Religious Persecution in the Soviet Union

Background

After the Bolsheviks (later the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) seized power in 1917, the Soviet government regarded religion as an outdated legacy that stood in the way of building a communist society. The Russian Orthodox Church, deeply intertwined with the tsarist empire, became the principal target. Holding religious faith as such, however, was never declared illegal. For this reason, repression is often said to have been carried out under other pretexts, such as "resistance to the regime."

Course of Events

The Decree on the Separation of Church and State and the 1920s

• 1918: On January 19, Patriarch Tikhon issued an encyclical anathematizing (expelling from the communion of the Church) those who committed acts of violence. He urged the faithful to defend the Church not by violence but with a readiness to lay down their lives. On January 23 the Soviet government promulgated the decree on the separation of church and state, denying the Church legal status.
• 1921: With the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party, antireligious policy entered a new phase. In August of the same year a directive was issued to oppose all religions, though in practice the repression fell especially hard on the Orthodox Church.
• From 1922, antireligious periodicals appeared one after another. The League of the Godless was founded in 1925, centered on the weekly Bezbozhnik ("The Godless"), edited by Yemelyan Yaroslavsky. The organization later renamed itself the League of the Militant Godless and conducted campaigns to close churches and to ban the ringing of church bells, as well as demonstrations against religious holidays.
• From 1927, Metropolitan Sergius, then leading the Orthodox Church, adopted a policy of unconditional loyalty to the Soviet government. This provoked fierce criticism within the Church, and some clergy and laity broke away.

The 1929 Law on Religious Associations and the 1930s

• 1929: On April 8 the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic enacted the Law on Religious Associations. Congregations of believers were required to register with the authorities, and houses of worship became state property. With charitable, educational, and youth activities prohibited, religious activity was confined to worship services. A provision allowing authorities to bar the use of a building on the grounds that it was dilapidated and unsafe served as a pretext for closing churches.
• On May 21 of the same year, a decision was issued that treated religious organizations like wealthy peasants (kulaks) and imposed heavy taxes on them.
• Protestants were no exception. In an effort to weaken the Orthodox Church, the government for a time tolerated Baptist and Methodist missionaries. When these groups began assisting church members through welfare work, however, the authorities cracked down. In July 1929, when Russian Baptists held a large baptism service in the Moscow River, the state-controlled press denounced it.

The Turning Point of 1943

On September 4, 1943, in the midst of the German-Soviet War, Stalin met with three metropolitans—Sergius, Alexius, and Nicholas—at the Kremlin. Four days later, at a council of nineteen bishops, Sergius was elected Patriarch of Moscow. The government permitted the opening of additional churches and seminaries, a move interpreted as part of a policy of using the Church for wartime mobilization. The League of the Militant Godless was dissolved in 1947, and its work was taken over by an organization devoted to disseminating political and scientific knowledge.

Results and Impact

The system of religious control established by the 1929 law defined the relationship between state and religion until the final years of the Soviet Union. This framework changed only on October 25, 1990, when the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic enacted a law on freedom of religion. The persecution severely undermined the foundations on which faith communities—not only the Orthodox Church but also Protestant and other denominations—could operate publicly.

Assessment

• The Soviet government invoked the separation of church and state as its justification. Scholars, however, hold that the 1929 law transformed sporadic harassment into systematic control.
• The campaign to spread atheism, spearheaded by the League of the Militant Godless, has also been described as both the Soviet regime's most ambitious attempt at social transformation and one of its most conspicuous failures.
• Sergius's policy of loyalty has generated controversy over whether it was a choice made to preserve the Church under persecution or an excessive compromise.