[11] It published newspapers, journals, and other materials that lampooned religion; it sponsored lectures and films; it organized demonstrations and parades; it set up antireligious museums; and it led a concerted effort telling Soviet citizens that religious beliefs and practices were wrong and harmful, and that good citizens ought to embrace a scientific, atheistic worldview.

[12] The newspaper Bezbozhnik (Godless, Atheist) (1922–1941), founded and edited by Yemelyan Yaroslavsky,[1] played a significant role in the League's establishment, and had a wide network of correspondents and readers.

The first congress of the organization, which took place in April 1925, decided to create a single all-union anti-religious society, called the "Union of Atheists".

[16] Well known members of the Communist Party and Old Bolsheviks such as Nadezhda Krupskaya, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Pyotr Krasikov, Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov, Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich, Nikolai Bukharin and others participated in the foundation of the organization and Yemelyan Yaroslavsky was elected chairman.

Since 1931, the magazine Voinstvuiuschii ateizm, a periodical of the Central Soviet of the League of Militant Atheists, began to be published.

Yaroslavsky protested this and affirmed that all religions were enemies of socialism including the Renovationist schism in the Orthodox church, but that the methods of struggle against different religions should vary due to the large number of loyal Soviet citizens with religious beliefs who should be re-educated as atheists rather than treated as class enemies.

[25][26] Between 1925 and 1929 a power struggle took place in the new organization between Yaroslavsky and his followers, and the leadership of the former Moscow group (Galaktionov, Polidorov, Kostelovskaia, Lunin and others).

In 1929, when resolutions that would set the tone for intensive persecution of the next decade were set and Yaroslavsky's victory in the power struggle had been completed, there were a few last attacks made on Yaroslavsky and the organization for minimizing the class-enemy thesis in attacking religion, of having few workers and peasants in its ranks, of using archaeology instead of aggressively attacking religion, of being indifferent to transforming the school system into a fundamentally antireligious atmosphere and of opportunistically citing works by non-Marxist Western bourgeois atheists in publications.

[28] In response, Yaroslavsky claimed that they had supported antireligious education for years, but in contrast to the leftists who simply wanted to attack religion, he was working to replace the popular religious ideology with that of dialectical materialism.

The CPSU Central Committee delegated to the LMG full powers to launch a great antireligious attack with the objective of completely eliminating religion from the country, granting them the right to mobilize all public organizations.

The debate on how to best exterminate religion was argued among the Soviet leadership, until in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when it was resolved by Stalin who condemned the extremes of both sides, and Yaroslavsky followed suit.

Early Marxist beliefs that religion would disappear with the coming of a tractor (Leon Trotsky had made this claim) [citation needed] were ridiculed by the League.

It criticized many public institutions (including the Communist Party) for failing to adequately attack religious belief and instructed them on how to be more effective.

A spokesperson for the latter tried to justify their behaviour to the LMG by claiming that they had reduced the total number of historical buildings under its protection (mostly ancient churches and monasteries) from 7000 to 1000, by destroying them.

Religious organizations... are in reality political agencies... of class groupings hostile to the proletariat inside the country and of the international bourgeoisie... Special attention must be paid to the renovationist currents in Orthodoxy, Islam, Lamaism and other religions...

[38]In 1932 the Second Plenum of the LMG Central Council was ordered by Stalin to adopt an antireligious five-year plan with the intention of eliminating the Church and its influence in the USSR.

[43] In addition to what is stated above, the 1929 LMA Congress also issued a number of other orders that would form the basis of the LMG's activities (as well as the character of the antireligious persecution throughout the country) in the following decade.

It determined therefore that the fight against religion needed to be pressed, although it still, as Yaroslavsky had said for years, warned against extreme antireligious ultra-left attacks.

[44] At the same meeting it demanded that no holidays should be allowed to coincide with important Church feast days; this policy was carried out in the same year.

The 1929 Congress called on public institutions to treat antireligious propaganda as an inseparable part of their work and to provide regular funding for it.

[46] The congress eliminated preferential treatment for different sects and declared unrelenting war against them, but contained the moderating statement to differentiate between the rank-and-file believers and the leadership, the latter of which were considered fully conscientious class enemies of the state.

The LMG would take advantage of rifts between different believers, including that between the Orthodox and Renovationists, in order to get either side to vote for the closure of each other's religious structures.

[36] The Central Asian Muslims, who had a long history of encountering Christian missionaries attempting to convert them away from Islam, were considered to pose a special issue for LMG activists who were told by Yaroslavsky that A careless approach to the matter of antireligious propaganda among these people can call up memories of this [Tsarist] oppression and be interpreted by the most backward and the most fanatical part of the Muslim population as a repeat of the past, when Christian missionaries reviled the Mohammedan faith.

[55] Yaroslavsky in 1932 thought that the campaign would be successful, when he said: There can be no doubt that the fact that the new state of the USSR led by the communist party, with a program permeated by the spirit of militant atheism, gives the reason why this state is successfully surmounting the great difficulties that stand in its way - that neither "heavenly powers" nor the exhortations of all the priests in all the world can prevent its attaining its aims it has set itself.

[54]The enthusiasm of its new members was notably poor, however, as its dues were left unpaid and only a minority appeared to have great interest in antireligious work.

The Bezbozhnik u Stanka consistently ran 50,000-70,000 copies per issue, however, it changed from a monthly to a fortnightly in 1929 and continued to produce until it was closed in 1932.

The supposedly popular nature of the atheist propaganda was also contradicted by cases of reported lynchings of antireligious propagandists and murder of LMG agitators.

The League of Militant Atheists attempted to "control and exploit the Proletarian Freethinkers," a group founded by socialists in 1925, in order to diminish the influence of religion, particularly Catholic Christianity, in Central and Eastern Europe.

[67] Under the slogan, "the Storming of Heaven," the League of Militant Atheists pressed for "resolute action against religious peasants" leading to the mass arrest and exile of many believers, especially village priests.

In order to gain support for the war effort (both domestic and foreign), Stalin ended the antireligious persecution[72][73] and the LMG was disbanded.