Religious Developments in the Soviet Union

Abstract

RELIGION expresses and perpetuates itself through institutions developed within a social context. From the days of the Roman and Byzantine imperial orders through the rise and fall of Feudalism down to nationalistic capitalism, both the Christian and the Jewish Churches have had periodically to survive drastic social transitions. The Soviet Union represents the most recent mutation in social organization. Like previous shifts in economic and political power, it has confronted institutional religion with problems of adjustment for which there existed no prior patterns; ways of conformity had to be discovered through painful experimentation. Moreover, because of the hostility towards religion in communist circles, thoroughly justified by the unhealthy condition of the Orthodox Church and its involvement in the autocratic order, Church leaders found themselves at a double disadvantage. Not only did they have to make this drastic social adjustment but they had to work out the problem in the face of a political estrangement which deprived them of the benefit of friends at court. It is not surprising that an accommodation of interests has been twenty-five years in the making and only now are there clear signs of permanent resolution. Entirely apart from subtler ideological conflicts, the socialization of property confronted organized religion with a major crisis. The Church was asked to surrender that power of self-determination which resides in the ownership of property and the accumulation of endowments. It was proposed that the traditional area of religious operation should be radically curtailed by the state's assumption of the educational function and the provision of a planned program for meeting those basic human needs which previously had provided a free field for private charity and religious