Christianity

Lenin

• Introduced Decrees defining the relationship between government and religion

  • 1917 Decree on Land (peasants could seize Church’s Land)

  • 1918 Decree on Freedom of Conscience banned religious education outside home

  • 1918 Decree Concerning Separation of Church & State took away traditional priviledges of Orthodox Church

• Used Cheka to terrorise Church

  • 1918 Head of Orthodox Church was under house arrest

• All monastries were closed and Churches destroyed

• Priests were denied food rations, suffrage and targets during Red Terror 1921-22

• League of Militant Godless was establised as part of Bolshevik propaganda campaign 1929

• Religious rituals were attacked

  • Replacing baptisms with Octoberings

• The decentralised Living Church was created by Lenin as a rival which would be easier to control

  • Not prepared to support the regime & most Russians were religious in 1920s

• Saw religion as a threat to socialist ideology

  • Emphasis on rights of the individual opposed collective mentality

  • “The opium of the masses” - Marx

  • Particular opposition to Orthodox Church thanks to Tsarist links

• Lenin had a particular hatred for priests

Stalin

• Campaign of persecution accompanied collectivisation

  • Priests labled as Kulaks and deported

• More attacks through the Great Purge 1936-39

• By 1939 only 12 of 163 bishops weren’t imprisioned

• More Churches closed & turned into grain stores

WW2

• Church supported the war effort, so pariarchate re-established

• Some Churches reopened

  • 414 during WW2

• Some agknowledgement that religion could be vital in bosting war morale

• Ended anti-religion propaganda & censorship of Church magazines

Khrushchev

• Abandoned compromise → System of repression like Stalin’s preWW2

• Harsh campaign against religion 1958-64

  • Closure of once re-opened Churches

  • Reintroduction of propaganda

  • Refused access to holy sites

  • Priests role was limited to only spiritual advice

• Used Space programme to attack religion

  • Gagarin and Tereshkova said they had found no God → victory of aethism

Brezhnev

• Active persecution declined

  • He knew religious persecution alienated West and damaged Foreign Policy

  • 1976- Some priest created “Christian Committee for Defense of Believers Rights” to highlight human rights abuses

  • Leader Father Yakunin was imprisoned for 5 years for anti-Soviet propaganda in 1979

• Church was allowed to act within it’s defined limits

  • Expected to support Soviet Policies & be submissive

  • Clergy were classified according to loyalty to Socialism

• Council of Religious Affairs created to monitor services

  • Evangelical practices were restricted

  • Jews and Baptists were more likely to be critical so treated with less tolerance