“When the Soviet Union was established by the Bolsheviks in 1922, it was the constitutional organization which took over from the Russian Empire. At the time of the 1917 Revolution, the Russian Orthodox Church was deeply integrated into the autocratic state enjoying official status. This was a significant factor that contributed to the Bolshevik attitude to religion and the steps they took to control it.[1] Thus the USSR became the first state to have, as an ideological objective, the elimination of religion[2] and its replacement with universal atheism.[3][4] The communist regime confiscated religious property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in schools.[5] The confiscation of religious assets was often based on accusations of illegal accumulation of wealth.
The vast majority of people in the Russian empire were, at the time of the revolution, religious believers, whereas the communists aimed to break the power of all religious institutions and eventually replace religious belief with atheism. "Science" was counterposed to "religious superstition" in the media and in academic writing. The main religions of pre-revolutionary Russia persisted throughout the entire Soviet period, but they were only tolerated within certain limits. Generally, this meant that believers were free to worship in private and in their respective religious buildings (churches, mosques, etc.), but public displays of religion outside of such designated areas were prohibited. In addition, religious institutions were not allowed to express their views in any type of mass media, and many religious buildings were demolished or used for other purposes.”
State atheism in the Soviet Union was known as gosateizm,[2] and was based on the ideology of Marxism–Leninism. As the founder of the Soviet state, V. I. Lenin, put it:
Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class.[6]
Marxist–Leninist atheism has consistently advocated the control, suppression, and elimination of religion. Within about a year of the revolution, the state expropriated all church property, including the churches themselves, and in the period from 1922 to 1926, 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and more than 1,200 priests were killed. Many more were persecuted.[7] “
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Soviet_Union
Soviet anti-religious legislation
"The government of the Soviet Union followed an unofficial policy of state atheism, aiming to gradually eliminate religious belief within its borders and to replace it with atheism.[1][2] While it never officially made religion illegal, the state nevertheless made great efforts to reduce the prevalence of religious belief within society. To this end, at various times in its history it engaged in anti-religious persecutionsof varying intensity and methodology. Believers were never officially attacked for being believers, but they were officially attacked for real or perceived political opposition to the state and to its policies.[3] These attacks, however, in the broader ideological context were ultimately meant to serve the ultimate goal of eliminating religion and of replacing it with atheism, and the perceived political opposition acted as a legal pretext to carry this out.[4] Thus, although the Soviet Union was officially a secular state and guaranteed freedom of religion in its constitutions, in practice believers suffered discrimination and were widely attacked for promoting religion.[3]
As part of its anti-religious campaigns, the Soviet state enacted a significant body of legislation that regulated and curtailed religious practices. This, along with many secret instructions that were not published, formed the legal basis for the Soviet state's anti-religious stance.[citation needed] Laws were designed in order to hurt and hamper religious activities, and the state often vigilantly watched religious believers for their breaking of these laws to justify arresting them. In some places, volunteer neighbourhood committees, called "public commissions for control over observance on the laws about religious cults", watched their religious neighbours and reported violations of the law to the appropriate authorities.[5] The state sought to control religious bodies through such laws with the intention of making those bodies disappear.[2] Often such laws incorporated many ambiguities that allowed for the state to abuse them in order to persecute believers."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_anti-religious_legislation
"Throughout the history of the Soviet Union (1922-1991), Soviet authorities suppressed and persecuted various forms of Christianity to different extents depending on the particular era. Soviet policy, based on the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, made atheism the official doctrine of the Soviet Union. Marxism-Leninism has consistently advocated the control, suppression, and the elimination of religious beliefs.[1]
The state was committed to the destruction of religion,[2][3] and destroyed churches, mosquesand temples, ridiculed, harassed, incarcerated and executed religious leaders, flooded the schools and media with atheistic teachings, and generally promoted atheism as the truth that society should accept.[4][5] The total number of Christian victims of Soviet state atheist policies, has been estimated to range between 12-20 million.[6][7][8]
Religious beliefs and practices persisted among the majority of the population,[4] in the domestic and private spheres but also in the scattered public spaces allowed by a state that recognized its failure to eradicate religion and the political dangers of an unrelenting culture war.[2][9]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union
"The USSR anti-religious campaign of 1928–1941 was a new phase of anti-religiouspersecution in the Soviet Union following the anti-religious campaign of 1921–1928. The campaign began in 1929, with the drafting of new legislation that severely prohibited religious activities and called for a heightened attack on religion in order to further disseminate atheism. This had been preceded in 1928 at the fifteenth party congress, where Joseph Stalin criticized the party for failure to produce more active and persuasive anti-religious propaganda. This new phase coincided with the beginning of the forced mass collectivization of agriculture and the nationalization of the few remaining private enterprises.
