Communism and Religion (Edexcel A-Level History): Revision Notes

Communism and Religion

Introduction

The Communist regime's attitude to religion evolved significantly between 1917 and 1985. Different leaders adopted varying approaches, ranging from ideological hostility to pragmatic cooperation. While Lenin and Khrushchev pursued the destruction of religion for ideological reasons, Stalin proved more flexible, particularly during the Second World War. Brezhnev later rethought the relationship between Communism and Islam for foreign policy purposes.

Marxism and religion

Marx's view of religion

Lenin and most Marxist revolutionaries believed that Karl Marx was fundamentally opposed to religion. Marx famously described religion as the opium of the masses, suggesting it dulled people's awareness of their exploitation under capitalism. Lenin and other Marxist radicals therefore believed their revolution would liberate working people from both capitalist exploitation and what they saw as the delusions of religion.

Lenin's critique of the Russian Orthodox Church

Lenin was particularly critical of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was the dominant organised religion in Russia. He viewed the Church as problematic for several reasons:

• The Church was seen as an essential ally of the Tsar, supporting the old autocratic regime
• The Church was an extremely wealthy institution, with some priests living in immense privilege while workers remained poor
• This inequality directly contradicted Communist principles of social and economic equality

Communist suspicion of organised religion

The new Communist Government was suspicious of organised religion for two main reasons:

For these reasons, successive Communist governments tended to persecute the Russian Orthodox Church and other faiths, including Islam, though policies varied significantly over time.

Religious diversity in the Soviet Union

The Soviet Union was a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation containing large religious minority groups:

• Sizeable Muslim communities existed in Central Asia, the North Caucasus and Azerbaijan
• Lithuania had a large Roman Catholic community
• There was a significant Baptist minority in Ukraine

Soviet leaders approached different religious groups in different ways, and policies shifted as leadership changed and government priorities evolved. This diversity meant that religious policy could never be uniform across the entire Soviet Union.

Lenin's early campaign against religion

Lenin's early religious policies reflected two contradictory approaches: legal equality on one hand and violent terror on the other.

Legal reforms

In the first months after the October Revolution, Lenin introduced several decrees that fundamentally changed the relationship between government and religion:

October 1917 Decree on Land: This gave peasants the legal right to seize land belonging to the Church, dramatically reducing Church wealth and power in rural areas.

January 1918 Decree Concerning Separation of Church and State, and of School and Church: This decree ended the Church's privileged position in society. Specifically:

• Church land, buildings and property were nationalised (taken into state ownership)
• State subsidies for the Church were ended, removing its financial support
• Religious education was banned in schools, preventing the Church from teaching children

1922 Soviet Constitution: This guaranteed freedom of conscience for all Soviet people. However, in practice this legal right was seriously compromised.

The Church and the terror

Despite legal guarantees, Lenin was convinced the Church was an enemy of the revolution and used terror to undermine it. Senior priests in the Orthodox Church faced systematic persecution:

• November 1917: Archpriest Ivan Kochurov was murdered outside Petrograd
• January 1918: Metropolitan Vladimir was tortured and shot in Kiev
• Orthodox priests in Moscow were massacred in January 1918 following a Church decree excommunicating the Bolsheviks

More extreme measures followed in November 1918 when the Politburo issued a secret order to the Cheka (secret police) sanctioning the mass execution of priests. Within two years, most of the most popular Orthodox priests had been killed.

Treatment of different faiths

Different religious groups received different treatment:

Roman Catholic priests were initially treated more leniently because they had traditionally been a persecuted minority rather than part of the Church that supported the Tsar. In the first half of 1918 they were deported rather than executed, with executions only starting when the Civil War began.

In addition to executions and deportations, the government used propaganda against the Church and seized Church property. These policies operated together during the 1921 famine: Soviet authorities seized Church assets to fund famine relief and blamed priests who resisted for sabotaging relief efforts.

Islam: The government's policy was contradictory. Initially, Communist forces used the Decree Concerning Separation of Church and State to justify seizing the property of waqfs (Islamic foundations and charities). However, this policy was quickly reversed. Waqfs continued to fund schools in Muslim areas and Communist leaders encouraged local Muslims to join the Party. Communists were less antagonistic towards Islam than Russian Orthodox Christianity because there had been no official link between Islam and Tsarism.

