ДЕСТРУКЦІЇ АНТИРЕЛІГІЙНОЇ СТРАТЕГІЇ РАДЯНСЬКОГО ПЕРІОДУ У ЦИВІЛІЗАЦІЙНОМУ ВИБОРІ УКРАЇНИ

Abstract

In the conditions of building a Soviet society, the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR adopted a decree on the separation of the church from the state, the school from the church. Since then, the decree has become the basis of legislative acts, which determined the relations between the Soviet authorities and religious associations of Ukraine. Having announced the separation of church and state, the Soviet government gave society/citizens the right to independently choose any religion, or choose none. That is, the attempt to build an atheistic ideology of the USSR began. The decree caused the indignation of religious communities of all denominations without exception, because it legitimized open persecution both against the Orthodox Church and against religious societies, Christian and non-Christian. The decree referred to the strengthening of measures with a bias towards scientific and educational and anti-religious propaganda. In this direction, a huge amount of work was launched to establish the publication of a variety of religious press, the study of fundamental Marxist historical and philosophical problems in religious studies was introduced, ethnographic expeditions and sociological studies were conducted, the works of the classics of bourgeois religious studies were translated. And what was remarkable was the appearance of a number of «talented» experts who interpreted all of this in a way favorable to Soviet atheistic propaganda. Primary attention in atheist education was given to women. The problem was that the woman-mother brought up the future generation and had a greater influence on the formation of the worldview of the child than the man. That is why the propagandists of atheism paid the main attention to the formation of a scientific and materialistic worldview in women, often individually. The situation with «legality» in the Ukrainian SSR was interesting. The law was interpreted arbitrarily and was frankly decorative in nature, as a rule, this was done in order to be able to keep in subjection the party leadership, officials, representatives of the Council, the average citizen, who had religious beliefs. The abnormality and duplicity of the situation in which religious communities, parishioners and part of the party leadership were found was a common phenomenon. The situation changed somewhat with the coming to power of M. Gorbachev and his policy of «perestroika» and the course towards glasnost. Whole layers of previously forbidden, unknown history were discovered, which received the name «white spots», the crimes of Stalinism, repression became known, nationalist movements, the issue of the national language, etc. became more active. Liberalization and democratization of society took place, which ultimately led to the collapse of the USSR.