Many of those who had been arrested in the 1920s would continue to remain in prison throughout the 1930s and beyond.
The main target of the anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and 1930s was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest number of faithful. Nearly all of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labour camps. Theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited.[1] More than 85,000 Orthodox priests were shot in 1937 alone.[2] Only a twelfth of the Russian Orthodox Church's priests were left functioning in their parishes by 1941.[3]
In the period between 1927 and 1940, the number of Orthodox Churches in the Russian Republic fell from 29,584 to less than 500.
The campaign slowed down in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and came to an abrupt end after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa.[1] The challenge produced by the German invasion would ultimately prevent the public withering away of religion in Soviet society.[4]
This campaign, like the campaigns of other periods that formed the basis of the USSR's efforts to eliminate religion and replace it with atheism supported with a materialist world view,[5] was accompanied with official claims that there was no religious persecution in the USSR, and that believers who were being targeted were for other reasons. Believers were in fact being widely targeted and persecuted for their belief or promotion of religion, as part of the state's campaign to disseminate atheism, but officially the state claimed that no such persecution existed and that the people being targeted - when they admitted that people were being targeted - were only being attacked for resistance to the state or breaking the law.[6] This guise served Soviet propaganda abroad, where it tried to promote a better image of itself especially in light of the great criticism against it from foreign religious influences."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USSR_anti-religious_campaign_(1928–41)
Communist Kills Priest To Show Religious Hate
https://news.google.com/newspapers?...AIBAJ&sjid=LiIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5975,6276793&hl=en
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor.../KGB-involved-in-murder-of-Polish-priest.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror
The vast majority of people in the Russian empire were, at the time of the revolution, religious believers, whereas the communists aimed to break the power of all religious institutions and eventually replace religious belief with atheism. "Science" was counterposed to "religious superstition" in the media and in academic writing. The main religions of pre-revolutionary Russia persisted throughout the entire Soviet period, but they were only tolerated within certain limits. Generally, this meant that believers were free to worship in private and in their respective religious buildings (churches, mosques, etc.), but public displays of religion outside of such designated areas were prohibited. In addition, religious institutions were not allowed to express their views in any type of mass media, and many religious buildings were demolished or used for other purposes.”
