Anti-Religious Persecution in Post-Revolution Russia By Dan Lapidus

Communism & Religion Religion was regarded as undesirable by communists Karl Marx once said, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Marx considered the autonomy of humanity from the supernatural as an axiomatic truth; he rejected all religious thought and believed it irrelevant to the future of human beings.

The Role of Religion in the Russian Civil War After the October revolution of 1917, the religious establishments (the Eastern Orthodox Church and others) sided with the anti-communists (the whites), during the Russian Civil War that lasted for 4 years after the revolution. Under the Tsar the Eastern Orthodox Church was granted numerous privileges and by the time of the revolution there were some 55,000+ churches in Russia. After the Tsarist government was overthrown, the new communist government officially separated church and state. This left the Church without official state backing for the first time in its history.

First Anti-Religious Campaign For their Tsarist backing before the war, and their allegiance to the White Army during the war, the new Soviet regime began a campaign of persecution against the religious establishments of Russia. From 1917 to 1921 monasteries were burned, priests tortured and murdered, and other atrocities were committed. The Soviets made an effort to remove all religious influence from Russian life.

Second Anti-Religious Campaign The only reason that the two anti-religious campaigns are split up is because of new legislation passed in The 10th party congress met in 1921, and in On Glavpolitprosvet (a new economic policy) and the Agitation: Propaganda Problems of the Party they called for the following, “"wide scale 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.” During the second campaign there was a continuation of the atrocities of the first, this time a ratcheted up propaganda campaign lead to the masses of the workers being caught up in anti-religious fervor which furthered the interests of the party.