was the
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 45
most prominent manifestation of the atheistic policies aimed at
the 'unarmed eye' of the nai've outsider, the party relegates this
more and more to 'public organizations': first of all to local
party branches, but also to such organizations as the Komso-
mol, the Young Pioneers, the League of the Militant Godless,
Museums of Scientific Atheism, Workers' Evening Univer-
sities of Atheism under the auspices of the Trade Unions, and
others. To be sure, special conferences on antireligious
propaganda, under the auspices of the Central Committee
Agitation-Propaganda Department, became almost an
annual event ( 1926, 1928, 1929, etc.), but they were not widely
publicized. Instead, they worked out directives to their
participants, who then much more publicly implemented them
on either a local party level or through one of the above
institutions. More often than not they gave the impression that
the resultant policies were of their own making rather than
coming from the centre. This is the principle of Lenin's
'democratic centralism' in practice.
One of the major trouble spots for Soviet atheism was the
school. The delegates to the first congress of Soviet school-
teachers ( 1925) refused to endorse the principle of separation
of church and state and sought to retain the teaching of religion
in school. 40 According to Lunacharsky, the majority of school-
teachers were still practising religious believers in the early
1920s; hence the final resolution of the Congress insists only on
non-religious rather than anti-religious education in school,
and the Commissariat of Enlightenment was forced to make
this the official school programme. 41 During this time, and later
with hindsight, Lunacharsky justified this policy as the only
realistic one at the time, in view of the shortage of atheistic
teachers and the danger that an actively atheistic school would
cause a very hostile reaction on the part of the peasants (so
much for Trotsky's thesis on religious near-indifference of the
Russian peasant). The Orthodox Marxist historian and
Lunacharsky's deputy at the Commissariat, Mikhail Pokrov-
sky, plainly said that antireligious education in the primary
school was unnecessary. Lunarcharsky, however, called it
merely 'premature' for the primary school, but as early as 1925
he actively supported antireligious education in the secondary
school, mainly through classes on culture, in addition to setting
up branches of the League of the Godless (LG) in schools. It was
46 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

only in 1928 that he and his Commissariat, under the pressure

of attacks from the LG and particularly its leftist-radical
Moscow branch, came out in favour of an entirely antireligious
school from the first grade up, and issued relevant directives in
1929. Yet, even then, Lunacharsky warned against a general
expulsion of teachers with personal religious beliefs, for fear
that this would deprive the Soviet school of 30 to 40 per cent of
the educational cadres- this after particular efforts, especially
after 1925, to replenish the school with atheistic Soviet
teachers. 42
A 1929 Agitprop conference likewise resolved to intensify
antireligious work in all educational establishments on all
levels. Let us keep the priorities straight here: whatever the
precedence in dates, it is the Agitprop line that is crucial; the
Commissariat of Enlightenment only reflects and fulfils the
party line. This led to the setting-up of antireligious sections
the following year at all research and higher education
teaching institutions. A special antireligious faculty began to
function at the Institute of Red Professors in 1929. In the same
year a massive purge of the Russian Academy of Sciences
occurred, during which most of its non-Marxist scholars and
almost all of those who were practising members of the Church
were arrested, most of them subsequently perishing in the
camps and prisons. 43 One of the aims of the purge was to
decapitate the Church intellectually in order to clear the way
for the propaganda that only the backward and the obscuran-
tists believed in God.
The toughening of the assault against religion reflected the
general line of the time. Not only the specialized atheistic press,
but also Pravda and Komsomol'skaia pravda began to publish a
huge volume of truly threatening antireligious articles in 1928.
In 1929 not a single week passed without several highly
aggressive articles against religion in the latter paper; often
whole pages of it were entirely devoted to the 'unmasking' of
the Orthodox, the Moslems, the Sectarians or Judaism. The
tone seems to have been set by the editorial in the central Pravda
of25 December 1928. It stressed that there could never be any
peace between a Communist state and any form of religion,
and it scolded party members, the Komsomol, and even the LG
for their passive attitudes to religion; and, 'worse: there are still
unexpelled party members ... who fulfil religious rituals and
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 47

in their activities support the clergy'. It stated that the majority

of party members, instead of supporting and encouraging the
League of the Godless, avoided antireligious activities, wrongly
believing that religion would die on its own as a consequence of
gradually changing economic and class relations.
What was new in this article was, first, that religion as the
enemy was being mingled, probably for the first time, with
internal party factions; and that co-operation of the Trot-
skyites with the sectarians was being alleged. Second, no
distinction between the Orthodox Church, the sectarians, and
the Moslems as enemies of the socialist society was being made.
On the contrary, it was stressed that the sectarians 'had
particularly advanced since the revolution in fooling the
backward working masses and peasants ... making use of the
freedom of religious preaching granted to them by the
revolution' .44 The editorial requested the banning of the open
sale of Christmas trees as well as traditional feast foods in state
stores during religious holiday seasons. Finally, the school on
all levels was urged to become an active fighter against religion.
Although the article warned against the extremes of'revolu-
tionary anarchism' in attacking religion, and called for the
dissemination of antireligious literature and education along
with antireligious films and plays, it nevertheless discussed and
defined religion only as a class enemy. Thus it was contradict-
ing its own attack on the 'mechanicists' who made the
withering-away of religion dependent on changes in class
relations, which a year later was criticized as an over-
simplification and 'a leftist-anarchist deviation'. This shows
that the line of attack was not yet entirely crystallized, even in
late 1928. The article reflected to some extent a left-radical
trend of the Moscow branch of the LG, whose members often
published their articles in Kom. pravda and were engaged in a
war of words with Yaroslavsky throughout 1928 and 1929. 45
Playing down the barbarity of these attacks, Vorontsov
mentions only in passing an unpublished circular letter of the
CPSU Central Committee of 1929 which 'pointed out that the
mass character of the decisions to close churches was closely
connected to the strengthening of the atheistic movement
among the toilers', commenting that it was therefore 'not a
coincidence that the movement to close the churches had
reached its peak in 1928-29'. He then cites the figures of 532
48 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

religious establishments of all denominations closed in 1928

and 423 in 1929, which, of course, is a pittance in comparison
with what happened during the following decade. The year
1928-9 was far from the peak. What is important here, is that
he discloses the fact that most of the religious persecutions were
carried out on the strength of secret internal memoranda
emanating from the Central Committee, while openly the same
Central Committee issued resolutions like the one 'On the
Struggle Against Distortions of the Party Line in the Collective
Farm Movement' ( 1930), which demanded 'categorically to put
an end to the practice of shutting churches administratively'. 46
This, in fact, was a follow-up to Stalin's March 1930 Pravda
article 'Dizziness From Success' which had called for modera-
tion in the drive for the collectivization of agriculture.
It is interesting that Soviet 'religiologists' excuse the half-
admitted assault on the Church in the 1930s and even the ban
on religious propaganda in the legislation of 1929 which had
been made on the grounds of alleged anti-Soviet attacks by
church leaders, both inside and outside the Soviet Union. They
cite such instances as: counter-revolutionary Orthodox sects
('Fedorovites' and 'Name-glorifiers') who allegedly hid in their
midst leaders of former anti-Soviet peasant rebellions who
appealed to the population to boycott the Soviet regime and its
decrees. Trials of their leaders and members took place in
Voronezh, North Caucasus and other places in 1929 and 1930.
Another example most often cited by Soviet authors is the
Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAPTs), which
they deliberately associated with the Orthodox Church as a
whole, concealing the fact that the former was born in 1921
with the blessing and support of the Soviet Government as a
rebellion against the regular Patriarchal Orthodox Church.
The official excuses for the attack on the Church usually
cited by Soviet sources were many. They included the establish-
ment in Rome of the Jesuit centre Russicum for the study of
Orthodoxy with the aim of preparing clerical cadres for a
future Roman Catholic mission in Russia, the Vatican's 1930
ecumenical prayers for the persecuted Christians of the Soviet
Union and its appeal for a Christian 'Crusade' against the
Bolsheviks, and, in addition, the activities of a Russian emigre
'Fraternity of Russian Truth' which appealed for subversive
acts inside the Soviet Union in the name of God, and the
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 49

financial support of the Russian Evangelical sects by the US

Evangelical Churches who planned building 'a multi-storey
Gospel House' in Leningrad. So vulnerable was 'the mighty
Soviet State' which claimed consolidation of the whole people
with the government, that these activities, which were but a
fraction of the Communist subversive activities in the non-
Communist world, were seen to be such a serious threat to its
security that the government decided to deprive the main-
stream Churches of an autonomous public voice forever. But
the legislation depriving the Church of all rights except
liturgical services within church walls preceded the above
events, and was not their consequence. The legislation occur-
red in two stages. The laws on 'Religious Associations' were
published in A pril1929, the relevant amendment was added to
the 1924 Soviet Constitution on 18 May 1929 at the 16th
Congress of Soviets; while the anti-Soviet appeals of the Pope
and the Russian emigres belong to the following year. They
were a reaction to the above legislation, not vice versa.
Secondly, Vorontsov himself stated that the Orthodox Church
had moved to the position of unquestionable civic loyalty to the
state after her locum tenens Metropolitan Sergii's 1927
Declaration of Loyalty. There was no reason why a loyal
Church should be punished for the activities of the Vatican,
sectarians, emigres, or Ukrainian separatists, nor any reason
for these discriminatory laws remaining in force to the present
day, since the mainstream religions (the Orthodox, Moslems,
Baptists, Lutherans, and the Roman Catholics of Lithuania, to
name but a few) had proved their full loyalty and civic
obedience to the State by participating in and even launching
mass international peace campaigns and rallies on behalf of
Soviet foreign policy objectives. 47
But let us return to the late 1920s and the rising central role
of the League of the Godless.

THE LEAGUE OF THE MILITANT GODLESS

'Struggle against religion is the struggle for socialism' was the

official slogan of the Second Congress of The League of the
Militant Godless (LM G). Ironically, this also proved to be its last
All-Union congress. As Pravda indicated, it was to this 'public
50 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

organization' that the Communist Party relegated the leader-

ship role in the antireligious struggle, 'achieving direct control
over the League via the CP faction of the League's Central
Council, as well as through the CP cells in the League's local
councils'. 48
The journal Bezbozhnik (The Godless), edited by Yaroslav-
sky, appeared in December 1922. The following year a Moscow
monthly for industrial workers Bezbozhnik u stanka (The Godless
at the Work-Bench, henceforth Bezbust ), an even cruder publica-
tion than the former, with insulting cartoons on God and the
saints, formed the Moscow Society of the Godless. Two years
later the Bezbozhnik's ODGB (or SFGN: Society of Friends of
the Godless Newspaper) merged with the former group to form
the All-Union League of the Godless at its First Congress in
1925. Henceforth, at least until the 1929 Second Congress,
there raged a power struggle between Yaroslavsky and his boys
and the Moscow League of the Godless leadership (Galak-
tionov, Polidorov, Kostelovskaia, Lunin, and others). The
latter were fighting a losing battle against Stalin's aide in the CC
Secretariat, his obedient sycophant Yaroslavsky, one of the
founding editors of Kommunist, which in the 1930s became the
official ideological organ of the Communist Party Central
Committee. The Moscow organization tried to retain its
autonomy from the All-Union organization by betting on the
old horse of left-wing 'anarchist' radicalism. It gained the
support of the communist youth daily, Kom. pravda (which
regularly published the militant articles of Galaktionov and his
friends).
In addition, they were supported in the early period by the
Moscow CP organization, in whose organ, Sputnikkommunista, a
Bezbust spokesman, Polidorov, attacked Lunacharsky, Bonch-
Bruevich and Yaroslavsky for preaching anticlericalism and a
partisan attitude to different religions, instead of genuine
godlessness. It is interesting that in his response Yaroslavsky
first of all protests against being placed in the same category
with the other two ideologists, stressing that he does not share
any ofLunacharsky's concepts of antireligious struggle nor has
anything in common with B.-B.'s sympathy towards the
sectarians. This assurance did not prevent a close alliance of
Yaroslavsky with Lunacharsky in years to come, between 1925
and 1930, and after 1930 it became safer for the opportunistic
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 51

Yaroslavsky to avoid and later even to criticize his former

mentor.
Returning to 1924, Yaroslavsky's main points against Poli-
dorov were that first the question is not anticlericalism or
godlessness, but both. Second, all religions are ideological
enemies of socialism, even the Renovationists who claim to be
socialists; but arrests, imprisonment, and physical compulsory
destruction is possible only of those Churches which oppose
and actively resist the Soviet State, like the pre-1923 Orthodox
Church. The methods of struggle must be different when a
Church declares and practices civic loyalty, because it includes
in its flock dozens of millions of perfectly loyal workers and
peasants, who should be re-educated by the atheists but not
attacked as outright 'class enemies'. Thus, in contrast to
Polidorov and the Bezbust editors Kostelovskaia and Galak-
tionov, Yaroslavsky, Anton Loginov (both members of the
CPSU CC apparat), Lukachevsky and their associates from
Bezbozhnik argued that seeing religion only in terms of a class
phenomenon and only as a class enemy represented a partial
and oversimplified vision. Religion is also 'a certain system of
Weltanschauung, ethics, emotions and behaviour.... You
forget the believer if you approach religion only as a tool of class
exploitation.' Antireligious propaganda will be ineffective if
the propagandist is not aware of the personality, emotions,
ideas, and thoughts of his listener. Although the CPSU Central
Committee was obviously on the side of the Yaroslavsky-
Loginov school, the debate was not resolved at the first
Congress in 1925. Although the 1926 All-Union Conference
on antireligious propaganda called by the CC Agitprop threw its
weight in Yaroslavsky's favour, the debate still continued. 49
Even, as we have seen, thecentralPravdaaslateas December
1928 reduced the whole problem of religion to the issue of a
mortal class enemy of the proletariat and socialism. In the
following year Stalin gained full control over the 'left' and
'right' deviations, making way for vicious attacks on both.
Yaroslavsky followed suit on the religious front (the term
'front' was symptomatic), by attacking the class-centred stand
as a 'left-anarchist' deviation. He also attacked 'mechanicists'
and 'right-deviationists'. Skvortsov-Stepanov and others were
arguing that religion should be countered by mass compulsory
education in the natural sciences, contending that then it would
52 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

die of its own accord. Quite consistently, Yaroslavsky and his ilk
saw a logical link between the class-attack position of the left
and the do-nothing position ofthe 'mechanicists'. If the whole
religious phenomenon could be explained away in terms of a
class phenomenon, then there would be no need to combat it if
one genuinely believed that a classless society was being
constructed. Attacking Skvortsov in 1930 at the conference of
the All-Union Society of Militant Dialectical Materialists,
Yaroslavsky stressed that an active all-sided assault on religion
was inseparable from the building of socialism. One of the
slogans of the second LMG congress became: 'Struggle against
religion is a struggle for the Five Year Plan!' And the LMG
press from then on published masses of reports of LMG's
participation in the Plan fulfilment, subscribing and recruiting
subscriptions for the state loan. At the same time, emulating the
Party, LMG conducted a purge in 1932-4, of the 'rightist'
elements in its ranks criticizing Bukharin in its press. 5° Stalin's
words at the 16th Party Congress ( 1930) that religion was 'a
brake on the building of socialism', were immediately picked
up by the LMG and reiterated many times in its speeches and
writings. One of them, Lukachevsky, even criticized the above
Pravda article for de facto minimizing the threat of religion by
reducing it to the status of a class enemy. He ridiculed the early
Marxist belief (shared to some extent, as we have seen, by
Trotsky, very much in vogue in the early Bezbozhnik and
throughout the lifespan of the Bezbust) that the appearance of a
tractor would kill religion. In contrast, Lukachevsky pointed to
the popularity of religion among the emigre and nationalistic
intellectuals, and said that although its roots were socio-
economic this was not the only source of religion, and could not
alone explain the current growth of the sectarians, for
instance. 51
The vision of religion as a complex social and cultural
phenomenon, as we have seen, appeared to be establishing a
kinship between the ideas and policy of the LMG, especially
after 1929, and Lunacharsky, who made several far-reaching
statements, when he said for example that 'Freedom ... may be
cut ... when it is abused for the direct class struggle against the
proletarian dictatorship.' 52 He said this while speaking on
religious freedom and its limitations, which could and would be
used as a green light for the total onslaught against religion
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 53

from 1929 on. Even as late as 1929 Lunacharsky was still

warning against the use of direct force and persecutions, not on
principle but only in as much as it was strategically unwise and
counterproductive. He argued that, on the contrary, 'church is
an infection' and its physical suppression is acceptable but only
when the majority of the population is on your side or when the
clergy can be accused of breaking the law. What subsequently
happened in the following decade was the worst possible
combination of Lunacharsky's theories with the 'leftist prac-
tices' (which he personally attacked at the second LMG
Congress, when he accused Lunin of the Bezbust of proposing a
general physical persecution). The result of this sort of law
issued in 1929 was that any pursuit of the true pastoral duties by
a clergyman became punishable by law. 53 Lunacharsky's words
perfectly rationalized such persecutions. Is it possible that this
'abuse' of Lunacharsky's line played a role in his retirement
from his post as commissar later in the year?
In the typical Leninist-Stalinist tradition Trotskyite and
generally 'leftist-deviationist' roots in the subsequent anti-
religious holocaust were not acknowledged. Neither had Lenin
acknowledged his debt to the Socialist-Revolutionary agrarian
programme, nor did Stalin acknowledge the Trotsky-
Preopbrazhensky source of his programme of forced collecti-
vization.
Although the scene for the 'final' and complete assault on
religion was set at the second LM G congress (] une 1929), and
although the victory ofYaroslavsky's line there was a foregone
conclusion, the Moscow opposition gave a few rearguard
battles during that year. One of the most colourful was I.
Bobryshev:s attack on Yaroslavsky in the latter's own Antire-
ligioznik. He accused the LMG of minimizing the class-enemy
thesis in attacking religion, of having scarcely any workers and
peasants in its ranks, of engaging in antireligious archaeology
instead of aggressively combating religion, of having been
indifferent to the issue of transforming the school into a
militantly antireligious institution, and of opportunistically
using the writings of non-Marxist Western bourgeois atheistic
authors in its publications. Yaroslavsky refuted all these
accusations, stating that the LMG began a concerted struggle
for the antireligious school as early as 1927, but that in contrast
to the leftists who simply wanted physically to destroy religion
54 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

and churches, the Yaroslavsky policy was to replace the

religious Weltanschauung with that of dialectical materialism.
This, he said, was Lenin's purpose in addition to his position
that the works of the French encyclopaedists and any bourgeois
atheists should also be used for the dissemination of atheism in
the USSR. He admitted, however, that the effect of the LMG
work was much more modest than they wished, because the
League had remained decentralized until the second Congress
(a hint at the 'heterodox' behaviour of the Moscow organiza-
tion), and therefore it could not consolidate its actions and
policies. Also, it was the poorest of all Soviet 'public' organiza-
tions, almost without any full-time branch activists. Furth-
ermore, neither the CP nor the Komsomol local branches
supported LMG activities, and in the Ukraine they were
banned 'for tactical reasons', according to the Ukrainian
Government. All this apparently changed at the Second
Congress. Its resolutions taking up seventy-seven tightly
printed pages leave no doubt that the CPSU Central Commit-
tee delegated to it full powers to unfurl a sweeping attack on
religion with the aim of its near-total destruction and with the
right to mobilize all 'public organizations' of the country.
Otherwise it would not have dared to dictate to schools,
universities, the armed forces, the trade unions, the Komso-
mol, the Organization of Young Pioneers, and the Soviet press
in general, as it did in its resolutions addressed to each of these
institutions. It criticized each of them separately for poor
organization of antireligious activity in their particular fields,
and arrogantly instructed them how to become more effective.
It even gave commands to the Party regarding the antireli-
gious front. Paraphrasing the Congress decisions, Yaroslavsky
writes:

The Komsomol must obligate all its members to join the

League ... the Party must direct its party organizations and
all its members to further the very work of the LMG as well as
directly participate ... in the LMG .... We must turn ... to a
systematic recruitment of toilers ... there ought not remain a
single Pioneer troop without a junior LMG branch. 54

What was in store for religious groups in the context of the

mounting terror and the 'enemy within' mania of the time was
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 55

clear already from the following descriptions of religions and

Churches:
All religions, no matter how much they 'renovate' and
cleanse themselves, are systems of ideas . . . profoundly
hostile to the ideology of ... socialism .... Religious organi-
zations . . . are in reality political agencies . . . of class
groupings hostile to the proletariat inside the country and of
the international bourgeoisie ....
Special attention must be paid to the renovationist currents
in Orthodoxy, Islam, Lamaism and other religions ....
These currents are but the disguises for a more effective
struggle against the Soviet power. By comparing ancient
Buddhism, and ancient Christianity to communism, the
Renovationists are essentially trying to replace the commun-
ist theory by a cleansed form of religion, which therefore
only becomes more dangerous.
It is important to look at the historical background of this
resolution. This was the period when the Soviet Government
changed its policy towards the Renovationist schismatics in the
Orthodox Church. Whereas in 1922-3 they were actively
fomenting the schism, in 1924-7 they were actively pressing
both sides for reconciliation in the belief that they would get
agents and informers from the Renovationist leaders within a
reunited Church. They still continued to recognize only the
Renovationists as the legitimate Orthodox Church. From the
end of 1927 they recognized both groups; and there appeared
signs that the Soviets feared that the more modern, 'progres-
sive' and socialist Renovationists, shaved and wearing secular
dress, were a dangerous challenge to the regime. And from
1934 the persecution of the Renovationists began to reach the
proportions of the persecution of the traditional Orthodox
Church. 55
As for the second Congress resolutions, they admitted that
there was 'some growth of sectarian groups', but claimed that
this represented local rather than national tendencies. The
resolution warned, nevertheless, that lay religious activists
exceeded one million (over 50 000 communities of all faiths
with at least twenty lay activists in each) and that lately all of
them ('even the Orthodox') had begun to adopt modern,
56 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

'American', methods of mass work and were attracting youth

via special services, study circles, choral societies and the like.
Therefore, opposition to religion must be pressed; and it
approved the change from non-religious to anti-religious
education in the school system. 56 This, together with 'the
constitutional change on the rights of religious organizations
represents one of the greatest victories of the atheistic
movement'. The resolutions, then, despite their militancy,
warn against antireligious 'ultra-left anarchistic phrase-
mongering'.
The general resolution 'On the Immediate Aims of Anti-
Religious Struggle' and the resolution 'On Schools and Work
With the Children' demanded that no school or work days-off
be allowed on religious feast days and that days of rest should
not coincide with Church feasts. 57 The same year saw the
official replacement of the seven-day week by a six-day one-
five days of work, the sixth off. The antireligious propaganda
believed this would be a most effective means of preventing
believers from attending the Sunday liturgy. In addition, the
25th and 26th of December were proclaimed the Days of
Industrialization with obligatory presence at work. Yet, high
work absenteeism on religious feast days is reported as late as
1937. 58
The resolutions further proclaimed that local LMG bran-
ches should aim to effect total public ostracism of the clergy.
They ordered that priests should not be invited to private
homes. Soviet citizens should discontinue all donations to the
churches and pressure should be brought to bear 'on the trade
unions to refuse to perform any work for the churches (for
example, printing of religious literature, building of religious
temples, and so on)'. This LMG resolution preceded the
relevant Party decisions by one year. This was unquestionably
devised in order to boost the prestige of the LMG as the leader
in atheistic affairs and in order that the 16th Party Congress
( 1930) resolution on the trade unions should appear as a
res_Ponse to the will of the toiling masses. It called upon the
untons:

to pay particular attention to socialist education ... to the

systematic struggle against petty-bourgeois prejudices ... to
organize correctly and boost anti-religious propaganda,
struggle against anti-Semitism, narrow nationalism. 59
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 57

TheYoung Pioneer organizations were urged to participate

actively in antireligious struggle. 'Groups ofthe young Godless
must be formed at schools.' Children must be prevented by
Soviet authorities from serving as acolytes and from being
drawn into groups for home religious instruction.
In May 1930 the First All-Union conference of the godless
young pioneers took place in Moscow. As a consequence of the
CP Central Committee resolution calling off 'administrative
measures' against religion, during 1930-31 antireligious work
at the school in a number of places was weakened. But 1931 saw
the 5 September 1931 CPSU CC resolution calling for a full-
scale 'communist upbringing in the Soviet school', which was
immediately interpreted as active antireligious 'education'. By
the end of 1931 the LMG boasted that out of the total of
20 000 000 school-children 2 000 000 were LMG members, 60 a
rather modest proportion, hardly substantiating the claim that
the majority of school-children were atheists.
Meanwhile, the main LMG congress of 1929 had gone
further and took the armed forces to task for ignoring the
antireligious instruction of soldiers. One of its longest resolu-
tions (consisting of fourteen pages), 'On the Work in the Red
Army', details a programme of a most active and intensive
antireligious re-education of draftees and other military
personnel. Three years later the LMG was boasting of its
successes in the armed forces, where its cells began to be set up
on a systematic basis in each unit after 1927. However, the only
figure the author cites belongs to 1925 when a survey of one
army unit produced the following data: 28 per cent of the
recruits remained religious believers at the end of their service
term, 32 per cent had lost faith as the result of antireligious
education in the army; that is, 60 per cent of the recruits had
been believers at the time of their recruitment. The author
claims that thanks to the atheistic re-education work in the
armed forces 10 000 demobilized soldiers went back to the
villages as propagandists of collectivization and industrializa-
tion and as atheistic village culture-dub organizers (that is 10
per cent of the 100 000 such propagandists sent in that year to
the villages). 61 Quite a different picture was presented some
nine years earlier by a communist publicist and sociologist, Ya.
Yakovlev, whose book, The Villageasltls, was highly acclaimed
at the time in the Soviet press and widely quoted. He describes
how ex-Red Army soldiers who had joined the Communist
58 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

Party while in the army, were now concealing their past party
membership from their neighbours as well as from the author,
only on occasion admitting that the idea was being abused by
the Soviet reality. 62 It is not certain whether this contrast is
evidence of improvement or of changed police and censorship
regulations, but judging by the opportunistic zig-zags in the
LMG propaganda lines, the latter is more likely. For instance,
in the 1920s the propaganda against the Church was that she
had supported the 'Imperialistic War' of 1914, preached
unqualified patriotism denying the importance of class differ-
ences, and thus was the enemy of the working class. It was
likewise asserted that the sectarians had supported the Tsarist
war efforts and had served in the army, but under the Soviets
declared themselves pacifists, refusing to bear arms not out of
religious principles but out of hostility to socialism. In contrast,
by 1938-9 the line of the antireligious attack was that a
Christian could not be a reliable soldier because Christianity is
fundamentally anti-war, preaches love of one's enemy and
turns the other cheek, instead of resisting the enemy. 63 So much
for ~he principles; but let us return to the second Congress once
a gam.
The general resolution ends with an instruction to the trade
unions, the Komsomol, the departments of education and
consumer co-operatives to treat 'anti-religious propaganda as
an inseparable part of their work and to provide regular
funding for it'.
A separate resolution 'On the Sectarian Movement' rejected
the earlier preferential treatment for the sects and declared
unrelentless war against them on the same terms as any other
religion, stressing, however:
the necessity to distinguish the mass ofrank-and-file sectarians from
the top strata who are fully conscientious class enemies of the
Soviet power, and counterrevolutionaries.
There is a characteristic statement at the end of the
resolution that 'religious temples should be shut only with the
agreement of the majority of the working population'. There is
no qualification that this majority must consist of or at least
contain religious believers, let alone members of the given
religious confession. Henceforth, many churches and temples
of all religions were closed by means of organizing a meeting at
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 59

a local club or factory where an open vote was taken under

pressure. Genuine believers who were willing to risk their social
and employment status by defending the church often found
themselves in the minority. A characteristic case in point was a
huge plant in a suburb of Moscow, the Trekhgornaia Factory,
where of its 8000 workers, 3000 fought for the retention and
reopening of the factory settlement church. The reports on the
case were at variance with each other: some publications
emphasized the 'revolting' situation of 3000 workers being still
in the nets of the obscurantist clergy while others boasted that
5000 were in favour of transforming the church into a factory
club (without elaborating whether this was a case of a genuine
vote or just a mathematical subtraction of 3000 active believers
from the total, and the subsequent assumption that all the
others wanted the church closed). 64 Even in cases where the
vote for the closure of a church did take place, part of the
reason may have been the result of antagonism between the
sectarians and the Orthodox. At least one Soviet author wrote
that in some cases the sectarians voted with the atheists to close
an Orthodox church. 65 The reverse could also occur, particu-
larly as long as there was preferential treatment of the
sectarians by the Soviets; hence the Orthodox often saw them
as 'pink'.
The resolution 'On Youth' expressed concern with the
passive attitude of the Komsomol to the campaign against
religion. It stated that in some areas Komsomol branches had
fallen apart under the impact of the activities of the Orthodox
Church and the sectarians or:
become a tool of anti-Soviet policies at the hands of local
religious organizations . . . members of the Komsomol
participate in religious feasts. The percentage of young
people expelled from the Komsomol for religious convic-
tions has increased in some areas (the Urals, Vladimir).
Most Komsomol organizations ignore anti-religious work
... only 2 1/2 per cent of the Komsomol membership have
joined the SVB.
and conversely: 'the majority of SVB organizations ignore
work with the youth' .66 This is a very strange admission. Does it
mean that as early as 1929 Soviet atheistic activism was already
mostly represented by the older generation?
60 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

The resolution 'On the Press' took the general Soviet

publications to task for paying too little attention to active
atheism. It declared that it was their duty to join the front of
active attack on religion, because 'struggle against religion is a
political struggle'.
In the resolutions on education the Congress urged the most
active antireligious education of children from the very first
grades and the establishment of antireligious departments in
all institutions of higher learning. 67
Two years later a leading antireligious propagandist and
theorist, N. Amosov, added that antireligious education at
grade schools was not enough: 'All LMG councils must fully
participate in the development of anti-religious work among
pre-school children. '68
As we have already seen, the Second LMG Congress was
obviously allowed to mobilize all public organizations for the
struggle against religion, with special emphasis on the Komso-
mol. Indeed, the Komsomol Programme adopted at its 1Oth
Congress in 1936 stipulated the following:
The Komsomol patiently explains to the youth the harmful-
ness of superstitions and of religious prejudices, organizing
for this purpose special study circles and lectures on anti-
religious propaganda.
The Statute adopted at the same Congress stipulated that it
was the duty of every Komsomol member 'to struggle against
the remnants of religious prejudices' .69 The remarkable
growth of the LMG between 1929 and 1932 was evidently
mostly due to the imposition of LMG membership on the
Komsomol. However, its subsequent decline and its admission
that 'only 45 percent of the LMG membership dues were paid
during the first quarter [of 1933] and even less in the next
quarter' and that in a city boasting several thousand members
only seven persons turned out to be genuinely interested in the
work of combating religion 70 - all this indicates that the new
recruits to the mass membership of the Komsomol were a
rather unreliable and unenthusiastic lot, although the formal
statistical growth figures are remarkable indeed. The All-
Union League of the Godless grew from 87 000 members in
1926 to half a million in 1929. Although it officially aimed at
17 000 000 members in 1931, it seems to have peaked in 1932
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 61

with 5 670 000 members (at least on paper). Thereafter the

membership began to decline to under two million in 1938,
rising somewhat again to about 3.5 million in 1941, its last year
of prominence. The League put out masses of publications in
most languages of the USSR. During the peak year, 1941, it
published ten atheist newspapers and twenty-three journals.
Here are some of the circulation figures for its periodicals. The
weekly Bezbozhnik newspaper reached 500 000 copies per issue
in 1931. The circulation of the illustrated monthly journal by
the same name (except for 1928-32, when it appeared
fortnightly) and also edited by Yaroslavsky, published since
1925, grew from 35 000 in 1928 to 200 000 in 1931. After 1932
the circulation dropped to 150 000. By 1938 the circulation of
the monthly grew to 230 000, declining to 155 000 again in the
following year. Meanwhile, Bezbozhnik u stanka grew from a
monthly with 70 000 copies per issue in 1924 to a fortnightly
journal in 1929, but its circulation continued to waver between
50 000 and 70 000 until its final closure in 1932. Yaroslavsky's
'scholarly-methodological' monthly of the LM G Central Coun-
cil Antireligioznik (The Antireligious) appeared in 1926. By
1929 each issue contained about 130 pages and had a
circulation of approximately 17 000, climbing to 30 000 in the
following year, but declining to 27 000 in 1931. In those years
efforts were obviously being made to publish some theoretical
and scholarly material in it. But by the late 1930s its contents
became hoplessly dreary, primitive and repetitious. Its size was
reduced to sixty-four pages by 1940, but many issues appeared
as double issues for two months at a time and consisted of eighty
pages. The circulation varied between 40 000 and 45 000 in the
last two years ofits existence, and it folded up in 1941. 71 An Anti-
religious Textbook for Peasants was issued in six editions between
1927 and 1931, with a circulation of 18 000 for the first edition
and 200 000 for the sixth. A similar textbook for the urban
reader appeared in 1931, followed by a universal-
amalgamated textbook. One of the most aggressive pioneers of
LMG, I. A. Shpitsberg, began publishing a journal of'atheistic
scholarship' in the late 1920s called Ateist. Its editor in 1931
became P. Krasikov who changed the name to Voinstvuiushchii
ateizm (Militant Atheism), a strange name for a scholarly
journal, and its publisher was the LMG Central Council. Its
'scholarship' obviously did not fare very well, for the following
62 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

year it was swallowed up by Antireligioznik. From 1928 to 1932 a

journal for peasantsDerevenskii bezbozhnik (The Rural Godless)
was published. There is a glaring contradiction between the
claim that peasants loved it so much 'that each issue would be
literally read to tatters' and the fact that it ceased publication by
the end of 1932. More probably the religious persecutions and
the forced collectivization, together with the artificially in-
duced famine designed to break the peasants' resistance
( 1932 -3), antagonized them so much that the regime thought
it wiser to discontinue this 'popular' publication. Vorontsov
also mentions cases oflynchings of atheist propagandists in the
villages, and speakers at the second plenum of the LMG
Central Council ( 1930) openly admitted cases of the murder of
antireligious agitators by the population. 72
To sum up the post-1929 publications ofthe LMG, the non-
serial antireligious literature alone grew from a total of 12
million printed pages in 1927 to 800 million in 1930. In 1941
sixty-seven books and brochures of antireligious propaganda
were printed with a total circulation of 3.5 million copies. 73
There is no information available on the numbers of these
publications actually bought by the public.
From 1926 to 193 7 the League 'trained a whole army of anti-
reljgious propagandists and organizers of anti-religious work
among the masses'. Their work differed from the 1921-5
period, according to Vorontsov, in the following respects:
First, their work became more systematic and of a mass
character. Secondly . . . more varied means of ideological
influence were used ... e.g. the cinema and the network of
anti-religious museums. Instead of anti-religious carnivals at
Easter and Christmas, special campaigns of lecture cycles
were practised.
[Thirdly] ... no debates between the atheists and believers
were practised any more, as a rule, after 1929. Instead, there
were mass meetings at which former clergymen who had
broken with religion, gave talks. 74
Why were public debates discontinued? To answer this
question we have already cited the case of Martsinkovsky,
which disproved the official Soviet claims, that the religious
apologists were invariably beaten at such debates. Soviet
practice is generally to suppress that which does not serve their
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 63

cause- for example, crime statistics or, much more recently,

child mortality rates since 1974 when they began to rise. 75 An
excellent admission of this policy is contained in a 1930
publication by one of the top three LM G leaders. It ad vised that
social surveys of believers in school classes where the majority
of pupils 'are religious believers, is harmful', 76 and that
questionnaires should be used only where the results would be
predictably favourable to the Soviet cause. Therefore it may be
safely concluded that by the end of the 1920s Soviet leaders
were convinced that the atheistic orators generally failed in
open and public confrontations with religious apologists. As to
the reliance on clergy-renegades, a Soviet source claimed that
from the ranks of the Orthodox clergy their total number had
run into several hundreds in the 1930s; that is out of a total of
forty to fifty thousand- not a very impressive achievement in
the face of the tremendous pressures and persecutions the
clergy was enduring as the only alternative to reneging.
An illustration of the real worth of Soviet social surveys based
on the principle of 'surveying' only that which serves their
interests, was the well-publicized survey of 12 000 Moscow
industrial workers in 1929 on their attitude to religion.
Although the questionnaires 'were completely anonymous'
(the Soviet author does not say how anonymous was the
method of distribution and collection of the questionnaires), in
a climate of gathering clouds of persecution only 3000
returned the questionnaires completed. Predictably the vast
majority of these respondents, in fact 88.8 per cent, turned out
to be atheists. Consequently the press and propagandists
hailed the results as demonstrating that nearly 90 per cent of
the Moscow industrial proletariat were convinced atheists. 77
No better and no more reliable was the leader ofLMG. In the
Lunacharsky vein adopted by the LMG at the time, a 1934
textbook on atheism for the peasants, approved and prefaced
by Yaroslavsky, admits that religion is not only the domain of
illiterate masses, but that there are sincere believers among the
intellectuals as well. Three years later in a brochure in English
for American readers the same Yaroslavsky asserted that
scholars and scientists who claim to believe in God are simple
deceivers and swindlers; none of them is sincere. 78
We may remember that by that year a new wave of religious
persecutions including mass arrests and closure of urban
64 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