Religion in the 1920s

After the Civil War ended, Communist policy regarding religion changed significantly. Mass executions, violence and deportations stopped, replaced by more subtle techniques. The new strategy emerged in 1921 and early 1922.

The Living Church

One strategy against the Orthodox Church involved establishing the Living Church, which claimed to be a reformed version of the old Orthodox Church where ordinary people had power. Aided by the GPU (secret police), the Living Church organised a national congress in April 1923 which:

• Deposed Patriarch Tikhon (the head of the Russian Orthodox Church)
• Introduced a new decentralised structure

This was part of a government-backed strategy to split the Church, remove its central leadership and weaken its national structure.

However, the strategy faced unexpected problems. Archbishop Vedenskii, leader of the Living Church, refused to fully support the Communists. In 1923 he publicly debated science and religion with Anatoly Lunacharsky, gaining widespread support for his argument that science could not disprove the existence of God. These public debates proved counterproductive, so in 1925 the Central Committee stopped them.

Islam in the 1920s

During the 1920s, Soviet authorities initiated campaigns against Islamic groups. Communists objected to Islam for two main reasons:

• They claimed Islam encouraged crimes based on custom, particularly those infringing women's rights
• They recognised that Islamic organisations commanded the loyalty of many people in the Caucasus and Central Asia, threatening Communist power

To weaken Islam, Soviet authorities:

• Closed mosques, converting them into sports clubs or storage depots
• Discouraged pilgrimages to holy sites
• Attacked Islamic shrines
• Started campaigns against women wearing the chador (traditional dress which sometimes included a veil)
• Opened anti-Islamic museums in the midst of recognised holy places

These measures aimed to reduce Islamic influence and extend Communist control in Muslim regions.

Stalin, religion and terror

Stalin's religious policies were often driven by his other priorities rather than pure ideology. In this sense, he was quite pragmatic when dealing with religion.

Religion and collectivization

During the collectivisation drive, Stalin ordered the closure of many churches largely because they were aiding resistance to his agricultural policies. Outside Russia, Stalin set targets for the number of people from different ethnic groups he wanted purged.

Attacks on Islam

In the Central Asian republics where Islam was the dominant religion, the NKVD (secret police) attacked:

• Local priests and intellectuals
• Groups established to defend Islam in the 1920s from Soviet attacks
• Jadids (Islamic reformers) and Sufi groups dedicated to saving Islam from Marxist pollution

By the end of 1936, Sufi groups had been destroyed, even in former Islamic strongholds like the Ferghana Valley of Turkestan. However, despite Soviet propaganda claims, Islam survived.

Religion and the Second World War

During the Second World War, Stalin made a pragmatic alliance with the Church, representing a significant shift in policy.

Stalin's strategy

One of Stalin's strategies for winning the war was to appeal to Russian patriotism to boost morale and inspire people to fight. This appeal to patriotism was combined with a new understanding between government and Church.

Reasons for the alliance

Stalin reached out to the Church during the war for several reasons:

The wartime agreement

Early in the war, Stalin reached an understanding with Church leaders. Metropolitan Sergey, the Russian Orthodox Church's most senior figure, urged Christians to fight for the motherland, proclaiming Stalin God's chosen leader.

In return, the government changed its policy towards the Church:

• From the war's outset, anti-religious propaganda ceased. Communist publications like Bezbozhnik (The Godless) were officially closed
• Stalin granted Metropolitan Sergey an official residence in Moscow
• Stalin promised to end censorship of religious magazines after the war
• Stalin promised churches closed by the government would reopen; 414 churches reopened during the war's final year

Growth of religious groups

The easing of restrictions led to significant growth. The Orthodox Church priesthood expanded from 9,254 in 1946 to 11,827 in 1948. The Orthodox Church was not the only denomination to benefit – numbers of Baptists, Pentecostalists, Methodists and Jehovah's Witnesses all increased following 1945.

Khrushchev and religion

Khrushchev's approach to religion was more hard line than Stalin's. He saw it as part of his mission to revive the anti-religious campaign of the 1920s to liberate Soviet society from the last vestiges of religion.

Government concerns

The government realised that church attendance was a form of resistance. This awareness heightened when, from the mid-1950s, certain Protestant Churches began to prophesy that the Soviet regime would end within a generation, directly challenging Communist authority.

