Soviet Attacks on Religion (Edexcel A Level History): Revision Note

Summary

• This note will examine the relationship between religion and the Soviet state

• Communism was an atheist ideology

• The Bolsheviks saw religion as a rival belief system that had to be controlled or removed

• Every Soviet leader attacked religion, but the intensity of persecution varied

• Stalin used religion during the war to unite the country, Khrushchev renewed attacks, and Brezhnev relied more on control than destruction

• Historians debate whether attacking religion strengthened Soviet power or created more problems in the long-term

Communism & religion

• Marx called religion the “opium of the people”

  • He believed religion kept workers passive and distracted from class struggle

• However, communism viewed all people as equal, regardless of their beliefs

Why was religion important in the Russian Empire?

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

• Religion was central to identity and often tied to ethnicity:

  • Russian Orthodoxy

    • The state-supported religion in Tsarist Russia

    • Around 70% of the population were 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 to the West of the Empire

• The Russian Orthodox Church had been a pillar of tsarist autocracy:

  • It preached loyalty to the tsar as God’s chosen ruler

  • It reinforced the idea of social hierarchy and obedience

  • Many priests were closely tied to the state

Lenin's views on religion

• For Lenin, attacking religion was a way of dismantling the ideological foundations of Tsarism

  • Religion was seen not just as a belief system

    • It was a source of opposition to Communist authority

• The Bolsheviks believed that true socialism had to replace religious faith with loyalty to the state and science

Religious policies under Lenin

Laws

Decree on Land (October 1917)

• Gave peasants the right to seize land from the Church

Decree on the Separation of Church and State (January 1918)

• The Russian Orthodox Church lost its land, schools, and special privileges

• Religious teaching was banned in schools

• The state no longer gave money to the Church

The Soviet Constitution (1922)

• The state allowed all people to have 'freedom of conscience'

  • This essentially allowed people to have whatever faith they wished

Reality in Leninist Russia

First year in power

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

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

The Civil War

• Orthodox Churches were shut down

• The state seized Church property

  • This continued during the 1921 famine to fund aid

• Priests were deported or persecuted

• Islamic charities were seized

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

After the Civil War

• The state created the Living Church. It was:

  • Ran by the GPU

  • Intended to split the Orthodox Church

  • Banned from public debating in 1925 due to differences of opinion with the State

• The state attempted to weaken Islam by:

  • Closing mosques

  • Attacking Islamic shrines

  • Accusing Muslims of 'crimes based on customs' against women

  • Campaigning against women wearing the chador

Religious policies under Stalin

• Stalin's approach to religion was pragmatic

  • Stalin was Georgian

    • This meant he was an ethnic minority of the Russian Empire

    • Lenin had made Stalin the Commissar for Nationalities

  • He did not focus on religion

    • However, his policies often had religious implications

Collectivisation

• Collectivisation campaigns included closing churches and arresting clergy

  • Resistance to collectivisation often came from the clergy

• By 1939, only about 1 in 40 churches remained compared to 1917

Purges

• Purges often set numbers for how many people from each ethnic group should be targeted

  • The NKVD heavily attacked Islamic and pro-Islamic groups in Central Asia

    • By 1936, Sufi groups had almost been wiped out

    • Women in Kazakhstan kept the religion alive in underground communities

Second World War

• Stalin formed an alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church. This was because:

  • Orthodoxy linked to national identity, improving patriotism

  • The Church comforted grieving families

  • Religion provided reassurance to soldiers that they would go to Heaven if they died

  • It boosted public morale against the Nazis

• 414 Orthodox Churches reopened

  • Numbers of other Christian religions also increased in this era

• The state:

  • Ended anti-religious propaganda

  • Promised to end censorship of religious publications

Post-war

• Restrictions increased again

  • However, this was not as severe as the 1930s

  • Many churches were allowed to remain open

Religious policies under Khrushchev

Policies

• Khrushchev launched a new anti-religious drive:

  • From 1958–1964, over 10,000 churches were closed

  • Anti-religious magazines were re-established

  • Propaganda harassed and mocked the clergy

  • Religion was presented as unscientific and outdated in a modern, space-age USSR