churches was sweeping the country after the 1930-33 lull,

which followed Stalin's 1930 article 'Dizziness From Success'
and his secret instruction of the same year. Immediately
thereafter antireligious printed propaganda, particularly in
the pages of Kom. pravda was toned down and reduced in
quantity to a fraction of its 1929 volume. This says much about
the independent policy stands of Soviet public institutions.
Soviet authors now ridicule those Western scholars who
claim that a secret five-year plan was adopted at the time to
annihilate organized religion in the USSR. Yet the antireli-
gious press officially stated in 1930 that an 'antireligious five
year plan was adopted by the Second Plenum of the LMG
Central Council'. Although officially it only set LMG member-
ship goals (17 million members in five years) and concentrated
its propaganda on the LMG's assistance to the government in
fulfilling the economic Five-Year Plan, subsequent events
suggest that the annihilation of religion was one of their
unpublished aims. 79
The atmosphere in, and the prerogatives granted to, the
LMG are vividly reflected in the report on its Central Council
Second Plenum cited above, when the Peoples' Commissariat
of Enlightenment spokesman was heckled for the insuffi-
ciently active attack on religion through the school system.
Particularly singled out for criticism was Glavnauka, Chief
Administration for Science and Scholarship. The spokesman
assured the audience that the institution had been reformed
and, as praiseworthy evidence of this, stated that it had reduced
the total number of historical buildings under its protection
(mostly ancient churches and monasteries) from 7000 to 1000.
'This is a measure of considerable progress,' he said, the logical
implication being that the destruction of all monuments of past
culture would be a triumph of total progress. 80
And yet two years later we find Soviet press criticism of the
LMG for allegedly reducing antireligious struggle. Moreover,
at the height of Stalin's 'final solution' of the Church question,
antireligious museums were closing down, chairs of 'scientific
atheism' were closed even in such institutions as the University
of Moscow. Indeed, even the figures for atheist lectures and
publications suggest a decline in 1940-41. Although 239 000
antireligious public lectures were delivered to a total audience
of 11 million in 1940, this adds up to an average audience of
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 65

under fifty per lecture. Even the combined total circulation

figure of 6 million for the three Russian antireligious periodi-
cals in 1941 was considerably smaller than the 1931 total;
moreover, the mass circulation weekly Bezbozhnik seems to have
ceased publication altogether, having been absorbed by its
namesake monthly. The League's membership, as we have
seen, declined from 5 760 000 in 1932 to 3.5 million nine years
later.
Did the terror morally alienate sincere atheists from the ugly
persecutions of believers? It is more likely that the centralized
terror of the 1930s could not tolerate any forms of autonomous
organizations, even the atheistic ones, and simply destroyed
everything that was in any way prominent in its wake, including
organized atheism. These may have been factors. But another,
and more important, factor must have been the changing of
Stalin's mood. On the one hand, he must have lost patience with
the LMG when its leader admitted in 1937 that a third of the
urban and two-thirds of the rural population were still
practising religious believers despite the flood of antireligious
propaganda and persecutions. 81 On the other hand, the
'campaign' may have achieved its purpose in Stalin's opinion:
organized religion had practically ceased to exist, and this for
Stalin's totalitarian frame of mind was more important than the
faith of an individual citizen, pushed by the terror system into
isolation and thus less likely to congregate into communal
expressions of religious life. Finally, war clouds were gathering
on the horizon, and Stalin needed some consolidation, patriot-
ism, and unity of the nation in place of the divisive onslaughts of
Marxist purism and atheism. It was no coincidence that the
leading official Soviet history journal published an article in
1937 on the meaning of Russia's conversion to Christianity in
the tenth century. The author, a very respectable historian
Bakhrushin, praised that event as having opened Russia to
contemporary universal European culture by way of the most
advanced state and centre oflearning and art of the time, which
was Byzantium. 82 Henceforth, this attitude to Russia's Christ-
ianization became official Soviet doctrine. Yet, wild attacks on
the contemporary Church and believers continued well into
1938. In line with the Great Purges, Yaroslavsky declared that a
purge of 'several hundred reactionary zealots of religion'
among the millions ofbelievers was necessary. The clergy were
66 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

attacked as foreign spies, and several trials ofbishops with their

clergy and lay adherents were reported as 'unmasked nests of
foreign spies' and 'subversive terroristic gangs'. It was only in
1939, when the likelihood of a major war appeared on the
horizon, and especially after the annexation of the territories in
the west (1939-40),that the tone changed. The same Olesh-
chuk who a year earlier 'reported' the 'unmaskings' and spoke
about the clergy and religious laity as enemies, was now
claiming that:
Only an insignificant minority [of people] in the ranks of
religious organizations consists of hostile-class elements ....
tha majority of believers are our people, backward workers
and collective farmers.
A year later he reprimanded the antireligious activities and
activists in the recently annexed western Ukraine and Belorus-
sia for being overzealous and too aggressive, saying this only
foments religious fanaticism. From the 'lofty' rostrum of the
chief ideological mouthpiece of CPSU, he even advised not
setting up LMG cells in those areas for the time being. 83
This changing climate is well reflected in what was probably
the last of Yaroslavsky's programmatic statements before the
factual discontinuation of the LM G' s work and the closure of its
last periodicals in September 1941. Addressing the All-Union
conference of the officials of antireligious museums on 28
March 1941, Yaroslavsky warned against the tendency of the
'simplifiers of anti-religious propaganda' to condemn all
believers as:
blind ignoramuses and total idiots .... It is wrong to think
that the dozens of millions of religious believers are all ...
idiots . . . pitiful cowards and spiritually empty indi-
viduals .... There are many completely loyal Soviet citizens
still possessing religious beliefs and superstitions.
And he called for patient, tactful, and mostly individual
person-to-person work, without offending the believer, but re-
educating him, and suggested a differentiated methodology,
depending on the area and region. In some areas, he said,
religion has almost wholly withered away; in others, particu-
larly in the recently annexed western provinces and new Soviet
republics (the Baltics and Moldavia), where religion is still
 Antireligious Policies, 1917-41 67

powerful, there ought not to be a brutal offensive. Indeed, in

the partofhis speech where he boasted about the achievements
of atheistic work in these newly Sovietized regions, he cited only
one figure: a mere seventy-five attendants at the first-ever
course for atheistic propagandists in Estonia; that is in a
population of 1 200 000. Granted, the course was organized in
Tallin's Russian Workers' Club, but he stressed that the
students came from the whole 'republic'; and even if only
Russians attended, there were over 150 000 Russians living in
Estonia at the time.
He called for moderation, and yet when he says there were
very few attempts to reopen, let alone build new churches, he
presents this as evidence of the total decline of religion in the
Soviet Union, as if he did not know by what means the number
of churches across the whole Union was reduced from over
40 000 in 1929 to considerably less than 1000 a decade later. He
called for moderation, and yet when he cites the few examples
of renewed petitions to reopen a church, he brands the
initiators of the campaign as former kulaks and falsifiers of
figures. In one case he claims that there were only between ten
and fifteen kolkhoz peasants who really wanted to reopen a
church but that they fraudulently reported there were 533; yet
he does not explain how eleven to fifteen collective farmers
could muster 10 000 roubles for repairing the church! 84 All his
assurances do not tally with his own admission only four years
earlier, that over 50 per cent of the population still believed in
God; nor do they answer the question why 50 per cent of the
population were left with only a handful of temples to serve
them? A revealing answer to these contradictions arrived less
than five months after Yaroslavsky's address, when the Soviet
population occupied by the Germans and Rumanians re-
opened and rebuilt thousands of churches and rushed to them
in their millions. 85
Three months after the Nazi attack on the USSR, in
September of 1941, the last antireligious periodicals were
closed down. The reopening of churches in the German-
occupied territories required the Soviet Government to make
some concessions to the believers at home, in order to rally
them to the defence of the country. The liquidation of the LM G
itself took place very discreetly somewhere between 1941 and
1947. 86
68 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

The result of a decade of LMG activities with the full co-

operation of the OGPU-NKVD was the reduction in the
number of all overtly functioning religious communities of all
faiths, according to official Soviet data, from more than 50 000
in 1930 to 30 000 by 1938, and 8000 in 1941, on the eve of the
German attack. This last figure, however, includes the
annexed western territories with atleast 7000 religious temples
of different denominations (Orthodox, Roman Catholic,
Protestant, Jewish). In other words, the 1938-9 holocaust
resulted in the closing (and very often destruction) of some
30 000 temples, despite Soviet admissions in 1937 that 'the
number of believers in some areas ... exceeds that of the
atheists', and that on the average some 66 per cent of rural and
33 per cent of urban dwellers were practising religious
believersY
With the outbreak of war the 'unemployed' Yaroslavsky
decided to seek a more lucrative metier: 1942 saw the publica-
tion of his article on the Orthodox Christian writer and Russian
nationalist Dostoevsky. The subject was Dostoevsky's alleged
hatred of the Germans. 88
This metamorphosis of one who is still being hailed in the
Soviet atheistic press as one of the country's most dedicated
Marxist ideologues, is a fine comment on the ideology and its
adherents. However, a true Marxist-Leninist might explain
this in terms of dialectics: the historical moment of the time
necessitated the upholding of rational traditions and non-
Marxist values so that the Marxist state could survive and
return to the promotion of world Communism and antireli-
gious struggle in the more secure times to come.
3 The Post-War Atheistic
Scene: A Renewal of the
Offensive
FROM THE WAR TO KHRUSHCHEV

The lull in atheistic attacks against the Church did not last very
long. Already in September 1944 when victory was beyond
doubt, the Central Committee issued a decree calling for
renewed antireligious efforts through 'scientific-educational
propaganda'. Party members were reminded of the need to
combat 'survivals of ignorance, superstition, and prejudice
among the people'. Another Central Committee resolution,
calling for the intensification of atheistic propaganda by the
mass media, was issued in 1945, soon after the end ofthewar. 1
As long as Stalin lived, the renewed atheistic propaganda was
mostly limited to words, and was only rarely accompanied by
direct harassment or acts of vandalism. The main target of
verbal attacks was the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican
in particular; although on the local level Orthodox bishops,
parish priests and believers had to fight for the survival of
churches opened during and immediately after the Second
World War. Here and there local officials of the Council for the
Affairs of the Orthodox Church did close some parishes and
made life difficult, particularly for the bishops, by trying to
prevent any disciplinary measures that the bishops might take
against immoral or otherwise unworthy clerics and church
activists. Such actions by state officials were quite legitimate in
terms of the 23 January 1918 Decree depriving the Church of
the status of a legal person, and of the two latest Constitutions
implicitly denying the Church the status of a social organiza-
tion. Such deliberate undermining of church discipline was
further facilitated by the 16 March 1961 Instruction of the
Council for the Russian Orthodox Church Affairs (CROCA)
and the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults (CARC),
which explicitly forbade 'Religious centres, religious associa-

69
70 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

tions and the clergy ... to apply any measures of force or

punishment.' 2
Although no centralized brutal attacks against the Church
occurred under Stalin in the post-war period, the year 194 7 was
marked by a definite escalation of the antireligious campaign.
For the first time since the end of the war the Communist Youth
daily, Komsomol'skaia pravda, emphatically declared that mem-
bership in the Young Communist League (Komsomol) was
incompatible with religious belief; Uchitel'skaia gazeta (The
Teachers' Newspaper) said the same thing about the teaching
profession, and again called for a resolute struggle against the
'false' theory of a merely non-religious education: it had to be
actively antireligious. 3 The first antireligious attacks in the
CPS U chief ideological organ Bol'shevik (renamed Kommunist at
the 19th Party Congress, 1952) appeared in 194 7 in one article
on education. Attacked, among other things, were Western
influences, weakness of the ideological content in the post-war
school and non-socialist attitudes to labour. They appealed to a
combination of Stalinist post-war Soviet-Russian nationalism,
Marxist ideology (Lenin's article on 'The National Pride of
Great Russians' being interpreted as the proper form of
nationalism), and Stalin's leadership. The official interpreta-
tion is that this type of patriotism is opposed to religious
survival. The latter must be combated. 4 But although this was
followed in the course of the next three years by numerous
ideological articles containing implied attacks on the religious
Weltanschauung, most of them avoided mentioning religion by
name, or did so in the context of attacks on the 'pernicious
influences of the imperialistic reaction . . . [its] idealism,
mysticism, clericalism [which] have become widespread in the
contemporary bourgeois natural sciences'. 5 One of the early
exceptions is a 1950 article which, inter alia, praises the
formation in 194 7 of the All-Union Society for the Dissemina-
tion of Political and Scientific Knowledge, or Znanie (Know-
ledge) for short, very much in the vein of the late Skvortsov-
Stepanov:
In contemporary conditions the propaganda of natural
sciences becomes particularly important. It helps ... to
overcome the capitalistic survivals in the mentality of people,
to overcome superstitions and prejudices [i.e., religion- D.
P.).6
 The Post-War Atheistic Scene 71

The 'USSR' volume of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia re-

affirmed the CPSU's resolute and unwavering negation of any
religion. Just as before the war, it was the Komsomol and its
periodicals which took a leading position in the active offensive
against religion.
As a Soviet publication later admitted in just so many words,
the above Z nanie society was formed as heir and successor to the
defunct LMG. But its diversified lecture and publications
programme, and its 'mass education' activities which become
the forum for its attacks on religion, made it a much cleverer
and more devious institution than the one it had replaced.
Already in 1950 it was claiming 243 000 full and associate
individual and 1800 institutional members. The very fact of
diversity allowed genuine scholars, even non-atheists, to
belong to it, and there was the added attraction that giving
popular lectures through the Znanie network paid well and
gave some fringe benefits. This did not mean that a scholar who
was a practising believer would be forced to deliver a lecture on
atheism, but it added extra prestige to an atheistic Znanie
lecturer who could boast that he belonged to the same society
as, say, Academician Kapitsa. The society began to grow by
leaps and bounds after the CPSU Central Committee resolu-
tion of20 June 1949, 'On the State of and Measures to Improve
the All-Union Society of ... Knowledge', which took the society
to task for the following reasons: ( 1) its membership to date was
only 34 000 full members and 16 200 associate members, with
only 10 per cent of all scholars participating; (2) 'The Society
does not pay sufficient attention to the propaganda of scientific
atheism'; (3) 'The Administration of the Society shows insuffi-
cient supervision over the quality and ideological content of the
lectures.'
The resolution then formulates the tasks of the Society: ( 1)
'The Society is to be transformed into a mass voluntary
organization of Soviet intelligentsia' ('voluntary' in the Soviet
Union ought to read 'compulsory-voluntary'). (2) The Society
is to concentrate in its lectures on such topics as: the communist
upbringing of the toilers; struggle against various expressions
of bourgeois ideology; the materialistic explanation of pheno-
mena of nature and of social life . . . (5) The administration of
the Society is to supervise more closely the 'ideological content
of the lectures'. 'All lectures are to be submitted to the
72 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

administration for approval prior to their delivery.' 7 There is

no evidence that this 'Stalinist' instruction on close control and
pre-censorship of every word uttered in public by a Soviet
lecturer was ever abolished or amended, even in the subse-
quent post-Stalin 'liberal' years. Be that as it may, the resolution
was obviously implemented effectively, for by 1972 the society
grew to 2 457 000 members, including 1700 members of the
Union and Republican Academics of Sciences and 107 000
professors and doctors of sciences. In many cities the society
runs 'Houses of Scientific Atheism'. 8
The year 1950 seems to have been important for the renewal
of some form of attack on the Churches, but there probably
continued to be divisions in the ideological establishment camp
on how to do it. On the one hand, it was in 1950 that the first
post-war issue of an academic atheistic periodical began to be
published by the USSR Academy of Science; on the other hand,
after the appearance of this first issue under the title Voporosy
istorii religii i ateizma, four years went by and Stalin was dead
before the next issue came out. 9 Either Stalin himself did not
like the content and blocked its further publication, or else he
felt that pressure against religion could be increased by the
well-tested administrative measures without too much intellec-
tualizing about it in highbrow volumes of some 300 pages. The
latter is more likely, because the increasing pressures on the
Church in the last five years of Stalin's reign do not indicate any
liberalizing intentions on Stalin's part regarding religion. As
the above illustrations show, in 1950 the Soviet press summed
up the results of the three preceding years of cautious renewal
of antireligious propaganda, maintaining that religion would
not wither away on its own, therefore antireligious activity and
propaganda should be stepped up.
This is the conclusion that Khrushchev inherited, and he
unleashed the attack on religion on a scale which the post-war
Stalin (bound by the 1943 'concordat') had not dared to do.
Joan D. Grossman believes that it was the aged Bonch-
Bruevich who was the architect of Khrushchev's assault against
religion. But this is very unlikely. Indeed, Bonch-Bruevich was
one of the editors (and perhaps the founder) of the antireli-
gious academic periodical mentioned above, and was active in
the revival of atheistic propaganda until his death in 1955. His
last major publication stressed the rights of religious believers
 The Post-War Atheistic Scene 73

in Soviet society, the principle of the separation of Church and

state, and the alleged freedom of conscience under the Soviet
constitution. In his arguments in favour of religious freedom
he cites whatever communist authorities he can find (Stalin in
1913, Malenkov in 1952). Just before his death he rewrote in
1954 his 1929 article on Lenin and religion in which he
emphasized Lenin's warnings against using force to suppress
religion. Moreover, when B.-B. was important in shaping the
Bolshevik antireligious policy he was in favour of courting and
'domesticating' sectarians and Old-Believers, whereas under
Khrushchev and even after his time the Protestant sects have
sometimes been attacked even more severely than the
Orthodox. 10
It is interesting that nextto the B.-B. article Voprosy ist. rei. i at.,
No.2 ( 1954), published Oleshchuk's highly aggressive antireli-
gious article, quoting passages from Lenin, which, in contrast
to those cited by B.-B., support a general attack on religion.
In 1954 there were also two controversial Central Committee
resolutions on religion. That of 7th July stated that both the
Orthodox Church and the sectarians were successfully attract-
ing the younger generations by the high quality of their
sermons, charity work (illegal since the 1929 legislation),
individual indoctrination, and the religious press. This 'activ-
isation of the Church has resulted in an increase of the number
of people ... participating in religious services'. The resolution
called on the Ministries of Education, the Komsomol and the
trade unions to intensify antireligious propaganda. Lack of
unity in the Soviet leadership after Stalin's death was made
evident by the fact that four months later (10 November 1954)
the other CPSU Central Committee resolution appeared
which criticized arbitrariness, the use of slander and libel
against the clergy and the believers, and insulting epithets in
the antireligious campaign.''
Therefore if B.-B., the old veteran of atheism, who certainly
had direct access to Khrushchev and was a very influential Old
Bolshevik, was the architect of any antireligious policy of the
time, it would have been the one reflected in theN ovember, not
the July, resolution, while Khrushchev's antireligious assault,
finally unleashed in 1959, was a realization of the July
resolution. Oleshchuk and the other surviving veterans of the
pre-war LMG were more likely the spirits behind the July
74 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

resolution and the subsequent persecutions. However, ideolo-

gical strategy disagreements delayed the attack; 1955 to 1957
were probably the most liberal years for religious believers
since 1947. But the offensive was not called off and an early
foreboding of an intensification of the antireligious campaign
to come could have been seen in the 1957 re-publication of
Yaroslavsky's pre-war book On Religion (0 religii). As to the
1954 resolutions, the November document called only for the
eradication of errors in the antireligious propaganda, not for
its abolition, while the July 1954 resolution had called on the
Academy of Sciences to participate prominently in the atheistic
offensive. Duty-bound, the Academy accepted a role in the
campaign in its decisions of 30 October 1954. Less than three
years later it began to publish its YearbookoftheMuseumofHistory
of Religion and Atheism; but a mass-circulation Znanie Society
monthly, promised in the July Resolution, had to wait until
September 1959, when it appeared under the title Nauka i
religiia (Science and Religion), with an abundance of slander-
ous antireligious material not unlike its pre-war predecessor,
Yaroslavsky's Bezbozhnik. In circulation, however, it never
matched the latter, growing from 100 000 copies per issue to a
peak of over 400000 in 1981-3, subsequently declining to
340 000-350 000.
Significantly, the editorial in the very first issue of Science and
Religion, setting the tone for the publication and its aims to aid
in the intensification of 'militant atheism' until 'the complete
eradication of religious superstitions' has been achieved, refers
to the then recent XXI CPSU Congress and its proclaimed
aim of 'the over-all construction of a communist society' as its
point of departure. This is an indirect confirmation of the
never-refuted rumours at the time that a secret resolution was
adopted at that congress to annihilate religious institutions in
the country during the implementation of the Seven-Year Plan
adopted at the congress. Yet, contradicting its promise of
militancy, the editorial warns against insulting believers'
feelings and the use of arbitrary force, and refers only to the 10
November 1954 Resolution. 12
Although the more aggressive July 1954 Resolution men-
tioned the Church press as a dangerous threat to atheism in the
USSR, at that time it consisted of only one Russian Orthodox
 The Post-War Atheistic Scene 75

monthly with a circulation of no more than 15 000 copies, 13 one

Baptist journal and a Ukrainian Orthodox journal - both
published six times a year, each with a circulation of perhaps
ten thousand copies or less. The Church publications appeared
in open sale in a few churches in the major cities for no longer
than an hour or two per issue and were very difficult to
subscribe to, while the number of atheistic pamphlets alone in
1950 equalled forty, with a total annual circulation of 800 000
copies, not to mention the atheistic monopoly in the education
and mass media. In addition, the Resolution ordered that:
the teaching of school subjects (history, literature, natural
sciences, physics, chemistry, etc.) should be saturated with
atheism ... the anti-religious thrust of school programmes
must be enhanced.
Indeed, every subsequently published school textbook became
even more emphatically assertive of atheism than before, with
such declarations as:
Religion is a fantastic and perverse reflection of the world in
man's consciousness .... Religion has become the medium
for the spiritual enslavement of the masses. 14
Predictably, it was the tougher July 1954 document rather
than the milder one of November that led to much greater
repercussions some five years later and proved to have been a
trial balloon for the persecutions of 1959-64. One looks in vain
for any printed pledges to stamp out religion or similar
statements in the official state and party documents. The
antireligious hints in them are even flimsier than in the pre-war
decade. For instance, the Central Committee report at the
20th Congress ( 1956) merely mentions 'survival of capitalism
in people's minds' which it will be 'impossible to stamp out ...
without the participation of the masses'. 15 This was followed by
a more explicit hint of things to come in Khrushchev's 1958
Theses on Educational Reform which emphasized the need to
develop a materialistic world-view in youth. Finally, the
euphemisms in the resolutions of the 21st Party Congress
( 1959) leave very little doubt of a forthcoming toughening up
of antireligious policies, particularly in the following passage:
76 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

in the ideological sphere: strengthening of the ideological-

educational work of the party, raising of the communist
consciousness in the toilers ... struggle against bourgeois
ideology. 16

An article in Pravda (21 August 1959) took the 'ideological

workers' to task for holding the mistaken view that now, once
the deepest roots of religion have been eliminated, the social
base of religion liquidated, the consciousness of the Soviet
people raised, the necessity for patient daily efforts to
overcome religious prejudices has allegedly disappeared. 17
The pre-war line that religion will not disappear on its own, for
'religious survivals possess exceptional vitality owing to the
stagnant and conservative nature of religious ideology', 18 is
restated once again. And, as in 1929, it is admitted that 'the
degree of religiosity . . . has increased in some areas of the
country'. We are told that between '1954 and 1960 the CPSU
Central Committee ... has emphatically restated the import-
ance of intensifying the atheistic work', although not a single
one of the published CC documents since the above two of 1954
ever mentioned atheism by name. Thus the context of this
assertion must be found by reading the party documents
between the lines, and understanding clearly that 'struggle
against the bourgeois ideology, reactionary ideas, capitalist
survivals', and so forth, stands for struggle against religion.
Again, as in the pre-war era and as mentioned in relation to the
secret Seven-Year Plan, there were secret instructions about
which the poor churchmen could only guess.
For the first time since 1941 the pre-war LMG veteran,
Kryvelev, reappeared in Kommunist of that year, although the
thrust of his attack was directed to contemporary trends in
Western theology, especially its allegedly reactionary, anti-
Soviet, anti-scientific character. All the other ideological
antireligious articles which by 1959 were appearing in almost
every issue of Kommunist attacked religion mostly by using such
euphemisms as: survivals of the old ideology, superstitions,
prejudices, petty-bourgeois ideological survivals and the like. 19
In 1959 there was introduced an obligatory course of 'The
Foundations of Scientific Atheism' in all institutions of higher
learning. 20 But it was the 9 January 1960 Central Committee
 The Post-War Atheistic Scene 77

Plenum Resolution 'On the Tasks of Party Propaganda in

Modern Times' which openly and emphatically called for the
escalation of an antireligious attack in terms much closer to the
July than the November 1954 Resolution. It took local party
organizations to task for a 'passive, defensive attitude to the
idealistic religious ideology, hostile to Marxism-Leninism', and
called for 'an active offensive struggle against bourgeois
ideology, hostile to Marxism-Leninism'. There were no in-
structions to avoid offending believers or anything of that kind
in this resolution, which emphasized in terms reminiscent of
the 1928-40 era that religion was hostile to the official ideology
of the Soviet state and remained incompatible with it. 21 This
resolution set off a flood of antireligious articles in Kommunist
and other Soviet periodicals in 1960 and the following year; for
example, the chief philosophical monthly of the Academy of
Sciences, Problems of Philosophy (Voprosy filosofii) published
thirteen major antireligious articles in 1960 under its new
rubric of'Marxist-Leninist Ethics and Scientific Atheism'. This
is in contrast to the absence of any major militantly atheistic
articles in that journal in 1959, only two or three in 1958
(including one by the LMG veteran Oleshchuk), none in 1957
and one by the leading Soviet ethnographer Tokarev in 1956.
The programmatic editorial for this 'new' course appeared in
the March 1960 issue of the periodical under the title 'For the
Creative Development of the Issues of Scientific Atheism',
which in its turn referred to the above CPSU Central
Committee Plenum Resolution of 9 January 1960. The
editorial also mentioned a 15-17 June 1959 All-Union
conference on atheism organized jointly by the Academy of
Sciences and the Znanie Society, in which 800 scholars and
propagandists of atheism participated. The report of the
Znanie Society board to its III Congress mentioned fifteen
inter-republican and republican, and 150 provincial, confer-
ences and seminars dedicated to the question of'improving the
ideological and scientific contents of atheistic propaganda'
which had occurred in the course of 1959, with the total
participation of over 14 000 propagandists. The report criti-
cized the illiteracy of many propagandists, lecturers and
authors; for example, a cartoon in Science and Religion
(subsequently NiR) depicts Adventists as praying before an
78 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

icon, and an article in the same publication calls the Hebrew

Talmud 'a prayer book held by believers in their hands' during
services in synagogues. And it called for immediate publication
of a basic textbook on scientific atheism, which in fact soon
appeared. Its third edition in 1964 was issued with a circulation
of 50000. 22
Leonid Il'ichev, who then headed the CC Ideological
Commission (formerly Agitprop), in his 1959 Kommunist article
had still used language of euphemisms; but in 1960 he attacked
the Church unequivocally in a most aggressive manner. He
admitted that the new line was born at the XXI Party Congress,
which proclaimed the communist society as inseparable from
an atheistic upbringing of the toilers. He also hinted why
suddenly it was necessary to renew and escalate the attack on
religion, when he said religious concepts were being dissemi-
nated 'particularly [by] the sectarians and the Roman Catholic
clergy. Hence ... the struggle against religious ideology must
be escalated ... particularly the educational work with indi-
vidual believers.'23 The latter phrase was menacingly reminis-
cent of the late 1930s. This policy was endorsed by a plenary
session of the Komsomol Central Committee in 1961. Com-
munist party cells at places of work or study, similar Komsomol
branches, local sections of the Znanie Society and trade-union
branches appointed atheist members as personal tutors in
atheism to known religious believers, in most cases their
workmates. They visited these believers at their homes, and
tried to convince them. If this did not work, they would bring it
to the attention of their union or professional collectives, and
these cases of 'religious backwardness' and 'obstinacy' were
aired at public meetings. 24 Should all these efforts prove
fruitless, then followed administrative harassment at work or
school, not infrequently culminating in lower-paid jobs,
blocking of promotion, or expulsion from college if the
believer was a student. Physical harassment ofbelieving school-
children by their teachers was also common. 25 There was a
concerted campaign in the early 1960s to induce priests and
theologians to defect to the atheist camp; this reaped a harvest
of over 200 such defectors, including two theology teachers,
one priest and one layman. 26 These efforts, however, were soon
abandoned after it was realized that the defections and their
loud publicity had little effect on believers, for most of the
 The Post-War Atheistic Scene 79

defectors had not commanded the love, devotion and faith of

their parishioners to begin with. 27
In 1960, as in 1929, the general school was criticized for
insufficiently active antireligious education. A collective open
letter to the RSFSR Minister of Education, citing instances of
practising believers among school pupils, accused the school of
ignoring its duty to wipe out religious 'superstitions'. Charac-
teristically, it described believing parents in pejorative terms as
'fanatics', and active believers and clergy as 'swindlers' who fool
and cheat people in order to catch them in their nets.
Responding to this letter, the Minister stated that one of the
aims of Khrushchev's 1959 educational reform of polytech-
nisation of the secondary school was to make education more
effectively atheistic. A special instructional letter from the
Ministry of Education of February 1959 obliged school
administrations to take measures to make education truly
antireligious, wherefore in the course of 1959-60 Darwinism
and 'the origins oflife on earth' began to be taught intensively,
and all natural sciences were subordinated to the purpose of
'developing a scientific-materialistic attitude in students to-
wards nature'. A whole series of books with a Marxist-
materialistic interpretation oflife and nature were issued at the
same time as additional school readers. Both the letter and
Minister's answer treat expressions of religious belief as a very
serious social epidemic. 28
The 1960 CC Plenum resolution called for the introduction,
beginning in 1961-2, of special courses of basic political
education in senior highschool grades, because 'It is indispens-
able ... that in the process of education students master the
materialistic Weltanschauung, the communist ideology.' And a
1961 report on the work of the Leningrad Museum of History
of Religion and Atheism boasts some achievements along the
lines of the 1960 resolution and the above articles. In the field
of individual work with believers, special schools training such
individual agitators were set up in Leningrad in 1958, proving
that there must have been secret instructions to this effect long
before the above plenum resolution. Two special 'universities
of atheism' were formed in Leningrad and several in its
province. One of the city 'universities' was run by Znanie, the
other by the Museum. They trained lecturers, propagandists
and agitators for individual atheistic work. Clubs of atheism
80 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

were formed for the masses at the local 'Palaces of Culture',

followed by the formation of special atheistic film clubs. 29
The 1961 22nd Party Congress, the one which publicly
denounced Stalin more broadly and fundamentally than the
20th Congress and which was hailed by many at the time as
launching a new era of liberal communism, escalated the
antireligious attack to new levels of intensity and intolerance
when it issued the new Communist Party Programme pro-
claiming the construction of Communism within twenty years.
Khrushchev followed closely Marx's imperative, 'Communism
begins at the outset with atheism', 30 when he declared:
It is impossible to take a man into communism who is covered
with a mass of capitalist prejudices. We must first emancipate
him from the burden of the past .... Man cannot develop
spiritually if his head is crammed with mysticism, prejudices,
false ideas .... Communist education presupposes the liber-
ation of the mind from religious prejudices and supersti-
tions.
Although none of the Congress resolutions spelled out
religion in so many words, Khrushchev in that Congress speech
called for the intensification of 'scientific-atheistic' education
to prevent the 'dissemination of religious ideas, especially
among children and adolescents'. This was sufficient for the
Soviet authors to interpret the 22nd Party Congress as having
drawn the attention of communists and of all progressive
humanity to the necessity for struggle against religion- for the
complete eradication of religious prejudices of all Soviet
people, who must be brought up in the spirit of a scientific
materialistic Weltanschauung. 31
The 22nd Party Congress's antireligious line was followed by
a militantly antireligious resolution of the 1962 14th Komso-
mol Congress, which called for a more 'concrete' attack on
religion, 'revealing its reactionary essence'. It also adopted a
new Komsomol Statute which declared that the duty of each
Komsomol member was 'the conduct of a resolute struggle
against ... religious prejudices'. 32 Kommunist and Vop. is. rel. i
at., not to mention the daily press, followed with a series of very
militant articles against religion in 1962 and 1963, calling it a
hostile phenomenon and ideology which must be eradicated by
every means. One of the most militant was written by our 'old
 The Post-War Atheistic Scene 81

friend' Oleshchuk calling for an even more intensive attack. 33

The militancy of the antireligious campaign definitely
gained momentum after the 'liberal' 22nd Party Congress. The
CPSU Programme adopted at the Congress declared that 'the
current generation of Soviet people will live under
Communism'; 34 this was officially interpreted by the Academy
of Sciences as an imperative 'to emancipate the consciousness
of Soviet citizens from all and every kind of survival of the old
exploiting society, including the religious survivals'. The
authors argued that this requirement gave paramount import-
ance to a decisive antireligious struggle and propaganda of
atheism. 35
Two CPSU Central Committee resolutions were issued on 6
July 1962. One was addressed to the party leadership of
Belorussia, the other to the provincial party administration of
the Kuibyshev Province. Both party administrations were
taken to task for insufficient activity in antireligious struggle. It
was decreed, for instance, that 'the population be persistently
educated in scientific atheism. An end must be put to the
dissemination of religious ideas, especially among children
and youth.' The instruction is definitive and categorical. Its
obvious meaning is that religion must be eradicated by any
means possible, even including direct persecution. In Soviet
practice such resolutions addressed to two or three individual
party administrations are always meant to be read as addressed
to the whole country and to be followed by all other party
administrations. And this was precisely how NiR interpreted
the resolutions. 36 During the same year the journal declared
editorially that it was the duty of every member of Soviet
intelligentsia to be a propagandist of atheism. 37 The period was
rife with all sorts of conferences on antireligious propaganda,
on methods of combating religion. 38 All this led up to the june
1963 ideological plenum of the Central Committee with its
mammoth speech by Il'ichev.
Il'ichev linked religion with Western 'ideological subversion'
of Soviet society and called the people who were still 'in the
hands of survivals of the past', 'amoral'. He stated that 'the
religious opiate' is 'one of the extreme forms of bourgeois
ideology', and advised 'a merciless war against all those who
stand in the way of building communism', that is, a merciless
war against religion. Although he treats religion almost
82 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

exclusively as a class phenomenon, a survival of the hostile

classes and their mentality, almost in the style of the left wing of
the LMG of the late 1920s, he admits that its vitality is such that
'where we don't work, the influence of the Church and the sects
grows'; and he calls for a militant, aggressive assault on
religion, although he uses the term 'scientific-atheistic prop-
aganda'. Stalin, he says, had a wrong interpretation of the class
struggle and its progression, the interpretation being that his
ceasefire with respect to religion after 1943 may also have been
wrong. No mercy or respect for believers' feelings is ever
mentioned in that speech, which came after four years of direct
and brutal persecution. On the contrary, Il'ichev scolded the
atheistic front for being too passive. This was soon followed by
his massive article in Kommunist in which he blamed the
relatively tolerant 1943-53 Soviet policies towards religions on
Stalin's abuse of the 'Leninist legality'; that is, the mounting
persecutions were being presented as a 'return to Leninist
principles', return to Soviet 'legality' (sic). 39 Thus Khrushchev
and his staff not only approved direct persecutions of religious
faith, but by presenting them as constitutionally legitimate
further helped to debase the concept of the rule of law in the
eyes of the population.