State atheism in the Soviet Union was known as gosateizm,[2] and was based on the ideology of Marxism–Leninism. As the founder of the Soviet state, V. I. Lenin, put it:
Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class.[6]
Marxist–Leninist atheism has consistently advocated the control, suppression, and elimination of religion. Within about a year of the revolution, the state expropriated all church property, including the churches themselves, and in the period from 1922 to 1926, 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and more than 1,200 priests were killed. Many more were persecuted.[7] “
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Soviet_Union
Soviet anti-religious legislation
"The government of the Soviet Union followed an unofficial policy of state atheism, aiming to gradually eliminate religious belief within its borders and to replace it with atheism.[1][2] While it never officially made religion illegal, the state nevertheless made great efforts to reduce the prevalence of religious belief within society. To this end, at various times in its history it engaged in anti-religious persecutionsof varying intensity and methodology. Believers were never officially attacked for being believers, but they were officially attacked for real or perceived political opposition to the state and to its policies.[3] These attacks, however, in the broader ideological context were ultimately meant to serve the ultimate goal of eliminating religion and of replacing it with atheism, and the perceived political opposition acted as a legal pretext to carry this out.[4] Thus, although the Soviet Union was officially a secular state and guaranteed freedom of religion in its constitutions, in practice believers suffered discrimination and were widely attacked for promoting religion.[3]
As part of its anti-religious campaigns, the Soviet state enacted a significant body of legislation that regulated and curtailed religious practices. This, along with many secret instructions that were not published, formed the legal basis for the Soviet state's anti-religious stance.[citation needed] Laws were designed in order to hurt and hamper religious activities, and the state often vigilantly watched religious believers for their breaking of these laws to justify arresting them. In some places, volunteer neighbourhood committees, called "public commissions for control over observance on the laws about religious cults", watched their religious neighbours and reported violations of the law to the appropriate authorities.[5] The state sought to control religious bodies through such laws with the intention of making those bodies disappear.[2] Often such laws incorporated many ambiguities that allowed for the state to abuse them in order to persecute believers."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_anti-religious_legislation
"Throughout the history of the Soviet Union (1922-1991), Soviet authorities suppressed and persecuted various forms of Christianity to different extents depending on the particular era. Soviet policy, based on the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, made atheism the official doctrine of the Soviet Union. Marxism-Leninism has consistently advocated the control, suppression, and the elimination of religious beliefs.[1]
The state was committed to the destruction of religion,[2][3] and destroyed churches, mosquesand temples, ridiculed, harassed, incarcerated and executed religious leaders, flooded the schools and media with atheistic teachings, and generally promoted atheism as the truth that society should accept.[4][5] The total number of Christian victims of Soviet state atheist policies, has been estimated to range between 12-20 million.[6][7][8]
Religious beliefs and practices persisted among the majority of the population,[4] in the domestic and private spheres but also in the scattered public spaces allowed by a state that recognized its failure to eradicate religion and the political dangers of an unrelenting culture war.[2][9]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union
"The USSR anti-religious campaign of 1928–1941 was a new phase of anti-religiouspersecution in the Soviet Union following the anti-religious campaign of 1921–1928. The campaign began in 1929, with the drafting of new legislation that severely prohibited religious activities and called for a heightened attack on religion in order to further disseminate atheism. This had been preceded in 1928 at the fifteenth party congress, where Joseph Stalin criticized the party for failure to produce more active and persuasive anti-religious propaganda. This new phase coincided with the beginning of the forced mass collectivization of agriculture and the nationalization of the few remaining private enterprises.
Many of those who had been arrested in the 1920s would continue to remain in prison throughout the 1930s and beyond.
The main target of the anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and 1930s was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest number of faithful. Nearly all of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labour camps. Theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited.[1] More than 85,000 Orthodox priests were shot in 1937 alone.[2] Only a twelfth of the Russian Orthodox Church's priests were left functioning in their parishes by 1941.[3]
In the period between 1927 and 1940, the number of Orthodox Churches in the Russian Republic fell from 29,584 to less than 500.
The campaign slowed down in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and came to an abrupt end after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa.[1] The challenge produced by the German invasion would ultimately prevent the public withering away of religion in Soviet society.[4]
This campaign, like the campaigns of other periods that formed the basis of the USSR's efforts to eliminate religion and replace it with atheism supported with a materialist world view,[5] was accompanied with official claims that there was no religious persecution in the USSR, and that believers who were being targeted were for other reasons. Believers were in fact being widely targeted and persecuted for their belief or promotion of religion, as part of the state's campaign to disseminate atheism, but officially the state claimed that no such persecution existed and that the people being targeted - when they admitted that people were being targeted - were only being attacked for resistance to the state or breaking the law.[6] This guise served Soviet propaganda abroad, where it tried to promote a better image of itself especially in light of the great criticism against it from foreign religious influences."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USSR_anti-religious_campaign_(1928–41)
Communist Kills Priest To Show Religious Hate
https://news.google.com/newspapers?...AIBAJ&sjid=LiIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5975,6276793&hl=en
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor.../KGB-involved-in-murder-of-Polish-priest.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror
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