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The Soviet regime had an ostensible commitment to the complete annihilation of religious institutions and ideas. [11] Communist ideology could not coexist with the continued influence of religion even as an independent institutional entity, so "Lenin demanded that communist propaganda must employ militancy and irreconcilability towards all forms of idealism and religion", and that was called ...
The persecution entered a new phase in 1921 with the resolutions adopted by the tenth CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) congress, and would set the atmosphere for the remainder of the decade's persecutions, which would enter another new phase in 1929 when new legislation was passed on prohibition of public religious activities.
Most of the bishops arrested between 1928 and 1932 were arrested for reasons surrounding opposition to Metropolitan Sergius and his notorious declaration of loyalty. The state did officially maintain the line that church and state were separate in the Soviet Union during this time, despite the many arrests of people for not following their religious leaders.
The article would be very important in anti-religious policy in the USSR in later years, and its last sentence, which would be both ignored and recalled back at different point in Soviet history, would play an important role in later rivalries in the power struggles of later years between different Soviet leaders. [50]
Many Soviet youth turned to religion, [21] and concern was expressed over this attraction, which was believed by Soviet authorities to be caused by the art, architecture and music of the Church, as well as that the church's separation from political and material power by the state had removed previously negative associations with religion. This ...
The 21st Congress brought in a new, radical programme of anti-religious propaganda that would stay in place for the next twenty-five years. [13]A new anti-religious periodical appeared in 1959 called Science and Religion (Nauka i Religiia), which followed in the tradition of Bezbozhnik in aggressiveness and vulgarity, but was much less vicious.
As for the Russian Orthodox Church, Soviet authorities sought to control it and, in times of national crisis, to exploit it for the state's own purposes; but their ultimate goal was to eliminate it. During the first five years of Soviet power, the Bolsheviks executed 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and over 1,200 Russian Orthodox priests.
The government of the Soviet Union followed an unofficial policy of state atheism, aiming to gradually eliminate religious belief within its borders. [1] [2] While it never officially made religion illegal, the state nevertheless made great efforts to reduce the prevalence of religious belief within society.