STREAMLINING FOR PERSECUTIONS

In preparation for the intensified campaign against the

Church, the Soviet Council of Ministers issued three instruc-
tions, none of which is to be found in the published Soviet
codes, aimed at the suppression and liquidation, wherever
possible, of monasteries and convents. One of them (of 16
October 1958) cancelled the tax exemptions on monastic
properties granted on 29 August 1945. The second one (of6
November 1958) introduced a very high tax on land lots
belonging to the monasteries of 40 r. per 0.01 ha. (4 post-1961
roubles). And the third one (also of 16 October 1958)
instructed republican ministries and local government to cut
the sizes ofland plots under monastic control and to study ways
and means of reducing the number of open monasteries. 40 The
reason for starting the campaign with an attack on monastic
institutions must have been twofold.
 The Post-War Atheistic Scene 83

First, there are no clear laws in the Soviet codes regulating

the legal status of monasteries and there are no groups of
twenty laymen to represent the monastic institutions (offi-
cially) to the civilian authorities. In fact, each monastery is
registered as an affiliate of the Moscow Patriarchate directly, in
a special resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. 41
But since the Church and all the ecclesiastical institutions and
dignitaries do not enjoy the status of full legal persons in Soviet
law, while the lay members of the 'twenties' do, it is easier to
suppress those church bodies which have no 'twenties' to
represent them (legitimately).
Second, monastic institutions perform an extremely impor-
tant spiritual function in the life of the Orthodox Christians, as
centres of pilgrimage, as centres for soul-searchingconfessions
and spiritual consultations with the recognized elders, and as
institutions reaffirming laymen in their religious commitment,
in strengthening the faith of the nation.
Thus, by closing the monasteries or aiming at this, the regime
was killing two birds with one stone by attacking the Church's
legally weakest link and depriving the religious masses of one
of the most essential parts of the spiritual diet. The tangible
five-year-long antireligious holocaust began in 1959, develop-
ing along the following lines: (i) mass closure of churches,
reducing their total number from some 22 000 to about 7000 by
1965; (ii) closure of monasteries and convents accompanied by
the reinforcement and reiteration of the 1929 legislation
banning organized or any other group pilgrimages either to
monasteries or to locally revered holy places, many of which
commemorated closed and destroyed monasteries or sites
where large groups of monastics had been executed in the
1920s or 1930s; (iii) closure of five of the then still existing eight
seminaries, accompanied by bans on the short intensive
pastoral courses periodically run by some bishops in the 1940s
and 1950s, thereby acutely intensifying the problem of clergy
replacement; (iv) strict banning of church services, even
private ones, outside the church walls, accompanied by an
order to record the personal identities and identification
documents of all adults requesting a baptism, church wedding
or funeral. Non-fulfilment of these orders, which amounted to
reporting the persons involved to the KGB, led to the
deprivation of state registration of the offending clergy,
84 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

without which no priest was allowed even to assist at a service

without the special permission of the state plenipotentiary for
religious affairs; (v) deprivation of parental rights for the
religious upbringing of children; (vi) secret instructions
banning the presence of children at church services and the
administration of Communion to children four years of age
and older; (vii) forced retirement, arrests, and prison sen-
tences meted out to priests and bishops on trumped-up
charges, but in fact for resisting the closure of churches, for
sermons attacking religious persecution and atheism, for
Christian charity and generally for making religion popular by
personal example; (viii) oral, and in some places local written,
orders, banning the ringing of church bells and the conducting
of daytime services in rural churches from May to the end of
October under the pretext of field work requirements,
although cinemas and clubs were not required to cease daytime
operations. 42
In 1960 the closing-down of seminaries began with those of
Kiev, Saratov and Stavropol, which either closed or ceased to
accept students. Before 1965 the seminaries of Volhynia and
Belorussia likewise ceased to exist. According to the former
secretary of the Volhynia Seminary, it was closed in 1964 under
the pretext of lack of students. In reality, the Volhynian
CROCA representative had ordered the seminary to provide
him with the lists of seminary applicants. He then instructed
the local armed forces recruitment offices to block the
candidates' de-registration at the recruitment points of their
residence. Even those who somehow managed to overcome
this obstacle were then refused residence permits in Lutsk
where the seminary was situated. Thus, over a period of several
years the seminary was literally drained of students. A similar
method was used to close the Belorussian Seminary, and
probably the others as well. 43 Yet the Soviet media misrepre-
sented this as a natural decline 'of the numbers of those willing
to enrol for theological studies', as a sign of the decline of
religious beliefs. 44
As had been the case thirty years earlier, all forms of mass
media were now being called upon to consolidate their
campaign against religion, and the process of atheistic re-
education was not to be limited only to special subjects in the
senior-school grades:
 The Post-War Atheistic Scene 85

It is indispensable that the pre-school institutions and

schools participate accordingly in the system of scientific-
atheistic education, as well as higher education establish-
ments, research institutions, museums and creative associa-
tions ... houses of culture, clubs, libraries, etc. 45

Like the League of the Godless before the war, so the Z nanie
Society was now leading to ideational onslaught against
religion. In January 1960 there was a high-level Znanie
conference on atheism with such important party bureaucrats
as Brezhnev, Kosygin, Mikoian, Suslov and others
participating. 46 Since within a few days after the conference two
republican first party secretaries (from Moldavia and Belorus-
sia) threatened to take measures to stop the violation of
'socialist legality' by churchmen, it is clear that the guidelines on
tactics adopted at that conference encouraged attacks on the
Church in the name of re-establishment of the Leninist legality.
This was fully in line with Khrushchev's attack on Stalin as a
man who had violated Leninism and the Leninist-socialist
legality; because of the 1943 oral concordat concluded between
Stalin and the surviving leaders of the Orthodox Church and
the bye-laws adopted at the 1945 Sobor (Council) of the Russian
Orthodox Church which flatly contradicted the whole volume
of Soviet legislation regarding the Church from 1918 to 1929.
The bye-laws reconstructed the strict hierarchical structure of
the Church, in which the bishop was the leader of the diocese,
and the parish priest of the parish, whereas the Soviet law knew
only groups of twenty lay persons. The fact that the Soviet
Government tacitly accepted the Church bye-laws without,
however, amending its own laws on these matters must have
meant that it viewed the situation as only a temporary compro-
mise. Stalin was repeatedly accused by Soviet leaders and the
press of having violated Lenin's decree on the separation of
Church and StateY A Soviet law invalidating all legislation
passed by the Nazi occupiers on Soviet territory held by them
during the war was invoked to close most of the churches and
monasteries reopened during the war on the territory occu-
pied either by the Germans or the Rumanians (Moldavia and
the Black Sea littoral from Bessarabia to Crimea). Since most of
the church re-openings during the war had in fact occurred in
the occupied territories, this law alone allowed the Soviets to
86 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

close some 65 of the 80-odd monasteries and convents and a

good many of the 15 000 Orthodox churches, which were
closed between 1959 and 1964. The fate of the religious
establishments of other faiths was very similar. 48 Many
churches during these years were liquidated in territory never
occupied by the enemy (for example, in the Kirov Diocese of
seventy-five churches functioning in 1950 only thirty-five
remained open in 1965). Here, other 'legal' means were used.
For instance, the law that a person's residence must be within
the area of his employment was invoked to ban missionary visits
by priests to parishes left without a priest. 49 At the same time the
local CROCA official ('plenipotentiary', as he is officially
called) would deprive a popular priest of a registration permit
on some pretext and then refuse to register any newly ordained
candidate for that parish, thus depriving the parish of clergy
services. Meanwhile, filling clerical vacancies was becoming
more difficult because of the closure of seminaries (only three
of the post-war eight remained by 1965) and of the special brief
pastoral-preparatory courses for mature candidates without
regular theological training, which used to be run periodically
by diocesan bishops until about 195 7-8; but then they were
banned, apparently by some unpublished Soviet instruction.
After the parish remained without a priest for over six months
the local soviet would close it on the grounds that the church was
not being used. 5° Another common means of closing a church
was to refuse to let the parishioners make major repairs. Then
the appropriate state commission could rule the building
unsafe for use, and the very soviet which had refused the repair
permit could now close it on those grounds. 5 1
Expanding on the law (1918 and 1929) banning religious
instruction for minors, children under 18 years of age were
forbidden to attend Baptist worship services in 1961, and by
the fall of 1963 the ban was extended to Orthodox churches as
well. In 1963 the Central Committee of the Komsomol urged
that services not be allowed to begin if children were present in
the church. 52 There is evidence that this stipulation was applied
under state pressure and threats until after the fall of
Khrushchev. Furthermore, the 14th Komsomol Congress
(April 1962) declared that 'freedom of conscience does not
apply to children, and no parent should be allowed to cripple a
child spiritually'. The top Soviet professional legal journal,
 The Post-War Atheistic Scene 87
Soviet Justice, added legal grounds on which parents could be
deprived of parental rights over their children by the state,
since that right is granted to the parents by the state to begin
with. 53 This could henceforth be applied to individual religious
families. And fifteen years later this practice was legalized
implicitly in the Constitution of the USSR of 1977 which makes
it ad uty of each Soviet citizen 'toed ucate the children so ... that
they become worthy members of the socialist society'. Since the
Communist Party is the 'vanguard of the whole people' of the
Soviet Union whose 'socialist society is ... on the road to
communism', and since one of the main aims of the socialist
state is the 'upbringing of members of communist society', the
above passage on parental family duties can be easily interpre-
ted (whenever the authorities might decide on the desirability
of such an interpretation) as a duty to bring up their children as
Communists, that is, as atheists. 54 Thus the deprivation of
parental rights on the grounds of religious beliefs becomes
quite legal. This shows that, if not in practice, at least in terms of
their legal status the situation of believers has not improved
since the fall of Khrushchev.
But let us return to the early 1960s. In March 1961 the USSR
Council of Ministers issued a decree 'On the Strict Observance
of the Laws on Religious Cults'. Four months later the Church
was forced to change her bye-laws radically in order to bring
them in line with Soviet laws. This decree deprived the priest of
all control over the parish: he became simply a hired employee
of the 'twenty' for the performance of religious rites. The party
thought it was easier to infiltrate groups of laymen associated
with the Church than the clergy, for in addition to depriving
the clergy of administrative powers, special 'Administrative
Commissions Attached to the Executive Committees of the
City Soviets of Workers Deputies' began to be set up in 1962 in
the context of Khrushchev's idea of involvement of public
organizations in state administration in preparation for the
future Communist society. But these commissions, made up of
members of local soviets and of representatives of other public
organizations were apparently meant mostly as disciplinarian
supervisors primarily over religious bodies, because their
instructions and prerogatives were included in an internal
manual on Soviet laws on religion for Soviet administrative
personnel; as from 1966 they began to be transformed into
88 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

'Commissions-in-Aid to the Executive Committees of the

Soviets of Workers Deputies on the Observance of Religious
Cults'. As they are meant to be set up locally and the above
manual contains only a 'Model Statute', there seem to be
multiple variants of the regulations of their work, make-up and
functions. One of such later regulations reads in parts:

3. The commissions are to be made up of politically literate

persons who can keep the religious societies under
completely close observation . . . Their membership
should consist of deputies of local Soviets, employees of
cultural and education establishments, financial organs
... propagandists ... and other local activists.

Commissions function on the approval of city and county

soviet executive committees
4. The functions of the commissions include:
(a) a systematic study of the religious situation ... the
contingent of people who frequent churches and
participate in religious rites, ... and the degree of
influence of the religious societies and the clergy on
the involvement of youth and children in the
church ....
(b) continuous study of the ideological work of the
church, sermons ... Ascertain who are the young
people whom the priests try to prepare for church
work ...

(d) study of the membership of religious societies (parish

organs) exposing their most active members ....
(e) ... expose all attempts by the clergy to violate Soviet
laws and immediately inform the state organs.
(f) help the financial organs to expose those priests who
perform religious rites illegally in private homes and
apartments ....
(g) expose . . . unregistered priests who illegally visit
towns or villages and perform religious rites there. 55

One of the main purposes of the commissions is the

finding of ways ... to limit and weaken activities of religious
societies and the clergy.
 The Post-War Atheistic Scene 89
The second part of the instructions deals with the groups of
twenty laypersons and is addressed to a county or village soviet
executive:
the groups of twenty in existence today ... are not reliable.
They consist almost entirely of ... illiterate fanatics ...
Try to recommend the formation of new twenties made up
of ... non-fanatical persons, who would sincerely fulfil
Soviet laws and your suggestions, instructions. When such a
twenty has been formed and its membership satisfies you,
only then sign a contract with it....
Letthe group of twenty ... elect its executive body .... I tis
desirable that you ... take part in the selection of members of
such an executive body and that [they be] ... those who carry
out our line ....
It is recommended that you not include priests, choir
directors, church watchmen ... and other people working
for the church into the groups of twenty. 56
The aim of this document was to divest the clergy of all direct
control over the parish and to make certain that the control was
entrusted to people who cared little, if at all, for the spiritual life
of the parish. Such personnel of the 'twenties' bred discontent
in the parish, often resulting in direct conflicts between the
priests and the executive organs of their parish, and turned the
latter into a tool of control of the clergy by the atheistic
government, as testified by many samizdat documents. 57 The
smooth transition and evolution of these bodies from Khrush-
chev's into Brezhnev's era, while many secular institutions were
changed, indicates once again the essential continuity of the
antireligious policies of these two periods.
The March 1961 decree emphatically reiterated the 1929
stipulations expressly forbidding the parishes to engage in any
form of charity, and forbidding religious centres to 'offer
financial aid to those parishes and monasteries which do not
enjoy the support oflocal population'. This was then used to
close many smaller parishes under the guise of their amalga-
mation with others, having made the barely solvent parishes
insolvent by such measures as, for instance, a ban on profit
from the sale of candles. The argument used here was that this
was a disguised form of soliciting obligatory payments to the
church, forbidden by the 1929 legislation (as if anyone was
90 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

being forced in the church to buy candles). 58 The process was

further facilitated by depopulation of rural areas, particularly
in central and northern Russia, the Urals and Siberia, owing to
intensive urbanization. Logically this should have led to the
proportional reopening of churches in urban areas. But this
did not occur, because of the authorities' resistance to the
opening of new churches.
The ban on aid to monasteries was very timely from the
Soviet point of view, for as early as 16 October 1958 a decree of
the Council of Ministers reintroduced a tax on monastery
buildings and land-holdings, abolished by a decree of the same
Council of Ministers in 1945, as discussed above. 59 Thus once
again, as in 1918, an attempt was made to squeeze much of the
Church out of existence by trying to starve her monasteries and
many of her parishes. This did not work; the Church and the
faithful came to the monasteries' aid. So the government's next
step in 1961 was to ban all charity to monasteries, but still most
of the monasteries survived until the direct administrative
closures of the following years. To justify this process it was
accompaniedbyamassiveanti-monasticcampaigninth epress,
where monasteries were depicted as parasitic institutions, with
fields and gardens tilled by exploited peasants while the monks
and nuns were enjoying the proceeds. Monasteries were
accused of black-market operations, and monastics oflechery
with nuns and female pilgrims, and of drunkenness. Monastic
administrators were accused of collaboration with the enemy
during the war. And the actual expulsion of monks and nuns
from the monasteries accompanied by the forced closure of the
emptied monasteries was presented as a voluntary process.
Photographs of former monastics as happy workers and
peasants, accompanied by appropriate interviews and state-
ments confirming the alleged satisfaction of the monks and
nuns to be once again among the productive and toiling Soviet
masses, appeared in the Soviet media. 60 Similarly attacked and
'exposed' were secret hideaways and underground monaster-
ies of the Old Believer sects of True Orthodox Wanderers.
These were often accused ofharbouring criminals or deserters
from the war. 61

To effect a stricter control over the Churches the two state

councils - one on the Affairs of the Orthodox Church, the
 The Post-War Atheistic Scene 91

other dealing with all the other religions - changed their

functions during the period between 1957 and 1964. Set up
originally by Stalin in 1943 allegedly as mere liaison bodies
between the given religious institutions and the state, they now
appropriated for themselves the functions of highly dictatorial
and despotic supervisors and controllers over every aspect of
church life. Professor Igor' Shafarevich, a famous Soviet
mathematician and an Orthodox Christian, observed that
although two official Soviet collections of party and state
documents on religion published in 1959 and 1965 made no
mention of CROCA, in fact during these years it had become
'an organ of unofficial and illegal control over the Moscow
Patriarchate'.
The two councils were amalgamated in 1965 into a single
Council for Religious Affairs (CRA). Ten years later the 1975
revisions of the 1929legislation for the first time officially and
overtly legislated the CRA, raising its status to the position of
arch-supervisor over the Church. But Shafarevich believes
that a secret instruction of 19 October 1962 had in fact given
these prerogatives to the Council (or rather, to its two
predecessors). 62

REVIVAL OF THE 'GOD-BUILDING' HERESY

An interesting aspect of the antireligious campaign was

revealed at the February 1962 'All-Union Conference On
Scientific-Atheistic Propaganda' held in Moscow. It discussed
concrete suggestions for the development of a streamlined,
well-thought-out system of atheistic upbringing. The view
prevailed that even such measures as the multiplication of
'Houses of Political Education', creation of atheistic 'Houses of
Culture', additional atheistic publications, and obligatory
courses of scientific atheism in schools and colleges, would not
be enough. 63 What was needed was a complete integration of
disciplines, all with an atheist ideological content, and a
presentation and solution of problems taken from all aspects of
social life in the context of atheistic Weltanschauung:
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 ofbelievers. 64
92 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

There is nothing new in this idea. The very popular Russian-

Soviet writer V. Veresaev, a medical doctor by profession, as
early as 1926 argued in lectures and articles in favour of
developing beautiful and standardised rituals at least for such
occasions as name-giving (to an infant), weddings and funerals.
To those who saw rituals as signs of reactionary backwardness
and clericalism, he pointed out that the secular life of Soviet
atheism was already full of rituals (parades, demonstrations,
'red weddings', secular requiems), only they were 'depressingly
untalented and miserable'. He and hundreds of his correspon-
dents argued that people were often turning to church rites
after being disappointed in the bureaucratic indifference and
ugly poverty of the Soviet ritual of marriage or birth-
registration. One correspondent, a Communist, cited a friend,
a rural teacher, who had told him he would not preach atheism
to peasants 'because you'll make the man an atheist, will deprive
him of all rituals along with his religion, but give him nothing to
replace them with'. Indeed, although the official propaganda
(beginning with Lenin) compared the faith with moonshine-
vodka and alcoholism, at least one of Veresaev's correspon-
dents, a Komsomol activist, describes how a person whose wife
had just been buried by means of the cold and indifferent
secular-communist ceremony, empty and unreconciled,
found satisfaction only in consuming a full bottle of vodka and
crying his soul out, so that vodka came in lieu of a religious rite,
not with it.
Veresaev's appeals met with stern attacks from positivist
intellectuals 'of the Pisarev type': 'Soviet office workers,
responsible party officials, and the majority of university
students'. Veresaev argued that these 'stooping people with
protruding foreheads, short-sighted eyes and thick spectacles'
had no sense of beauty and therefore needed no colourful
rituals and feasts in their lives. But he warned that, should they
prevail, 'life would become a bore and man would turn into an
empty container'. 65
As we know, they did prevail. Whether or not this was one of
the reasons for the survival of religion and its admitted new
growth in the late 1950s to early 1960s, Veresaev's appeals were
finally echoed many years later. The reluctance to plunge too
deeply into the subject is associated with the fear of resurrec-
tion of the whole 'god-building' deviation of Russian Marxism,
 The Post-War Atheistic Scene 93

represented by such figures as Gorky, Lunacharsky, A.

Bogdanov, V. Bazarov, Yushkevich and other outstanding
Marxist intellectuals. They argued that Marxian materialism
on its own was too mechanistically determinist in its approach
to the human person and its role in history. Its materialism
would not be able to inspire the masses to any voluntary action,
let alone revolution. Man needed religion to act, to develop the
necessary energy for action and for creativity. Inspired by such
authors as the Austrian NaturfilisofMach and his Empiriocritic-
ism, as well as by Feuerbach and Nietzsche more than by Marx
per se, these early Russian revisionists argued that freedom of
will reigns supreme in the world, while the Marxian notion of
necessity is a product of this freedom. They interpreted the
term 'religion' after Feuerbach, namely as a link, any link, not
necessarily between man and the Supernatural, but as a link
between individual men, between man and the nation in the
past and present, between man and a personified history, as it
were. Yushkevich argued that the destructive element is much
more strongly represented in Marxism than constructive and
positive harmony of emotions and elation. Lunacharskywrote:
For the sake of the great struggle for life ... it is necessary for
humanity to almost organically merge into an integral unity.
Not a mechanical or chemical ... but a psychic, consciously-
emotional linking-together ... is in fact a religious emotion.
Gorky defined religion as 'a sense of connection with the past
and future', and saw the emotions of friendship and mutual
respect linking people together as potentially religious, and
believed that they would form a religion in the future.
Lunacharsky in his essay on atheism argued that a consistent
regular atheist is a pessimist, because life becomes meaningless,
ruled by death. The only optimistic way out is to plunge into a
life of pleasure. He saw in the context of atheism the only non-
pessimistic solution in turning to a Feuerbachian religion of
Man-godhood: idolation of man as an autonomous agent of
history and carrier of the historical mission of the progressive
class of the given period of history. His freedom is expressed in
joy that his intellect has recognized historical necessity and
agreed to subordinate itself to it, and participate in it. This he
called religious atheism where matter is deified, because 'matter
stands above all intellects'. The commandment 'Love God over
94 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

everything else' may be translated into the social-economic

language as:
You must love and deify matter above everything else, [love
and deify] the corporal nature or the life of your body as the
primary cause of things, as existence without a beginning or
end, which has been and forever will be.
'God has been found,' says Lunacharsky: 'You must love and
deify the material world', because 'it is the primary cause of
things'. In the final analysis, he says:
God is humanity in its highest potential. But there is no
humanity in the highest potential. ... Let us then love the
potentials of mankind, our potentials, and represent them in
a garland of glory in order to love them ever more.
He follows this with excerpts from Our Father, interpreting
each verse in terms of his atheistic religion of deified mankind.
This atheism, he says, 'is full of light, life struggle'.
Lunacharsky saw Marxism as an atheistic religion, its
religious component being its belief in the victory of socialism,
its belief in science and its ability to transfigure man and his
human and social relations. He interpreted the mass events of
the 1905 revolution as an expression of the religious forces of
the nation. Even a god had to be created ('built', hence 'god-
building') for this new religion of the future, a god as the
personification of the social ideal of socialism, because in the
notion and image of a god 'all that is human is uplifted to the
highest possible potential'.
Like Leo Tolstoy, the 'god-builders' rejected the divinity of
Christ but deeply respected Him and interpreted Him as a
revolutionary leader and the first Communist on earth. Rather
inconsistent, in view of their rejection of God as a real person,
was their acceptance of the institution of prayer, which in the
god-building cult would be addressed to progress, humanity,
the nation, and to the human genius. As the whole cult was
primarily meant as a means to achieve a collective frenzy of
sorts for a common revolutionary action, the god-builders
placed the stress on the communal or collective prayer, and
wrote that Marxism as a new religion must lead to the erection
of new temples, new rituals and new prayers. According to
Lunacharsky, the new revolutionary theatre with its symbolic
 The Post-War Atheistic Scene 95

plays would create the necessary religious frenzy in the

viewers. 66
These ideas were vehemently attacked by Lenin. Although
his attacks on the movement amounted to a simple name-
calling containing no rational arguments, 67 party discipline,
and particularly Lenin's victory in 1917, put an end to this
school of thought, except in the case of Bogdanov, a medical
doctor and a philosopher, whose empiriomonism was inspired
by Avenarius's Naturfilosofie and Mach's empiriocriticism. 66
Gorky and Lunacharsky had caved in to Lenin's reprimand
even before the revolution. We saw that, as the Commissar of
Enlightenment, Lunacharsky would represent all Scriptures as
evil and wholly unacceptable; he rejected Christ even in the
above context. In fact, in his later writings he called Jesus a
mythical personality in the classical Marxist tradition, rejecting
Him as a historical figure. 69
From the Orthodox Christian viewpoint this attempt to
create a Communistic counter-church, a mystical anti-
Christian cult, belongs to the category of false prophets
predicted by Christ, and to the black mass ofSatanism. A Soviet
author, Laskovaia, quite appropriately points to a similarity of
the god-builders' ideas with the 'Death of God' concepts oflater
Western agnostic or atheistic theologians, such as D.
Bonhoeffer, or Bishop J. Robinson. 70 She ignores, however,
the revival of only slightly camouflaged god-building ideas
among Soviet atheists, especially after their recognition in the
course of 1965 of the failure of Khrushchev's wholesale attack
on religion. Then more and more suggestions appeared in the
Soviet press for the introduction of pseudo-religious rites
which would use symbols to create a mystical link between the
people and the promised Communist society of the future,
glorified in the Communist-orientated labour of the present.
These rites or services would have a future orientation like
Communism itself, would venerate and celebrate the Com-
munist promise of an ideal society. To this end there would be
celebrations of events and days for glorifying Communism.
Special temples with symbolic artistic ornamentations should
be built to glorify Communism as the greatest achievement of
man's mind; oratorios should be composed and performed in
these temples. Paradoxically, these articles were printed in the
mid-1960s in the Communist youth daily in a section under the
96 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

heading of 'Reason against Religion'." Thus Soviet Marxist

atheists were returning to the days of the French Revolution
with its religion of Reason.
But since the idea of a structured, institutionalized and phil-
osophically based religious cult of Communism had already
been categorically rebuffed by Lenin, its new protagonists did
not go as far as the earlier 'god-builders', nor was it permitted
by the ideological watchdogs to so blatantly challenge Lenin's
authority. Therefore, the theoretical discussion of the estab-
lishment of a more or less institutionalized cult soon petered
out, reducing itself to the suggestions and introduction of some
isolated rights in connection with events in personal or
collective life. Since 1966, for instance, an' All-Union Day of the
Agricultural Worker' has been set up when the completion of
harvest is marked by some locally devised rites, often based on
such semi-pagan, semi-Christian rituals as those connected
with StJohn the Baptist's Day. The celebration of the day of the
Agricultural Worker is supposed to 'inspire ... to call people to
labour feasts', to extol 'the social, political, and ideological unity
of society under socialism'. Apparently this holiday is cele-
brated differently in various parts of the country. In some parts
of the Ukraine, where it bears the name of the Holiday of
Hammer and Sickle and takes place in December, it is
celebrated thus:
On an early December morning tractor drivers [from the
surrounding region] converge in Zhitomir. At the entry to
the city they are met by representatives of the city factories
who report to them on the progress of the socialist competi-
tion and invite the drivers to their factories, where the
peasants and the workers engage in heart-searching and
business like discussions. Then a parade of agrarian tech-
nology takes place at the Lenin Square. Solemnly, accom-
panied by an orchestra, the best workers and peasants
receive their prizes and diplomas. Then all of them make
public production-quota pledges for the forthcoming year at
the city theatre. 72
Special rites and ceremonies were devised in the 1960s to
celebrate the granting of passports on the occasion of the
sixteenth birthday of a Soviet citizen when he or she receives
the internal passport, which thereafter becomes the means to
 The Post-War Atheistic Scene 97
control every movement, act, and job of a Soviet man or
woman. 'Initiation into the ranks of workers and peasants'
involves another rite. To compete with the Church, the Soviets
have been introducing since the late 1950s a more ceremonious
form of civil marriage, solemn rites of giving a name to a baby,
civic burial rites, the so-called 'secular requiem'. 73
Soon after Khrushchev's fall, Soviet authors engaged in the
atheistic campaign cautiously began to question its actual
effectiveness. Their general conclusion was that it had mis-
fired. It antagonized the believers against the Soviet system
instead of converting them to atheism. It merely pushed the
religious life underground where it is more dangerous than if it
is in the open. And it has drawn the sympathies of many
unbelieving and indifferent people to the sufferings of the
believers. Generally, after the fall of Khrushchev direct mass
persecutions stopped, although very few of the closed 10 000 to
15 000 churches were reopened for worship. 74
On 10 November 1964 the Central Committee of the CPSU
issued a resolution 'On Errors Committed in the Conduct of
Atheist Propaganda .. .'The resolution reaffirms that actions
which offend believers and the clergy, as well as actions· of
administrative interference in the affairs of the Church, are
unacceptable. As we have seen, such decrees and resolutions
are a regular feature after every wave of particularly harsh
persecutions or at the time of change ofleadership. In all cases
they are a testimony that the ideological leadership of the
Soviet Communist Party had once again admitted defeat in its
head-on attack on the Church.
4 Antireligious Policies
after Khrushchev
A RETREAT? 1964 TO EARLY 1970s

The fall of Khrushchev resulted in an almost immediate

toning-down of the antireligious attacks. Moreover, the two
main antireligious academic serials, Yearbook of the Museum of
History of Religion and Atheism and Problems of History of Religion
and Atheism, soon ceased publication as well. 1 They had been
published by the Academy of Sciences where, even in the
overpoliticized humanities and social sciences, genuine
scholars are still to be found. Hence, such a rapid end to the
serials could have reflected the negative attitude of the genuine
scholars towards such scholastically questionable publications
emanating from their institution, taking advantage of the first
opportune moment to have these publications discontinued.
However, events would soon show that no major changes of
principle in the antireligious policies of the post-Khrushchev
establishment occurred. All that happened was a recognition
that the crudeness and brutality of the persecutions of 1959-
64 did not pay. The attack continued, but the strategy changed.
Hardly any of the churches that were closed under Khrush-
chev were subsequently reopened, and the few that did were
almost matched by those closed by local authorities from the
early 1970s to the early 1980s. 2
Under Brezhnev (or more exactly, under the KGB chief
Andropov, for the KGB and its predecessors have been the de
facto curators of the Church since the first years of the Soviet
power), many of the secret, and therefore unofficial, tempor-
ary instructions aimed at suppressing the Church were made
into laws and published, thus legitimising many aspects of the
persecutions. The Institute of Scientific Atheism, established
in 1964 as the main Soviet research and co-ordination for
antireligious work and attached to the Academy of Social
Sciences of the CPSU Central Committee, was raised in status
and importance when the function of publishing major studies
on religion and atheism was handed over to it from the regular

98
 Antireligious Policies after Khrushchev 99

Academy of Sciences, which was not under such tight control

by the party as the Academy of Social Sciences. In place of the
defunct Problems of History of Religion and Atheism, a new
irregular serial, Problems of Scientific Atheism, began to be
published in 1966, now under the auspices of the CPSU CC
ASS. Whereas its predecessor occasionally contained serious
scholarly articles by such outstanding historians as the late A. A.
Zimin and other Russian medievalists on social aspects of
religion in Russian history with little atheistic content, Problems
ofScientific Atheism has had a more partisan and militant profile.
In short, atheistic propaganda after Khrushchev became more
centralized and co-ordinated, and its research more politically
engaged and hence less scholarly and reliable than it had been
under the Academy of Sciences. 3
It was in 1965 that for the first time a statute of the CRA was
published, simultaneously amalgamating the former Council
for the Russian Orthodox Church Affairs and the Council of
Religious Cults into the single organization of the Council for
Religious Affairs. The prerogatives granted to this body
included decision-making powers on such matters as whether
to permit or to close a religious association. This changed the
body from being an intermediary between the government
and the Church, as was allegedly claimed by Stalin at his fateful
encounter with the Orthodox Metropolitans in September
1943, 4 into the virtual super-administrator over the Church. V.
Furov, the CRA deputy head, several years later boasted in a
report to the CPSU Central Committee:
The [Patriarch's] Synod is under CRA's supervision. The
question of selection and distribution of its permanent
members is fully in CRA's hands, the candidacies of the
rotating members are likewise co-ordinated beforehand
with the CRA's responsible officials. Patriarch Pi men and the
permanent members of the Synod work out all Synod
sessions' agendas at the CRA offices ... and co-ordinate
[with us] the final 'Decisions of the Holy Synod'. 5
So far the state has successfully resisted the reopening of any
of the seminaries closed under Khrushchev (let alone opening
additional ones); but giving in to the pressure both of the
church leadership and of growing numbers of student-
applicants, it has allowed considerable expansion of the
100 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

existing three seminaries and two graduate academies. By the

early 1980s their student numbers have grown to some 1300
day and over 1000 extramural students, from less than 300 day
and some 500 extramural students at the end of Khrushchev's
reign. The numbers have continued to rise in the 1980s,
although only about 20 per cent of the applicants gained
admission owing to lack of space. 6
Table 4.1 shows that there had been no noticeable decrease
in the number of atheistic lectures delivered in the immediate
post-Khrushchev years. One suspects, however, that the 1966
to 1970 decrease either continued or at least was not reversed,
because we failed to find any such statistics in the Soviet press
for subsequent years. Even NiR editorial dedicated to the 30th
anniversary of Znanie and to its seventh congress does not
mention any statistics on the numbers of antireligious lectures. 7

Table 4.1 No. oflectures on atheist themes annually, 1954-70

Year No. of lectures across the whole USSR
1954 120000
1958 303000
1959 400000
1963 660000
1966 760000
1968 679000
1970 650 000 (approx.)

As to the publication of books and articles, Figures 4.1 to 4.5

indicate the dynamics of the antireligious printed propaganda
from Khrushchev's onslaught to the early 1980s. 8 They show a
sharp decline from 1964 to 1970 in the total numbers of books
and articles printed, but not in the number of copies per title.
The publication figures after 1970 are uneven, showing
clearer growth tendencies again roughly from 1980, which
coincides, as will be shown below, with the renewed toughening
of the general line towards religion, and comes as a response to
the growth in the numbers of people turning towards religion. 9
As to the total number of books (titles) printed, it had stabilized
at 160 to 180 per annum from 1967 to 1980, declining
somewhat thereafter, while their total circulation has been
steadily growing from the lowest point in 1970 of 2 500 000
Figure 4.1 Antireligious articles in the Soviet central press (excluding the literary and other professional monthlies and the
professional atheistic press)
190
180
~ 170
160
150
140
130
120
>-
.... 110
i=
z 100
<t:
::>
0 90
80

60
50

20

......
0
19571958 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 84 ......
Sources: 1957-72, incl. Powell, Antireligious Propaganda in the Soviet Union.
1973-84, Letopis' gazetnykh statei (1973-78, section 'Ateizm, Nauka i religiia, Religiia') (1978-84, section 'Ateizm,
Religiia').
Figure 4.2 Antireligious articles in m~or Soviet periodicals (excluding the professionally atheistic ones) 1957-82 ......
0
N)

340
320
300
280
260
240
220
200
QUANTITY 180
160
140
120
100
80 80
60
40

Note: These figures are approximate and should only be used to illustrate trends in changes over time.
Figure 4.3 Publication of antireligious books, 1957-81
360 360
340 340
320 320
300 300
280 280
260
240 240
220 220
200 200

QUANTITY 180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
10
......
57 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 81 0
ColO
Source: Yezhegodnik Knigi S.S.S.R.
Figure 4.4 Total quantity of antireligious books printed, 1957-81
......
Quantity Quantity 0
~
printed printed
X 1,000 X 1,000

8,000 8,000
7,500 7,500
7,000
6,500
6,000
5,500
5,000

4,500
4,000
3,500
3,000
I 2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
250
57 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 81
Note: Numbers for quantity printed are in thousands, therefore 4500 = 4 500 000;
*no data available for 1958.
Source: Yezhegodnik Knigi S.S.S.R.
Figure 4.5 Average circulation (no. of copies printed) per book, 1957-81
Average Average
quantity quantity
printed printed
X 1,000 X 1,000

40
36

32
28

24
20
16
12
8
4
2
J.__j_J

57 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 81
Year

Note: Numbers for average quantity printed are in thousands, therefore 36 = 36 000;
* no data available for 1958. 0
Source: Yezhegodnik Knigi S.S.S.R. (Jl
-
106 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

copiestoover6 500 OOOin 1980,decliningto5 500 OOOby 1982,

equal to the figure reached at the height of Khrushchev's attack
in 1962.
Thus,itwouldhardlybefair tospeakofthepost-Khrush chev
era as a lull in the intensity of antireligious propaganda,
although most central party documents of these years contain
less direct, more veiled criticism of religion, expressed in such
language as: 'it is necessary to intensify the ideational-political
work among the toilers'. They urged the importance of
'teaching Marxism-Leninism at the higher education establish-
ments and other schools'; that party organizations must
'ascertain a higher level ofthe ideational-theoretical quality ...
of published literature', and that it was imperative to 'unmask
the professional anti-Soviets and anti-Communists'. The 24th
Party Congress noted that 'the period [since the previous
Congress] is characterized by an activization of the ideational-
theoretical work of the party, [and] improvement of the
Marxist-Leninist education of Communists.'
Only the Party Statute at the 24th Party Congress (April
1971 ), retains the militantly antireligious clause present in all
RCP-CPSU statute versions. It states in Paragraph 2, Section
'd' that a party member must 'carry on a decisive struggle with
any expressions of the bourgeois ideology, with ... religious
prejudices and other survivals of the past'.
Most CPSU policy documents of the two post-Khrushchev
decades, especially those addressed to the Komsomol, express
concern over the laxity of 'ideational-political work'. Komso-
mol is taken to task for:

frequently ignoring the main thing, namely: the develop-

ment in young people of the Marxist-Leninist Weltans-
chauung, the class approach to all phenomena of life, its
upbringing in the revolutionary, working class and military
traditions of the Soviet people.

