League of Militant Atheists - A Favorite Strawman of Many [View all]

[Taverner]

In many arguments here, theists cite the League of Militant Atheists as proof that it the Soviet Union was a revolution FOR Atheism.

Let's do a little reading now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Militant_Atheists

The League of Militant Atheists (also Union of Belligerent Atheists (Russian: Союз воинствующих безбожников ; Society of the Godless (Общество безбожников ; Union of the Godless (Союз безбожников ), was an antireligious organization of workers and others that developed in Soviet Russia under the influence of the ideological and cultural views and policies of the Communist Party in 1925–1947. It "consisted of Party members, members of the Komsomol youth movement, workers and army veterans".

The League embraced workers, peasants, students, and intelligentsia. It had its first affiliates at factories, plants, collective farms (kolkhoz), and educational institutions. By the beginning of 1941, it had about 3.5 million members of 100 nationalities. It had about 96,000 offices across the country. Guided by Bolshevik principles of antireligious propaganda and party's orders with regards to religion, the League aimed at exterminating religion in all its manifestations and forming an anti-religious scientific mindset among the workers. It propagated atheism and scientific achievements, conducted 'individual work' (a method of sending atheist tutors to meet with individual believers to convince them of atheism, which could be followed up with public harassment if they failed to comply) with religious people, prepared propagandists and atheistic campaigners, published anti-religious scientific literature and periodicals, organized museums and exhibitions, conducted scientific research in the field of atheism and critics of religion. The League's slogan was "Struggle against religion is a struggle for socialism", which was meant to tie in their atheist views with economy, politics, and culture. One of the slogans adopted at the 2nd congress was "Struggle against religion is a struggle for the five year plan!" The League had international connections; it was part of the International of Proletarian Freethinkers and later of the Worldwide Freethinkers Union.

Whew!

OK - so the group was not some paramilitary organization as some here have claimed.

As per 'persecution of Christians,' their persecution amounts to:

- Going to churches and obnoxiously debating with believers

- Working (albeit unsucessfully) to purge the USSR of all belief in God

- Trying to convert Theists to Atheists in the military, at the workplace, in schools, etc.


Now under Stalin there was real persecution of the religious, but under Stalin EVERYONE was persecuted, from high ranking party members, to ditch diggers, to people wearing glasses. If you did not like somebody on your block, you placed an anonymous tip to the NKVD and nobody every saw them again.

The one time they did try to remove religion from the USSR, Operation North - where they forcibly moved Jehovas Witnesses and practitioners of non-Orthodox religions to Siberia. Were they sent to labor camps? Were they stripped of their possessions? No and no.

The idea was to just get them out of their hair. Similar to the British Exile of the Anabaptists to the 13 colonies, except it was, well, fucking Siberia.
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So all the lies Christians state about being killed for believing in God - all of it made up.

In Stalinist times you were killed for not being Stalin or Beria.

Let me follow up with what eventually became of the League of Militant Atheists:

The climate of the campaign against religion was changing in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The regime slowly became more moderate in its approach to religion. Yaroslavsky, in 1941 warned against condemning all religious believers, but said that there were many loyal Soviet citizens still possessing religious beliefs. He called for patient and tactful individual work without offending the believers, but "re-educating" them. He claimed that religion had disappeared in some parts of the country but in other parts (especially in the newly annexed territories) it was strong, and he warned against starting brutal offensives in those areas.

He alleged that there were very few attempts to re-open churches and that this was a sign of the decline in religion. He branded those who tried to re-open churches as "former kulaks" and "falsifiers of figures". This report was contradicted, however, by the LMG's own figures (based on the 1937 census) that found perhaps half the country still held religious beliefs, even if they had no structures to worship in any longer and they could no longer openly express their beliefs.[30]

An answer to this report was found when Nazi Germany invaded in 1941, and churches were re-opened under the German occupation, while believers flocked to them in the millions. In order to gain support for the war effort (both domestic and foreign; the allies would not support Stalin if he continued the campaign ) against the German forces that were effectively "liberating" religious believers from the persecution against them, Stalin ended the antireligious persecution and the LMG was disbanded. All LMG periodicals ceased to publish by September 1941. Its official disbandment date is unknown, but traced somewhere between 1941–1947.

Yaroslavsky turned his attention to other pursuits and in 1942, he published an article on Orthodox writer Dostoevsky, for his alleged hatred of the Germans.

So much for persecution of Christians, huh?

If only Atheists had it this good in the dark ages....you know, when the CHURCH ran things...