Soviet Attacks on Religion: Communism vs the Church (AQA A Level History: Component 1: Breadth study): Revision Note

Summary

• Communism was an atheist ideology that saw religion as a rival authority

  • The Bolsheviks wanted loyalty to the state, Party and science to replace religious faith

• Lenin promised freedom of worship, but in practice, the regime seized Church property and persecuted clergy

• The state promoted atheism through propaganda, anti-religious education and the League of the Godless

• Stalin intensified the attack through collectivisation, the purges and the 1936 Constitution

• The campaign targeted every major faith

  • However, most people still identified as believers by 1941

• Historians debate whether anti-religious policy advanced the regime’s secular aims or failed to win people to atheism

  • Steeves stresses the long-term alienation of younger generations from the Church

  • Anderson argues that few believers were genuinely converted to atheism

Communism & religion: why were they incompatible?

• Communism was an atheist ideology that saw no place for organised religion

  • Marx described religion as the "opium of the people"

    • He believed it kept workers passive

    • He argued that it distracted them from the class struggle

• Communism still claimed to treat all people as equal

  • This included people with different beliefs

  • However, the Bolsheviks wanted loyalty to the state, Party and science to replace faith

Religion as a rival authority

• Organised religion could command loyalty that competed with the Party

  • Churches had their own hierarchy

  • They owned property

  • They influenced millions of people

• The Russian Orthodox Church had been a key pillar of tsarism (opens in a new tab)

  • It preached obedience to the Tsar as God's chosen ruler

  • It reinforced social hierarchy and obedience

  • Attacking the Church also weakened a foundation of the old regime

Why was religion important in the Russian Empire?

• By 1900, the Russian Empire was home to over 200 nationalities

• Religion was central to identity

  • It was often tied to ethnicity

  • This meant that later attacks on religion affected many different communities

Key faiths

• Russian Orthodoxy

  • The state-supported religion in Tsarist Russia

  • Around 70% of the population was Russian Orthodox

• Islam

  • Widespread in Central Asia and the Caucasus

• Catholicism

  • Strong in Poland and parts of the western empire

  • Linked to Polish nationalism

• Judaism

  • Concentrated in the Pale of Settlement in the West of the Empire

• The widespread nature of religion shaped how far the later Soviet attack would reach

Religious policies under Lenin

Key laws

First year in power

• On paper, Lenin allowed freedom of worship after the October Revolution

  • A small atheist Bolshevik minority could not openly confront an Orthodox majority

  • In practice, the regime quickly moved against the Church

• In 1918, the Cheka received an order from the Politburo to execute Orthodox priests

  • Within two years, the Cheka had killed some of the most well-known and respected priests

Repression during the Civil War

• The Civil War brought severe persecution of the Orthodox Church

  • Orthodox churches were shut down

  • The state seized Church property

  • Church bells and treasures were confiscated, officially to fund the famine relief

    • This continued during the 1921 famine

• Priests were persecuted, deported and executed

  • Hundreds died after being deprived of rations during War Communism

  • Around 8,000 priests were executed under Lenin in 1921

    • Many were killed for resisting the seizure of Church valuables

• The regime broke the Church's leadership

  • Patriarch Tikhon was arrested in 1922

    • He later recanted and was released

  • His successor Sergius, was jailed

    • He was freed in 1927 after pledging to stay out of politics

• Islamic organisations were treated more cautiously at first

  • Islamic charities were seized

  • Communist leaders later reversed the policy and encouraged Muslims to join the Party