Educational institutions must 'form the Marxist-Leninist

Weltanschauung in the students' minds through education and
upbringing' 10
There were several Komsomol documents that undoubtedly
stimulated these directives: for example, the resolution of the
15th Komsomol Congress (1966) which complained that:
 Antireligious Policies after Khrushchev 107

Imperialism leads a massive ideological offensive against

Soviet youth. Its main aim is to disseminate in its midst
individualism and social passiveness, replace the class
solidarity ... by greed for a petty-bourgeois prosperity; [to
replace] ideological convictions by skepticism and critical
attitude.
The resolution then elaborated on the necessity for renewing
the ideology of Soviet youth. It resolved to set up special
'republican and district Komsomol schools', on the model of
the party schools.
A Komsomol central document of the following year
complained that members of the Komsomol working with the
pioneers did not pay enough attention 'to ideational-political
activities', and in the 1968 resolution, on the Komsomol's 50th
anniversary, the usual appeal to follow the directives of the
CPSU in inculcating in the young generations the Marxist-
Leninist revolutionary ideas of class struggle, was included. 11
Although atheism and antireligious struggle were not
mentioned in these documents by name, terms like 'Marxist-
Leninist ideas' or 'scientific Weltanschauung' were the usual
euphemisms used in antireligious attacks and atheistic prop-
aganda. An excellent illustration of this is the special ideologi-
cal resolution of the CPSU Central Committee of 26 April
1979. Its main point of reference is the 25th Party Congress of
1976, the key documents of which do not mention atheism by
name, but speak about a relentless progress towards Commun-
ism and call for ideological vigilance. Yet it is precisely in
elaborating on these points that the Central Committee
resolutions is explicit:
work out and implement concrete measures for the escala-
tion of atheistic education. Raise the responsibility of
communists and Komsomol members in the struggle against
religious superstitions. 12
It may be remembered that in the 1930s even when
documents of the LMG complained that Komsomol were not
giving sufficient support to the League, many acts of physical
destruction of churches were committed by Komsomol brig-
ades; similarly when the above documents called upon the
Komsomol to participate more actively in ideological and
108 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

antireligious campaigns, Komsomol hoodlums again harassed

the Church and its adherents. 13
There is a marked difference in style and militancy between
the documents of the 1970s and those adopted by the
Komsomol under Khrushchev, for instance the resolution of
the 14th Komsomol Congress (1962):
It is imperative to arm the young generation with the
knowledge of scientific atheism and with the methods of
work with those young people who have fallen under the
influence of religion, to protect children and teenagers from
the tenacious fetters of churchmen.
Or take the Komsomol Central Committee Resolution 'On the
Improvement of the Scientific-Atheist Work Among Youth' of
January 195 7. When the party was still using only euphemistic
references to religion and antireligious struggle in its docu-
ments, the Komsomol did not mince words. 14 The lack of direct
attacks on religion in the Komsomol documents of the late
1960s are evidence that the party was revising its antireligious
strategy and finding that former methods of attack had been
ineffective.
There are obvious signs of uncertainty in the post-
Khrushchev antireligious policies. On the one hand, the direct
persecutions of the Khrushchev era on a mass scale were
discontinued, on the other, the Soviet media boasts of the
decline of religious rites (particularly weddings, funerals,
baptisms), of the numbers of seminarians and, allegedly, of
practising believers, in the early 1960s, as if this was a natural
process and not a result of terror, harassment, threats, and
physical closures of temples and seminaries. These claims were
often substantiated by selected spot sociological field surveys of
believers and non-believers, of which there was a large number
in the 1960s and up until the early 1970s. Apparently, soon
after it had become obvious that the persecutions had not been
achieving the desired results, it must have been decided to
make a thorough study of the believers in order to work out a
more effective antireligious policy. Yet whatever the published
data of such surveys, those in charge must have known they
were unreliable. In fact some Soviet publications have partly
admitted as much when describing the methodology of such
census-taking and the use of local Komsomol activists and
 Antireligious Policies after Khrushchev 109

antireligious lectures for the purpose, and the collection of the

information via personal interviews rather than
anonymously. 15 The doubtfulness of the survey indicators,
particularly those showing the decline of religious conviction
and practices, is further corroborated by the near-absence of
printed reports on any detailed and informative surveys since
approximately 1973. A source who had worked as a NiR staff
journalist from 1975 to 1980, informed this author that a team
of sociologists led by Pivovarov (not to be confused with the
priest Alexander Pivovarov) had carried out several detailed
surveys in the late 1970s, but their findings were apparently
classified, as none of them were ever published or even made
available to the NiR staff. 16 Apparently the data so blatantly
contradicted the earlier claims that no semi-officially tolerated
level of rigging could save the situation. This is an illustration of
how cautious one must be when using Soviet data, especially
when it relates to such a touchy subject as religion and
atheism. 17
There seem to have been at least two quite different policy
stages in the post-Khrushchev era, indirectly paralleling that
suspect field survey. At first, it seems, the party leadership
wanted to avoid direct attacks on religion, having recognized
the negative effect of Khrushchev's onslaught. One of the early
signs of this change of direction was an article in Kommunist
published only a few days after Khrushchev's demotion. The
author was taking up the old Bonch-Bruevich's line when he
protested against wholesale condemnation of all movements
arising 'under a religious form' as being reactionary. He
argued that progressive movements have continued to arise
from within certain religious movements and often 'millions of
believers ... and honest ministers of religion sincerely believe
that their faith ... stimulates progressive movements'. The
duty of Marxists, he says, is to co-operate with such
movements. 18 He was referring to the leftist religious move-
ments of the West and the Third World. This was quite a
change from Khrushchev's blanket attack on all religions.
Altogether, antireligious articles in the general Soviet press
were considerably scaled down in quantity and tone in the years
1965 to 1979 (see Figures 4.1 and 4.2). Kommunist for 1965, for
instance, contained only two directly antireligious articles by
professional 'religiologists' and even they took the form of
110 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

analyses of the methodology of antireligious propaganda and

criticized its primitivism. Most general ideological articles were
not concerned with religion. Even the hardline N. Egorychev,
Secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee, in his article on
the Komsomol does not mention struggle against religion as a
target of Soviet youth education. 19 Science and Religion (NiR) at
this period painted religion as the resort of old people, mainly
old peasants, who find in religion their last consolidation after
the horrors and losses of the Second World War. The tone of
most of the articles is that of a patronizing tolerance of the old
and the harmless, unlike the vicious and contemptuous attacks
of the recent past. However, the party would not tolerate for
long this revival of the 'mechanicist' passive approach towards
religion as an institution doomed to die on its own.
On 27 July 1968, Pravda came out with an editorial
condemning this approach to religion and to antireligious
propaganda. Once again, 'the Party, Komsomol and Trade
Union organizations may not take an indifferent attitude to
religious views which fog over the thinking abilities of a certain
part of the population'. Referring to the April 1968 Central
Committee Plenum's resolution on the need for the improve-
ment of ideological work, the article called for a flexible
antireligious propaganda, for more initiative on the local level,
with different approaches depending on the place and
situation. It criticized Znanie for having reduced its annual
volume of antireligious lectures from 760 000 (in 1966) to less
than 650 000. Another article criticized the work of the Moscow
Znanie section in which most of the 369 professional anti-
religious lecturers were of the old generation and failed to
communicate effectively with the mostly young and well-
educated audiences. The Pravda editorial signalled the coming
re-intensification of antireligious attacks by stressing that 'the
formation of the Communist Weltanschauung is impossible
without antireligious struggle, without an active scientific-
atheistic upbringing'. 20
This sudden re-activisation of the antireligious front was
actually a logical follow-up of the Central Committee resolu-
tion of 14 August 1967, 'On the Measures of Further
Development of Social Sciences and in Increasing Their Role
in the Building of Communism'. It was the most important
ideological·party document during this relatively 'soft' era. It
 Antireligious Policies after Khrushchev 111

avoided direct reference to atheism and antireligious struggle,

in contrast to similar documents of the 1958-64 era. Yet it
came closest to naming such tasks, especially when dealing with
educational establishments, the Komsomol, and the Znanie
Society. It called for a radical improvement in the teaching of
Marxist-Leninist philosophy and broader participation of
scholars and social science teachers in 'people's universities,
schools of communist labour, lecture- and cine-lecture-series
of Znanie'. 21
One of the direct results of the 1967 resolution and of the
commotion which followed was the formation in December
1971 of the 'Philosophic Society of the USSR' with a declared
aim, not of pursuing the truth as expected of philosophers, but
of leading:
an untiring atheistic propaganda of scientific materialism
and ... struggle against the revisionist tolerant tendencies
towards religion, against all concessions to the religious
Weltanschauung. 22
As in the years immediately preceding 1962, the most
antireligious activity was being relegated to social organiza-
tions, the Philosophic Society, Znanie, and Komsomol. Mean-
while, the CROCA/CRA assumed supreme authority over the
Church, effecting discreet but direct and increasing oppres-
sion of the Church, of individual parishes and of whole
dioceses. 23

RENEWALOFTHEATTACK
The second, more aggressive stage seems to have begun
roughly from the mid-1970s, following upon the 1975
amendments to the 1929 antireligious legislation and the 25th
Party Congress; it found its most explicit formulation in the
1979 CC resolution. Great importance is attributed to this
document by the most authoritative Soviet atheist
publication. 24 But the resolution, as well as the 25th Party
Congress, was preceded by the 1974 Leningrad conference
dedicated to 'The Topical Problems of the History of Religion
and Atheism in the Light of Marxist-Leninist Scholarship'.
During the same period, from 1971 to 197 5, over 30 doctoral
and some 400 magisterial dissertations were defended on the
112 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

subjects of atheism and critique of religion. 25 This is evidence of

the intensification of antireligious activities by the Establishment
during the whole decade of the 1970s.
Even as physical harrassment declined after Khrushchev,
the quantity and aggressiveness of antireligious publications
was again on the rise, especially from the early 1970s. 26 The
main mass-circulation Znanie periodical, Science and Religion
(Nauka i religiia) since 1972 has shown signs of nostalgia for the
defunct LMG/7 implying perhaps that Znanie does not
compare with its predecessor. The press and special confer-
ences have continued to complain about insufficient action
taken against religion and to appeal for the activisation of
atheistic propaganda. 28
Despite the fact that 'Foundations of Scientific Atheism', a
course for students in all fields of studies in all establishments of
higher education, introduced in 1954 and made obligatory in
1959, was being taught in over 500 establishments of higher
education in the USSR by 1975, complaints continued that
there was much laxity and little enthusiasm on the part of both
students and instructors. 29 Since the early 1970s more concern
has been expressed over the growing attraction of young
people (presumably mostly young intellectuals) to religion via
the art, architecture and music of the Church. Recognition of
such non-material motives as causes of behaviour and ideas
contradicts the materialistic doctrine of Marxism, causing
divisions among Soviet religiologists. While one of the most
prestigious religiologists, the late P. Kurochkin, continued the
refrain of 'interdependence of the atheistic work with the
problems of national economy' (and he is not a lonely figure in
Soviet religiology), others began to point out that, deprived of
political and material power by the Soviet system, and thus of
the negative associations inseparable from such functions,
religion has gained greater attraction for contemporary young
Soviet persons. They now see the beauty of its temples and
frescoes; and in their eyes the cultural-historical role of the
Church is not blemished by the politico-economic aspects
which now have retreated into the nebulous past. In conclu-
sion, at least one Soviet philosopher suggests that a 'construc-
tive cooperation of Soviet philosophers and atheists' is
absolutely necessary for the success 'of militant atheism' and
'atheistic education'. In this conclusion he is supported by his
 Antireligious Policies after Khrushchev 113

apparent opponent, Kurochkin, who likewise sees a threat to

Marxist atheism from the Orthodox Church's 'ever more
intensive propaganda that precisely she drove Russia onto the
broad track of global social development'. Contradicting his
own assertions of materialistic determinism, he warns against
nihilistic tendencies and results in antireligious propaganda.
Often, he writes, a break with religious ethics without their
replacement by a Communistic morality leads to moral decline,
consumerism, lechery. When breaking with religion, writes
Kurochkin, the most important thing is not the break itself, but
the necessity to fill the subsequent vacuum with a new Com-
munist moral education. The neo-god-building implica-
tions in these writings are quite obvious: in order that atheism
and materialism replace the religious moral fabric in society
they must acquire the properties of a religion, become a
pseudo-Church. 30
The new line of antireligious propaganda distinguishes
between the alleged loyal majority of believers and the enemies
of the Soviet state on the fringes of the Churches. This is the
subject of the CRA secret report to the CPSU Central
Committee, according to which the only commendable be-
haviour of a bishop or a priest is complete subordination to the
local CRA plenipotentiary and absence of any pastoral activi-
ties on his part outside the routine performance of religious
rites. If a certain bishop is criticized for 'high religious activity',
he will be moved about all the time from one diocese to another
on CRA's orders. In the same report the CRA boasts of having
gained control over the Patriarch's Synod, which was forced to
co-ordinate in advance the sessions' agenda and decisions to be
reached with the CRA. 31
There is a similar divide-and-rule policy toward the Baptists.
Whereas persecutions were stepped up during the 1970s
against the Initiative Baptists, a faction which had broken away
from the official Baptist Church in 1962 in protest against a
latter's subservience to the regime's antireligious orders, and
whose congregations refused secular registration, the official
Baptist Church was practically pampered by the regime during
the same period. The treatment accorded it was much better
than the one given the Orthodox Church. Its congresses were
allowed genuine debates and even to cast negative votes on
decisions adopted and candidates promoted by the administra-
114 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

tion, at least once succeeding in electing a person from the floor

to the central administration in place of the official candidate.
According to Kuroedov, the late CRA chief, since 1977 the
official Baptists were allowed to open 300 additional churches
(mostly by attaining registration for formerly unregistered
communities); the Lutherans, 129; the Muslims, 69 mosques;
the Roman Catholics, 40 churches; the Orthodox, only 33.
Extrapolating his figure of 2000 Baptist and Adventist
churches serving an estimated four to six million funda-
mentalist Protestants in the USSR and juxtaposing it with his
8500 temples serving 40-50 million Orthodox believers, we
discover that the former have 50 per cent more churches per
capita than the Orthodox (plus many hundreds of unregister-
ed Baptist churches). 32 The reason for this preferential
treatment of the official Baptists is quite clear: to convince the
schismatic Baptists that they gain nothing by remaining in
opposition.
Similarly, there is a marked difference in the treatment of
believers, depending on their educational and professional
levels. For instance, 'party members, administrative personnel
of the high and middle executive categories, teachers and
professors of all types, army officers and personnel of the
Ministry of Internal Affairs, and so forth were subjected to
direct persecutions for baptizing their children', and therefore
had to look for priests who would agree to perform these
services secretly. 33
Peasants and workers rarely suffer serious consequences for
the same acts. The uneducated and the elderly, in contrast to
Khrushchev's times, are generally left alone. The young,
particularly those with higher education, have been actively
persecuted for practising religion, particularly if they do so
openly or take part in Christian study groups or form church
choirs. 34 Many members of such groups have been arrested and
imprisoned, some in psycho-prisons. In the latter case the
Snezhnevskian extension of Marxist materialistic determinism
into psychiatry has been implied, namely, the doctrine that
man's behaviour is determined by his material and social
environment. Consequently, anyone who had gone through
Soviet atheistic education all the way from kindergarten to
university and yet remained a religious believer or, even worse,
became one in mature age, is seen as a split personality or a
 Antireligious Policies after Khrushchev 115

plainly psychotic case. 35 Whereas under Khrushchev there was

a general campaign of intimidation and terror against the
clergy, now it is only the most dedicated priests, particularly
those who attract young people and offer missionary pastoral
guidance, who fall foul of the secular authorities. 36
Another aspect of this renewed attack on religion is a
regional differentiation and decentralization of tactics and
methods, in accordance with the 1968 Pravda editorial men-
tioned above. Only reports on Latvia speak about the so-called
KV AT clubs (Clubs of Militant Atheists) at its institutions of
higher learning. Although there was an attempt by the Soviet
press around 1971 to popularize the idea of these clubs, the
name of which is so reminiscent of the LMG, there is no
evidence that thev took root anywhere except Latvia, where
they have been in existence since approximately 1960. The
Latvian clubs of atheistic students run schools for young
lecturers of atheism and organize antireligious theatrical
presentations. In western Ukraine a similar function is per-
formed by Yaroslav Halan Clubs, which seem to specialize in
fighting against the remnants of the banned Uniate Church.
Special emphasis is apparently applied to antireligious prop-
aganda in the areas which had missed Stalin's antireligious
holocaust of the 1930s since they were outside his empire at the
time. These clubs of militant young atheists are also active in
devising and implanting the new secular rites, in an attempt to
replace the church-related rites. 37
The issue of these neo-god-building rites was not abandoned
after Khrushchev's fall, but was revived as an alternative to the
churches to avoid suppression by direct force. This movement
can also be seen as a revival of neo-paganism, similar to Hitler's
attempts in Nazi Germany. Indeed, a god-building idolisation
of the people as builders of a future communistic paradise on
earth becomes idolisation of the nation state. It is argued that
because the state is engaged in building Communism, it must be
mighty. This leads to idolisation of the physical might, power
and military prowess of the socialist state. The result is an
aggressive chauvinism, promoting a climate which justifies any
aggression by such a state in terms of its ideology and 'faith'.
In their conventional expressions of religion the Soviets have
preferred pagan revivals to Christianity. This can be illustrated
from examples of official Soviet literature and from samiulat
116 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

documents which show attempts of subversive Soviet agencies

to penetrate the genuine samizdat in order to sow distrust
among the dissidents. 38 Soviets have reported with satisfaction
the re-emergence of paganism in areas without churches
(which is as much a reflection of a need for religious faith as a
potential for communist god-building). 39 As for the god-
building rites, official Soviet atheistic literature has claimed
great success in the 1960s and early 1970s in tearing people
away from the Church. 40 But the accuracy of these claims is
doubtful. In fact, lately they appear to have been toned down.
Instead, there has been more anxiety shown regarding the
survival of the church and especially the increasing participa-
tion of young people in the life and rituals of the established
religions. Soviet claims of a steep decline in baptisms and
marriages performed by the Church after the introduction of
relevant secular ceremonies may have simply meant that more
people asked their priests to perform the former secretly and
privately. The point is that the State stipulated in 1962 that
persons requesting church burials, weddings and baptisms
must submit all their passport data to the church register. All
this information must be given to Soviet officials who may
harass people involved, at their places of work or education.
Consequently, people began to make private arrangements
with trusted priests who made no record.
Articles began to appear in the Soviet press as early as 1972
expressing great concern that Communist Party and Komso-
mol members were not only participating in religious rites but
even initiating them. Several districts in central Russia and
Siberia were named where such 'heresies' were occurring,
despite the new Soviet rites and rituals. In line with the
regionalist differentiation in antireligious work, it was stated
that in the Moscow, Leningrad, Lipetsk, Gorky regions and in
the Tatar ASSR, 'faculties and departments for training atheist
lecturers have been created in the evening universities of
Marxism-Leninism; in the Ukraine, Moldavia, and Lithuania
seminars exist on a permanent basis' for the same purpose. Yet
the Party ideological department found all of this insufficient
to counter the influence of religion, especially on the younger
generation, finding the media atheistic material unconvincing
and of very low quality, and pointed out that in some areas, for
instance Uzbekistan, the quantity of antireligious lectures
 Antireligious Policies after Khrushchev 117

actually declined. It appears that the Establishment's main

concern was with the increasing amount of indifference to
atheism and atheistic propaganda, a kind of agnosticism as it
were, in the ranks of Soviet youth. 41
The most important formal events in the state's policies
towards religion of the post-Khrushchev years have been in the
area of codification (discussed in the second chapter). The
latest Soviet Constitution implied a right to remove children
from actively religious families. This was spelled out much
more clearly in the new family legislation of 1968 and in the
laws on national education of 1973. Both maintain that it is the
duty of parents or guardians to bring up children in the spirit
and morals of Communism, which means active atheism.
Another article of the family code allows the courts to deprive
parents of their parental rights if they 'do not fulfil their
obligations as to the upbringing of their children', which
presumably means if they fail to bring up their children as
atheistic Communists. 42 Some laws passed between 1966 and
1975 dealt directly with Church-State relations, ending some
of the ambiguities of the Khrushchev era. Predictably, the
comments of the late CRA chairman, V. Kuroedov, were that
the new laws represented a marked improvement in the status
of the Church. But his own deputy, V. Furov, inadvertently
admitted the miserable legal position of the Church and her
hierarchy in his comments on the history of the Soviet laws on
religion. He states:
Not a single religious organization has the right of interfer-
ence in the activities of another against the latter's will:
appoint priests not wanted by that organization, take away a
temple from it ... because these are leased by the Soviet
executive organ exclusively to the local group of believers.
That is, the Church hierarchy has no disciplinary powers over
its parishes, laity or parish clergy whatsoever in the Soviet law.
Similarly, as Furov explains in so many words, the parish priest,
being an appointee of the bishop, has no administrative or
economic powers in the parish either. Moreover, although the
Soviet law permits 'uncontrolled freedom' of sermons from the
pulpit, they may only be 'of exclusively religious character'.
Neither Soviet law nor Furov gives any definition of the above
phrase; but Furov adds that any 'bourgeois- anarchic' content
118 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

in a sermon is criminally punishable. Furov's secret reports to

the CPSU Central Committee cited earlier give explicit
illustrations of what is meant by these limitations when they
mention persecution of clergymen for criticizing Marxist
atheism and materialism in their sermons. 43 In fact, the aim of
Soviet laws on religion, past and present, has been to make the
Church as passive as possible.
An Ukaz by the RSFSR Supreme Soviet Presidium of 18
March 1966, 'On the Administrative Responsibilty for Viola-
tion of the Laws on Religious Cults', enumerates only violations
by churchmen, such as evasion of registration of a religious
community with the state organs, violation of the (state) rules
on religious performances and carrying out of special services
for youth. No punishments are mentioned for violations by the
secular authorities. 44 The 197 5 amendments of the 1929
legislation raised the status of the CRA from that of a liaison
body between the Church and the Soviet Government to that of
administrator over the Church and the bishops and greatly
increased its authority. Every parish, including those in the
process of formation, was now rendered powerless and placed
completely at the mercy of the CRA which alone had the
authority to grant them registration. One of the amendments
states:
A religious society or a group of believers may begin to
function only after the Council of Religious Affairs ... has
arrived at a decision regarding the registration of the society
ora group.
In other words, a group ofbelievers applying for registration is
legally deprived of the right to communal worship while
waiting for the registration.
Other amendments stated that the CRA arrives at its
decisions on the recommendation of the local government of
the given town or district. The believers could only wait, pray
(but not communally) and hope. They are permitted to submit
their original petition to the local government, but not to begin
to meet regularly or keep up the spirit ofcommunity worship of
the parish-to-be. The local government must submit the
petition with its comments and recommendations to the CRA
within one month - the views and comments of the local
government on the issue are not conveyed to the petitioning
 Antireligious Policies after Khrushchev 119

believers. Then the CRA may take any time it wishes to arrive at
its decision, which is final. This weakens the position of the
religious society. In the past it dealt with the local government
where it could argue and appeal its decisions, or eventually
present its case to the Patriarchate which could and often did
take up its case on a much higher level with the CRA (CROCA
in those days). But now the distant and lofty CRAin Moscow is
the first and last authority, dealings with which for a provincial
church group are clumsy, complicated, and expensive. 45 The
CRA secret report to the CPSU Central Committee leaves no
doubt that the purpose and function of the CRA is to strangle
the Church or at least to demoralize her internally by using all
forms of intimidation, blackmail and threats to the clergy. 46
Yet the legislation comes one step closer to granting the
Church legal status by permitting both diocesan or spiritual
centres and religious societies and parishes to build and own
secular buildings for residence or administrative use, or for the
production of articles necessary for the given religious cult.
The existing laws on religion are being revised at the time of
this writing, apparently under the direct pressure of the
Moscow Patriarchate. 47 The bits and pieces of these revisions
have been appearing periodically in the journal of the Moscow
Patriarchate. One of the earliest revisions requalified the
clergy's income for the purposes of taxation as ofJanuary 1981,
from Article 19, meant for commercial private enterprise, to
Article 18, equalizing the legal status of clergy income with that
of medical private practice or that of private educators. The
maximum income tax according to Art. 18 (that above 7001
roubles p.a.) is 81 per cent, according to Art. 19 it is 69 per cent
of income. 48 Curiously, professors at the theological schools
and all clergy and laity working for the Department of External
Ecclesiastical Relations of the Church, although also paid from
Church funds emanating from believers' donations, are taxed
similarly to all Soviet employees, with the tax ceiling of 13
per cent, in recognition of their contribution to the Soviet
image abroad, at least indirectly rewarding subservience to the
state. 49 Other published bits of the presumably new legislation
equalized the clergy with the rest of the citizenry as to property
and inheritance rights, and as to the privileges granted to war
veterans should a member of the clergy be a former Soviet
soldier or officer. 5° But the most interesting innovations have
120 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

extended the rights of religious societies - i.e. the parish lay

organizations (of at least twenty persons)- considerably. The
religious society has at last been officially granted the status of a
legal person, with the rights of signing legally binding contracts
with Soviet trade unions as well as independent workers for
building projects and similar works. The new amendment does
not specify any more the character of the building a religious
society may build 'for its needs', but presumably it includes the
right to build not only residences and administrative centres
but also temples for worship; because a subsequent paragraph
says:
Should a house of worship ... be state property in leasehold
of a religious society in accordance with a contract, its
insurance at the cost of the society is compulsory.
Presumably this means that henceforth temples may also be
owned by religious societies when either built or bought by
them; as the law spells out for the first time that buildings
'bought or built' by a religious society 'become a property of the
religious society'. Judging by past precedents, the ambiguity
left in the law by not specifying the right to own temples is there
to leave the State room to resist 'uncontrolled' dissemination of
new churches, especially those owned by the church bodies.
The atheistic State, however, continues to be well 'protected'
for the time being. First, the religious societies may buy or build
only 'in accordance with the existing regulations': meaning,
they have to gain the CRA's permission first of all to legally
exist, i.e. to be registered, and this remains, as we have seen, a
totally arbitrary right of the CRA and the local Soviet
government bodies. Second, although as a legal person the
religious society receives full control over its bank account (also
spelled out in the new legislation of late 1985), the body itself
can be heavily infiltrated and controlled by state agents, owing
to the right of the local government bodies to reject elected
parish officials and to inject the body with their people. Thus,
unless the legal-person status is also extended to the clergy, the
latter's (i.e. the Church's) real rights and prerogatives may be
even more effectively curbed vis-a-vis the lay parish organiza-
tion now gaining the power that it lacked before.
What is an unquestionable gain for the Church per se though
these amendments is that the rights ofchildren and adolescents
 Antireligious Policies after Khrushchev 121

to be in church have now been affirmed in the written form for

the first time in Soviet law. In the past clergy has often been
persecuted for involving minors in church services and in
1961-4 even for serving a liturgy in the presence of minors.
Children ten years of age and over may now actively participate
'in the ritual', i.e. serve as acolytes, psalmists or choir singers;
while children of any age may be present at church services and
receive communion. 5 1
By this differential policy of'carrot and stick' -the disparity
between the taxation levels for the clergy useful and useless to
the state, the threat of deregistration for a missionary zeal and
total devotion to Christ contrasted with a tolerant attitude to
lukewarm clergy, etc. -the regime seems to indicate that it has
reluctantly reconciled itself to the notion that religion is here to
stay. All the regime can hope to do is to minimize its 'harmful'
impact on the Marxian social structure by the above measures.

ATHEISM'S NEW OFFENSIVE ... OR DEFENSIVE?

The authoritative Problems of Scientific Atheism (Voprosy nauch-

nogo ateizma, VopNAt for short) began to point out in the latter
half of the 1970s the inadequacy of explaining the persever-
ance of religious beliefs in the USSR solely in terms of the
'survivals of the pre-revolutionary past'. 'The vast majority of
members of religious communities are under sixty years of age
and were born and raised after the October Revolution, not to
mention the younger generations ofbelievers,' says one article.
Another adds that although social conditions for the existence
of religion do not exist in a socialist state, the complexity of the
phenomenon of religion is such that not only does it continue to
survive, but 'reproduces itself and shows signs of new vitality'.
As in the debates of the 1920s, 1930s and 1950s, the article takes
to task those atheists who claim that religion will die away with
the disappearance of the last traces of a class society, that is
those who treat religion in a classically Marxist context. Such
people fail to notice the dynamics of religion, and the fact that
the new generations ofbelievers are often well-educated Soviet
citizens, so their religiosity cannot be brushed aside as a sign of
intellectual ignorance and backwardness. 52 The Brezhnev
speeches at the 25th ( 1976) and 26th ( 1981) party congresses
122 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

and the 26 Aprill979 CPSU Central Committee resolution 'On

Further Improvements in the Ideological, Politico-
Educational Work' called for a 'complex approach' to ideologi-
cal questions, harking back to Lunacharsky and Yaroslavsky
during the time of the Second LMG Congress. These remarks
were immediately picked up by atheistic authors as being new
directives for atheistic propaganda. Furov, the author of most
of the secret reports on the Church, saw this 'newness' already
in Brezhnev's 1977 Constitution- namely, in its Article 52
which had replaced the phraseology of Article 124 of Stalin's
Constitution. Whereas the latter had spoken of the freedom of
antireligious propaganda, the 1977 Constitution spoke of
freedom of atheistic propaganda. Furov interpreted this as a
difference between a negative approach and a positive one:
replacement of the religious Weltanschauung with an atheistic
one. Kurochkin added that the 1979 CC Resolution resulted in
a more active antireligious propaganda, embracing all aspects
of public life and culture, with a more intensive participation in
it of CP organizations, the mass media, higher and secondary
schools, as well as institutions of culture and scientific
research. 53 Sophistry of the language aside, we ought to
remember that there is nothing new in this; this was the crux of
Yaroslavsky's arguments against the radicals from Bezbozhnik u
stanka from 1928 to 1930.
What is more significant is that all these speeches and
resolutions were clearly seen as signals for further escalation of
the intensity of antireligious activities, as witnessed by the
resolutions of the 1982 19th Komsomol Congress. While the
18th Congress, meeting only four years earlier, still avoided
direct attack on religion, preferring euphemisms, the 19th one
ordered all local Komsomol committees 'to perfect the atheistic
upbringing of the young generation, to profoundly expose the
antiscientific essence of religious ideology and morals':
In order to improve the efficiency of atheistic upbringing,
the struggle with religious survivals and traditions ... it is
recommended that the Komsomol organizations:
-explain to the youth the antiscientific essence of religious
ideology from the position of a class approach. More
attention should be paid to the study of the foundations of
scientific atheism in the system of Komsomol political
 Antireligious Policies after Khrushchev 123

education ... intensify criticism of the clerical bourgeois

propaganda, its attempts to use different channels for the
revitalization of religious organizations in our country ...
-make a fuller use of the cinema, the theatre, institutions of
culture and libraries for the scientific-atheistic propaganda

- improve individual atheistic work with children and

teenagers, especially with those stemming from religious
families; recruit young teachers, pioneer and Komsomol
workers for this work ... Educate militant atheists, form
active atheistic public opinion, do not leave without an
exacting reprimand every case of the Komsomol members'
participation in religious rites. 54
As we see, there is nothing new in the warnings, in the
methods of antireligious work, or in the complaints that Soviet
Komsomol youth continues to frequent churches and, at least
in some cases, to prefer genuine religious rites to the neo-god-
builders' ersatz rituals. What is puzzling, however, is that it took
the Komsomol fourteen years to reflect in its major policy
document the above Pravda editorial's warning about 'the
dissemination of religious views . . . among children and
teenagers'. Probably a clue to this puzzle is to be found in two
ideological policy editorials in the two top ideological journals
of the Soviet Union, Voprosy filosofii and Kommunist, marking
the sixtieth anniversary of Lenin's 'On the Importance of
Militant Materialism'. Kommunist in particular admits a grow-
ing apathy towards questions of Marxist theory and ideology
on the part of the younger generation, including young Soviet
intellectuals, and even 'philosophers' (sic). This trend is blamed
on the 'bourgeois philosophers' who charge 'the Marxist-
Leninist philosophy per se' with responsibility 'for the indi-
vidual negative facts in the history of Soviet science connected
with a nihilistic attitude towards the theory of relativity,
genetics and cybernetics'. Consequently, 'some Soviet philo-
sophers and representatives of other fields of scholarship' not
only fall into the positivist trap of 'creeping empiricism',
claiming that sciences are a 'philosophy unto themselves', but
even treat every 'statement of principle by the party leadership
on ideological errors ... in individual scholarly works as ...
124 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

diktat and violation of freedom of scientific research and of the

autonomy of science'.
Turning directly to questions of atheism, the journal
attacked 'certain god-seeking motifs ... mystical subjects ...
aesthetization of religious images, church leaders, romanti-
cisation of [the Orthodox monastic institution of] elders
[starchestvo ], identification of national traditions ... with the
church traditions and rites' in the works of contemporary
(mostly young) Soviet writers. 'Problems of atheistic educa-
tion,' declared Kommunist, 'remain a topic for today.' 55
This is seconded by Vop. fil., which incidentally speaks not of
an offensive but of a necessity 'to defend . . . scientific
materialism'. In its thesis on the topicality of Lenin's 1922
article for the present day, the journal sees historico-
ideological parallels between the time of the writing of the
article and today. Having lost the duel with Bolshevism in the
open Civil War, the Russian bourgeoisie allegedly tried in the
early 1920s 'to stifle the young Soviet republic' on the
ideological front by setting up free religio-philosophical
academies, study circles, and periodicals (the article passes over
in silence Lenin's real method of dealing with these philo-
sophers: by arresting and expelling all of them abroad and
closing the institutions and their journals by force). Lenin's
article was the Marxist-Leninist response and policy directive.
Now the would-be bourgeoisie, having witnessed 'the catas-
trophe of traditional rationalistic values' has been turning
towards the irrational, searching an escape from the scientific-
technical revolution in Gnosticism and other forms of mysti-
cism. All this adds particular topicality to Lenin's article and to
the necessity to intensify antireligious struggle; which, accord-
ing to the journal, is still qualitatively quite weak, lacking (after
nearly seventy years and billions of roubles and millions of
tonnes of paper expended on antireligious propaganda)
'fundamental work on the history and theory of atheism,
criticism of religions, practical scientific-atheistic propaganda
... highly qualified cadres of atheists'. 56 In other words, the
atheistic cart is still there where it was in 1922.
No wonder that after such an admission the CPSU Central
Committee came out with another militant resolution a year
later. The task set by the June 1983 Plenum for the party and its
ideological workers was 'to form a scientific, Marxist-Leninist
 Antireligious Policies after Khrushchev 125

Weltanschauung in all Soviet people'. The General Secretary

Andropov (Gorbachev's 'godfather' in the Mafia sense of the
term) promised that 'the ideological work is quickly becoming
the first priority [of] the party committees on all levels'. Each
citizen, said Andropov, must 'become an active builder of
communism'; and Chernenko added, 'Communists are consis-
tent atheists'. The Plenum Resolution avoided dotting the i's on
this issue, leaving the interpretation to the ideological workers,
who, as could be expected, stressed the direct bearing of the
Plenum Resolution 'on the overcoming of the religious
survivals in socialist society'. 57
According to inside Church information, pressures against
the Church have been on the rise once more in the 1980s. The
Church sees it, however, as rearguard attacks of an ideologi-
cally bankrupt but physically powerful enemy. This opinion
seems to be borne out by the ideological policy statements cited
above. The preference of the top leaders themselves not to get
directly implicated in this new offensive may have been guided
as much by the uncertainty of gaining an ideological victory
over religion and a desire to have some room for manoeuvra-
bility, as by a desire not to antagonize the believers too much
now, on the eve of the Millenium of Russia's Christianity.