• Many strategies targeted women

  • Women accounted for over 80% of Protestant Christians

  • The state accused nuns of being 'unnatural' for not being wives and mothers

• Muslim groups, especially in Central Asia, also suffered

  • Mosques were closed

  • Khrushchev revived the 1920s campaign to 'liberate' Islamic women

Impact

• Policies against women proved unsuccessful

• Women protected their religious freedom by:

  • Marching

  • Distributing pamphlet

  • Taking their children out of school

• Dissident groups formed due to religious issues

Religious policies under Brezhnev

Policies

• Brezhnev avoided aggressive persecution, focusing instead on control:

  • Churches could remain open but were closely watched by the KGB

  • Atheism was promoted

    • In 1969, the state opened the Institute for Scientific Atheism

    • The state advised teachers on how to teach atheism

• The government supported anti-American Islamic groups

  • From the late 1960s, the state believed that these groups had many common beliefs with them

• Brezhnev opened the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan

  • This allowed Soviet Islamic leaders to communicate with Muslims in other countries

Impact

• Religious believers in the USSR remained stable at 20% from 1960 to 1985

Impact of religious policies on the USSR

• Weakening of the Church

  • Religion never regained its political influence after 1917

• Survival of faith

  • Religious belief continued underground, especially in rural areas and among Muslims in Central Asia

  • Baptisms, weddings, and funerals were still common

• Links to nationalism

  • In non-Russian republics, religion was closely tied to national identity

  • In Poland, the Catholic Church remained strong and became a focus for resistance to Soviet control

• Public distrust

  • Heavy-handed repression often created sympathy for religious groups

  • It also pushed people into opposition or resentment towards the state

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

• Historians disagree over whether repression of religion strengthened Soviet control or damaged it

Attacks on religion strengthened communist power

• Religion was linked to the old Tsarist regime

  • Suppressing it allowed the Bolsheviks to secure authority

• By the 1960s, the Church had no political influence

Key historians

"The persecution of the Church was accompanied by a highly organized campaign to promote atheism and to destroy Russia's religious culture.. Children from 8-14 years of age were enrolled in Groups of Godless Youth, and the League of Communist Youth (Komsomol) took a vigorous antireligious line... Much of this antireligious propaganda was extremely crude— embarrassingly so for some party intellectuals — and probably did not greatly harm the Church, though the long-term programme of indoctrinating children and young people in atheism has clearly helped to produce two generations of adults who are largely alienated from the Church and from Russia's traditional culture and piety." - Paul D. Steeves, Keeping the Faiths: Religion and Ideology in the Soviet Union (1989)

"People were confused by the loss of Communism as a system of beliefs and practices. They felt a moral vacuum. For some, religion filled the gap. Orthodoxy was a ready-made alternative to Marxism-Leninism. It offered reconnection with a Russian way of life that had been lost since 1917, repentance for the repression of ancestors and self-purification from the moral compromises involved in living with the Soviet regime." - Orlando Figes, Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A History (2014)

Attacks on religion created more problems

• Repression alienated peasants, nationalist groups and rural communities

• Targeting religious groups created resistance and undermined trust in the state

Key historians

"It is impossible to assess the full extent of Stalin's persecution of religious believers, their persons, their beliefs, and their institutions. So many died in general purges and famines, and no figures can be extracted to indicate that those who were victims were primarily because of their faith. In Stalin's Russia, simply to be a priest warranted a prison sentence, which in its turn was often the equivalent of a death sentence... While no one would assert that Christian protest was the sole motivator of an emergent human rights movement, it unquestionably played a role with academic research, even to this day, has never fully acknowledged... Even Jewish protests, which for many people came to symbolise the human rights movement in the Soviet Union, did not emerge until almost a decade after isolated Christians had first begun to call for justice." - Michael Bourdeaux, The Gospel's Triumph Over Communism (1991)

"In terms of winning believers to atheism success is yet harder to evaluate. Such statistics as are available do suggest a general decrease in the number of believers, but it remains difficult to ascribe this to propaganda and educational activities alone, for the decline took place during a harsh anti-religious campaign when public confession of faith could lead to discrimination and job loss, and during which the number of open places of worship was radically reduced. Propaganda messages repeated over time probably had some effect in shaping the perception of religion held by ordinary citizens, but it seems unlikely that many believers were genuinely converted to atheism as a result of such measures." - John Anderson, Religion, State and Politics in the Soviet Union and Successor States (1994)