The propaganda war on religion

• The state built machinery to promote atheism

  • The newspaper The Godless appeared in 1923

  • The League of the Militant Godless was founded in 1925

  • It coordinated anti-religious propaganda across Soviet society

• The state tried to discredit religion publicly

  • Komsomol members ransacked churches

  • Sacred relics were "exposed" as fakes

Weakening religion from within after the Civil War

• The Party tried to weaken the Orthodox Church internally

  • It backed the Living Church

  • This faction was run by the secret police, later the GPU

  • It was designed to split the Orthodox Church

  • It was banned from public debate in 1925 after the Civil War

• The state also targeted Islam after the Civil War

  • Mosques were closed

  • Islamic shrines were attacked

  • Muslims were accused of "crimes based on customs" against women

  • Campaigns targeted women wearing the chador

Religious policies under Stalin

• As a Georgian, Stalin came from one of the Russian Empire's ethnic minorities

  • This gave him direct experience of the Empire's national and cultural diversity

  • His attitude to religion was mainly pragmatic

• Lenin later appointed him Commissar for Nationalities

• Religion was not usually Stalin's main focus

  • However, many national and cultural policies affected religious communities

  • Religion was often caught up in wider campaigns to control non-Russian groups and strengthen soviet society

Collectivisation

• Collectivisation brought a new wave of church closures from the late 1920s

  • Village churches were closed

  • Clergy who resisted were arrested

  • By 1939, only around one in 40 churches remained open compared with 1917

• Every day worship was made harder

  • From 1929, worship was restricted to "registered congregations"

  • The "uninterrupted working week" (1929-1940) removed Sunday

    • New Year and May Day replaced Christmas and Easter

The purges

• The purges targeted the clergy alongside other "enemies"

  • Priests were imprisoned or executed

  • The 1936 Constitution criminalised religious propaganda

• The attack reached every major faith, not just Orthodoxy

  • Mosques were closed

  • Sharia courts abolished

  • Wearing the veil was forbidden

  • Pilgrimages to Mecca were banned from 1935

  • Buddhists and the Armenian and Georgian Churches were also targeted

  • In parts of Central Asia, traditionalists murdered those who obeyed Soviet bans

The Second World War

• By 1941, the institutional Church had been badly weakened, but religious belief had survived

  • Nearly 40,000 churches and 25,000 mosques had been closed or converted

  • In 1937, around 57% of people still described themselves as believers

  • Persecution during collectivisation and the purges may have strengthened private faith

• The war forced Stalin to change course

  • He formed an alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church in order to strengthen patriotism and morale against Nazi Germany

    • Orthodoxy was linked to national identity

  • The Church comforted and provided support for grieving families

  • Religion reassured soldiers that they would go to Heaven if they died

• The state eased pressure on religion further during the war

  • 414 Orthodox churches reopened

  • Numbers of other Christian religions also increased

  • Anti-religious propaganda ended

  • The state promised to end censorship of religious publications

Did the Soviet attitude towards religion cause more issues than it solved?

• Historians disagree over whether the anti-religious campaign served the regime’s aims or created more problems than it removed

Suppression broke the Church's power and advanced a secular state

• The Church lost the political and institutional power it had held under the tsars

  • Its land, schools, funding and leadership were stripped away

  • By the late 1930s, most churches and mosques were closed

• Removing a rival authority helped the Party consolidate control

  • No independent Church remained to rally opposition to the regime

• Long-term anti-religious education shaped a more secular society

  • Schooling and youth organisations promoted atheism to a whole generation

Key historian

• Steeves accepts that much propaganda was crude

  • However, he argues that its long-term effect was to detach younger generations from the Church

  • This supports the view that the campaign slowly advanced the regime’s secular aims

Repression entrenched belief and failed to win people to atheism

• Faith proved resilient despite decades of pressure

  • A majority still identified as believers of a faith in the late 1930s

  • Worship continued underground

  • This was especially true in rural areas and Muslim communities

• Persecution alienated key groups

  • Peasants, national minorities and clergy were pushed further from the state

  • In Central Asia, some communities violently resisted bans on religious practice

• The aim of converting people to atheism was largely unmet

  • Falling belief owed as much to coercion as to genuine persuasion

Key historian

• Anderson argues that any fall in belief is hard to separate from coercion

  • He concludes that few people were genuinely persuaded into atheism

  • This supports the view that the policy’s central aim was largely unmet