history, communismMy understanding is that Marxist theory was strictly anti-religion. We all know the quote about “opiate of the people” and all that.
But my understanding is also that the totalitarian states of the Soviet bloc (in any case arguably not properly Marxist at all) soon learnt there was little to be gained in persecuting the religious and found it useful to allow it so long as local churches didn’t offer a challenge to the state or harbour serious dissidents.
Is this fair enough?
Because of the kind of work I used to do I had the opportunity to work with a number of ex-Soviet era scientists and technicians, and I met and hung out with their spouses at functions. I asked questions about the state and about religion. Pretty universally they were atheistic, and it was a simple form of atheism. The version that they pretty much all expressed to me was of the form. “No, that stuff is all superstition. Why would anyone care enough to ask? You Americans seem fascinated with this stuff, its odd.” And that was sort of it.
The Orthodox Church was officially suppressed, which is somewhat understandable considering the history of the Church’s support for the Tsar, but Islam, especially in the Central Asian states, was tolerated. Atheism was never “forced” onto the people as it is often represented by Christians in the West, but it was strongly encouraged by a number of measures. Certainly a Party official who did not conform was unlikely to get much in terms of advancement.
The Soviet Union was always more complex than the West allows in their history books. But then again, that is true of pretty much everything, isn’t it.
As mentioned above, Islam was largely tolerated as long as it remained distributed and not politically organised. This was because the Muslim states of the Union were also the ones with the most natural resources, in particular oil in the Caspian sea, and so it paid to be more lenient there in order to not disrupt exploitation of said resources (and before anyone asks for references, I was born in Azerbaijan so that’s how I know! :) ).
Judaism was more or less completely suppressed, on the other hand. That was for all kinds of complicated historical reasons, not just simple communist dogma. A lot of the leaders of the revolution and the rank and file of the party were already atheist Jews. To a degree communism allowed them to integrate into Russian society in a way that in other parts of Europe was still hard, because of ingrained antisemitism; but on the other hand there was still plenty of antisemitism in Russia, and during the Stalin years there was a purge of Jewish members of the party. People started to hide the fact that they were Jewish, and what with one thing and another by the 70s there were vistually no visibly religious Jewish communities left in the USSR.
Christianity lost its official status under communism, but the Church and its officials were not persecuted violently, because the political consequences would have been pretty damn serious - Russians are extremely sentimental about their church. They’re still not over the persecution of the “old faith” believers under Ivan the Terrible, and that was over how many fingers you use while crossing yourself! People went into exile in Siberia over this stuff - they do not take kindly to their religion being meddled with. There was a lot of education and children’s books about the value of muticulturalism and secularism, and of course there was no public worship - hatches, matches and dispatches were all secular ceremonies and there was no role for any clergy/priesthood in the operation of the state. The resurgence of religion after the collapse of the USSR had more to do with nostalgia than any genuinely long-suppressed religious fervor in the poulation (give or take a granny or two million - it’s a BIG place, so any generalisations are likely to be partially wrong).
There were also all kinds of tribes and pagan cultures on the margins of the state, in the far North and East in particular; these were mostly left well alone, as they had no political arm, nor were they considered demographically significant.
Somewhat. It depended on the area and the officials involved. There is rarely anything Total in Totalitarianism. And at any rate, the Bloc were autonomous. If you really mean the Soviet Union, even here you have a lot of unevenness. The USSR was a BIG place.
Some officials found religion useful. As you pointed out, nothing about the USSR had anything to do with Marxism. Marxism was just a tool-philosophy to hide behind.
China, today, is a much better example of Marxism, only here too is missing a lot of the pieces.
In all these examples, you still have underground religion. You cannot force Atheism on someone. Marxism doesn’t seek to simply deny religion to people, but to supplant it with other positive outlets. What Marx didn’t understand was the deep internal part of all people to try to get a leg up on everyone else.
This is why Marxist society quickly devolves into Totalitarianism, Authoritarian Oligarchies, or other societal structures that feature a near god-like ruling class.
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