USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928)

The USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) was a campaign of anti-religious persecution against churches and Christian believers by the Soviet government following the initial anti-religious campaign during the Russian Civil War. The elimination of all religion and its replacement with scientific materialism was a fundamental ideological goal of the state.Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. "A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory, and Practice, and the Believer", vol 1: A History of Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 34Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, The Attitude of the Workers' Party to Religion. Proletary, No. 45, May 13 (26), 1909. Found at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/may/13.htm To this end, the state began offering secular education to believers, intending to reduce the prevalence of superstition. It was never made illegal to be a believer or to follow a religion, and so the activities of this campaign were often veiled under other pretexts, usually resistance to the regime, that the state invoked or invented in order to justify its activities.Letters of Metropolitan Sergii of Vilnius http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Letters_of_Metropolitan_Sergii_of_Vilnius

History

The persecution entered a new phase in 1921 with the resolutions adopted by the tenth Communist Party of the Soviet Union congress, and would set the atmosphere for the remainder of the decade, which would enter another new phase in 1929, when new legislation was passed, prohibiting public religious activities.

The 10th Party Congress launched Lenin's "New Economic Policy" (NEP) in response to the poor state of the Soviet economy that resulted from World War I, the Russian Civil War, and the War Communist system used during the latter. The state faced large-scale popular revolts of workers, which Leon Trotsky believed threatened the survival of the state. The NEP introduced a measure of limited free enterprise, aiming to compromise with the general population, as well as to present the new regime in a more respectable light to the world, and thus acquire a place on the world market. The regime considered it detrimental to its reputation to continue with the civil war policy of murdering religious believers without trial or plausible accusations.Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. "A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory, and Practice, and the Believer", vol 2: Soviet Antireligious Campaigns and Persecutions, St Martin's Press, New York (1988) pg 47

Therefore, the anti-religious campaign needed to be conducted under more respectable pretexts. However, the elimination of religion remained a fundamental goal.Becker, Winfried. "Diplomats and missionaries: the role played by the German embassies in Moscow and Rome in the relations between Russia and the Vatican from 1921 to 1929." The Catholic Historical Review 92.1 (2006)

There were two main principal anti-religious campaigns in the 1920s, one alongside the campaign to seize church valuables and the other surrounding the renovationist schism in the Orthodox Church.

This portion of the state's anti-religious campaign came to an end in 1929, when Joseph Stalin began the implementation of a much harsher campaign that would take place in the following decade.

Legislative measures

The 10th Party Congress met in early 1921 and issued the resolution "On Glavpolitprosvet (Central Committee of the Republic for Political Education) and the Agitation: Propaganda Problems of the Party". This resolution called for "widescale organization, leadership, and cooperation in the task of anti-religious agitation and propaganda among the broad masses of the workers, using the mass media, films, books, lectures, and other devices.David E. Powell, Antireligious Propaganda in the Soviet Union: A Study of Mass Persuasion (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1975) p. 34;

In August of that year, a plenary meeting of the Central Committee adopted an 11-point instruction on the interpretation and application of Article 13 (mentioned above). The instruction differed between educated believers and uneducated believers, and forbade party membership to any believer who was a member of the clergy, or who had an education, but uneducated believers were allowed party membership on an individual basis, if they proved their devotion to Communism.Kolarz, Walter. Religion in the Soviet Union. St Martin's Press, New York (1961) pp 4 Such members, however, should be enrolled in 'special re-education work' in order to make them atheists. 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'. This meant that the anti-religious campaign was to be directed at building up a non-religious culture and educational system, rather than subjecting religion to ridicule and attack. It directed the Central Committee Agitation Department, Revolution and the Church, and Glavpolitprosvet to conform to this. The instruction also emphasized that the state was fighting against all forms of religious belief and not simply individual religions.Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 30

After the 10th congress, authorities began to take measures against public debates, which were eventually formally suspended in 1929 and replaced with public lectures by atheists. The reason given for their cessation was that they did not satisfy public demand and that people preferred to solidify their atheism with study. Vladimir Martsinkovsky was arrested and exiled in 1922, on account of his religious preaching, and told that he could return in a few years, once the workers had become wiser – he was in fact never allowed to return.Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 40

Persecution against the Orthodox Church

Despite the August 1921 instruction combating all religions, the state took a particular hard line against the Orthodox church on the pretext that it was a legacy of the Tsarist past.Joan Delaney Grossman, 'The Origins of Soviet Antireligious Organizations', in Richard H. Marshall, Jr (ed.), Aspects of Religion in the Soviet Union, 1917-1967, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971) p. 114 This may also have been a pragmatic consideration in the belief that the state was not yet strong enough in order to broaden its anti-religious activities beyond the Orthodox church.

