Religion under Stalin and Lenin

Marx had described religion as ‘the opium of the people’, used to justify the power of the upper classes over the people. However, Lenin did not see the Church as a threat and allowed freedom of religious workshop after the October Revolution. He accepted that the largely atheistic Bolshevik minority were surrounded by an overwhelmingly Christian Orthodox majority and that toleration was the best policy.

Lots of propaganda was used to applaud the secular society and changes took place in the position of the Church within the State. Church lands, for example, were seized in 1917, when private ownership of land was declared illegal and, in accordance with education policies, Church schools and seminaries were taken over by the State. The decree on civil marriage and the civil registration of births, marriages and deaths was followed by the official separation of Church and State in 1918. From 1921, the teaching of religion in schools was forbidden. Churches became the property of those who worshipped in them, monasteries became state property and were turned into hospitals, schools, prisons and barracks.

Deprived of rations, hundreds of priests lost their lives during the years of War Communism. Although the peasantry retained strong religious beliefs, there was little concern for the fate of such priests, who were attacked in the propaganda as repressor of the people. The Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, Tikhon, was arrested in 1922 for his opposition to the direction of government policy. He was to have undergone a show trial, but he chose to recant and accept the religious changes. As a result he was released, and on his death in 1925, given a state funeral. His successor, Sergius, was less accommodating and spent his first two years in office in jail. He was released in 1927, on signing a document promising to stay out of politics in return for state recognition of the Orthodox Church. This agreement had to be accepted by all priests.

The Church suffered a good deal from desecration. Church bells were seized during the civil war, officially to be melted down and the metal sold to raise funds for famine relief, while diligent communist officials had a field day in exposing the Church’s sacred relics as fakes, and key members of Komsomol ransacked churches to show their commitment to socialist teaching. In 1923, a newspaper, ‘The Godless’ was founded and in 1925, its supporters founded the League of the Godless to coordinate anti-religious propaganda. It tested Bible stories against scientific knowledge and spread atheistic literature, but the government remained wary of its activities and preferred to weaken the hold of religion by less explicit means.

Christian festival days disappeared when New Year’s Day replaced Christmas and May Day replaced Easter as holidays with public celebration. In 1929, worship was restricted to ‘registered congregations’ only and from 1932, the introduction of an ‘uninterrupted six day work week’ prevented a holy day of church attendance. Between 1929 and 1940 Sunday itself was abolished (providing six days in the week, each with a sixth of workers having a day off). However this was very unpopular and disruptive to family life and the workplace was well as Church services.

Stalin’s constituent criminalised the publication or organisation of religious propaganda, although priests regained the right to vote (which they had lost in 1918).

As with the Orthodox Christians, in the early years of Bolshevik rule, Muslims were treated leniently. However, during and after the civil war, Muslim property and institutions were confiscated and their Sharia courts were abolished. This produced a split within the Islamic Church with the ‘New Mosque’ movement taking a pro-Soviet line. Pilgrimages to Mecca were forbidden from 1935. the frequency of prayers, fasts and feasts reduced and the wearing of veil forbidden. This led to a backlash in some of the central Asian Muslim communities where traditionalists murdered those who obeyed the Soviet injunctions. Many Muslim priests were imprisoned or executed.

The anti-religion drive also extended to Buddhists and the Armenian and Georgian Churches. In each case, while the power of the Church as an institution was broken, faith remained strong. By 1941, nearly 40,000 Christian churches and 25,000 Muslim mosques had been closed and converted into schools, cinemas, clubs, warehouses, museums and grain stores. Nevertheless, there was plenty of evidence of strong religious belief, and this was probably strengthened by the attacks during the period of collectivisation and the purges. In 1937, 57% of the population defined themselves as believers.