The 1958 anti-religious campaign

Khrushchev's major anti-religious campaign started in 1958 and included:

• Churches reopened during and after the Second World War were closed
• Anti-religious propaganda was reintroduced
• Anti-religious magazines were reintroduced, for example Science and Religion was published regularly from 1960
• Roman Catholic monasteries were closed in 1959
• Orthodox convents were placed under surveillance
• Patrols refused to let believers access holy sites

Using the space programme

Khrushchev also used the Soviet space programme to attack religion. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin famously commented that having travelled to the heavens he had found no God. Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, argued her trip into space had led to the victory of atheism over the mysterious heavens that used to mystify people's imagination.

Targeting women believers

Khrushchev's campaigns particularly targeted female believers because government figures showed:

• Two-thirds of Orthodox churchgoers were women
• Over 80 per cent of Protestant Christians were women

Therefore from 1960:

• A propaganda campaign encouraged men to take the leading role in children's education
• Campaigns against nuns accused them of being unnatural women for refusing to do their natural duty by becoming wives and mothers
• Churches and Islamic groups were banned from running special events for women, such as women-only prayer meetings
• The 1920s campaign to liberate women from Islam was revived
• School teachers were expected to deliver anti-religious messages

Results of Khrushchev's campaign

The campaign had mixed results. The KGB successfully closed thousands of churches, reducing Orthodox Church buildings from 8,000 in 1958 to 5,000 in 1964.

However, Khrushchev failed to win the battle for the soul of the Soviet people. Women organised campaigns to protect their religious freedoms:

• Some marched in protest
• Others circulated pamphlets defending Christianity or Islam
• Some took their children out of schools to counter anti-religious propaganda

Religion under Brezhnev (1964-85)

Brezhnev ended Khrushchev's overt campaign against religion. Church closures stopped and poster campaigns ended. Instead, Brezhnev advocated spreading the philosophy of atheism rather than attacking religious organisations or practices.

Institute for Scientific Atheism

In 1968, Brezhnev opened the Institute for Scientific Atheism, which:

• Published articles in newspapers promoting atheism
• Advised teachers how to spread atheism in the classroom

This represented a shift from direct persecution to ideological persuasion.

Changing policy towards Islam

Brezhnev's foreign policy of seeking allies in the Middle East led to a significant change in policy towards Islam. Previous leaders had described Islam as a backward and barbarian religion.

Results

Brezhnev's attempt to promote atheism did not reduce the numbers of people professing religious faith. No more churches or mosques closed, and the proportion of people professing religious faith remained stable at 20 per cent from 1960 through to 1985.

This stability demonstrated that despite decades of anti-religious campaigns, the Soviet Government could not eliminate religious belief from Soviet society.

Media, religion and totalitarianism

Some historians have described the Soviet Union as a totalitarian regime – a form of modern dictatorship that attempts to control all areas of life. Control of the media and suppression of religion are often considered important aspects of totalitarianism.

Media control allowed the government to control the information Soviet citizens were exposed to, while suppression of religion meant Soviet citizens were less likely to be influenced by alternative views. However, the persistence of religious belief throughout the Soviet period suggests there were significant limits to this totalitarian control.

Conclusion

Successive Communist governments attempted to neutralise religion through various methods. Sometimes this meant direct attacks on religious leaders; at other times it meant working with religious groups to ensure support for the regime.

Notably, while the regime could close churches and convert mosques into storage depots, they could not eliminate the faith of Soviet citizens who looked beyond politics for life's ultimate meaning. The stable 20 per cent of the population professing religious faith from 1960-85 demonstrates the limits of Communist control over personal belief.

Exam focus

Understanding continuity and change

When answering exam questions on this topic, always consider:

• What changed between different leaders?
• What remained consistent throughout the period?
• Why did policies change – ideology or pragmatism?

Structuring essay answers

For questions asking 'How far...' or 'To what extent...':

• Introduction: Briefly outline your argument – acknowledging both change and continuity
• Main paragraphs: Organise by theme or chronologically, with clear topic sentences
• Evidence: Use specific examples, dates and statistics to support your points
• Analysis: Explain why policies changed and what their consequences were
• Conclusion: Make a clear judgement that directly answers the question

Common pitfalls to avoid

Typical question styles

This topic commonly appears in questions about:

• Methods of control used by Soviet governments
• Continuity and change across different leaders
• The nature of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union
• The limits of Communist control over Soviet society

Remember!