When church leaders demanded freedom of religion under the constitution, the Communists responded with terror. The metropolitan of Kiev, Vladimir Bogoyavlensky, was executed on 7 February 1918. In 1922, approximately 8000 Orthodox Christians were killed. Repression cowed most ecclesiastical leaders into submission.

Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow produced an encyclical on political neutrality and disengagement of the Church from worldly politics, and the official propaganda depicted it as a form of camouflage to hide his real aim: support for the autocratic bourgeois-aristocracy. Tikhon emphasized the freedom of the Church in the separation of Church and State and the duty of believers to be loyal to the state in civic matters, in as much as this did not contradict a Christian's primary loyalty to God. He produced three declarations of loyalty to the Soviet state, in 1919, 1923 and in his last testament in 1925.

Beginning in March 1922, the Soviet Press published libelous accounts of the behavior of clergy and believers. This was followed up with arrests and trials of the people attacked.

Believers could also be arrested for claiming or honoring miracles. Miracles needed to be suppressed in the eyes of the state due to their contradiction of the atheism of the official state ideology. However, it was not yet legal to prosecute people simply for making such claims, as it would become so in 1929, so miracle claims were prosecuted under the pretext that they were acts of resistance meant to strengthen believers in their resistance to hold on to church valuables. In Tula, the local bishop Yuvenalii was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment after the local populace claimed a miracle had occurred; several others were imprisoned along with him.

Faith had to be turned into a private affair and made as invisible as possible. The regime could not tolerate dynamic faith or popular religious leaders who could inspire and lead millions of people.Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 2: Soviet Anti-Religious Campaigns and Persecution, St Martin's Press, New York (1988) pg 58 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.Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 2: Soviet Anti-Religious Campaigns and Persecution, St Martin's Press, New York (1988) pg 57 Charges would often be invented against such popular clergy in order to justify their arrest, imprisonment or execution. This method was especially harsh in rural areas, away from foreign observers, where a systematic campaign liquidated the most popular monks and shut down the most authoritative monasteries. The famous Optina monastery was shut down in 1922 and turned into a state museum, and one of the elders was arrested. All seven local churches were shut down as well by 1929, leaving the local religious population with no building to worship in. The museum would later be closed in 1928, and by 1930 the monks who had served in it were mostly either in hiding or had been sent to gulags.

Secret Monasticism began to develop in the 1920s in response to state persecution. This practice involved either people who lived 'in the world' who undertook monastic vows secretly and lived a double-life with other secret monks or nuns, or it involved communities of monastics who lived in secret and isolated from society.Jennifer Wynot. Monasteries without walls: secret monasticism in the Soviet Union, 1928-39. Church History 71.1 (March 2002): p63(17). (7266 words) When such communities were discovered, the monastics could sometimes be immediately executed. Future church leaders lived in these communities and they may have been instrumental in preserving monasticism in the USSR.

Tikhon died in 1925. He was replaced in 1927 by Metropolitan Sergii, who gave unqualified loyalty to the state.Daniel, Wallace L. "Father Aleksandr men and the struggle to recover Russia's heritage." Demokratizatsiya 17.1 (2009)"Soviet repression of the Ukrainian Catholic Church." Department of State Bulletin 87 (1987) The Church, however, continued to teach that Orthodoxy was incompatible with Marxism. This was contrasted by many other religious groups in the country that tried to reaffirm their compatibility with the state ideology when they were put under attack.

The Orthodox church lost its ability to train new clergy in 1928, after its college of advanced theological studies in Leningrad "voluntarily closed".Tatiana A. Chumachenko. Edited and Translated by Edward E. Roslof. Church and State in Soviet Russia: Russian Orthodoxy from World War II to the Khrushchev years. ME Sharpe inc., 2002 pp3-4

Campaign to seize church valuables