THE MILLENNIUM AND THE SOVIETS

As 1988, the one thousandth anniversary of the official date of

the beginning of Russia's conversion to Christianity, draws
nearer, an undeclared duel between the Russian Church and
the Soviet ideological sector over the meaning of the date and
the role of the Church in Russian history and culture has been
gaining momentum. Officially, the state expressed its formal if
very modest gesture of goodwill towards the Church by
returning to her the most ancient monastery of Moscow, that of
St Daniel- in ruins to be sure, after decades of its use first as a
prison for juvenile delinquents, then as a w~r~house and
factory, where church sanctuaries were deliberately turned
into public lavatories. The rebuilding of the monastery will cost
the Church over 5 000 000 roubles. 58 Believers' requests to
return the most ancient monastery of Russia, that of the Kiev
Caves, for the same occasion, and several other most revered
126 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

monasteries and churches, have fallen on deaf ears. Neverthe-

less, the return of St Daniel's monastery was a gesture of
positive recognition of the Church as a historical phenomenon.
At the same time, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, attacks of
the Soviet media upon the Church as a cultural and historical
phenomenon have been mounting. The Church is accused of
having no legitimate claim to having been the source and the
champion of Russian culture, of the development of the
Russian national-historical consciousness and of the struggle
for the survival and unity of the Russian nation. This harks
back to the themes of the LMG, particularly of its Second
Congress in 1929, and the 1930 Second Plenum of its Central
Council when it attacked any association of Russian culture
with the Church. 59 Apparently, the topic of the role of the
Church in history and culture is particularly painful to the
Soviets because of the paucity of their own history and their
unattractive record of general cultural nihilism and of whole-
sale destruction of cultural monuments, churches, monas-
teries, ancient palaces, icons and religious manuscripts; 60 and
also in view of the fact that 'probably never before has history
had such a mighty power of attraction [for the Soviet public] as
today'. 61 Publications that can safely be considered the mouth-
piece of the party's general line regarding the forthcoming
Millenium, accuse the Church of capitalizing on the jubilee in
order to 'attract towards the Orthodox Church the attention of
the unbelieving citizens of the socialist state, especially those
who show interest in their nation's past, in which the Church
did play a not unimportant role'. 62
The task, obviously set by the party for Soviet religiologists, is
to minimize and compromise this historical role of the Church.
One of the primary aims is to upset the popular Slavophile
thesis that, in contrast to most of their western neighbours, the
Slavs in general and eastern Slavs in particular had had almost
no culture and a very amorphous form of paganism prior to the
adoption of Christianity. Consequently, the new Christian
culture was grafted almost on a tabula rasa, and the Russian
people thus became an Orthodox Christian nation from its
foundations, a New Testament nation, a 'God-bearing' people.
As a counter-argument, Soviet authors insist that there is new
evidence of stone structures and frescoes in Kiev going back
several decades before 988, that there are written Byzantine
 Antireligious Policies after Khrushchev 127

references to the existence of some Russian script in the late

ninth century and of translation of Russo-Byzantine treaties of
the early tenth century into Russian. Hence, they argue,
literacy as well as arts and architecture preceded the official
conversion of Russia. But this proves little. Historians, includ-
ing Soviet historians (who use this argument to show the
arbitrariness of the 988 date), hypothesis that the early Kiev
had been largely Christianized by its pre-Riurikide princes
Askold and Dir, who were treacherously killed in the early
tenth century by the heathen Prince Oleg invading Kiev from
Novgorod, causing the reversion to paganism. Moreover, the
Byzantine reference to a Russian script relates to a Russian
translation of the Scriptures and other church books in the
Russian northern and eastern Black Sea areas, and both are
related to and originate by Byzantium and Christian sources.
The other major attempt to minimize and neutralize the 988
date is to argue that it was merely the date of enforced mass
baptism of the population of Kiev (and later Novgorod) by its
authoritarian Prince Vladimir, while the conversion of the rest
of the nation took several centuries, and a pagan-Christian
dualism in the popular beliefs and practices of the nation
survived right into the twentieth century. To further weaken
the importance of the Millenium date, a 1500th anniversary of
the city of Kiev was invented literally out of thin air and
celebrated in 1980-82.63
The Soviet line regarding the importation of Christianity
from Byzantium is that although it is a culture phenomenon,
Christianity has had the effect of freezing cultural develop-
ment. It is alleged that the first historical stage of Christianity
expressed itself in the destruction of the great cultures of
antiquity. They admit that during the Dark Ages the learned
monks performed the role of sustaining some form of literacy
and cultural development. But once culture had spread into
secular society, the Church was said to have played a reaction-
ary role, discouraging secular culture, and persecuting secular
forms of drama, music and art. Eventually there was a fourth
stage, which was a secular revolt against the Church and her
stagnating policies, ending in the triumph of 'progressive
forces' over Church culture. Jumping on the bandwagon of the
currently fashionable preservationists, Nauka i rel., lately the
general Soviet media, has attempted to present itself and the
128 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

Soviet state as champions of the preservation of cultural and

historical monuments, especially church and monastic art and
architecture, and it has condemned acts of vandalism. At the
same time, the 1930s attacks against the Church for an alleged
lack of national patriotism have been revived. The Church
hierarchy is attacked for alleged collaboration with all the
invaders of Russia, from the Tatars and Poles (in the seven-
teenth century) to the Germans in the Second World War. It is
denied that the Tatars had spared the Church from destruc-
tion out of their general respect for religion. The Soviet line is
that the reason for the privileges granted by the Tatars to the
Russian Church was her collaboration with and support for
them because of Byzantine state interests. The clumsy evidence
produced is that a Tatar khan once said the churches should
not be taxed because the clergy 'prays for us'; whereas in fact
such prayers 'for the caesar of this land' are a regular part of
each liturgy. The fact that the Church supported Prince
Dimitry Donskoy's national struggle against the Tatars is
presented as an exception and a situation in which the Church
could not take any other position. Similarly, the patriotic stand
against the Polish invaders of Patriarch Germogen and his
subsequent martyrdom at their hands is interpreted as a last-
moment turn-around forced upon the Church by a surge of
national patriotic sentiment, making it impossible for Germo-
gen to take any other position. The accusation of collaboration
with the Nazis is based on the simple fact that the Church and
believers took advantage of greater religious tolerance of the
German occupiers in the Second World War and began to open
churches, establish dioceses, and reconstruct the Church out of
the ruin to which it had been reduced by the Bolsheviks. These
facts, of course, are overlooked and never mentioned by Soviet
authors. 64
Similarly, the impact of Byzantium and the influence of its
ideas and laws in the formation of the Russian state is
minimized by exaggerating beyond all proportions the pre-
Christian Kievan state which 'had existed already for over a
century, had politically strengthened itself and appeared
before the whole world as a mighty power'. 65
At the same time, when discussing the impact of the Church's
teaching on morality and ethics of the nation, the example of
the mad and psychotically cruel I van the Terrible is brought in;
 Antireligious Policies after Khrushchev 129
and it is claimed that he had been brought up by the Church,
was a connoisseur of theology and the Scriptures, and that he
could well have been inspired by the Scriptures (particularly by
the Old Testament) for his tyranny. Even the teaching of
monogamy is denied to the influence of Christianity. The claim
is that the pre-Christian Russians were monogamous, except
for some lecherous princes, including St Vladimir who among
his multiple concubines had three Christian wives (Czech,
Bulgarian and Greek princesses) - that is, their Christian
parents saw nothing wrong in polygamy. 66
Much space has been dedicated to belittling and blackening
the role of the monasteries in the history of Russia. The reason
given by Nikolai Gordienko, one of the leading religiologists
and anti-Church polemicists, for so much attention to this
subject is that the Church and her authors and sermonizers
have been systematically 'misinforming' the Soviet public
about the true history of monasticism. Consequently, today,
monasticism has become popular not only with Soviet believ-
ers, but also with 'unbelievers' (sic). 67
Gordienko's polemics consist in using half-truths, present-
ing only one side of historical facts without their proper
context, and concealing inconvenient facts. Contemporary
Russian Orthodox Church historians and theologians, as well
as clergy sermons, are constantly quoted and attacked. They
are often accused of deliberate misinformation, which at any
time can be interpreted as slander: that is, the authors can be
held criminally responsible for their writings and statements
on the Millenium and its impact on Russia's history, culture and
morals. That the attack has been interpreted precisely in this
way within the Moscow Patriarchate seems to have been
confirmed by the current uncertainty within the Moscow
Patriarchate of the manner and scope of Church celebrations
of her Millenium that will be allowed by the Soviet state in 1988.
This uncertainty has been confided by some persons within the
Patriarchate to friendly visitors from abroad. 68
However, Gordienko's policy directive, we can presume,
tells him not to totally condemn the Church, which is still of
great use to the Soviets in supporting their foreign policies and
'peace' propaganda at international forums. This role of the
Church and its use by the Soviet state has to be somehow
logically brought into focus and the duality should not appear
130 Marxist-Leninist Atheism

to be too contradictory. So, regarding the contemporary

Orthodox Church in the USSR, Gordienko says the Church
was forced to make peace with the socialist system and accept
socialism as a praiseworthy social system in order not to lose all
its flock. Hence today the Russian Church is a loyal institution
upholding Soviet foreign and domestic policies, having bor-
rowed these attitudes from the Renovationists which she had
fought. What is passed over in total silence, of course, is the
persecutions of the 1920s-1930s and the inconsistency
between the assertion that the Church was forced to the loyal
positions by its laity and the (concealed) fact that the Renova-
tionists had failed precisely because their loyalty to the Soviet
system had resulted in the loss of its lay flock.
Be that as it may, Gordienko concludes that the Church is
approaching the Millenium of the conversion of the city of
Kiev, which she 'bastardizes' as the Millenium of Russia's
Christianization, with a reduced flock, far from being in a
jubilee state (again passing over in silence the Soviet state
limitations and pressures imposed on her as the reason for her
low profile).
After hitting the Church hard he makes the grudging
admission that her role in Russian history has been quite
significant:

The baptism of the Kievites by the order of Prince Vladimir

... was a socially determined action of a far-sighted states-
man pursuing concrete and quite terrestrial (political and
ideological) aims: ... to make use of religion, which had been
formed in a class society, for the strengthening of the
domineering role of the exploiting classes being formed at
the time; for the strengthening of the princely power, for the
achievement of greater firmness of the Old Russian state and
of the acceptance of the growing oppression by the masses
through humility and subservience [taught by the Church].

The Church, he says, was an institution 'which blessed feudal

relations'. And as long as feudalism was a progressive force in
history, the role of the Church was likewise historically
progressive and useful. Once feudal relations began to be
replaced by commerce and capitalism and thus became a
reactionary force, so did the Church. Any other interpretation
 Antireligious Policies after Khrushchev 131

of the Church's role in history 'is perversion of history at it

crudest', declared Gordienko menacingly, 69 while ignoring the
fact that the Old Russian society, particularly the Kievan one,
was not feudal by any stretch of imagination, except in the
fantasies of Marxist dogmatists.
Appendix 1
The following is a collection of the maJor laws and regulations governing and
affecting the existence of religious organizations. Particular emphasis has
been placed on the earlier bodies oflaws and regulations, as these formed the
basis of the relationship between the State and religion and the attitudes
towards believers. Much has been omitted for the sake ofbrevity and to avoid
repetition. In addition, some of the texts have been abbreviated in order to
avoid technical details and matter not pertaining directly to believers.

ACTS OF THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT ON RELIGION AND

THE CHURCH, PRECEDING THE DECREE ON THE
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
Act of the Commissar of Education, December 11, 1917
... It is declared that all control ofeducational matters shall be handed over
to the Commissariat of Education from all religious organizations. All
church/parish schools, teachers colleges, religious colleges and seminaries,
... all missionary schools, [and] all academies ... with all oftheir property,
both movable and immovable, i.e. with all buildings ... land, with all
gardens, with all libraries ... valuables, capital and vulnerable papers ...
and with all that was credited to the above mentioned schools and
institutions, shall likewise be handed over to the Commissariat of
Education ....
(Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V.I. Lenin)

Decree on the dissolution of marriage, December 18, 1917

. . . 12 . . . All records currently in the possession of any religious
organization are to be handed over to the local courts without delay .... All
decisions regarding the dissolution of marriages already made or in the
process of being ruled upon by any religious organization or by any of its
representatives, are hereby declared destroyed and not valid, they are to be
decided upon by the local courts upon their taking possession of the
appropriate records. Parties not wishing to wait until this takes place have
the right to issue a new petition for the dissolution of their marriage as
described by this decree ....
(Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V.I. Lenin)

Decree on Civic marriages, on children, and on the introduction of books

or records, December 18,1917
The Russian Republic as of now recognizes only civil marriages ....
(Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V. I. Lenin)

132
 Appendix 133

Order of the People's Commissar of military affairs No. 39, January 16,
1918
On the prohibition of all powers of religious departments
1. All religious ministers and practisers currently employed by war
departments are discharged.
2. All powers of military clergy are dissolved.
3. War committees have the right to retain religious ministers, providing
this is in accordance with the desires of their members.
4. In the above case the support of such a minister will be entirely up to the
concerned committees.
5. All wealth and property of military churches, without exception, is to be
handed over to the war committees of the units involved for safe-
keeping ...

Order of the People's Commissar of Welfare, January 20, 1918

The distribution of subsidies for the maintenance of churches, chapels,
and for the operations of religious orders are to be halted. Governmental
support of clergy and teachers of religion is to be halted as of the 1st of
March of this year ... Church services and the fulfilment of the needs of
believers may be continued on the condition of an expressed desire by
collectives of believers who must assume the full cost of repairs and
maintenance of churches, [and] of all inventory and all servers.
(People's Commissar A. Kollontai)

LAWS OF 1918
SEPARATION OF THE CHURCH FROM THE STATE AND THE SCHOOLS
FROM THE CHURCH

Decree of the Soviet of People's Commissars January 21, 1918

1. The Church is separated from the state.
2. Within the territory of the Republic, it is forbidden to pass any local
laws or regulations which would restrain or limit the freedom of
conscience or which would grant special rights or privileges on the
basis of the religious confession of citizens.
3. Every citizen may confess any religion or profess none at all. Every
legal restriction connected with the profession of no faith is now
revoked.
Note: In all official documents every mention of a citizen's religious
affiliation or nonaffiliation shall be removed.
4. The actions of the government or other organizations of public law
may not be accompanied by any religious rites or ceremonies.
5. The free performance of religious rites is granted as long as it does not
disturb public order or infringe upon the rights of citizens of the
Soviet Republic. In such cases the local authorities are entitled to take
the necessary measures to secure public order and safety.
134 Appendix

6. No one may refuse to carry out his citizen's duties on the grounds of his
religious views.
7. Religious vows or oaths are abolished. In necessary situations a
ceremonial promise will suffice.
8. The acts of civil status are registered exclusively by the civil authorities
at the departments for the registration of marriages and births.
9. The school is separated from the church. The teaching of religious
doctrines in all state and public schools, or in private educational
institutions where general subjects are taught, is prohibited. Citizens
may receive and give religious instructions privately.
10. All ecclesiastical and religious associations are subject to the same
general regulations to private associations and unions, and shall not
enjoy any benefits, nor any subsidies either from the Government, nor
from any of its autonomous or self-governing institutions.
11. Religious organizations are prohibited from calling obligatory gather-
ings for its members, from establishing membership dues, and from
disciplining any of its members in any way.
12. No church or religious organizations are permitted to own property.
They do not have the rights of a legal person.
13. Any and all property that any church or religious organization may
have in Russia is hereby declared to be public property. Buildings and
objects required specifically for religious ceremonies, are to be given
only by special decrees by either local or central governmental powers,
for free use for the appropriate religious organization.
(Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, V.I. Lenin)

Constitution of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, July 10,

1918
Chapter Five
13. For the goal of securing true freedom of conscience for workers, the
church is separated from the state and the schools are separated from
the church, but all citizens are free to carry out religious and
antireligious propaganda.
Chapter Thirteen
65. The following categories may not vote and cannot be elected ... :
(b) those who do not work for their income ...
(d) monks and clergy ...

Declaration of the People's Commissar of Education, February 17, 1918

All teachers of religion of all religions are relieved of all oftheir duties and
responsibilities as of the first of January, 1918.
(People's Commissar A. V. Lunacharsky)
 Appendix 135

Declaration by the People's Commissar of Public Property, January 14,

1918
The Court Clergy is abolished.
The protection of Court churches, as artistic and national monuments, is
temporarily assigned to the committees and commissars of those places
and institutions to which the churches are attached. If any religious society
declares a desire to celebrate in these churches, then it will have to take
upon itself the full cost of supporting the clergy, other religious servers and
other associated costs ...
(Deputy People's Commissar Iu. Flakeerman)

Declaration of the People's Commissar of Justice, August 24, 1918

6. The minimum oflocal citizens required, in order to receive the use of
religious property, shall be set by the local Soviet of Worker and
Peasant Deputies, but this number may not be less than 20.
[Thus a local Soviet could very easily prevent a Church from
opening by setting the minimum number at an unrealistically high
level. Ed.]
8. Those who take upon themselves the use of a church building are
obligated to: ... in the event ofthe revelation by the Soviet of Worker
and Peasant Deputies of embezzlement or ill usage oflent property,
immediately give up said property to the Soviet ofWorker and Peasant
Deputies upon their first demand ....
10. All local citizens of the corresponding faith have the right to ... take
part in the administration of the church property to the same degree as
the founders of the association.
[Thus the local administration could fill the church's administration
with its agents and thus control it to such an extent as to even
'voluntarily' close the church. Ed.]
29. In government and all publicly administered buildings, it is, without
exception, forbidden to:
(a) hold religious functions or ceremonies (prayer services, funerals,
etc.),
(b) house any sort of religious items (ikons, pictures, statues of a
religious nature, etc.).
31. Religious processions, and the carrying-out of any sort of religious
functions outside, is allowed only with written permission from the
local _Soviet authority, which must be obtained for each separate
occas10n ...
(People's Commissar D. Kursky)

Act #259 of the People's Commissar oflntemal Affairs, july 30, 1929
4. . .. for former church/parish houses or former monastery buildings, if
they are rented out to workers, they will be responsible for all repairs,
and they must be charged rent equivalent to the devaluation of the
property. This is to be considered as 1 per cent of the current
136 Appendix

construction cost for stone buildings, and 2 per cent for wooden
buildings.
For tenants living off non-labour income, including religious servers,
the rent shall be determined as the cost of the devaluation of the
property plus the interest upon the cost of the construction of the
building, assumed to be up to 10 per cent per year, depending upon
local conditions and the situation of the tenant.
[In other words the rent for ministers of religions was to be 5-10
times that of a worker for the same property. Ed.]

Act of the All-Russian Central Administrative Committee and Soviet of

People's Commissars RSFSR, AprilS, 1929
1. Persons living off non-labour income ... exceeding 3000 rubles per
year, living in nationalized or municipally owned housing, cannot have
their leases extended past the 1st of October 1929 .... they must be
moved out without being offered alternative living space.
3. In all municipally owned or nationalized housing ... it is from now on
forbidden to rent out space to those on non-labour incomes. It is also
likewise forbidden to sublet, or take in as boarders those living on non-
labour incomes.
[In other words a priest cannot live with a parishioner or relative in
government-owned housing. Ed.]

DecreeofSNKRSFSR#23-24, 1929
1. All cemeteries ... and all funeral organizations are hereby placed in the
control oflocal soviet deputies.
(People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Tolmachev)

LAWS CONCERNING THE TAXATION OF RELIGIOUS

CULTS AND THEIR EMPLOYEES
Circular NKF USSR, September 10, 1929 #398
1. Buildings, assigned for religious use ... and supplied free of charge for
use to religious organizations, are subject to local taxes ...
4. . .. nonpayment of taxes on time will result in the confiscation of the
building.
(People's Commissar of Finance Briukhanov)
Rule #211177
1. In those municipalities where there are municipal administrators, those
citizens who are deprived of civic rights [see Constitution . . . 1918,
chapter 13, section 65. Ed.] and thus cannot perform administrative
functions are subject to a surtax.
4 .... The surtax shall not exceed 10 rubles ...
(Assistant Head of Taxation the RSFSR People's Commissariat of Finance
Starobinsky)
 Appendix 137

LAWS CONCERNING CIVIL OBLIGATIONS

Law on military obligations, September 1, 1928
Section 1 ... The armed defence ofthe USSR shall be carried out only by the
workers. Non-worker elements are charged with the fulfilment of other
tasks for the defence of the USSR.
Section 236 Citizens, freed from military service on religious ground [by
local courts. Ed.] ... are to be assigned to: in peacetime- public-benefiting
work (combating natural disasters, epidemics, etc.) ... and in wartime-
special brigades for the servicing of the front and rear.

The Central Committee and the Soviet of People's Commissars of the

USSR decrees:
1. Citizens assigned to home front service ... in peacetime are subject to a
special military tax for the duration of their home front service
designation.
2. . .. the rate of tax shall be as follows: ... for those with an income up to
1800 rubles- the equivalent of 50 per cent of their income tax; with an
income up to 3000 rubles- 75 per cent of their income tax; over 3000
rubles- 100 per cent of their income tax ... but the special tax shall not
exceed 20 per cent of the person's taxable income.
5. The special military tax shall be collected for the first five-year period of
one's home front service designation, and after this- for one year of
every six years of home front service designation.
(Moscow, Kremlin, April10, 1929)

Instruction for the fulfilment of [the above] decree, April 25, 1929
19. The maximum age for being designated for home front service is
40 ...
(Assistant Head of Taxation)

Instruction on the elections to the Soviets, confirmed by the Presidium

of the Central Committee, November 4, 1926
15. Servers of cults of all religions and beliefs, including: monks, novices,
deacons, psalmers, mullas, rabbis, lamas, shamans, pastors ... and all
those who fulfil similar functions, are denied voting privileges ....
Family members of those whose voting privileges are suspended, and
if the source of their income is social benefiting labour ...

Act of the Central Committee and the Soviet of People's Commissars,

January 11, 1928
All Citizens of the USSR, who possess voting privileges ... may organize
consumer organizations to serve their consumer and household needs ....
[In other words, those whose voting privileges have been denied
(monks, priests, etc.) could not form, participate in, or benefit from
138 Appendix

consumer organizations. Membership in such organizations, at

certain times, in some areas, was essential in order to have access to any
consumer goods. Ed.]

Confirmation of the Central Committee, December 15, 1928

... Those whose voting privileges have been suspended, have the last and
lowest priority in land distribution for use ... Members of land organiza-
tions [which assign all land for all use. Ed.] are considered all those who ...
possess voting privileges ...
[In other words those who are not permitted to vote cannot have a
voice in land allocations. This was a particularly harsh measure for
village priests who often depended upon small gardens or farms for
their survival. Even if the village priest did receive land, it was often the
worst land available, that no one else wanted. Ed.]

Act of the Soviet of People's Commissars of the USSR, September 24,

1929
I. In all industries ... [and] in all institutions, that operate year round ...
the five-day work week (four days of work and one day of rest) is to be
introduced ....
[By this method, since only every fifth Sunday was a day of rest,
regular church attendance was made impossible. The celebration of
religious holidays was also made difficult by the abolition of holidays
for such events as Christmas and Easter. Ed.]

The three main collections of laws and regulations governing the formal
existence of religions and their relations with the state in the USSR- the 1929
Legislation on Religious Associations as amended in 1975 (LRA), the 1965
Statute of the Council for Religious Affairs (CRA), and the Instruction on the
Supervision over the Fulfilment of Religious Cults (1961)- are presented
below in the reverse order. The texts are abbreviated from the Russian
original. The language is simplified. Some articles have simply been
summarised, others were omitted in order to avoid purely technical matter or
repetition from one code to the next.

THE LAWS ON RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATIONS OF 8 APRIL

1929, WITH THE JUNE 23 AMENDMENTS
Only articles directly bearing on the religious associations, their rights, etc.,
will be cited. The relevant Soviet authorities will appear under their current,
not their 1929, designations.

3. A religious society is a local association of believers at least 18 years of age,

belonging to the same religious cult, faith, orientation or sect, numbering no
less than twenty persons, having come together for the joint satisfaction of
their religious needs.
 Appendix 139

Lawso£1929 Amendments of 1975

4. A religious society or group of 4. A religious society or a group of
believers may start its activities only believers may begin to function only
after the registration of the society or after the Council for Religious
group by the committee on religious Affairs . . . has made a decision
matters at the proper city or district regarding the registration of the
(raion) soviet. society or group.
The decision on the registration of
a religious society or a group of
believers and on the establishment of
a prayer house is made by the Coun-
cil . . . on the recommendations of
the Councils of Ministers if auton-
omous republics or the executive
committees of regional, provincial or
city (Moscow and Leningrad) soviets
of workers' deputies.
5. In order to register a religious 5. In order to register a religious
society at least 20 initiators must society its founders, consisting of at
submit to the agencies mentioned in least twenty persons, address a peti-
the previous Article an application in tion to the executive committee of
accordance with the form deter- the district or city soviet ... request-
mined by the Permanent Committee ing the registration of the society and
for Religious Matters at the [Council the opening of a prayer house ...
of Ministers]. [The soviet] addresses the
received petition of the believers
with its resolution to the Council of
Ministers of the autonomous re-
public, [or] the executive committee
of the regional, provincial, city
(Moscow and Leningrad) soviet ...
6. In order to register a group of 6. In order to effect the registration
believers, the representative of the of the group, the petition signed by
group (Art. 13) must submit an all the believers of the given group is
application to the agencies men- submitted to the executive commit-
tioned in Article 4 of the city or tee of the district or urban soviet ...
district where the group is located in which forwards this petition with its
accordance with the form deter- resolution attached to the Council of
mined by the Permanent Committee Ministers of an autonomous repub-
for Religious Matters at the [Council lic, to the executive committee of a
of Ministers]. regional, provincial or ([in the cases
of] Moscow and Leningrad) city
soviet ...
7. The registration agencies shall 7. The Council of Ministers of an
register the society or groups within autonomous republic, or the execu-
one month, or inform the initiators tive committee of a regional, provin-
of the denial of the registration. cial or city (Moscow and Leningrad
[only]) soviet ... having received the
materials regarding the registration
140 Appendix

of a society or group ofbelievers, is to

complete their scrutiny within one
month and then forward them with
its representation to the Council for
Religious Affairs of the USSR Coun-
cil of Ministers for authorization.
The Council for Religious Affairs
. . . studies the materials . . . and
makes the decision [no time limit
given] whether to register or to
refuse to register the ... group, and
informs the latter on its decision.
8. The registration agencies shall be 8. The Council for religious Affairs
informed on the composition of the keeps a register of all religious asso-
society, as well as on their executive ciations, houses of prayer and [other
and accounting bodies and on the church] buildings ... [and] estab-
clergy, within the period and in lishes the order of submission of data
accordance with the forms deter- on religious societies or groups of
mined by the Permanent Committee believers, their executive and audit-
for Religious Matters at the [Council ing organs and the clergy.
of Ministers].
10. For the satisfaction of their reli- 10. For the satisfaction of religious
gious needs, the believers who have needs the believers making up a
formed a religious society may re- religious society may, on the decision
ceive from the district or city soviet, of the Council for Religious Affairs
under a contract, free of charge, . . . receive a special building for
special prayer buildings and objects prayer, free of charge, on the condi-
intended exclusively for the cult. tions ... stipulated in the agreement
Besides that the believers who concluded between the religious
have formed a religious society or society and a legitimate representa-
group of believers may use for tive of the executive committee of the
prayer meetings other premises left district or urban soviet.
to them by private persons or local In addition, believers comprising
soviets on lease. Such premises shall a religious society or a group of
be subject to all regulations provided believers may use for their commu-
for in the present law relating to nal prayer other structures on lease-
prayer buildings; the contracts for holding conditions placed at their
the use of such premises shall be disposal by individual persons or
concluded by individual believers on executive committees of district or
their personal responsibility. Such urban soviets . . . These structures
premises shall be subject to technical are subject to all regulations of the
and sanitary regulations. legislation in force regarding house
A religious society or group of of prayer ... Moreover, these struc-
believers may use only one prayer tures must correspond to the regular
building or [complex of] premises. building and sanitary safety regula-
tions.
A religious society or group of
believers may use only one house of
prayer.
 Appendix 141

11. Individual members of the executive organs of religious societies or

representatives of groups of believers may make contractual agreements
hiring persons to fulfil various jobs connected with guarding, repairing or
procuring church property or material necessary for its preservation.
[Paraphrased, D.P.]
Such contracts may not include any commercial or industrial operations,
even if related to the church, e.g. leasing of candle-producing plants or
printing shops for the production of religious prayer books.

Lawsof1929 Amendments of 1975

12. For each general assembly of a 12. General meetings (other than
religious society or group of believ- prayer meetings) of religious
ers, permission shall be obtained: in societies and groups ofbelievers may
cities from committees for religious take place [only] on the permission of
matters of the city soviets, and in the executive committee of the dis-
rural areas from the executive com- trict or urban soviet ...
mittees of the district.
18. Teaching of any kind of the 18. No religious doctrines what-
religious cult in schools, boarding soever may be taught in educational
schools, or preschool establishments institutions. The teaching of religion
maintained by the State, public insti- is permitted in theological schools
tutions or private persons is prohi- only, which may be established in
bited. Such teaching may be given accordance with the existing regula-
exclusively in religious courses cre- tions.
ated by the citizens of the USSR with
the special permission of the Perma-
nent Committee for Religious Mat-
ters at the [Council of Ministers].
19. The clergy and other ministers of religion may operate only in the area of
residence of members of the religious association by which they are employed
and in the area of the temple where they serve.
Clergymen regularly serving two or more religious associations may
minister only in the areas of residence of the members of the given religious
communities.

Lawsof1929 Amendments of 1975

20. The religious societies and 20. Religious societies and groups
groups of believers may organize of believers may convoke religious
local, All-Russian or All-Union reli- congresses and conferences only
gious conventions or conferences by with the express permission of the
special permission issued separately Council for Religious Affairs in each
for each case by: particular case.
(a) the Permanent committee for Religious centres, spiritual admin-
Religious Matters of the [Council of istrations and other religious organi-
Ministers] if an All-Russian or All- zations elected at such congresses
Union convention or congress on the and conferences have administrative
territory of the RSFSR is supposed to jurisdiction only over the religious
be convoked. (canonical) activities of religious
142 Appendix

(b) the local Committee for Reli- associations. They are supported by
gious Matters, if a local convention is the contributions of religious asso-
supposed to be convoked. ciations collected exclusively by
The permission for convocation of means of voluntary donations.
republican conventions and confer- Religious centres and diocesan
ences shall be granted by the Com- administrations have the right to
mittee for Religious Matters of the produce church-plate and [other]
appropriate republic. objects of the religious cult, and to
sell the same to societies of believers.
[They also have the right] to obtain
means of transportation, to rent,
build and purchase buildings for
their own needs in accordance with
the legally established order.
25. All the property necessary for the performance of the religious rite, both
that contractually leased to the believers forming the religious society, and
that newly acquired or donated for the use in religious cult, is a nationalized
property and is listed in the files of the local government organs.

Lawso£1929 Amendments of 1975

27. Prayer buildings and religious 27. Houses of prayer and religious
objects shall be leased to believers belongings are transferred to the
forming religious associations for believers comprising a religious soci-
use by the Committee for Religious ety for use on conditions and in the
Matters at the city or district soviet. order established in the agreement
concluded between the religious
society and a plenipotentiary repre-
sentative of the executive committee
of a district or urban soviet ....
28. The temples and all the cult utensils within them are handed over for the
use of believers forming the religious society, on conditions stated in the
agreement concluded by the religious society with a representative of the
local government.
29. The agreement must state that the persons taking over the building and
its contents for religious use, pledge:
(a) to preserve and protect them as state property entrusted to them;
(b) to carry out all necessary repairs and to fulfil all financial obligations
connected with the rental and use of the property, e.g. for the heating,
insurance, guarding, payment of taxes, special collections, etc.;
(c) to use all these properties only for the purpose of satisfying religious
needs;
(d) to repay to the government the costs of any damaged or lost goods;
(e) to keep a register of all the belongings of the given temple, entering
therein all additionally obtained (whether by purchase, personal donations,
or receipt from other churches) objects of the religious rite ... objects falling
into disuse through wear and tear must be stricken out of the register
informing the local government organ and receiving permission from the
same to do so.
(f) official representatives ofthe local governments to be permitted by the
 Appendix 143

parish executive to inspect the property and all its contents at all times except
during the performance of the religious rite.
31. All local residents belonging to the same faith may add their names to
those who have already signed the lease agreement, thereby obtaining equal
right with the former in administering over the properties ...
32. Every signatory may remove his/her signature at a later date, departing
from the religious community. This however does not free him/her from the
responsibility for the state of the property and its contents up to the moment
of his/her resignation.

I..awso£1929 Amendments of 1975

33. Prayer buildings shall be subject 33. Houses of religion must be in-
to compulsory fire insurance for the sured at the cost of the persons
benefit of the appropriate local gov- signing the agreement [on behalf of
ernment at the expense of the per- the religious society] [but] in favour
sons who signed the contract. In case of the executive committee of that
of fire, the insurance payment may district or urban soviet ... on whose
be used for the reconstruction of the territory the structure is situated.
prayer building destroyed by fire, or The insurance payments for
upon decision of the appropriate prayer houses destroyed by fire and
local government for social and cul- are used, in accordance with the
tural needs of a given locality in full decision of the Council of Ministers
accordance with the Decree of of an autonomous republic or the
August 24, 1925 on the Utilization of executive committee of a regional,
Insurance Payments Acquired for provincial or city (Moscow and
Prayer Buildings Destroyed by Fire. Leningrad [alone]) soviet ... co-
ordinated with the Council for Reli-
gious Affairs, for the reconstruction
of the ruined buildings or for cultu-
ral needs of the district or town in
which the ruined prayer house was
situated.
34. Iftherearenopersonswhowish 34. If the believers do not submit a
to use a prayer building for the petition to lease to them for religious
satisfaction of religious needs under purposes a building and its belong-
the conditions provided for in Arti- ings necessary for the religious cult
cles 27-33, the city or district soviet . . . the Council of Ministers of an
puts up a notice of this fact on the autonomous republic or the execu-
doors of the prayer building. tive committee of a regional, provin-
cial or city (Moscow and Leningrad
[alone]) soviet ... decides on the
subsequent use of the prayer house
and all its belongings in accordance
with articles 40 and 41 of this enact-
ment.
36. The transfer of a prayer build- 36. A cult building used by believers
ing leased for the use of believers for may be reassigned for other needs
other purposes (liquidation of the [i.e., a prayer house may be simply
prayer building) may take place only closed down] exclusively by a deci-
144 Appendix

according to a decision of the [Coun- sion of the Council for Religious

cil of Ministers] of the autonomous Affairs ... after a request from the
republic or oblast which must be Council of Ministers of an auton-
supported by reasons, in a case omous republic or from the execu-
where the building is needed for tive committee of a regional, provin-
government or public purposes. The cial or city (Moscow and Leningrad)
believers who formed the religious soviet, ... if this building is necessary
society shall be informed regarding for state or public needs. Believers
such decision. comprising the given religious socie-
ty are to be informed of the decision.
38. Lease agreements regarding ... houses used for religious rites can be
annulled ahead of time by court action.
39. Only the CRA may close a temple by the request of the Council of
Ministers of an autonomous republic, a province or a city (in the cases of
Moscow and Leningrad) government.
40. Should a temple be closed, its contents are distributed thus:
(a) all goods made of precious metals and containing precious or semi-
precious stones go to the local government financial organs or to the Ministry
of Culture;
(b) all objects of historical and special artistic value go to the Ministry of
Culture;
(c) other objects (icons, clergy vestments, etc.) having special significance
for the performance of the rite are given to believers for transfer to other,
active, places of worship of the same faith ... ;
(d) ...
(e) money, incense, candles, oil, wine, wax, firewood and coal remain with
the religious society, should the latter remain in existence after the closure of
the temple.

Lawso£1929 Amendments of 1975

41. Prayer buildings and wayside 41. Prayer houses subject to closure
shrines subject to liquidation, which which are not under state protection
are registered in special local agen- as cultural monuments may be ...
cies for State funds, may be transfer- rebuilt for other uses or demolished
red for use free of charge to proper only be the decision of the Council
executive committees or city soviets for Religious Affairs ... on the rep-
under the condition that they will be resentation from the Council of
continuously considered as national- Ministers of an autonomous republic
ized property and their use for other [etc.] ...
purposes than stipulated may not
take place without the consent of the
Minister of Finance.
43. When the religious association 43. Religious assoCiations may be
does not observe the terms of the deprived of registration if they trans-
contract or orders of the Committee gress the legislation on cults.
for Religious Matters (on re- Deregistration of religious asso-
registration, repair, etc.), the con- ciations is enacted by the Council for
tract may be annulled. Religious Affairs ... on the repre-
The contract may also be annulled sentation from the Council of Minis-
 Appendix 145

upon the presentation of lower ex- ters of an autonomous republic

ecutive committees by the [Council [etc.] ...
of Ministers] of the autonomous
republic, oblast, etc.
44. When the decision of the au- 44. In the case of nonobservance by
thorities mentioned in Article 43 is the religious association of the agree-
appealed to the [Council of Minis- ment on the use of the prayer house
ters] within two weeks, the prayer or cult belongings the Council for
buildings and property may actually religious Affairs ... has the right to
be taken from the believers only after annul the agreement on a represen-
the final decision of [the Council]. tation from the Council of Ministers
of an autonomous republic [etc.] ...
45. The construction of a new 45. On the request of religious
prayer building may take place upon societies and with the permission of
request of religious societies under the Council for Religious Affairs ...
theobservanceofthegeneralregula- on the representation from the
tions pertaining to construction and Council of Ministers of an au ton-
technical rules as well as the special omous republic [etc.] ... believers
conditions stipulated by the Perma- may be permitted in individual cases
nent Committee for Religious Mat- to build new prayer houses out of
ters at the [Council of Ministers]. their own resources.
46. Should the temple, owing to its age, become a hazard to the believers
using it, the executive committee of the local government has the right to
propose to the parish executive organ to discontinue the building's use for
religious purposes until an inspection by a technical commission.
48. The technical inspection commission formed by the local government is
to include a representative of the religious society in question.
49. The conclusion of the commission is final and its fulfilment is obligatory.
50. The commission's report is to state whether the building must be
demolished or repaired. In the latter case the report is to detail the necessary
repairs and the time needed for their conclusion.
51. In the case of the believer's refusal to carry out the required repairs, the
agreement with the religious society on the lease of the property is nullified by
theCRA ...
52. The CRA also annuls the contract with the society if the commission
concludes that the building must be wrecked.

Lawso£1929 Amendments of 1975

54. The members of the groups of 54. Religious societies and members
believers and religious societies may of groups ofbelievers may voluntari-
pool money in the prayer building or ly pool their resources together and
premises and outside it by voluntary solicit voluntary collections inside
collections and donations, but only the prayer house among members of
among the members of the given the given religious association for
religious association and only for the purposes connected with the mainte-
purpose of covering the expenses for nance of the building, [the purchase
the maintenance of prayer building and upkeep] of the cult belongings,
or premises and religious property, the hiring of the clergy, and support
and for the salary of the clergy and of the executive organs.
activities of the executive bodies.
146 Appendix

57. Religious services take place in the temples without any express
information to the effect of any local government organs.
Local government must be informed [advance permission has to be sought
- D P] in advance, should a religious service take place in a building other than
those officially assigned for such use.
58. No religious rites may be performed in any state, public or co-operative
institutions and enterprises. Neither may there be any religious symbols
displayed in such buildings.
This ban does not extend to special rites performed by request of ad ying or
gravely ill person, being in hospital or prison, if these rites are performed in
special isolated rooms. Neither does the ban extend to cemeteries and
crematoria.

Lawsof1929 Amendments of 1975

59. A special permission [granted] 59. Religious processions, the per-
for each case separately by the Com- formance of religious ceremonies in
mittee for Religious Matters is the open air, as well as in apartments
required for the performance of and houses of believers, may take
religious processions as well as the place only by the express permission
performance of religious rites in the in each individual case from the
open air. An application for such executive committee of the regional
permission must be submitted at or urban soviet ...
least two weeks prior to the cere- Petitions for permissions [for the
mony. Such permission is not above ceremonies] ... must be sub-
required for religious services con- mitted at least two weeks prior to the
nected with funerals. date [of the desired action] ...
Religious ceremonies in private
residences requested by dying or
very seriously ill believers may be
performed without the [above] per-
mission or request [of the same] ...
60. No special permission is required for processions around the church as a
part of the religious service, as long as they do not interfere with the traffic.
61. All other religious processions and all performances of religious rites
outside the regular cult building require special permission of the local
government in each particular case.

