USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928)
To acquire a better reputation, the regime considered it detrimental to continue with the civil war policy of murdering religious believers without trials or plausible accusations.
The instruction warned against rash actions in anti-religious propaganda, against giving too much publicity to 'anti-religious agitation' and it stressed 'serious scientific cultural-enlightenment work, building up natural-scientific foundation for a proper historical analysis of the question of religion'.
[11] To this effect, Lenin's doctrine that the state should be much more tolerant towards amoral or even criminal priests rather than those of good moral standing, was interpreted such that popular clergymen were removed, imprisoned or killed wherever it was deemed feasible.
The sixth sector of the OGPU, led by Yevgeny Tuchkov, began aggressively arresting and executing bishops, priests, and devout worshipers, such as Metropolitan Veniamin in Petrograd in 1922 for refusing to accede to the demand to hand in church valuables (including sacred relics).
The Soviet press reported that the mounted police were greeted with threatening shouts and hurling of rocks or other articles, while someone rang an alarm bell that brought huge masses of people to the square.
He wrote, At the party congress, arrange a secret meeting of all or almost all delegates to discuss this matter jointly with the chief workers of the GPU, the People's Commissariat of Justice [NKIu], and the Revolutionary Tribunal.
The valuables collected proved to be of pitiful value on the world market, (it was even discovered that the Russian nobility had for centuries been donating fake precious stones), but Lenin's propaganda effect was still achieved.
[25] The commission addressed a letter to the Central Committee suggesting immediate discontinuation of the closure of churches, and the publication of an article in Pravda condemning such acts.
The Central Committee followed with an internal letter to all party organizations on June 23, calling for a halt to all such abuses which 'cause all sorts of dissatisfaction, made use of by anti-Soviet elements.'
This, however, was cut short by the failure of the state to conceal the embarrassing massive black-market operations by Soviet officials who were caught stealing and selling the valuables for themselves.
The Petrograd section of the State Famine Relief Commission initially agreed to a plan proposed by Metropolitan Veniamin to hand over the valuables, and to include representatives of the Church in the confiscations.
Gurovich conducted an excellent defense; he cleverly mentioned how Krasnitsky had been publishing militantly anti-bolshevik articles up until November 1917, and as a Jew, he defended the record of the Russian clergy in a pre-revolutionary incident where there had been an allegation of Jewish ritual murder.
[33]In his final plea to the court, Veniamin declared his loyalty to the state and recalled the words of St Paul 'if you suffer because you are a Christian, don't be ashamed of it but thank God'.
[40] The authorities changed direction and pushed for reunification in 1924–1927 in the belief that the Renovationists who were loyal to the state could be used as agents, activists and informers within the Patriarchal Orthodox church.
The church hierarchy was presented in the official press as indifferent to the suffering of the famine and happy about the economic catastrophe, as a means that could contribute towards overthrowing the Soviets and returning the monarchy.
[45] The anti-religious press continuously produced primitive blasphemies of God, Christ and the Saints in their pages designed to insult the religious feelings of believers.
As the years progressed, it became increasingly clear that the old Marxist assumption[2] that religion would die away quickly and easily was highly mistaken as resistance to the anti-religious policies was found across the country.
[48] Trotsky considered printed anti-religious material to be of little use in a largely illiterate nation and he emphasized the potential of the cinema in being able to replace the religiosity of the peasantry (which he thought was only a matter of habit in absence of other entertainment).
The deputy editor of Bezhbozhnik Anton Loginov explained: it's common knowledge that religion is opium... poison, stupor, moonshine, and yet we are not supposed to insult believers' feelings.
Lenin's statement called for a close-cooperation of all militant materialists (atheists), both communists and non-communists, including the 18th century French materialists, and it also stressed the role of the official Marxist philosophical monthly journal Under the Banner of Marxism (Pod znamenem marxizma) to tirelessly disseminate 'atheistic propaganda and struggle', which he called 'the cause of our state' (nasha gosudartsvennaia rabota) [1] An important part of this debate occurred between Emelian Yaroslavsky (founder of the Society of the Godless) and the Moscow Society of the Godless.
[5] In 1925, the delegates of the first congress of Soviet schoolteachers refused to endorse the principle of separation of church and state, and sought to retain religious teaching in school.
Sects that had originally been praised in the official press for their loyalty and hard-work,[53] despite their religious convictions that were problematic to implementing Communism, began to be demonized in the late 1920s.
Even when these other religions tried to reaffirm their compatibility with Marxism and their loyalty to the state, but this was rejected in the official propaganda that increasingly depicted all religious activity as harmful and in contradiction with Communism.
The non-hierarchical nature of some of these sects made them appear even more dangerous to the state, since they could not be as easily controlled as the Orthodox Church that worked according to a strict hierarchy.
The Soviets initially supported a Ukrainian nationalistic church movement called the Autocephalists (also known as Lypkivskyites), which broke with Tikhon under the leadership of Metropolitan Lypinski.
Both Muslims and Protestants enjoyed relative toleration until 1928–1929 and were allowed activities banned to the Orthodox church (including publications, seminaries, youth work, etc.)
The party reacted against this idea of a unified and autonomous Muslim state by choosing to divide Central Asia into different republics (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan) in 1924.
Special conferences on anti-religious propaganda under the auspices of the Central Committee Agitation-Propaganda Department, worked out directives that were implemented on either the local party level or through a public institution from 1926 onwards.
[5] In 1922 at the Conference of Genoa, wherein the Soviet Union's relations with the foreign community of nations was negotiated, the Vatican demanded that Russia grant complete freedom of conscience to its citizens.
[5] The Soviet government instead pursued a policy of demanding the Vatican to grant it recognition without a concordat or any conditions, and held out the prospect that doing so could result in priests being released from prison.