Lawsof1929 Amendments of 1975

63. The registration agencies of 63. The Council of Ministers of an
religious associations (Art. 6) submit autonomous republic [etc.] . . . re-
data to the Committee for Religious ports all information on religious
Matters at the city and district soviets associations to the CRA ... in accord-
in accordance with the forms and ance with the established order.
within the period established by the
Permanent Committee for Religious
Matters at the [Council of Ministers].
 Appendix 147

SUPERVISION OVER THE FULFILMENT OF LEGISLATION

ON RELIGIOUS CULTS OF THE USSR2
Instruction on the application of the legislation on religious cults.
Approved on 16 March 1961.
/.General
1. [Rights to believe].
2. Definition of a religious society. See LRA, Art. 3.
3. Believers forming a religious association [society or group] may:
(a) observe religious rites, organize worship meetings as required by
the given cult;
(b) hire or elect clergymen and other personnel necessary for the
observance of the cult;
(c) use a house for prayer and other cult utensils;
(d) collect voluntary donations within the temple for the support of
the clergy, the prayer house, its property and the executive organs of
religious associations.
4. On theopenelectionsoftheexecutiveorgans. Thesameasin the Laws
on Religious Associations. See below.
5. The Council on the Russian Orthodox Affairs, the Council on
Religious Cults, their local plenipotentiaries and local government
organs must carry out strict supervision that the constitutional rights
of believers and non-believers are observed, that no administrative
methods are used in antireligious struggle, no administrative interfer-
ence in the activities of a religious association, rudeness towards the
clergy and insults of believers feelings.

II. The Activities ofthe Clerg;y and the Religious Associations must correspond to the
following demands
6. Free performance of religious rites is warranted as long as it does not
disturb public order and is not accompanied by acts infringing on
the rights of Soviet citizens. Otherwise, organs of national government
may take any measures deemed necessary to restore public order and
security.
7. Religious associations and clergy may not:
(a) use religious services for political pronouncements, contradicting
the interests of Soviet society;
(b) urge the believers to abstain from fulfilling their citizens' duties;
(c) carry on propaganda aimed at tearing the believers away from
active participation in the state, and the cultural and socio-political life
of the country;
(d) perform religious rites and ceremonies in the state, public and co-
operative institutions and enterprises. [Exception for the sick and the
dying ... ]
8. Religious associations and the clergy may not engage in any activities,
except those aimed at satisfying believer's needs.
9. Meetings and processions. Same as in LRA below.
148 Appendix
10. Religious centres, religious associations and the clergy may not:
(a) organize special groups, etc.- as in LRA below;
(b) organize pilgrimages to the so-called 'holy places', perform
fraudulent actions aimed at raising superstitions in the masses of
population in order to derive some kind of benefits (declaration of all
sorts of miracles, e.g. curing of illness, prophecies, etc.);
(c) make any compulsory collections or imposing dues on believers for
the support of religious associations or other purposes;
(d) apply any forms of compulsion or punishment to believers.
11. Religious centres, diocesan administrations and other religious
organs are forbidden to:
(a) use their resources and funds for charity or for the support of
churches and monasteries, not supported by the population as it drifts
away from religion, or for any other needs except for the covering of
expenses required for the sustenance of the organs themselves;
(b) convoke religious congresses and councils, establish theological
schools, publish religious literature, without the express permission
each time of the Council on Religious Cults or the Council for the
Russian Orthodox Church Affairs.
12. & 13. Technicalities, repeated in LRA (CRA's inspections, etc.).

Ill. Supervision over the fulfilment of the Legislation on Cults

14. Technical.
15. On the discovery ofbreaches of the Legislation on Cults in the activities
of a religious association or a clergyman, state of organs and officials of
the CROCA/CRC must ask the said clergyman or religious asso-
ciation's executive organ to remove the breaches by a certain date.
Should the said bodies continue to disregard the rules and refuse to
do otherwise, the said government organs must raise the question of
depriving the clergyman or the religious association of registration ...
and, in special circumstances, bring the guilty ones to justice.
16. Technical: on keeping registers, listing and reporting ...
17. [On the duty oflocal CROC/CRC officials to inform the central offices
on all details oflocal religious life, breaches oflegislation by the church
organs, etc.]

IV. Order and Procedures regarding Registration of Religious Associations,

Opening and Closing of Prayer Houses
18. No religious association may begin its functioning without first
registering with the organs of the state government.
19. Technicalities of the procedure. Basically the same as in LRA.
20. The executive committee of the local government addresses the
believers' petition with its resolution attached to the provincial
government or to the Council of Ministers of the given autonomous
republic, adding to it all the necessary information as established by
the CROCA/CRC.
21. On the instruction of the provincial government. .. the local official of
the CROCA/CRC reviews the believers' petition and checks its
soundness.
 Appendix 149

22. The Provincial Government or Council ofMinisters of an autonomous

republic makes the decision to register or not to register the petitioners
as a religious association.
23. Religious societies and groups of believers belonging to the sects the
teachings and character of activities whereof is of an anti-state and
fanatical nature, may not be registered. To these belong: The Jehovah
Witnesses, Pentecostals, the True Orthodox Christians, The True
Orthodox Church, the Adventist-Reformists, Murashkovites, etc.
24. Religious associations may be deprived of registration in cases of
breaking the Soviet legislation on religious cults.
The Procedure is the same as in the LRA below, except that the
registration is revoked by local government rather than by the CRA or
its predecessors.
25. Prayer houses may be closed in the following cases:
(a) if the religious association using it has been deprived of registra-
tion;
(b) if the building has to be demolished owing to the reconstruction of
the area or owing to the dilapidated state of the building as confirmed
by a technical inspection document and co-ordinated with the local
official of the CROCA/CRC.
26. No Orthodox, Old Believer, Armenian-Gregorian, Roman-Catholic,
Lutheran churches, Moslem mosques, Judaic synagogues, sectarian
places of worship, Buddhist temples, actively in use by their religious
societies may be closed without the express permission of the
provincial government or Council of Ministers of an autonomous
republic, co-ordinated with the central CROCA/CRC.
27. Registration and de-registration of clergy. The same as in LRA.
28. Provincial governments and their equivalents may order a limitation
on tolling church bells, should this become necessary and be
supported by the local population.

V. Rules on the Use of Objects (Utensils) of the Cult

Basically the same as in LRA. A lesser role is given to the CROCA/CRC; a
greater to local governments.

The texts of these rules and of the CRA Statute are taken from a closed Soviet
publication (not for general sale), Zakonodatel'stvo o religionznykh kul'takh
(Moscow: I uridicheskaia literatura, 1971 ), marked 'For Official use'. In other
words, at least until the publication of the revised Soviet Laws on Religious
Associations, the average Soviet citizen could only guess that there were some
new regulations, increasing administrative control over the Church and
giving new powers to the CROCA/CRC, which in 1965 were amalgamated
into a single body: Council for Religious Affairs (CRA).
The above booklet was somehow leaked out of the USSR and reprinted in
1981 in New York by the Chalidze Publishers.
If we compare the stipulations of this Instruction with both the CRA
Statute and the 1975 version of the Legislation on Religious Associations
(LRA), we see even there a considerably changed role of the CRA compared
with its predecessors. The latter were rather consulting and professional
150 Appendix

information bodies on religion (its needs and requirements) for the Soviet
Government. In some instances (Art. 26, for instance) CROCA/CRC's
function appears to be almost a protector for the believers and the churches
against undue encroachments by the state.
In contrast, in the CRA Statute and the 197 5 LRA, CRA is a watchdog over
the Church with very wide arbitrary and dictatorial powers over her.
Articles 24-26 spell out quite clearly for which offences and/or in which
circumstances alone a house of prayer may be liquidated. Although, in view
of the arbitrariness of Soviet power and its monopoly over the interpretation
oflaw, these regulations leave much room for abuse, the 1975 LRA does not
provide even this flimsy protection to the church (see Art. 36, LRA). That the
protection was flimsy enough was testified by the mass arbitary closures of
thousands of churches in 1959-64, eleven years before the adoption of the
1975 amendments.
Articles 6, 7, 10 and 11 in the above Instruction renderthemselves to much
abuse. What religious rites disturb public order? Choral singing, processions
(of which the Orthodox Church has traditionally had much), not to mention
church bells, may be interpreted as disturbing public order and be banned.
Art. 7/a-ccan be applied toanysermon theregimedoesnotlike. Furov, for
instance, complained that Bishop Khrizostom of Kursk in his sermons
criticized the basic premises of 'scientific atheism' and maintained that
science likewise depended on faith as a motive power for research and
investment. For such sermons he was taken to task by the CRA. Refusing to
budge, he soon lost his post as deputy head of the Department of External
Ecclesiastical Relations, and by the end of 1984 was moved to a distant Ural
diocese.
Similarly, monastic sermons calling on people to concentrate on their
spiritual life and belittling the material temptations of the secular world can
be interpreted as 'propaganda aimed at tearing believers away from active
participation in the life of the state'. This apparently was the reason for the
harassment and expulsion in 1976 of Fr. Amvrossi - a highly revered
monastic priest (born 193 7)- from the Zagorsk Holy Trinity Lavra and seven
years later from the Pochaev Lavra. In both places his sermons attracted
many thousands of pilgrims from all corners of the USSR.
Art. 10/b forbids priests to organize pilgrimages, and attributes belief in
miracles and other manifestations of God's power to 'fraudulent actions'. But
belief in these manifestations is an essential part of belief in God of all
religious faiths. Priests have been struck from the register and even
imprisoned for witnessing such manifestations to their parishioners. One of
them the late Fr. Sergii Zheludkov who lost registration by the CRA in the
1960s for taking some of his parishioners to a site of icon renewal. This is an
inexplicable phenomenon when suddenly an icon (sometimes all icons in a
church), dark and almost invisible from centuries of soot from candles and oil
lamps, suddenly begins to shine anew as if recently painted. What sort of
freedom of religion can there be if a believer may not testify to his faith in,
what he believes to be, manifestations and signs of God!?
Finally, Art. 11 deprives the Christian of his or her basic 'good Samaritan's'
duty and calling. And then: it is not the Church who decides how many
theological colleges she needs or when to have a council, but the CRA!
 Appendix 151

Such is, Dr Billy Graham, your religious freedom in the USSR. But perhaps
the 1975 legislation has improved the situation? Let us look.

PROVISIONS ON THE COUNCIL FOR RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS

OF THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS OF THE USSR

I. The CRA ... has been formed for the implementation of the policies
of the Soviet Government regarding religions.
2. The main functions of the CRA are:
(a) [to make sure that the constitutional and all other legal provisions
regarding Church-State relations are observed];
(b) to study and draw conclusions regarding the practice of the laws on
religious cults, to draft new laws and decrees in this sphere ... ;
(c) to inform the Soviet Government on the activities of religious
organizations;
(d) to heIp religious organizations in making international contacts, in
participating in the struggle for peace and strengthening friend-
ship between nations.
3. The CRA's duties include:
(a) assuring the realization ofthe constitutional right of Soviet citizens
to profess a religion or not to profess any;
(b) supervision over the correct fulfilment of the laws on religion by
religious organization and the clergy;
(c) liaison functions between the religious organization and the Soviet
Government on questions needing a governmental decision;
(d) keeping a register of all religious associations prayer houses and
buildings;
(e) study and decision-making regarding questions arising out of
activities of religious organizations in the USSR;
(f) checking the application of the laws on religion by central and local
organizations;
(g) issuing resolutions on the union republican draft laws relating to
religion;
(h) receipt of information and materials on religion from the central
and local government organs.
4. The CRA has the right to:
(a) make decisions on the registration or de-registration of religious
associations, on the opening and closing of temples and prayer
houses;
(b) check the activities of religious organizations in regard to their
observance of Soviet laws on religion; its orders to discontinue any
abuses of the laws must be met without fail;
(c) raise the question of initiating penal administrative or criminal
procedure against those in breach of the laws on religion;
(d) clarify questions relating to the laws on religion to central and local
government organs and other Soviet organizations;
(e) suggest to local and higher administrative organs abolition of
instructions that contradict Soviet laws on religion.
152 Appendix

6. (Structure and staffing of the CRA)

7. The CRA of the Soviet Council of Ministers at its meetings studies
questions related to the practical application of the Soviet religious
policies ... makes decisions on the registration and de-registration of
religious temples and prayer houses ... [and regarding all the other
issues enumerated in article 1-5].
8. The CRA has its plenipotentiary officials in each union and
autonomous republic and in every province, subordinate to the
central CRA.
9. [The local CRA official is responsible for all the actions on the local
level, stipulated in the above articles. Has the same controlling powers
over local church organizations and bishops as, in principle, the
central CRA Office has over the whole Church. He also informs the
CRA central office on all details oflife and activities oflocal churches
and clergy.]
10. More details of the kind enumerated under No.9.
11. & 12. Additional details on the relationship between the local CRA and
local governments, and on the CRA stamp.
Adopted on 8 December 1965
Confirmed on 10 May 1966.

Criminal Code of the USSR, January 1, 1979

Article 142
The breaking of the laws on the separation of Church and State, and
Schools and Church- is punishable by correctional labour for up to one
year, or by a fine of up to fifty rubles .... Repeat offenders are to be
imprisoned for up to three years.
Article 143
The hindrance or prevention of the fulfilment of religious functions, so far
as they do not harm the social order or infringe upon individual rights- is
punishable by correctional labour for up to six months or by a public
reprimand.
[Here it is made clear that article 142 applies only to believers who break
the laws on the separation of Church and State, while article 143 applies
only to those opposing believers. Thus, even in the very unlikely
eventuality of a group ofbelievers suing a Soviet official, and an even less
likely eventuality of their winning the suit, all that the guilty adminis-
trator would likely face would be a public reprimand. No matter how
many times an official or a citizen is found guilty of preventing believers
from exercising their religious rights, the maximum sentence to which
he could be subjected is six months orcorrectionallabour, while believers
who repeatedly are found guilty under article 142 face up to three years
of imprisonment. Ed.].
Article 190
The systematic distribution of false information, harmful to the Soviet
government, or to the social order, whether in oral, written, or any other
form - is punishable by imprisonment for up to three years, or by
correctional work for up to one year, or by a fine up to 100 rubles.
[This would include sermons condemning religious persecutions. Ed.]
 Appendix 153

Article 199
... The unlicensed construction of a dwelling or an addition- is punishable
by correctional work for a period of 6 months to one year with a
confiscation of the construction or addition.
[This punishes the expansion of a church without government
authorization. Ed.]
Article 277
Organizations or the leadership of a group, which function under the guise
of fulfilling religious duties, that are harmful, or that enlist other citizens
into harmful activities by threat of expulsion from the religious group, or
attempt to enlist or force others to enlist minors into the group - is
punishable by imprisonment for up to five years, or banishment for up to
five years with or without confiscation of property ....
[This article gives licence to brand as harmful to society any missionary
work and threaten with imprisonment any clergyman or layperson who
attracts converts or who strengthens religious convictions. The article
also allows for the punishment of those clergymen who try to achieve
proper spiritual discipline by subjecting parishioners to ecclesiastical
punishments for immoral or spiritually demoralizing behaviour. Ed.]
Notes and References
INTRODUCTION

1. Bociurkiw in Lenin: the Man, the Theorist, the Leader, Leonard Schapiro
and Peter Reddaway, eds (London: Pall Mall Press, 1967) pp.I07-8;
Thrower, Marxist-Leninist 'Scientific Atheism' and the Study of Religion and
Atheism in the USSR (Berlin-Amsterdam: Mouton Publishers, 1983)
pp. 110-11 et passim. Among Western scholars who have under-
estimated the role of atheism and antireligious campaigns in Soviet
policy-making should be named John Curtiss, the leading American
scholar in this field of the elder generation who adversely influenced the
whole American scholarship on the subject. Billy Graham's declarations
after his 1982 trip to the USSR that there is religious freedom there and
that the party and the government ought to be separated in our
perceptions on the status of religions, have ever since been skilfully used
by Soviet propaganda: for example, Vladimir Kuroedov (the late
chairman ofthe Council for Religious Affairs [CRA]) inNauka i religiia,
no.IO (October 1982) p. 5.
2. Many believers and the Church herself at first thought that the term
'social organization' (obshchestvennaia organizatsiia) applied to the
Church, after the publication of the 1936 Constitution, believing that she
could now put forward candidates for the elections to the soviets. A
Krasnov-Levitin, Likhie gody, 1925-1941 (Paris: YMCA Press, 1977)
pp. 299-300. Leading Soviet atheist authors attacked believers and the
Church for the 'misconception', stating that the Church was an
ideologically alien organization and therefore could not be a social or
public organization in a socialist state. See: F. Oleshchuk, 0 zadachakh
antireligioznoi propagandy (Moscow, 1937) pp. 12-17; Iu. Kogan and F.
Megruzhan, 0 svobode sovesti (M.: OGIZ, 1938) pp. 64-5; F. Putintsev,
Vybory v sovety i razoblachenie popovshchiny M., 1937) p. 20 et passim;
'Predvyborvye manevry tserkovnikov' and 'Luchshikh liudei - v
Verkhovnyi Sovet SSR!', Bezbozhnik, respectively no. 6 (June 1938) and
no. II (November 1937) pp. 3-4 and 2-3.
3. Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, supplement to New
Times, no. 41 (1977). In the Constitution of 1936 (English edn, e.g., M.:
Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1962) the relevant Articles are
124 and 126, which read respectively: 'Freedom of religious worship and
freedom of anti-religious propaganda is recognized for all citizens; and
'the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ... is the vanguard of the
working people ... and is the leading core of all organizations of the
working people, both public and state.'
4. See Marx and Engels: The Holy Family, The Communist Manifesto, German
1deology,LudwigFeurebachandtheEndoftheClassicalPhilosophy, The Origins
of the Family, Private Property and the State, The Dialectics of Nature, Anti-
Duering.

154
 Notes and References 155

5. V oprosy nauchnogo ateizma v kurse istorii KP SS (M.: Vysshaia shkola, 1975)

pp. 14 and 34; Karl Marx, On Religion, Saul Padover (ed. and transl.)
(N.Y.: McGraw-Hill, 1974) p. 356.
6. Voprosy .. . , pp. 22-3;KPSS vrezolutsiiakhiresheniiakhs'ezdov, konferentsiii
plenumov Tsk (M.: Izd. polit.literatury, 1969-72) vol. I, p. 60.
7. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime, 1917-1982
(Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984) ch. 2.
8. 'Ob otnoshenii rabochei partii k religii', as cited in: F. Putintsev, 'Lenin i
bor'ba s religiei', Pod znamenem marxizma, no. 3-(1932) p. 65.
9. Ibid, and: a. Lenin, 'Oznachenii voinstvuiushchego materializma' Polnoe
sobraine sochinenii, 5th edn (M., 1964) vol. 45, pp. 22-33 (first published
in Pod znamenem marxizma, no. 3, March 1972); b. 'Novyi etap' and
'Rezolutsii II Vsesoiuznoi konferentsii marxistsko-leninskikh nauchno-
issledovatel'skikh uchrezhdenii' ,P. znam. marx., no. 5 ( 1929) pp. 1-6 and
7-11, resp.; c. '0 zhurnale P. znam. marx. (Postanovlenie TsK VKP(b) ot
25 ianvaria 1931 g.)' and editorial, 'Vazheishii istoricheskii dokument',
P. znam. marx., no. 10-12 (1930) pp.l-2 and 3-13 resp. Also: editorial
in P. nam. marx., no. 9-10 (1931) pp. 3-5.
10. Vlad. 011-sky, 'Stoimost' Kul'tov', Prosveshchenie, no. 3 (St Pbg., March
1913) pp. 40-9; S, no. 6 (June 1913) pp.I-19.
11. lu.k., 'A. Lunacharsky, Religiia i sotsializm, v. II, Spbg. 1911'. A book-
review, Prosv., no. I (1912) p. 86; Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 35 (M.:
Progress Publishers, 1966) p.l22.
12. A. Lunacharsky, Vvedenievistoriiureligii (M-Pgd.: Gos. izdat., 1923) p. 3.
13. Ibid, chs 1-4.

CHAPTER 1: THE PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS

OF SOVIET ATHEISM
I. L. Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper Torch Books,
1957) pp. 13-14.
2. Ibid, p. 152.
3. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Historich-Kritische Gesamtausgabe
(Frankfurt, 1927-35) II (1), p.l75.
4. D. Aikman, The Role of Atheism in the Marxist Tradition, PhD dissertation
(Seattle: University of Washington, 1979) pp. 7 and 183-4.
5. Ibid, p. 9. He accepts this formula from the Soviet Russian mathema-
tician and religious thinker, Igor' Shafarevich, Sotsializm kak iavlenie
mirovoi istorii (Paris: YMCA Press, 1977) p. 260.
6. Ibid, p. 164.
7. Marx and Engels, Collected Works (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975)
vol. 3, p. 176.
8. Ibid, vol. 5, p. 7.
9. Engels, Anti-During (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House,
1954) p. 440.
10. Ibid, pp. 65-6.
II. Ibid, p. 192.
156 Notes and References

12. V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, 5th edn (M.: Foreign Languages Publishing
House, 1962) vol. 4, p. 2.
13. Ibid, vol. 4, pp. 83-4.
14. Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3, p. 296.
15. Ibid, vol. 5, p. 45.
16. Aikman, Role of Atheism, pp. 190-2.
17. Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 5, p. 8.

CHAPTER 2: ANTIRELIGIOUS POLICIES, 1917-41

I. Vorontsov, Leninskaia programma ateisticheskovo vospitaniia v deistivii
(1917-1937gg.) (Leningrad: izd. LGU, 1973) passim.
2. The exact dating of this decree is most frustrating. Originally it appeared
in Izvestia, no. 16 of21 January (Old Calendar, henceforth o.s. for Old
Style) 1918 under the title of 'Decree on the Freedom of Conscience,
Ecclesiastical and Religious Associations' over the signatures of Lenin
and eight other people's commissars, as well as Vladimir Bonch-
Bruevich, Director of the Office of People's Commissars, and N.
Gorbunov, its secretary. So presumably the decree should have come
down into history as thatof20 January (o.s.) or 2 February (n.s.), and this
is the date of the document given in 'K istorii otdeleniia tserkvi ot
gosudarstva i shkoly ot teserkvi v SSSR', Voprosy istorii religii i ateizma
(henceforth VIRA)vol. 5 (M:. Academy of Sciences, 1958) pp. 7 -8; but a
footnote on p. 7 adds that in a codification of Soviet decrees issued on 26
January it appeared under its current name of'Decree on the Separation
of Church From the State and the School From the Church'. Thus so far
the decree could be dated by 20, 21, 26 January (o.s.); yet all subsequent
official Soviet collections oflaws date it 23 January, 1918: for example,
Sistematicheskoe sobranie zakonov RSFSR .. . , vol. 2 (Moscow: luridiches-
kaia literatura, 1968) pp. 537-8.
3. Lev Regel' son, Tragediia russkoi Tserkvi, 1917-1945 (Paris: YMCA Press,
1977) p. 90- he erroneously calls it the V Department. In fact it was the
VIII Department of the Commissariat of Justice. For example, 'Otchet
VIII (likvidatsionnogo) Otdela Narkoma Iustitsii Vserossiiskomu s'ezdu
Sovetov', Revolutsiia i tserkov', no. 9-12 (1920) p. 70.
4. Pospielovsky, Russ. Church, cbs I and 3.
5. 'Ob antireligioznoi propagande', Rev. its., no. I (1919) pp.l3-16;
Vorontsov citing B.-B.'s memoirs, Leninskocia programma, p. 30.
6. KPSS vrezolutsiiakh .. . , vol. 2, p. 49. According to Vorontsov (p. 28), the
author of Article 13 was Krasikov. One of the most aggressive leaders of
Soviet atheism and the chief prosecutor at the trial of Metropolitan
Veniamin of Petrograd in 1922, Krasikov requested the death penalty
for him along with the death of numerous other leading church
personalities in Petrograd. The metropolitan was absolutely innocent,
but since he was much too popular among the masses of the population to
be tolerated, he was executed.
7. This is the opinion of Joan Delaney Grossman, 'The Origins of Soviet
Antireligious Organizations', in Richard H. Marshall,Jr (ed.), Aspects of
 Notes and References 157

Religion in the Soviet Union, .1917-1967, (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1971) pp. 103-30.
8. Bezbozhnik, no.1, 4January, Year 8 (1925) p.l.
9. David E. Powell, Antireligious Propaganda in the Soviet Union: A Study of
Mass Persuasion (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1975) p. 34; andKPSSv
rezolutsiiakh, vol. 2, p. 242.
10. Trotsky, 'Vodka, tserkov' i kinematograf, Pravda (12 July 1923) p. 2.
The very title of the article shows Trotsky's carelessly contemptuous
attitude to religion, not unlike Alfred Rosenberg who brushed aside the
Orthodox Church as nothing but a meaningless folk ritual, while his
subordinates in occupied Russia soon became convinced that it was the
single most important consolidating power of the Russian people.
Underestimation of the importance of the Church in the Russian
tradition stems from a confusion of popular anticlericalism with non-
belief (see my Russ. Church, Introduction and ch. 2).
11. Lunacharsky's position, beginning with his 1919 article 'Ob antireli-
gioznoi propagande', see Pochemu nel'zia verit' v boga?, F. Oleshchuk (ed.)
(M.: Nauka, 1965) pp. 229-33 and 308. Skvortsov-Stepanov, Mysli o
religii (M.: Gosizdat.antirel.lit., 1936) passim. On the matter of attack on
all religions, not just the Orthodox, he agreed with Lunacharsky at least
as early as 1922 (see The Russ. Ch., vol. 1, 91 nn.). On Trotsky, contrast his
article in Pravda 12 July 1923 (above) with his 'Antireligioznaia
propaganda', Pravda, 24July 1924.
12. 'Dekret obuchrezhdenii Komissariata po delam musul'man', lzvestiia, 21
January 1918 (o.s.).
13. The Moslems had enjoyed direct Soviet support until 1920; both the
Moslems and the Protestant sects enjoyed relative toleration until1928-
9 and were allowed a wide range of activities, including publications,
seminaries, youth work, etc., which were banned to the Orthodox. See,
for example, Bernhard Wilhelm, 'Moslems in the Soviet Union, 1948-
54', and Andrew Q. Blane, 'Protestant Sectarians in the First Years of
Soviet Rule' in Aspects of Religion . .. , pp. 257 and 301, respectively.
14. D. Grossman, 'Antireligious Organizations', p. 114.
15. Ibid, p. 127.
16. 'Vodka, tserkov' ... '(n. 21); on Rosenberg: The Russian Church, vol. 1,
ch. 7, p. 225.
17. See Lenin's objection to the arrest of the Patriarch in his 'secret letter' on
Shuia, below. Note that Trotsky's article (n. 18) was published in Pravda
in July 1923, when, afterthe Renovationist Schism had begun to decline,
the Patriarch was released from prison and made his declaration of civic
loyalty to secular authorities of the Soviet Union. Hence, Trotsky must
have lost hope of destroying the Church by means of the split, but at the
same time he was calmed by Tikhon's declaration. A year earlier he was
much more militant. Fr. Mikhail Polsky claims that also in response to
Tikhon's excommunication of the Bolshevik leaders (19 January, 1918
o.s.) Lenin refused to permit his arrest and execution suggested by
Trotsky, saying: 'We shall not allow him to be turned into a second
Germogen'. (The latter was the patriotic Russian patriarch martyred by
the Polish occupying forces at the Moscow Kremlin in 1612.) Novye
158 Notes and References

muchenikirossiiskie, vol. 1. (Jordanville: H. Trinity Monastery Press, 1949)

p.l50.
18. For example, Emelian Yaroslavsky, Na religioznom fronte (M.-L., 1925)
passim. He uses such primitive antireligious arguments as, for instance,
that the Easter cake blessed by a priest with holy water still dries like any
other. He repeats similar 'challenges' in his Bible for Believers and
Unbelievers, a collection of his articles published earlier in Bezbozhnik.
Each article deals with a paradoxical episode or story from the Old
Testament which Yaroslavsky interprets in its primitive literal sense, and
'proves' its inaccuracy in the context of the scientific theories of his time
or of naturalistic realism. There is much mockery and blasphemy in the
book. Bibliia dlia veruiuschchikh i neveruiushchikh (M.: OGIZ, 1936) 417
pp., circulation 20 200 copies.
19. '0 znachenii .. .', pp. 23-9; 'K itogam vsesoiuznogo soveshchaniia
OVMD' (editorial), P. znam. marx., no.3 (1931) p.8; 'Vazhneishii .. .',
p.5.
20. For the complete original text and the date on the Shuia events, see
VRSKhD, no. 98 (Paris, 1970) p. 54.
21. In fact, Lenin and the Soviet propaganda misrepresented the position of
the Church on the famine. It was the Patriarch who had originated the
charity campaign by appealing to Church leaders in the West and
forming a special Church Committee for aid to the victims of famine.
The government ordered this committee to be dissolved and all collected
funds handed over to it. The Church complied. When the government
ordered the confiscation of Church valuables, the Patriarch issued a
pastoral letter permitting the submission of all of them except those used
directly for Eucharistic purposes, offering instead to collect their money
value by a special plate collection. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, ch. 3.
22. Izvestia, 19 December, 1922; E. Belov, 'Sud'ba tserkovnykh tsennostei,
iz'iatykh sovetskoi vlast'iu v 1922 g.', VRSKhD, no.l04-5 (1972)
pp. 325-7 (in. edit. note).
23. Vorontsov, pp. 90 and 132; Grossman, 'Antireligious Organizations',
pp.l20-8.
24. Vorontsov, p. 72.
25. KPSS v rezolutsiiakh, vol. 2 p. 468; vol. 3, p. 84.
26. 'Rezolutsiia Obshchestva voinstvuiushchikh materialistov o tekushchikh
zadachakh obshchestva', P. znam. marx., no.12 (1926) p. 236; 'Ot
pravleniia Obshchestva voinstvuiushchikh materialistov-dialektikov'
and 'Ustav O-va VMD', ibid, No. 12 (1928) pp. 216-22.
27. N. Krupskaia, 'Obstanovka, v kotoroi pisalas' stat'ia Lenina '0 znachenii
voinstvuiushchego materializma', no. 1 ( 1933) pp. 147 -9; Gr. Bammel',
'Ob idealisticheskoi filosofii posle Oktiabria', ibid., no. 5 ( 1930) pp. 36-
61; V.V. (Vaganian?), 'S krestom i bogom protiv materializma', ibid,
no.4 (1922) p. 82-94.
28. The Russ. Church, vol. 1, p. 51.
29. P. K. Lobazov, I. A. Serebriankin, Voprosynauchnogoateizmavkurseistorii
KPSS (Moscow: Vysshaia shkola, 1975) pp. 196-7.
30. On Vvedensky: A. Levitin and V. Sharvrov, Ocherki po istorii russkoi
tserkovnoi smuty (Kuesnacht, Switzerland: Institut 'Glaube in der 2 Welt',
 Notes and References 159

1978), vol. 1, p. 53 et passim; on Martsinkovsky and in general on the

debates: V. Martsinkovsky, Zapiski veruiushchego (Prague, 1929) passim;
on the surgeon-bishop Voino-Iasenetsky generally, see: Mark Popovsky,
Zhizn' i zhitie Voino-lasentskogo, arkiepiskopa i khirurga (Paris: YMCA Press,
1979) passim.
31. Martsinkovsky, p. 278.
32. The very first Soviet film, produced in November 1918, was anti-
religious propaganda based on the Demian Bedny poem, 'on the Priest
Pankrat, Aunt Domna and an Icon in Kolomna', Voprosy . .. , p. 100. Note
that 'Cinematography' is the third word in the title of the cited Trotsky
1923 Pravda article. There he attaches great importance to the cinema in
the struggle against religion on a mass scale.
33. N. A. Krylov, 'Iz istorii propagandy ateizma v SSSR (1923-25)', Voprosy
istoriireligii iateizma (V. VIII, M., 1960) pp. 183-7. Also: Zatko, pp. 103,
117.
34. The 8 Aprill929 'Law on Religious Associations' restricted believers to
services within the church walls; the 14th Congress of the Soviets a month
later made religious propaganda illegal, restricting the right of prop-
aganda to atheism alone.
35. Thrower, Marxist-Leninist 'Scientific Atheism' and the Study of Religion and
Atheism in the USSR (Berlin and Amsterdam: Mouton Publisher, 1983)
pp. 70-100.
36. 'Novyietap',P. znam. marx., no. 5 (1929) pp. 1-5; I. Skvortsov-Stepanov,
'Obshchestvo voinstvuiushchikh materialistov', ibid, no. 2-3 (1927)
pp. 256-60; responses to Skvortsov-Stepanov, by Nik, Karev, Vas.
Slepkov, and the Presidium of the Society of Militant Dialectical
Materialists, ibid, no.4 (1927) pp. 252-80; editorial, ibid, no.l0-11
( 1929) p. 1; '0 zhurnale 'Pod znamenem marxizma' (Postanovlenie TsK
VKP(b) ot 25 ianvaria 1931 g.), followed by the editorial 'Vazhneishii
istoricheskii dokument', and unsigned 'Itogi filosofskoi diskussi', ibid,
10-12 (1930) pp. 1-2, 3-14, and 15-24, respectively.
37. KPSS v rezolutsiiakh .. . , pp. 164-5. It is interesting how this document
betrays that 'voluntary' in Soviet semantics means compulsory: 'Confirm-
ing the CC resolution on the voluntary character of political education,
the CC at the same time considers it an error to interpret the principle of
voluntariness as permission to refuse political education.'
38. KPSS .. . , vol.4, pp.415 and 469.
39. Pospielovsky, Russ. Church, ch. 5; also: N. Struve, M. Spinka, etc. The
decree is no. 301, Sobranie zakonov i rasporiazhenii Rabochekrestianskogo
pravitel'stva SSSR (M., 1929) p. 641.
40. F. N. Oleshchuk, introductory article to Lunacharsky's, Pochemu
nel'zia... . , pp. 5-28.
41. Ibid, p. 304; Oleshchuk contradicts the author of the book he edited
when in his introduction he says that only 40 percent of the teachers were
religious believers.
42. Pokrovsky, 'K uchitel'skomu s'ezdu', Na putiakh knovoishkole, No.1 (M.:
Rabotnik prosveshcheniia,January 1925) pp. 4; Lunacharsky, Pochemu
nel'zia . .. , pp. 239 and 303.
43. Vorontsov, p. 117. On the Academy of Sciences purge, see: N.
160 Notes and References

Voznesensky, 'Imena i sud'by' and 'Materialy k istorii Akademii nauk',

Pamiat', a historical miscellany of samiulat (respectively: no. 1, Moscow,
1976- New York: Khronika Press, 1978; and no. 4, M., 1979- Paris:
YMCA Press, 1981) pp. 353 and 459.
44. Lunacharsky as long ago as 1925 showed his implicit disagreement with
the general party line which at that time tolerated sectarians. He argued
in his speech at the first congress of the LG that they were more
dangerous than the traditionalists, because they (Tolstoyans and other
radical sects) by their dress and behaviour appeared to be modern,
revolutionary and even communistic. In a March 1929 article in Izvestia
he strongly reiterated Pravda's new line: 'It would be a crime to peroert the
struggle in such a way as to turn it entirely against the Orthodox Church ...
leaving in the shade the struggle against sectarianism, Islam,]udaism or any other
religion', Pochemu nel'zia . .. , pp. 241, 308.
45. 'Antireligioznaia propaganda i klassovaia bor'ba', Pravda, 25 Dec.
( 1928); for exam pie, M. Galaktionov, 'Shire front antireligioznoi bor'by',
Koms, pr., 30 Aug. (1929), etc.
46. Vorontsov, respectively pp.153, 113. The evidence that this circular
instruction was never published lies in its reference to an unpublished
documents' section of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism Archives.
The same is true of vitally important decisions concerning a total attack
on religion adopted by special party conferences in 1928-9, the only
reference to it in Vorontsov is again to the above archival section ( 106-
7). Hence, the most important policy decisions, guidelines and regula-
tions are not those which were published and known to the citizens, but
those that remained secret and unknown.
47. See Edgar C. Bundy, How the Communists UseReligion(N.Y.: The Devin-
Adair Co., 1966) passim; William Fletcher, Religion and Soviet Foreign
Policy (London: Oxford University Press, 1973) passim.
48. Vorontsov, p.ll2.
49. Ibid, pp. 91-3; Yaroslavsky, 'Marxizm i anarkhizm v antireligionoi
propagande', Bol'shevik, no. 7-8 (15 July 1924) pp. 61-71, and 'Marx
ireligiia', no. 5 (14 March 1933) p. 89.
50. It is interesting that wbile the Soviet Government was pursuing the policy
of divide and rule towards religion in 1918-27, Skvortsov-Stepanov
declared publicly that this was only a temporary manoeuvre. In reality,
the party was equally hostile to all religions and aimed at the liquidation
of all of them. Pospielovsky, Russ. Church, vol.1, 91 n. M. Enisherlov's
article in Voinstvuiushchee bezbozhie v SSSR za 15 let, M. Enisherlov, A.
Lukachevsky, M. Mitin (eds), (M.: Gos. antirel. izd., 1932) p. 342, etc.
Yaroslavsky himself, apparently, narrowly escaped these purges: his
name had disappeared from the list of Bol'shevik's editors after its 6th
issue in 1934, but he remained one of its regular authors until his death in
1943(?).
51. 'Izuchenie sotsial'nykh kornei religii v SSSR' (M.: 1930) pp. 5-14;
Mybezbozhniki, a book of antireligious readings for grade schools
compiled by I. A. Flerov, lists its whole first section under the subtitle
'Religion, a brake on the construction of socialism' (M.: Gos. antirel. izd.,
1932) pp.19-90.
 Notes and References 161

52. Pochemu nel'zia verit' . .. , p. 229.

53. Ibid, pp. 248, 334, 339. In June 1929 he writes in Izvestia: 'Religion is
like a nail: if you hit it on the head, you'll drive it only deeper.' Hence
he rules out persecutions, but then says: 'You need pliers. Religion
must be grabbed, squeezed from below ... and removed with roots.'
This, he alleges, can be achieved 'only by a scientifzc propaganda, moral
and artistic re-education of the masses' (Pochemu nel'zia verit' p. 222). And
what if this is ineffective? What if persecution appears to be more
effective in physical terms, which alone should count for a consistent
Marxist, for matter determines the state of mind? After all, Lunacharsky
offers no moral objections against the use of compulsion. On the 1929
legislation and its effect see Russ. Church, vol. 1, chs 4 and 5, and vol. 2,
appendix6.
54. I. Bobryshev, 'K perevooruzheniiu na odnom iz boevykh uchastkov', and
Yaroslavsky, 'N auchites' pravil'no vladet' oruzhiem marxizma'- both in
Antireligioznik, no. 9 (Sept. 1929) pp. 57 and 65 resp.
55. Levitin-Krasnov, Likhie gody (Paris: YMCA Press, 1977) p. 256.
56. See the shorthand report ofthe LMG Second Plenum for its attacks on
the Peoples' Commissariat of Enlightenment for allegedly upholding
their 1924-5 line of 'a religious education' rather than antireligious.
Antirel. cit., p. 118 et passim.
57. Rezolutsii II vsesoiuznogo s'ezda soiuza voinst. bezb., 2nd edn (M.: Akts.
obshch. 'Bezb.', 1930) pp. 3, 77.
58. 'Rabochie 25 i 26 dekabria budut rabotat", Kom.pr., (11 Dec. 1929). On
the antireligious function of the six-day week, see: Bullo, 'Za shestid-
nevnuiu nedeliu', Bezbozh., no. 8 (17 Feb. 1929); N. Fominov 'Protiv
Blagodushiia i Bespechnosti v antireligioznoi rabote', Bol'shevik, no. 20
(15 Oct. 1937) pp. 36-8. According to soviet emigrants of the pre-war
generation, throughout the 1930s there existed three parallel systems:
most schools and enterprises worked five days having the sixth day off;
medical doctors and many other professions worked four days having
the fifth day for rest; but in the more distant provinces, at least in
industry, the old seven-day week was retained (to get more production
out of the worker)- six days of work, one day off. In 1940 the seven-day
week with Sunday as the only off-day was universally restored.
59. XVI s'ezd Vserossiiskoi kommunisticheskoipartii (bol'shevikov). Stenografzcheskii
otchet (M.: Gosizdat, 1930) p. 740.
60. Antireligioznik, no. 3 (1932) p. 61. Also, N. Amosov, 'Antireligioznoe
vospitanie v deistvii', Voinstvuiushchee bezbozhie ... , p. 299. Amosov
admits, however, that the natural trend is that as soon as a lull occurs in
the antireligious offensive of direct and brutal persecutions (for this is
what the euphemism 'administrative measures' stands for), the anti-
religious character of the school withers away and antireligious activities
come almost to a standstill.
61. G. Struchkov, 'Antireligioznaia rabota v Krasnoiarmii', Voinstvuiushchee
bezbozhievSSSR za 15let, M. Enisherlov, A. Lukachevsky, M. Mitin (eds),
(M.: Gos. antirel., izd., 1932) p. 418.
62. Derevniakak ana est' (M.: Krasnaia nov', 1923) p. 68.
63. Contrast V. Cherniavsky, 'Sektanty i voina', Kom. pr., 1 Aug. 1929; and I.
162 Notes and References

Kryvelev, Pochemu my boremsia protiv religii (M.: Gos. antirel. izd., 1940)
p. 7.
64. Contrast: G.Z., '5,000 rabochikh "Trekhgorki" trebuiut: ... tserkov'
pod detskii klub', Kom. pr., 16 Oct. 1929; and K. Berkova, an antireligious
lecturer-propagandist who complained that even the best antireligious
lectures cannot break the resistance and power of the religious workers
who cast 3000 votes in favour of the church at the above factory. In other
words, the 5000 atheists claimed by the Kom. pr. article must have been a
gross exaggeration or else they abstained from voting. Berkova asks
Lukachevsky, why, despite all the propaganda and lectures, 'there is a
growth of religiosity among some working class strata'. At the Trekhgor-
naia, workers replied to her lectures: 'tell us better why we have had no
bread for three days .... Stop muddling our heads, and no one asked
you to lecture to us.' Lukachevsky, lzuchenie sotsial'nykh komei religii v
SSSR (M.: 1930) p. 24.
65. Lukachevsky,Izuchenie, pp.5-14.
66. The claim that 'komsomol cells become a tool of anti-Soviet politics' may
have been nothing more than 'left-right deviation' purge hysterics in
which the LMG was scrupulously imitating Stalin's party policies. See
Rezolutsii II Vsesoiuznogo s'ezda SVB, pp. 33-6.
67. Ibid, p.14.
68. Amosov, p. 30.
69. Desiatyis'ez.dVLKSM, 11-12. IV.1936 g. (M.: Partizd., 1936) pp.426and
432.
70. John Curtiss, TheRussianChurchandtheSovietState, 1917-1950(Boston:
Little, Brown, 1953) p. 205; F. Oleschuk, 0 zadachakh antireligioznoi
propagandy (M.: 1937) p.16. The Smolensk LMG section reported the
'dissolution of some of its cells' as early as 1926 (one year after LMG's
national establishment). While 850 churches of all denominations
functioned in the province with 836 priests and ministers 'and there has
been marked increase in church attendance, especially by young people',
the documents complained about the difficulty of recruiting young
people to the LMG cells. In the whole city of Smolensk of some 70 000
inhabitants at the time, with four Orthodox, one Roman Catholic and
one Evangelical church and a functioning synagogue, the League could
not secure even twenty attendants for a regular seminar on 'scientific
atheism', although the nominal Smolensk provincial LMG membership
was 1395. 'Protocol No. 1', 9.1.1926, LMG; 'Secret Circular on the
Activities of the Churches and on the State of the LMG in the Western
Oblast"; A. Gagarin, 'Results ... of Antireligious Work', an internal
report. SmolenskArchives XT 4 7 (documents resp.: 458/56,499, pt, II of2,
and 458/35).
71. Curtiss, The Russian Church, p. 205. N. Amosov, Antireligioznaia rabota na
poroge vtoroi piatiletki (M.: Gos. antir. izd., 1932) p.ll; Yaroslavsky,
'Zadachi antireligioznoi propagandy', Antireligioznik, no. 5 (May 1941)
p. 2; Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 3rd edn, vol. 3 (Moscow 1970)
p. 225; A. Lukachevsky, '10 let zhurnala "Antireligioznik'", Bezbozh.,
no. 2 (Feb. 1936) p. 8; and my scrutiny of Soviet antireligious periodicals
at the Hoover Institution and at the libraries of Harvard and Columbia
 Notes and References 163

universities. According to a Soviet- Ukrainian source, there were 25

LMG periodicals in 1932. Ak. nauk Uht. RSR, Inst. Suspil'nykh nauk,
Stanovlenniavi rozvytok masovoho ateizmu v zakhidnikh oblastiahh URSR
(Kyiv, 1981) pp.139-40.
72. Vorontsov, pp.130-34; Second LMG Central Council Plenum, report
by Stal'. Similar reports could also be seen in the daily press, e.g. 'Vylazka
tverskikh sektantov: ubili aktivnuiu antireligioznitsu', Kom. pr. (16. Oct.
1929).
73. Curtiss, The Russian Church, p. 205.
74. Vorontsov, pp.130-34 and 101.
75. Murray Feshbach, 'The Soviet Union: Population Trends and Dilem-
mas', Population Bulletin, vo!. 37 no. 3 (Aug. 1982) p. 30. One of such
claims for failure of the religious debaters is made by Struchkov, p. 416.
76. A. Lukachevsky, Izuchenie sots. kor. rel., p. 19.
77. Vorontsov, p.151. Incidentally, Yaroslavsky, who was hailed as a great
Marxist scholar, used this fraudulent statistic as late as 193 7 in his
'Antibol'shevitskaia propaganda v sovremennykh usloviakh', Bol'shevik,
no.4 (15 Feb. 1937) p.32.
78. Compare: Antirel. krestianskii uchebnik (M.: Moskovskii rabochii) p.14;
with his Religion in the USSR (N.Y.: International Publishers, 1934) p. 48.
In this duplicity he also followed his mentor, Lunacharsky, who, while
participating in public debates with the Renovationist bishop Vvedensky
( 1925), calls him: 'a respectable opponent. . . who is dedicated supporter
ofjustice in the world'. But addressing the first LG congress in the same
year he calls the same Vvedensky 'a talented cheater'. Pochemu nel'zia
verit' . .. , respectively pp. 83 and 241.
79. Nikita Struve, Christians in Contemporary Russia (London: Harvill Press,
1967) p. 54. Vorontsov denied such a plan, p. 115, although he admits
there that a Five-Year Plan was adopted in 1930 to co-ordinate and
rationalize the League's activities, including 'enactment of mass anti-
religious work'. See also, V. Dulov, '0 podgotovke kadrov voinstvuiush-
chikh bezbozhnikov', Antirel., no. 5 (1930) p. 52. On role in Five-Year
Plans see, 'Bezbozhniki prodvigaiut zaem 3-go reshaiushchego goda
Piatiletki', no.10 (1931) pp. 102-4.
80. 'Stenogrammy Vtorogo plenuma TsS SVB', Antirel., cit., p. 116. Olesh-
chuk hints that Lunacharsky's retirement may have been caused by his
opposition to the destruction of cultural treasures (churches) and by the
attacks 'on the part of the atheistic public opinion' on his Commissariat of
Public Enlightenment for its slowness in introducing militant atheism
into school programmes. He adds that L. was lucky to die in 1933, thus
'avoiding the sad fate of many of his comrades ... who would fall victim
to Stalin's ... arbitrary rule'. In trod. to Pochemu nel'zia . .. , p.23.
81. Vorontsov, p. 148, citing Yaroslavsky. It is also general knowledge that
the 1937 population census, that last one which contained a question on
religious convictions, was suppressed owing to embarrassingly high
figures of religious believers. Another census was taken in 1939. It and all
subsequent ones do not contain any question on religious belief, under
the official pretext that owing to the separation of church and state,
religion is a private affair of no interest to the state. The other reason for
164 Notes and References

the SVB decline may have been the imminence of war requiring a greater
national unity for defence, rather than an atmosphere of internal civil
strife fomented by constant attacks on the religious masses.
82. 'K voprosu o kreshchenii Kievskoi Rusi', Istorik-marxist, no. 2 (1937)
pp. 40-77. EvenBezbozhnikhad tofollowsuitwithanarticle byGrekulov,
'Kreshchenie Rusi', in no. 5 ( 1938). Characteristically, at the above 1930
LMG CC plenum schoolteachers were attacked for teaching that the
Church had disseminated culture in the past. Antirel. cit., p.118.
83. Yaroslavsky, 'Antireligioznaia propaganda v sovremennykh usloviiakh',
Bol'shevik, no. 4 (15 Feb. 1937) p. 31. Also compare: Oleshchuk, 'Boevye
voprosy antireligioznoi propagandy', Bol'shevik, no. 16 ( 15 August 1938)
pp. 35-8 (he also says that 'priests have gone into the underground,
formed illegal church organizations, secret worship, underground
monasteries', p. 38); and Oleshchuk, 'Kommunisticheskoe vospitanie
mass i preodolenie religioznykh perezhitkov', Bol'shevik, no. 9 (1 May
1939) pp. 46-8; and 'Kommunizm i religiia', Bol'shevik, no. 8 (1 April
1940) pp. 39-40.
84. 'Zadachi antireligioznoi ... , pp.l-8. He also cites interesting statistics
on the dynamics of Soviet atheism: LM Gran 484 antireligious courses in
1939, 622 in 1940, but the total number of course attendants in the same
two years declined from 12662 to 10968, less than 17 per course;
similarly, the number ofLMG study circles increased from 5089 to 9698,
but the number of participants declined from 82 536to 71 982 -just over
7 members per circle; similarly, the number ofLMG seminars grew from
4824 to 5068, but the number of participants declined slightly from
77 231 to 77 011 despite the addition of the western territories.
85. Theofanes Stavrou and Vasili Alexeew, The Great Revival (Minneapolis:
Burgess Publishing Co., 1976) passim.
86. Its activities petered out by the end of 1941. Its formal abolition date
remains questionable. The Soviet Historical Encyclopedia gives no date.
The third edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Russian edn, 24, M.,
1976, p. 266) gives 1947, the year of the establishment of Znanie Society,
as the year of dissolution of LMG. Antireligious articles likewise
disappeared from the flagship of Soviet atheism, Under the Banner of
Marxism, immediately after the German attack of June 1941; and were
soon replaced by nationalistic articles praising Russian (and to a lesser
extent those of other Soviet nationalities) historical personalities, the
Russian people, the heroism of Soviet soldiers, etc. Having been
launched as the leading organ of militant atheism, the journal lost its
raison d'etre and ceased publication in 1944.
87. N. 88. Also: Fominov, 'Protiv blagodushiia .. .', p. 36; n. 62; and
Oleshchuk, 'Boevye voprosy .. .', pp. 34-5. The figures on believers
must have come from the suppressed 193 7 population census. The 1941
figure in Pospielovsky, Russ. Church, vol.1, p.174.
88. 'Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky protiv nemtsev', Bol'shevik, no.16
(August 1942) p. 38.
 Notes and References 165

CHAPTER 3: THE POST-WAR ATHEISTIC SCENE

l. Characteristically, the 27 Sept. resolution uses very cautious language.
There is no direct reference to atheism or religion; the term 'scientific-
enlightenment propaganda' is used instead. 'Postanovlenie Tse-Ka
VKP(b) ob organizatisii nauchnoprosvetitel'noi propagandy', KPSS v
rezolutsiiakh ... , vol.6, pp.121-3. See also: Powell, Anti-religious
Propaganda, p. 38.
2. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, ch.9; and (on the text of the 1961
Instruction) Zakonodatel'stvo o religioznykh kul'takh, a reprint from a secret
internal publication (M.: Iuridicheskaia literatura, 2nd edn, 1971) by
Chalidze Publications (New York, 1981) p. 80.
3. One would have thought this issue had already been resolved in 1928-9
(see Chapter 2). But apparently the quiet resistance of the secretly
believing or of simply civilized and tolerant teachers minimized the
implementation of the official policy of aggressive atheism in school
wherever possible.
4. S. Kovalev, 'Kommunisticheskoe vospitanie trudiashchikhsia i preodo-
lenie perezhitkov kapitalizma v soznanii mass', Bol'shevik, no. 5 (March
1947) pp.20-21; and N. Yakovlev, 'Sovetskaia shkola- vazhneishee
orudie vospitaniia molodiozhy', Bol'shevik, no. 11 Oune 194 7) pp. 6-22.
The fact that Yakovlev was a regular contributor of highly patriotic
articles to the journal throughout the war, but had never mentioned
religion in any one ofthem prior to this one, indicates a policy decision at
the level of the CPSU Central Committee.
5. S. Kaftanov, 'Vsemerno uluchshat' prepodavanie osnov marxizma-
leninizma v vysshei shkole', Bol'sh., no.12 (30 June 1949) pp. 22-3; but
also in Bol'sh.: S. Kovalev, '0 preodolenii perezhitkov kapitalizma v
soznanii liudei', no.l9 (Oct. 1950) pp.l9-31; unsigned editorial
'Stroitel'stvo kommunizma i propaganda marxizma-leninizma', no.18
(Sept. 1951) pp. 3-12; V. Kuroedov, Secretary of the Sverdlovsk Prov.
Party Committee (the future chairman of the Council for Religious
Affairs), 'Obkom partii i voprosy prepodavaniia osnov marxizma-
leninizma v vuzakh', no.14 Oune 1950) pp. 57-62.
6. A. Sobolev, 'Lektsionnaia propaganda sredi naseleniia' ,Bol'shevik, no. 24
(Dec. 1950) pp. 67-70.
7. I have no direct evidence of the late Kapitsa's Znanie membership, but
most probably, in view of the above resolution and its size, he was a
member. The text of the resolution in KPSS v rezolutsiiakh . .. , vol. 6,
pp. 281-6. Additional information onZnanie received from Dimitry and
Taisia Lenkov, young former Soviet scholars who had institutional
Znanie membership during their conversion to Christianity. Oral
testimony given to this author, San Francisco, June 1984. See also,
'Primechaniia' to Lunacharsky's Pochemu nel'zia verit' . .. , 423.
8. Russian Church, vol. 2 pp. 316-17.
9. Akademiia nauk SSSR. Institut istorii, Voprosy istorii religii i ateizma.
Sbomik statei (M.: Akad. nauk., 1950) eire. 10 000 copies.
10. Grossman, 'Khrushchev's Anti-Religious Policy and the Campaign of
1954', Soviet Studies, vol. XXIV no. 3 (1973) pp. 377-9. B.-B., 'Svoboda
166 Notes and References

sovesti v SSSR', Vop. ist. rel. iat., no. 2 (1954) pp.11-28; 'Lenin oreligii' in
his posthumous lzbrannye ateisticheskie proizvedeniia (M.: Mysl', 1973)
pp. 40-1; F. N. Oleshchuk, 'Voprosy ateisticheskoi propagandy v rabote
V. I. Lenina' 0 znachenii voinstvuiushchego materializma', Vop. ist.
rei. ... , pp. 29-44.
11. KPSS v rezolutsiiakh, vol. 6, pp. 502-20.
12. The preparatory steps for the future onslaught were most likely made at
a strictly in-camera conference of 350 theorists of atheism and atheistic
militants in Moscow in August 1957. Vop.fil., no. 5 (1958), cited by N.
Struve, p. 293. On the secret atheistic Seven Year Plan this author was
informed in Moscow in 1964 by the now deceased highly respected
Moscow priest, Fr. Vsevolod Shpiller. The NiR editorial was entitled
'Kommunisticheskoe stroitel'stvo i preodolenie religioznykh perez-
hitkov', pp. 4-8. See also: Powell, Anti-Religious, pp. 39-40; Popovsky,
Zhizn' . .. , p. 467; William Stroyen, Communist Russia and the Russian
Orthodox Church, 1943-1962 (Washington, D.C., 1967) pp. 89-93.
13. The Zhurnal Moskovskoi patriarkhii (Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate,
henceforthZhMP) circulation is cited in the secret report ofV. Furov, the
deputy chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs (CRA), to the
CPSU Central Committee (undated, but apparently 1975): 'Tserkovnye
kadry i mery po ogranicheniiu ikh deiatel'nosti ramkami zakona', Vestnik
RKhD (Paris, 1979, no. 130) p. 328. Circulation of the other important
publication, Theological Endeavours, organ of the theological schools in
the USSR, appearing once or twice a year, is given by the same source as
3000 copies.
14. KPSS v rezolutsiiakh . .. , vol. 6, p. 507; Stroyen, Church, pp. 89-94, etc.
15. Donald A. Lowrie and William C. Fletcher, 'Khrushchev's Religious
Policy, 1959-1964',AspectsofReligion, p.132.
16. KPSS v rezolutsiiakh ... , vol. 7, p. 378; Grossman, 'Khrushchev's .. .',
p. 381.
17. G. V. Vorontsov and N. P. Krasnikov, 'XXII s'ezd KPSS i zadachi
ateisticheskogo vospitaniia trudiashchikhsia', Ezhegodnik muzeia ... ,
no. 6 (1962) p. 6.
18. The implication of this statement is that the natural state of man is
conservative, i.e. a materialistic Weltanschauung is unnatural and contra-
dicts human nature if it has to be brought about by force. There is no
evidence to show communist society is the inevitable result of human
history or that it represents man's return to his natural state.
19. Kryvelev, 'Sovremennyi fideizm i nauka', no.13 (Sept. 1959) pp. 96-
108; and almost every issue of Kommunist for 1959.
20. 'Kazhdyi intelligent-propagandist ateizma', NiR, no. 2 (Feb. 1962)
p.15.
21. '0 zadachakh partiinoi propagandy v sovremennykh usloviiakh', Kom.,
no.1 (Jan. 1960) pp.10-24.
22. 'Iz otchetnogo doklada Pravleniia V sesoiuznogo ob-va po rasprostrane-
niiu politicheskikh i nauchnykh znanii III s'ezdu Ob-va', NiR, no. 2 (Feb.
1960) p. 6; I. P. Tsamerian et al. (eds ), Osnovy nauchnogo ateizma. Uchebnoe
posobie. Tret'e, pererabotannoe izdanie (M.: izd. polit.literatury, 1964).
23. 'K novomu pod'emu ideologicheskoi raboty', Kom., no.14 (Sept. 1960)
pp. 22-40; also, F. Lukinsky, 'Zametki o nauchno-ateisticheskoi prop-
 Notes and References 167

agande' (Kom., no. 9, June 1960), who argues that 'individual work' is
necessary because believers do not attend atheistic lectures and do not
subscribe to atheistic literature- i.e. such atheistic efforts simply miss
their target (pp.112-14). Il'ichev later quotes an Orthodox priest as
saying that atheistic propaganda does not bother the believers: atheists
do not attend churches, believers do not attend atheistic lectures. See his
1963 CC Plenum report, n. 39 below.
24. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, ch. 10 and sources there cited; also Lowrie
and Fletcher, p.141.
25. Lowrie and Fletcher, ch.10, pp.141-3.
26. Ibid, ch.10. .
27. Ibid, particularly nn.11 and 74 in ch.10.
28. 'Pochemu shkola otstupaet bez boia?' and 'Otvet ministra prosveshche-
niia RSFSR, t. E. I. Afanasenko', NiR., no. 9 (Sept. 1960) pp. 3-7.
29. A. A. Vershinskaia, V. I. Nosovich and R. F. Fili ppova, 'Massovaia rabota
muzeia po preodoleniiu religioznykh perezhitkov', Ezhegodnik, no. 5
(1961)pp.350-7.
30. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx-Padover, 42.
31. Vorontsov and Krasnikov, pp. 10-11; N. S. Khrushchev, 0 kommunis-
ticheskom vospitanii (M.: Izd. polit.literat., 1964) p.149.
3 2. XIV s'ezd Vsesoiuznogo Leniniskogo kommunisticheskogo soiuza molodezhi. 16-
20 aprelia 1962 g . . Stenograficheskii otchet (M.: Molodaia gvardiia, 1962)
pp. 536 and 553. Trade unions were also brought into line. The
resolution of the 12th Congress of Trade Unions, meeting some months
after the 21st Party Congress, states that 'it is the duty oftrade unions to
improve the scientific-atheistic upbringing of workers'. In contrast, the
new statute adopted at the 13th Congress in 1963 states that the unions
include workers irrespective of their religious convictions, contradicting
the job discrimination of religious workers, widely practised from late
1950s again. See: V. Podzerko, XII s'ezd sovetskikh profsoiuzov (M.:
Profizdat,1969) p. 36;MateriallyXIII s'ezdaprofessional'nykhsoiuzovSSSR
(M.: Profizdat, 1964) passim.
33. They all refer to the 22nd Party Congress and the new CP Programme as
starting-points for the new consolidated offensive against religion as
part and parcel of progression towards communism. For example:
Oleshchuk, 'Torzhestvo kommunizma i zakat religii', and V. F.
Zybkovets, 'Programmnye polozheniia KPSS v bor'be protiv religii' -
both in Vop. istor. rel. i at., no. XI (1963) pp. 3-25, 26-42 respectively;
editorial 'N ovaia programma KPSS o preodolenii religioznykh predras-
sudkov', ibid, no. X (1962) pp. 3-19; V. Stepakov, 'Leninskie printsipy
kommunisticheskogo vospitaniia', Kom., no. 5 (March 1963) pp. 11-21.
Vop. ist. rel. i at. roughly from 1960 became less academic and more
militant in tone and content, but apparently not sufficiently so for
Khrushchev, for its circulation continued to decline. The last, 12th, issue
(1964) dropped to 2100 copies.
34. KPSS v rezolutsiiakh, vol. 8, pp. 367-73.
35. Filosofkie problemy ateizma (M.: Ak. nauk, 1963) pp. 30-1.
36. For example, N. Sviridov, 'Glavnoe- znat' liudei!', NiR, no.12 (Dec.
1962) pp. 70-3.
37. 'Kazhdyi intelligent- propagandist ateizma', n. 20 above.
168 Notes and References

38. See, for example, 'Programma partii- rukovodstvo k deistviiu', NiR,

no. 2 (1962) pp. 3-18, and no. 3 (1962) pp. 9-20; 'Vsesoiuznoe sovesh-
chanie ateistov', NiR, no. 5 ( 1962) pp. 7-14, etc.
39. 'Doklad tov. L. F. Il'icheva na Plenume TsK KPSS. 18 iiunia 1963 g.',
Pravda (19 June 1963), followed by an aggressively militant antireligious
editorial on the plenum: 'Ideologicheskii front', Kom., no. 10 (July 1963)
pp. 6-14; on Leninist 'legality': 'Formirovanie nauchnogo mirovozzre-
niia i ateisticheskoe vospitanie', Kom., no.1 (Jan. 1964) pp. 29-30.
Ideological-atheistic conferences, praising Il'ichev's aggressive stand
and drawing policy conclusions; e.g. and expanded session of the CPSU
CC Ideological Commission, NiR, no. 1 ( 1964) pp. 31-60; a conference
of Central Asian atheists, NiR, no. 5 (1964) pp.12-19.
40. See Resolutions (Postanovleniia) nos.ll60 (16 October 1958), 1251 (6
November 1958), 1159 (16 October 1958) respectively, in: Zakonodatel-
'stvo o religioznykh kul'takh (M.: I uridicheskaia literatura, 1971 ). 'Only for
internal use.' (Reprint N.Y.: Chalidze, 1981) pp. 35-6.
41. Fr. Gleb Yakunin, '0 sovremennom polozhenii Russkoi Pravoslavnoi
Tserkvi .. .', Vol'noeslovo (Samizdat reprint), no. 35-6 (1979) pp. 46-7.
42. Prot. Dimitri Konstantinov, Gonimaia Tserkov' (New York: Vseslavians-
koe izdatel'stvo, 1967) pp. 286-7, and (London: Macmillan, 1969) chs 4
and5.
43. For thedeclineoffunctioning seminaries, seeZhMP, nos. 5 (1961) p. 38
and 3 (1964) p. 22. On the Volhyinian Seminary, see Feodosii, Archb. of
Poltava,lettertoL. I. Brezhnev, VestnikRKhD,no. 135(1981)pp. 236-7.
On the Belorussian Seminary this author was informed by a former
professor of that seminary. There it was a case of overzealous
communists of the Belorussian republican government, while the
central government in Moscow opposed the closure for several years.
Consequently, for over two years the seminary officially continued to be
open, while the local Soviet authorities prevented any registration of new
students, using the above described methods.
44. For example, editorial 'Molodezh' i religiia', NiR, no. 8 (1962) pp. 3-7.
45. Vorontsov and Krasnikov, p.16.
46. Lowrie and Fletcher, Aspects of Religion, p.133.
47. Ibid, pp.133-5; N. Struve, pp. 295-6.
48. On the comparison of closing of Orthodox churches and synagogues
see: David Powell, Anti-religious Propaganda, pp. 40-1; on Baptists:
Michael Bordeaux, Religious Ferment in Russia (London: Macmillan,
1968) passim. Powell's maximum totalofOrthodoxchurches in the USSR
in 1959 is 17 500 and his figure for 1966, 7500. The late Metropolitan
Boris of Odessa at a press conference in Montreal in 1955 gave a figure of
'about 25 000'. A high-ranking priest of the Moscow Patriarchate told
this author in 1979 that the 197 5 internal figure of the Patriarchate was
6800 functioning Orthodox churches in the whole Soviet Union, not
counting Georgia.
49. The purpose of this law originally was to make employers responsible for
providing living quarters for their employees, an excellent example of
misuse for oppressive purposes of an originally beneficial law.
50. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, ch.lO (Boris Talantov's documents).
 Notes and References 169

51. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, ch.lO (Talantov's testimonies); the above

Archb. Feodosii letter, pp. 222-34, and many samizdat documents.
52. Lowrie and Fletcher, Aspects of Religion, pp.143.
53. Ibid, p.145.
54. See articles 66 and 6, and the 'Preamble' to the Constitution, as cited
below.
55. This refers to the 'wandering priests'. After the closing of churches and
deprivation of their priests of 'registration', the more dedicated ones
among them began to wander from village to village secretly performing
pastoral duties and religious services in private homes of the faithful in
the areas left without open churches. This has been confirmed to this
author by several Russian clerics, including V. Rev. Konstantin Tivetsky,
a Moscow priest who emigrated to the USA in 1980 (San Francisco,] une
1980).
56. This author saw this instruction originally in the BBC Central Research
Unit in 1967 (see Russian Church, ch. 10, n. 20); published in full in Vestnik
RKhD no. 136 ( 1982) pp. 273-6. The earlier versions, see in Zakonodatel-
'stvo o kul'takh, pp.187-96 and 88-103.
57. See, 'Archpriest Shpiller and His Parish', Patriarch and Prophets:
Persecution ofthe Russian Orthodox Church Today, Michael Bourdeaux, ed.
(London: Macmillan, 1969) pp. 304-29; V. Rev. Vsevolod Shpiller's
letter in Vestnik Russkogo Zapadnoevropeiskogo ekzarkhata, Paris, avril-juin
1967, no. 58 pp. 107 -9; and other documents.
58. Russian Church, ch. 10.
59. Zakonodatel'stvo o kul'takh, pp. 35-6.
60. For exam pie: E. Maiat and I. U zkov, 'Rushatsia monastyrskie steny', NiR,
no. 9 (1961) pp. 22-31; A. Andreev and G. Gerodnik, 'Krest nasluzhbe
u svastiki', NiR, no.ll (1963) pp.43-8; lu. M. Vesela, 'Dvi doli.
Rozpovid' kolyshnioi chernytsi', Voiovnychyi ateist, no. 7 (July 1964)
pp.4-7.
61. A. Shamaro, 'Mezhdu sinikh vetvei', NiR, no.l1 (1963) pp. 23-8; L.
Khvolovsky, 'Byvshie liudi', NiR no. 7 (1964) pp. 24-32.
62. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, ch.10.
63. D. Ushinin (this author's earlier pseudonym), 'Novye veianiia v
ateisticheskoi propagande SSSR', Grani no. 60 ( 1966) p. 206. An article
in Nauka i religiia compares the liveliness, human warmth and popularity
of the churches in Tambov with the emptiness and coldness ofthe atheist
section of the local 'House of Political Education'. In the latter there
could have been no visitors whatsoever for a long time because it was
locked and the correspondent had considerable difficulty obtaining the
keys to visit it. The church was packed with services, baptisms, funerals,
confessions and communions almost round the clock.
64. Powell, Anti-religious, p. 69 et passim; 'Novye sovetskie obriady i ritualy',
Radio Liberty Research Bulletin (Russian edn) (Munich, 16 August 1974,
no. 258/7 4); G. Chebotar', 'Novye obriady v drevnem Polotske', Nauka i
religiia, no. 7 (1970) pp. 33-4; N. P. Lobacheva, '0 protsesse formirova-
niia novoi semeinoi obriadnosti', Sovetskaia etnografiia, no. 1 ( 1972)
pp. 3-13.
65. Veresaev, 'Obobriadakh',Krasnaianov', no.11 (Nov. 1926) pp.174-85;
170 Notes and References

and his other publications mentioned in the article, e.g. 'Khudozhestven-

nomu oformleniiu byta', ibid, no. 1 (Jan. 1926), and Ob briadakh starykh i
novykh.
66. Compare the idea of the mission of'the new revolutionary theatre' with
N. Gogol's idea of a Christian (Orthodox) theatre's role in a religious
transfiguration of man. Ocherki po filosofii marxizma (S. Pbg., 1980); esp.
V. Bazarov's 'Mistitsizm i realizm nashego vremeni', pp. 3-71;
Lunacharsky's 'Ateizm', pp.107-61; P. Yushkevich's 'Sovremennaia
energetika st. zr. empiriosimovolizma', pp.162-214; and Bogdanov's
'Strana idolov i filosofiia marxizma', pp. 215-42. Also: M. Laskovaia,
Bogoiskatel'stvo i bogostroitel'stvo prezhde i teper' (M.: Moskovskii rabochii,
1976) pp.11-78; M.P. Gapochka, 'Uroki bogostroitel'stva', Vop. nauch.
at., no. 25 (M.: 1980) pp.186-204.
67. For example: 'idealism is clericalism ... But a philosophical idealism is
the road to clericalism.'; 'God-seeking differs from god -building . . .just
as much as a yellow devil differs from a blue devil.'; 'Any idea of any God,
any attempt to flirt with God is a loathsome abomination ... the most
dangerous abomination, the most infamous infection.' These and
similar statements the Soviet author calls Lenin's destruction of the god-
builders' theories. Laskovaia, Bogoiskatel'stvo pp. 21, 22, etc.
68. N. Valentinov in Vstrechi s Leninym (N.Y.: Chekhov Publishing House,
1953) pp. 283-305, gives a vivid description of Lenin's philosophic
illiteracy and primitiveness of argumentation.
69. See Chapter 1 of this work, and Lunacharsky's Pochemu nel'zia. ...
70. The German 'theological' school originating from the pastor-martyr
Bonnhoefer; or the fact that Dr Robinson, the Anglican Bishop of
Woolwich, safely retained his episcopal seat even after publishing his
Honest to God, which rejected the concept of a personal God.
In Russia, on the other hand, even under the Soviet regime, an
outstanding theology professor at the Leningrad Theological Academy,
Alexandr Osipov, when he ceased to believe in God, left the Academy
and, after publishing his attack on religion, was excommunicated by the
Orthodox Church. See the Patriarchal Ukaze to this effect in ZhMP, no. 1
(1960); 'Vypiska iz postanovleniia .. .',no. 23 (30 Dec. 1959). Similarly
when a bishop even of the Renovationist Church, Nikolai Platonov, had
developed similar doubts, he retired from all church positions and went
into civilian life. That these were hardly more than doubts seems to be
attested to by the fact thatjust before his death in 1942 he returned to the
Church and received the last rites. See Levitin, Orcherki ... , vol. 3,
pp.349-69.
71. This rubric appeared in 1965. See also, U shinin in Grani, no. 60 ( 1966)
pp.198-222.
72. P. P. Kampars, Sovetskaia grazhdanskaia obriadnost' (M.: Mysl', 1967)
passim.
73. Chebotar' in Nauka i Religiia, no. 7 (1970), Lobacheva in Sovetskaia
etnografiia, no. 1 ( 1972); also,Janis Sapiets, 'Soviet Atheists Adopt Pagan
Folklore Rites',BBC Central Research UnitTalk(no. 80/69,22 April1969),
citing Galina Terekhova in Sovetskaia kul'tura (4 January 1969) and Efim
Dorosh, 'Raionnye budni', Novy mir (M.: no.1, Jan. 1969). About the
 Notes and References 171
concern of the Soviets with Siberia this author was informed by several
Moscow Patriarchate sources. The other possible reason given by them
for permission to reopen a few Orthodox churches was the proximity of
China and the need for building Russian national identity.
74. Pospielovsky, Russian Church, ch.10; Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, 'Religion
and Atheism in Soviet Society', Aspects of Religion, pp. 49-53.

CHAPTER 4: ANTIRELIGIOUS POLICIES AFTER

KHRUSHCHEV

1. The specialized atheistic journals which appeared in these years were:

ScienceandReligion(Naukaireligiia),amassZnanieSocietymonthly(from
1959); its Ukrainian counterpart, The Militant Atheist (Voiovnychyi ateist,
1960), later renamed Man and World (Liudyna i svit); the Yearbook of the
Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism, volsl-VII (1957-64), and
Problems of History of Religion and Atheism (1950-64, an irregular
miscellany) - both published by the Academy of Sciences; both were
superseded in 1966 by the similarly irregular Problems ofScientific Atheism
(Voprosy nauchnovo ateizma), published by the Institute of Scientific
Atheism attached to the Academy of Social Sciences of the CPSU Central
Committee, but, in contrast to the meagre circulation figures of its
predecessors, Vop. nauch. at. reached over 24 000 per issue by the late
1970s, falling to 22 500 by 1985. See, L. Andreev, B. Evdokimov, etc.,
'Naychnyi ateizm za 50 let', Voprosyfilosofii, no.12 (1967).
2. There are plenty of documents to show that thousands of believers
signed petitions begging for the reopening of a church and their requests
were never granted. The most famous case is that of the city of Gorky
which has only three small churches on the outskirts serving a population
of 1.5 million. Nearly 2000 people have been fighting since 1969 for the
reopening of five churches in five inner districts of the city without
success. See this and other cases in, Documents ofthe Christian Committee for
the Defence of Believers' rights in the USSR (San Francisco: Washington
Research Samizdat Reprints, vv.1-12, 1979-80); also: Religion in
Communist Lands (Keston College, Keston, England) vol. 6, no. 1 ( 1978)
p. 45; vol. 7, no. 4 (1979) pp. 258-61; vol. 8, no. 2 (1980) p.13.
The Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate has been reporting the
reopening and even building of at least 19 Orthodox churches in the
period between 1977 and 1982; while the Baptist Church had managed
to open over 50 new churches in 1976 alone, although each Baptist
community is considerably smaller than the Orthodox parishes. See:
ZhMP, Partriarch Pimen's Report (no. 8, 1978) p.ll, and church
chronicle in other issues during the above years; for Baptists: 'New
Baptist Churches Opened', Religion in Communist Lands (henceforth
RCL) vol. 5, no. 3 (1977) p. 200.
3. Dr William Fletcher wrongly views the removal of atheistic research
from the auspices of the Academy of Science to the Academy of Social
Sciences as a positive factor, on the basis that their work henceforth
172 Notes and References

became 'more practical, immediately usable'. He ignores the fact that

having been placed under the direct control of the CPSU Central
Committee Agitprop it became even more mobilized to serve immediate
party needs than before. See Fletcher'sSovietBelievers. The Religious Sector
of the Population (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1981) p.11.
Angered by the fact that neither he nor a number of his proteges were
elected to the Academy, Khrushchev wanted to disband it altogether in
the last years of his reign. Hence, the creation of the Institute of Scientific
Atheism at the CPSU CC Academy of Social Sciences and the attachment
of Vop. nauch. at. to it must have been a carry-over from Khrushchev's
time.
4. Pospielovsky, Orthodox Church, ch. 6, n.18. Also, Fathers Gleb Yakunin
and Nikolai Eshliman, 'An Open Letter to Patriarch Alexii', Grani, no. 61
(1966) p.126.
5. 'From the Report of the Council for Religious Affairs to Members of the
CPSU Central Committee', Vestnik RKhD, no. 130 ( 1979) p. 277.
6. In fact, the correspondence (extramural) sector was reopened immedi-
ately after Khrushchev's fall in the 1965-6 academic year, having been
closed in the last years of Khrushchev's reign: Ushinin, 'Novye veiania',
p.199. Patriarch Pimen, in his report on the occasion of the sixtieth
anniversary of the restoration of patriarchate in Russia, cites the
following figures for 1977: 788 day students and 814 extramural ones:
ZhMP (8 August 1978) p.14. by 1981 this grew to 900 day students and
1000 extramural, according to another leading cleric of the Moscow
Patriarchate, Archbishop Khrizostom of Tambov. See Pospielovsky,
Russian Church, ch. 12, n. 31.
7. Powell, Anti-religious, p. 81; and 'Za deistvennost' ateisticheskoi prop-
agandy', Pravda, 27 July 1968. also, 'Nauka, tekhnika, progress', NiR,
no. 6 (1977) p. 2.
8. The graphs are based on Powell up to 1969 and 1973 (Anti-religious,
pp. 88-90). The continuation to 1981-2 and 1984 and the circulation
figures on books published have been found, compiled and formed into
graphs by my research assistant and son, Andrew Pospielovsky.
9. Inter alia see Pospielovsky, 'Intelligentsia and Religion: Aspects of
Religious Revival in the Contemporary Soviet Union. The Orthodox
Church', Religion and Communist Society, Dennis J. Dunn, ed. (Berkeley:
Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 1983) pp.11-44; Pospielovsky, The Russian
Church, vol. 2, pp. 454-60.
10. KPSS v rezolutsiiakh ... , vol. 9, pp. 30-4, 222-3, 346-53; vol.lO,
pp 361-3 and 434-6.
11. Tovarishch KomsomolDocuments of the Komsomol congresses, confer-
ences and CC resolutions (M.: Molodaia gvardiia, 1969) vol. 2, pp. 358-
9,375,407,476 and 488-90.
12. 'V Tsentral'nom komitete KPSS', Pravda 6 May 1979, pp. 1-2. Why did it
take so long to publish a document adopted on 26 April? There must
have been some behind-the-scenes disagreements. Both the 25th and
26th Party congresses avoided direct attacks on religion, preferring the
usual euphemisms.
13. Feodossii, Letter toBrezhnev, pp. 222-3. He describes the destruction in
 Notes and References 173

1971, by a group of 20 Komsomol members led by the village soviet

chairman and protected by a policeman, of brick walls just built by the
villagers in order to enlarge and improve the tiny village prayer house.
14. Tov. Komsomol, pp. 275 and 163. It is more than a question of
euphemisms; the emphasis in all Komsomol documents of the post-
Khrushchev era is on mobilizing youth for work on the industrial and
rural objects ofthe Five Year Plans.
15. See Soviet sources in Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, vol. 2, p. 454.
16. Oral testimony to this author by Irina Evsikova, Washington, D.C.,June
1985.
17. See text related to note 39 below. Perhaps some of this classified material
from unpublished surveys found its way into Veniamin Arsenkin'sKrizis
religioznosti i molodezh' (M.: Nauka, 1984) whose average for the non-
atheistic sector of the population is 48 per cent, and that of convinced
believers 26 percent-both far greater figures than those usually given in
Soviet publications. See, Oxana Antich, 'Kak byt' s religioznost'iu?', Rus.
m., 12July 1985, p. 6.
18. M. Mchedlov, 'Religioznoe "obnovlenchestvo" pod natiskom zhizni',
Kom., no.l5 (Oct. 1964) pp. 88-9; N. Baranova, 'Chto takoe ekume-
nizm?', NiR, no. 5 (1968) pp. 82-4.
19. 'Vospitanie molodezhi-delo partiinoe', Kom, no. 3 (Feb. 1965) pp.l5-
28.
20. See note 5 above; and 'U ateistovMoskvy',Naukairel., no. 4 (1968) p. 41.
21. See the whole resolution in KPSS v rezolutsiiakh, vol. 9, pp. 342-57.
22. Vop. fil., no.l Oanuary 1972) pp. 25-39, cited in Pospielovsky, 'The
Philosophic Society of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics', Radio
Liberty Research (Munich, 15 March 1972) CRD 64172. Its president, F.
Konstantinov, repeats the same instruction to Soviet philosophers once
again eleven years later in, 'Marxistko- Leninskaia filosofiia ... , Vop.fil.,
no. 7 (1982) pp. 37-45.
23. In the 1940s (and probably in the 1950s) bishops still dared to appoint to
parishes priests who were residing illegally, without any papers (fugitives
from concentration camps or those sought by KGB prosecutors). For
example 'Starets Sampson', Nadezhda, no. 8 (Samizdat, 1981; Possev
Repr., 1983) p. 126. Nowadays a bishop can make no such appointments
without the approval of and a registering licence from a local CRA
plenipotentiary. See the Bishop Feodosi letter to Brezhnev, cited below;
or Fr. Gleb Yakunin, Vol'noe slovo.
24. R. P. Platonov, 'Organizatsiia propagandy nauchnogo ateizma i
povyshenie eio effektivnosti na asnove komplexnogo podkhoda', Vop.
nauch. at., no. 26 (1980) pp. 5-20.
25. 'XXV s'ezd KPSS i voprosy ideino-vospitatel'noi raboty', Vop. nauch. at.
no. 21 (1977) pp.l4-15.
26. See, in particular, the vicious publications written jointly by A. V. Belov
and A. D. Shilkin: Ideologicheskie diversii imperializma i religiia (M.: Znanie,
1980) 45 pp., circulation 44 300; Religiia v sovremennoi ideologicheskoi
por'be (M.: Znanie, 1971) 62 pp., circulation 90 000; Diversiia bez dinamita
(M.: Izd. politicheskoiliteratury, 1972) 175 pp.
27. See the article on the occasion of the seventieth birthday of M. M.
174 Notes and References

Sheinman, an SVB veteran from its foundation: N. i rel., no. 3 (March

1972) p. 96 etc.; a similar article on another SVB veteran, Guliaev: no. 7,
pp. 22-4; colour reproductions of the title pages of N. i rel.'s 1922
namesake, in no. 8 (August 1972).
28. For example, a joint conference of the Institute of Scientific Atheism
with the Soviet trade-union leaders, the Ministry of Culture and the
Znanie Society at the end of 1967. Some of its proceedings were published
inN. i rel., no.4 (1968). See 'Eschche odin prizyv k novym metodam i
formam ateisticheskoi propagandy', Biulleten' radio Svobody, no. 255/68
(27 June 1968).
29. 'Budut li studenty-vypuskniki slushat' kurs "Osnovy nauchnovo ateiz-
ma"?', Biulleten' radio Svobody 199/68 (27 June 1968); M. Danilov,
'Vazhnyi razgovor', NiR, no.10 (1975) pp.12-13.
30. Contrast: Kurochkin, 'Ubezhdennost", NiR, no.1 (1980) pp. 2-4, and
L.A. Filippov, '0 voinstvuiushchem materializme i ateizme', Vop.fil.,
no. 3 (March 1972).
31. V. Furov, deputy CRA chairman; particularly pp. 277-86. The bishop
in question is Nikolai, moved from Rostov-on-Don to Vladimir, then to
Kaluga, thence to Gorky. The report has to be read in the knowledge that
its intention was to impress the Central Committee with CRA's real or
fictitious achievements in suppressing the Church.
32. See note 2 above and 'The Forty-First All-Union Congress of the
Evangelical Baptists of the Soviet Union', St Vladimir's Theological
Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 4 (1975) pp. 246-53; Religiia i tserkov' v sovetskom
obshchestre (M.: Polit.literatura, 1984) pp.144 and 108.
33. Fr. Gleb Yakunin, '0 sovremennom polozhenii Russkoi pravoslavnoi
Tserkvi i perspektivakh religioznovo vozrozhedeniia v Rossii (a report to
the Christian Committee for the Defence of Believers' Rights in the
USSR)(M.:samizdat)repr.: Vol'noeslovo(no. 35-36,Frankfurt!M., 1979)
p. 32etpassim.Aconcretecasecitedin Khronikatek.sob., no. 54 (M., 1979-
N.Y., 1980) p.102.
34. See almost every issue of the Chronicle of Current Events for arrests and
prison sentences. In particular, the prison terms meted out to A.
Ogorodnikov, T. Shchipkova, V. Poresh and other members of the
unofficial Moscow religio-philosophic seminar: Khronika . . . , nos 54, 55,
58, resp. pp. 28-30, 17-18, 33-4; Russian Church, ch. 12; the 1982 arrest
of Zoia Krakhmal'nikova for putting out a miscellany of religious and
theological readings Nadezhda (Posev, no. 10, October 1982) title page
and inside; on a church youthchoir,seeKhronika ... , no. 60; (M., 1980-
N.Y., 1981)p. 73. In January 1985, VladimirFrenkel,ayoungOrthod ox
Christian thinker who had apparently led a religio-philosophic circle in
Riga, was likewise arrested and sentenced to 18 months hard labour.
Russkaiamysl', 5July 1985, p. 7.
35. Peter Reddaway and Sidney Bloch, Russia's Psycho-prisons; V. Nekipelov,
Institute of Fools and multiple reports in the Chronicle of Current Events.
36. For example, Fr. Alexandr Pivovarov, see: 'Sud nad o Alexandrom
Pivovarovym', V.R.Kh.D., no.141 (1984) pp. 227-30.
37. Vop. nauch. at., no. 28 (1981), particularly section 3, 'Aktual'nye
problemy ateisticheskogo vospitaniia v regionakh rasprostraneniia
 Notes and References 175

katolitsizma', pp. 202-58. Also P. K. Kurochkin (ed.), 'Problemy

nauchnogo ateizma v svete reshenii XXVII s'ezda KPSS', Vop. nauch. at.,
no. 28, pp. 3-20.
38. See the texts of two such pro-pagan nationalistic writings in M. Meerson-
Aksenov and B. Shragin (eds), The Political, Social and Religious Thought of
Russian Samizdat (Belmont, Mass.: Nordland, 1977) pp. 420-48. Ideas
placing the national above God, and the pagan tribalization of God, also
occur in the writings of the extremist Ukrainian nationalist Valentyn
Moroz. See 'Nationalism as a Factor ofDissent', CanadianReviewofStudies
in Nationalism, vol. 2, no.1 (1974) p.l03; Powell, 'Rearing the New Soviet
Man', Religion and Atheism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, B. Bociurkiw
and]. Strong (eds) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975).
39. I. A. Kryvelev, 'Preodolenie religiozno-bytovykh perezhitkov u narodov
SSR', Sovetskaia etnografiia, no. 4 ( 1961) pp. 3 7-43. Igor' Golomshtok of
Oxford University and formerly of Moscow, an art critic, has observed a
similar phenomenon among the remnants of the north Russia peasants
in the area north and north-west of Vologda. there, deprived of priests
and officially functioning churches, the peasants observed a mixture of
Christian and Pagan traditions in their churches. Oral testimony made to
this author in 1974.
40. 'Novye sovremennye obriady .. .' and 'Novye obriady v drevnem
gorode',Naukaireligiia, no. 7 Uuly 1970) pp. 33-4; N. P. Lobacheva, '0
protsesse formirovaniia novoi semeinoi obriadnosti', Sovetskaia etnogra-
fiia, no.1 Uanuary 1972) pp. 3-13.
41. Fr. Dimitrii Dudko, 'Kreshchenie na Rusi' (a diary of adult conversions
from 1962to 1973), VestnikRKhD,no.ll7(1976)pp.188-208;Feodosii,
Letter to Brezhnev, p. 235; Larisa Volokhonskaia's oral testimony to the
author (Crestwood, N.Y., 16 Aprill980). She is a recent emigree who
described her own secret baptism in Leningrad in 1972.
On Soviet concerns: 'Ateisticheskoe vospitanie', Pravda, 15 September
1972, p. 1; Kurochkin, 'Problemy nauchnogo ateizma v svete reshenii
XXVIs'ezda KPSS', Vop. nauch. at., no. 28 (1981)p.15, where he cites the
rate of young Komsomol members within different attitudes to religion
as being 44 per cent in central Russia. The rate for young people
(generally members and non-members ofKomsomol) is as high as 50 per
cent in some regions.
42. See respectively: Pospielovsky, 'Soviet Family Policy', The Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe, a handbook ed. by George Schopflin (London:
Anthony Blond, 1970) p. 427; and V. A. Kapitanchuk, F. V. Karelin, G.
P. Yakunin, 'K priniatiiu "osnov zakonodatel'stva Soiuza SSR i soiuznykh
respublik o narodnom obrazovanii" ', Vol'noe slovo (no. 17-18: selections
from Veche, nos 7, 8, 9, 10 (1975)) p. 79. See confirmation of this in
Kuroedov, Religiia (1984) pp.129-30.
43. See Kuroedov: (1) 'Svoboda sovesti i zakon', Nedelia/Izvestiia's weekend
magazine, no.44 (31 Oct. 1971) p.16; (2) 'Torzhestvo leninskikh print-
sipov svobody sovesti', Nauka i rel., no.1 (1978) pp. 3-4; (3) Religiia i
tserkov' v sovetskom gosudarstve (M.: polit.literatura, 1981) pp.130-212.
Furov, 'Stanovlenie zakonodatel'stva o kul'takh', NiR, no. 8 (1979)
pp.16-18; his secret report: VRKhD, no.130 (1979) pp. 283-8;
176 Notes and References

summary in Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, vol. 2, pp. 409-15.

44. Vedomosti VerkhovnovosovetaRSFSR, no.l2 (March 1966) p. 219.
45. Fr. Gleb Yakunin and Lev Regel' son, 'Pis'mo General'nomu sekretariu
VSTs Filippu Potteru', Vol'noeslovo, no. 24 (1976) pp. 27-33 etpassim.
46. See the Furov report and Archbishop Feodosii, letter to Brezhnev,
passim. Fr. Yakunin claims that the unwritten condition for the episcopal
consecration of a candidate since the 1960s has been a prior written
pledge of the candidate given to the KGB to co-operate with it upon
consecration. This was not necessary under Stalin because the KGB
could arrest anyone without any regard for due process oflaw. But with
the so-called 'return to Leninist legality' the need for internal police
informers in the Church has increased, hence the above KGB-CRA
ruling. Yakunin, '0 sovremennom .. .', pp.l7-18.
4 7. Oral testimony to this author by clergy of the Moscow Patriarchate. Also
1985 statements by Yuvenali, Metropolitan of Krutitsy, and Vladimir,
Metropolitan ofRostov. Keston News Service (Keston College, Centre for
the Study of Religion and Communism, Keston, Kent, England), 21
February 1985, p. 22, and 4 April 1985, p. 7. Vedomosti, no. 27 (June
1975) pp. 487-91.
48. Sbornik po finansovomu zakonodatel'stvu (M.: Iuridicheskaia literatura,
1980) pp. 239-40; USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium Ukaz, no.l061 (1
January 1981); also, L. Sergeeva, 'V tiskakh sistemy', Posev, no. 7 (1981)
p.32.
49. Yakunin, '0 sovremennom', passim.
50. 'Nashi iuridicheskie konsul'tatsii', ZhMP, no. 6 (1985) p. 80, and no.lO,
( 1985) p. 80. The journal regularly publishes items on clergy who had in
the past gallantly served in the Soviet armed forces, with photos of them
in their uniforms and with medals, to counter the antireligious
propaganda depicting the Church and the clergy as unpatriotic.
51. 'Nashi ... konsul'tatsii', ZhMP, no.l (Jan. 1986) p. 80. Indeed, in the last
few years many issues of ZhMP have reported construction of new
diocesan and other secular buildings for administrative and other needs
of the Church. The most grandiose of them was the solemn opening of a
large plant at Sofrino near Moscow, on 15 September 1980, for the
production of church plate and other articles used in the Orthodox
Church services and for the private use of religious believers (ZhMP,
no. 11, 1980, pp. 12-15 ). The change of taxation rate, of course, does not
apply to articles produced and sold by the Church. The Sofrino income
remains taxable according to Article 19.
52. B. N. Konovalov, E. G. Filimonov, 'Komplexny podkhod v ateistiches-
kom vospitanii - reshaiushchii faktor povysheniia ego effektivnosti',
Vop. nauch. at., no.22 (1978) pp.l68-70; 'Povyshat' ideino-
teoreticheskii uroven' i effektivnost' nauchno-ateisticheskogo vospita-
niia', ibid, no.19 (1976) pp.11-13; XXV s'ezd Kommunisticheskoi partii
Sovetskogo Soiuza, vol.1 (M.: Izd. polit. lit., 1976) pp. 26-115; 'Otchet
Tsentral'nogo komiteta KPSS XXVI s'ezdu ... Doklad ... Brezhneva',
Pravda, 24 February 1981, pp. 2-9.
53. 'NovaiakonstitutsiiaSSSRisvobodasovesti', Vop.nauch. at.,no. 23(1978)
pp. 6-24; also: A. Olulov, P. Kurochkin, 'S uvazheniem k cheloveku',
 Notes and References 177

Pravda, 1 Sept. 1977, p. 3; Kurochkin, 'Ubezhdennost', p. 2.

54. Contrast XVIII S'ezd Vsesoiuznogo Leninskogo Kommunisticheskogo soiuza
molodezhi, 25-28 aprelia 1978 g . . Stenogr. otchet, vol. 2 (M: Molod. gvard.,
1978) pp.l96-221, with XIX S'ezd .. ., 18-21 maia, 1982 g., vol.2,
pp. 205-25.
55. 'Voinstvuiushchii materializm - filosofskoe znamia kommunizma',
Kom., no. 4 (March 1982) pp. 56-68.
56. 'Boevaia programma tvorcheskogo marxizma', Vop. fil., no. 3 (March
1982) pp. 3-16.
57. Andropov's and Chernenko's speeches followed by an editorial and by
the 14-15 June 1983 CPSU CC Plenum Resolution, Kom., no. 9 (June
1983) pp. 4-46; editorial, 'Aktual'nye voprosy ateisticheskogo vospita-
niia v svete reshenii iiun'skogo (1983) Plenuma TsK KPSS'; and L. K.
Shepetis, 'Ateisticheskomu vospitaniiu -deistvennost' i nastupatel'nost''
-both in Voprosy nauchnogo ateizma (henceforth Vopnat) vol. 32 (1985)
pp. 5 and 35 respectively; Pravda editorial, 14 December 1983, gives also
a militantly atheistic policy interpretation to the June CC Plenum
Resolution.
58. Oral testimony to this author by a very well-informed source who had
visited both the Patriarchate and the monastery in question in 1985. For
obvious reasons the source prefers to remain unnamed.
59. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, vol. 2, chs 10 and 12, and Chapter 3 of
present volume.
60. Pospielovsky, 'More on Historic Preservation Policy in the USSR',
Canadian Slavonic Papers, vol. XVIII, no. 4 (1975) pp. 641-9; and, inter
alia, such writings of Vladimir Soloukhin as: Chernye doski, Pis'ma iz
Russkovo muzeia, 'Prodolzhenie vremeni', Nash sovremennik (no. I, 1982),
and Vremiasobirat' kamni (M.: Sovremennik, 1980).
61. Apollon Kuz'min, 'Pisatel' i istoriia', Nash sovremennik, no.4 (M.:
'Literaturnaia gazeta', Aprill982) p. 148.
62. N. S. Gordienko, 'Kreshchenie Rusi':fakty protiv legend i mifov (Leningrad:
Lenizdat, 1984) p. 274. For a similar platform but presented less
polemically and in a more scholarly fashion, with many interesting
historical details not directly related or totally unrelated to the task of
'killing' religion, see M. S. Korzun, Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov' na
sluzhbe expluatatorskikh klassov. X vek -1917 god. (Minsk: Belarus', 1984).
Predictably, Gordienko's book was published in 75 000 copies, the much
more scholarly Korzun's, in 5000. Many anti-Millenium articles have
appeared in Vopnat., including one which was surprisingly scholarly and
'unorthodox' from the Marxist-Soviet policy viewpoint: L. V. Poliakov,
'Khristianizatsiia i stanovlenie filosofii v Kievskoi Rusi', vol. 32 (1985)
pp. 268-92.
63. Gordienko, Kreshchenie, passim; A. F. Zamaleev, V. A. Zots, Mysliteli
Kievskoi Rusi (Kiev: Vyshcha shkola, 1981 ), is one of the official
publications dedicated to the alleged 1500th anniversary. Ironically, the
subject of the book is a very confused and confusing analysis of the
writings of the first Russian bishops and monastics, and of the very pious
Prince Vladimir Monomakh (12th c.). The authors invent a division
between the Byzantine denial of the world expressed in the ascetic and
178 Notes and References

pessimistic Christianity ofthe monks, and the joyous Weltanschauung of

Metropolitan Ilarion, which was a legacy of Bogumil and some other
heresies mixed in with the Pagan background of the Russians. Much of
Polaikov's article argues that such an artificial duality is the product of
the authors' fantasy and incomprehension of Christian theology.
64. Vopnat., no. 30 (1982) passim; A. Gusev, 'Pis'mo veruiushchemu rod-
stvenniku', NiR, no. 8 (1975) pp. 27 -8; F. Gorbacheva, 'Dormidont i
voina', NiR, nos 2, 3, 4 and 5 (1975); Alexandr Shamaro, 'Kak ustoiala
Rus", NiR, no. 7 (1980) pp.18-28; Gordienko, Kreshchenie, passim;
Korzun, passim.
65. Gordienko, Kreshchenie, pp. 30-4.
66. Korzun, pp. 69-70, 95 and 17. In contrast to the 'cruelty' of the
Scriptures, he stresses that the common Russian people never came to
terms with Ivan's tyranny: 'In Russian folk songs Ivan the Terrible
appears as a wild beast.' Korzun is wrong about the Greek princess: he
received her as his wife only after his conversion and abandonment of
polygamy and of all his former wives and concubines.
67. Gordienko, Kreshchenie, pp.190-205.
68. Oral testimony to this author by a source that may not be named, June
1985. The threat of the Church must be very real if so much energy and
attention is given to polemics with its publications, which amount to a
monthly journal with a circulation of less than 50 000 copies, and with
priests' oral sermons; whereas millions of copies of antireligious
publications, printing houses, the whole educational, TV and broadcast-
ing systems are a monopoly of the Communist Party.
69. Gordienko, Kreshchenie, pp. 205-80.

APPENDIX

1. This Appendix includes some earlier translations of this author in his

Orthodox Church under the Soviet Regime (St Vladimir's Seminary Press,
1984), as well as from a brochure by this author on the legal situation of the
Church in the USSR to be published by the Orthodox Church in America
as a hand-out. Other parts have been newly translated and edited by
Andrew Pospielovsky, the compiler and editor of this section.
2. To the best of our knowledge, these regulations remain unpublished for
the general public to the present day.
Bibliography
The following bibliography consists of materials directly used and cited in the
current volume, books and other materials scrutinized in the course of
research directly relevant to this book, as well as those materials encountered
by this author and pertaining to the subject of Soviet atheism which would be
of use for further reading on the subject. The list does not include materials,
known to the author, which in his view add nothing to an inquisitive reader's
knowledge. This was the rationale for the selection of some books by, for
instance, a Western author for inclusion in the list, and exclusion of other
writings by the same author. Of course, the writer does not pretend to have a
total encyclopaedic knowledge of all sources, and may have missed some
useful ones as well.

ARCHIVES, DOCUMENTS, AND OTHER PRIMARY

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House, 1962.
Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, supplement to New Times,
no. 41. Moscow: 1977.
Documents ofthe Christian Committee for the Defense ofBelievers Rights in the USSR.
San Francisco: Washington Research Samizdat Reprints, vols 1-12, 1979-
80.
Feodosii, Archb. ofPoltava, 'Letter to L. I. Brezhnev', VestnikRKhD., no. 135.
Paris, 1981.
Furov, V., 'Tsekovnye kadry i mery po ogranicheniiu ikh deiatel'nosti
ramkami zakona', VestnikRKhD., no.130, Paris, 1979.
KPSS- Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Congresses: XVI S'ezd Vsesoiuznoi
Kommunisticheskoi partii (bol'shevikov). Stenografu;heskii otchet. Moscow:
Gosizdat, 1930. XXV S'ezd Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soiuza.
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Materially XIII S'ezda professional'nykhsoiuzov SSSR. Moscow: Profizdat, 1964.
Rezoluitsii II vsesoiuznogo s'ezda soiuza voinstvuiushchikh bezbozhnikov, 2nd edn.
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Samizdat Archives. Radio Liberty, Munich.
Samizdat Religious Archives. Keston College, Keston, Kent, England.
Sbornik po finansovomu zakonadetel'stvu. Moscow: Iuridicheskaia literatura,
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Sistematicheskoe sobranie zakonov RSFSR . ... Moscow: luridicheskaia liter-
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179
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SERIAL PUBLICATIONS

Antireligioznik, monthly. Moscow: 1926-41.

Ateist, irregular/monthly. (Superseded by Voinstvuiushchii ateizm.) Moscow:
1925-31.
Bezbozhnik illustrated, monthly until1926, bimonthly from 1926 to 1933 and
monthly after 1933. Moscow: 1925-41.
Bezbozhnik newspaper, irregularly, thrice monthly, and weekly. Not pub-
lished from january 1935 until March 1938. Moscow: December 1922-
July 1941.
Bezbozhnik ustanka, monthly. Moscow: 1923-32.
Biulleten' radio svobody, weekly. Munich: since mid-1950s.
Bogoslovskie trudy, once to twice annually. Moscow: Patriarkhiia, since early
1960s.
Bol'shevik, monthly. (Superseded by Kommunist.) Moscow: 1923-52.
Derevenskii bezbozhnik. Moscow: 1928-32.
Ezhegodnik muzeia istorii religii i ateizma. Moscow: Akademia nauk SSSR, 195 7-
62.
Grani, quarterly. Frankfurt am Main: since 1946.
Istorik-marxist, monthly. Moscow: 1926-41.
Izvestiia, daily. Moscow.
Khronika tekushchikh sobytii, irregularly. Moscow: Samizdat, since 1968.
Reprinted: Frankfurt am Main: Possev, 1968-72; New York: Chalidze
publications, since 1973.
Kommunist, 18 issues annually. (Superseded Bol'shevik.) Moscow: since 1952.
Komsomol'skaia pravda, daily. Moscow.
Krasnaianov', monthly. Moscow: 1921-41.
Liudyna i svit, monthly. Kiev: Znanie, since 1967(?).
Na putiakh k novoi shkole. Moscow: 1922-33.
Nadezhda: khristianskoe chtenie, irregularly. Moscow: Samizdat, since 1977.
Reprinted: Frankfurt am Main: Possev, since 1977.
Nash sovremennik, monthly. Moscow: since 1933.
 Bibliography 181

Nauka i religiia, monthly. (1) Moscow: 1921; (2) Moscow: Znanie, since 1959.
N edelia, weekly supplement to Izvestiia. Moscow.
Novy mir, monthly. Moscow: since January 1925.
Pamiat', 5 vols. Moscow: Samizdat, 1976-81. Reprinted: V. I- New York:
Khronika Press, 1978; vols. II- V- Paris: YMCA Press, 1979-82.
PodznamenemMarxizma, monthly. Moscow: 1922-44.
Posev, weekly 1945-67; monthly since January 1968. Frankfurt am Main.
Pravda, daily. Moscow.
Prosveshcheniie, irregular/monthly. St Petersburg, 1912-14.
Religion in Communist Lands, quarterly. Keston, Kent, England: Keston
College, since 1973.
Revoliutsiia i tserkov', irregular/monthly. Moscow: 1919-24.
Ruskaia mysl', weekly. Paris: since 1947.
Saint Vladimir's Theological Quarterly. Crestwood, New York: St Vladmir's
Orthodox Theological Seminary, since 1957.
Sovetskaia etnografiia, bimonthly. Moscow: since 1931.
Sovetskaia kul'tura, twice weekly. Moscow: since 1973.
Veche, 9 issues. Rozhdestvo, Vladimir, USSR: Samizdat, 1971-4.
Vedomosti verkhovnogo soveta RSFSR., weekly. Moscow: since 1936.
Vestnik russkogo studencheskogo khristianskogo dvizheniya (Vestnik RSKhD, or
VRSKhD), and since issue no.112-113, 1974- Vestnik russkogo Khristians-
kogodvizheniya(VestnikRKhD, or VRKhD), presently a quarterly. Paris: since
1926.
Voinstvuiushchii ateizm, irregular/monthly. Moscow: 1931-2.
Voiovnychyi ateist, monthly. Kiev: Znanie, since 1960, superseded by Liudyna i
svit (approx. since 1967).
Vol'noe slovo, formerly Possev, spetsial'nyi vypusk, 4 to 6 times annually.
Frankfurt am Main: Narodno-trudovoi soiuz, 1972-81.
Voprosyfilosofii, monthly. Moscow: Pravda, since 1947.
Voprosy istorii religii i ateizma. Moscow: Akadmeiia nauk SSSR, until1964.
Voprosy nauchnogo ateizma, irregularly. Akademiia obshchestvenikh nauk,
since 1964.
Zhurnal Moskovskoi Patriarkhii, monthly. Moscow: Patriarkhiia, 1931-5
irregularly, regularly since September 1943.

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Belov, E., 'Sud'ba tserkovnykh tsennostei, iz'iatykh sovetskoi vlast'iu v
1922g.', VestnikRSKhD., no.104-105, Paris, 1972.
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--,'Religious situation in Soviet Ukraine', Ukraine in Changing World. New
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Bogolepov, Alexander A., Tserkov' pod vlast'iu kommunizma. Munich: 1958.
Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 30 vols, 3rd edn. Moscow: 1970-78.
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Index

Academy of Sciences 81 Bogdanov, A. 93

Agitprop (Central Committee Dept Bonch-Bruevich, V. D. 3, 32, 72-3
for Agitation and Brezhnev, L.l. 3, 98, 121-2
Propaganda) 28,31,46,51-2
All-Russian Union of Teachers- Chernenko, K. U. 125
Internationalists 29 Christian- Atheist dialogue (public
All-Union Conference of Marxist- debates) 39-41,62-3
Leninist Institutions Church
(2nd) 42-3 charity 89-90
Anatoli, Bishop of the Archdiocese legislation on 27, 41, 49, 69, 87,
ofOdessa 39 111,117-20, 122,and
Andropov, Iuri 125 Appendix
Antireligious press 74-5
campaigns and methodology 30, suppression ix, 35-6, 38, 46, 68,
36-8,53-5,57-63,70: 83-6
five-year plan of annihilation taxation of 44, 82, 119
of religion 64; seven-year Clergy (status and
plan of annihilation 74-6 persecutions) ix, 86, 119, 121
declarations and resolutions 28- Commissariat of
9,38,44,57-8,81-2, 124- Enlightenment 29,45-6,64
5 Commissions-in-Aid to the
education 45, 56-7, 60, 70, 75, Executive Committees of
79,91, 106,112,116-17, Soviets of Workers
124: and youth 84, 86, 114, Deputies 88-9
117, 121 Communist Party
laws and decrees 27, 29, 49, 87, Congresses (lOth to 25th,
117 incl.) 29, 37, 40, 44, 52, 56,
press 28, 37,61-2,65, 72, 98, 75-6, 78, 80, 106-7' 111
100,112 declarations and resolutions on
propaganda 45,46,51,62,69 religion 7, 26, 28-31,69,
Antireligious Commission of the 73,76-7, 79,81,124-5
Soviet Communist Party Constitutions x, 1-2,38, 49, 122
Central Committee 38 Council for Affairs of Religious
Atheism Cults (CARC) 69, 91, 99
clubs 79-80, 115 Council for Religious Affairs
state-enforced 7, 26, 45 (CRA) 91, 99, 113, 118-20
theories 3, 17, 19, 20, 25, 31, Council for the Russian Orthodox
77-9,81,85,91 Church (CROCA) 69, 90, 99,
111
Baptists ix, xiv, 113-14
Bazarov, V. 93 Deborin, Lev 42
Belorussia, Party Leadership 81 Declaration of Loyalty (Segii's) x,
Belorussian Seminary (Minsk) 85 49

187
188 Index

Engels,Friedrich 15-17,25 Second Congress 54-60, 122

Lenin, V.I. 3-4, 18-21, 25, 27,
Family legislation 87, 117 33, 95-7, 123-4
Feuerbach, Ludwig 9-12, 15, 23- Letter on Shuia 34-6
4,93 Leningrad Museum of History of
Florensky, Pavel (Priest, Religion and Atheism 79
Professor) 39 Leningrad Orthodox Clergy
Fraternity of Russian Truth 48 Conference 41
Furov, V. 99,117-18,122 Liquidation (VIIIth) Department
of the People's Commissariat
Galaktionov, M. R. 50 ofJustice 27
Germogen, Patriarch 128 Lukachevsky, A. T. 51-2
Glavpolitprosvet (Chief Lunacharsky, Anatoli V. 3, 19-21,
Administration for Political 31-3,39,45,53,63,93-5,122
Enlightenment) 29-30, 40 Lutherans 49,114
God-building (bogostroitel'stvo) 20,
92-5, 115-16 Martinovsky, V. F. 39-40,62
Gordienko, N. S. 129-31 Marx, Karl 9, 12-15,23-5
Gor'ky, Maxim 5, 93 Marxism xiv, 93-6, 112-13
Groups of Twenty (Dvadtsatki) 89 Marxism-Leninism 6-8,21-3,
79-80,91, 106, 111, 113, 123-
Hegel, Friedrich 9
25
Houses of Culture 91
Materialism
Il'ichev, Leonid 78, 81-2 dialectical 17, 19,21,42-3
Institute of Scientific Atheism 99 historical 22-3
Intelligentsia 38, 71, 81 militant 19
Mechanicists 24, 31, 42, 47,51
Judaism 46 Monasteries and monasticism 3,
82-4, 90, 129
Khrushchev, Nikita S. 70-3, 79- Moscow Patriarchate 91, 119, 129
80,85,95-9, 108-9, 115 Moscow Society of the Godless 50
Kiev 126-7, 130-1 Moslems 32, 46, 49, 114
Kiev Caves Monastery 125 Museum of Scientific Atheism 45
Komsomol 44, 58-60, 70, 78, 80,
86, 106-8, 110 New Economic Policy (NEP) 30,
Congresses 86, 106, 108, 122-3 36,44
parodies on Christian feasts Nur-Vakhitov, Mullah 32
40-1
Kostelovskaia, M. M. 50-1 Old-Believer Schism 90
Krasikov, Piotr A. 27 Oleshchuk, F. 73, 81
Krupskaia, Nadezhda 29 'On the Sectarian Movement',
Kurochkin, P. 112-13, 122 CPSU Resolution 58
Kuroedov, V. A. 114,117 'On the Strict Observance of the
Laws on Religious Cults',
Latvia 115 Decree 87
Lithuania 49, 116 Orthodox Church xiii-xiv, 32, 49,
League of (Militant) Godless 5, 37, 55, 73, 85-6, 114
44-5,49-50,53-4,60-1, and national culture 126-9
65-7, 107, 126 the Patriarch's Synod 113
 Index 189

Philosophic Society of the Soviet Tikhon (Belavin), Patriarch 27, 35,

Union 111 38
Pimen, Patriarch 99 Trotsky, Lev 5, 29-33,47
Pokrovsky, Mikhail 45 True Orthodox Wanderers 90
Protestant sects 46, 58-9, 73
Psychiatric abuse 114-15 Ukrainian Autocephalous
Orthodox Church 48
Renovationists x, 32, 38, 55, 130 Universities of Atheism 79
Rightist deviation 31 Uzbekistan 116
Roman Catholics 49, 114
Russicum and Vatican 48 Veresaev, V. 92
Voino-Yasenetsky, Dr. Luka,
Samizdat sources xi-xiii, 115-16 Archbishop 39
Satan and Satanism 13, 95 Volhynia Seminary 84
Seminaries 84, 86, 100 Vvedensky, Alexandr, Priest 39
Sergii, Metropolitan x, 49 Yaroslavsky, Emelian 27, 32, 37,
Skvortsov-Stepanov, I van 31, 51 44,47,50-4,63,66-7,122
Society of Militant Dialectical
Materialists 3 7 Znanie (All-Union Society for the
Stalin, IosifV. xi, 42-3,49, 51-3, Dissemination of Political and
64-5, 70-2, 82, 85, 91 Scientific Knowledge) 5, 71-
'Storm and Push' 27 2,77-8,85, 100, 110-12