The Post-War Atheistic Scene: A Renewal of the Offensive

Abstract

The lull in atheistic attacks against the Church did not last very long. Already in September 1944 when victory was beyond doubt, the Central Committee issued a decree calling for renewed antireligious efforts through ‘scientific-educational propaganda’. Party members were reminded of the need to combat ‘survivals of ignorance, superstition, and prejudice among the people’. Another Central Committee resolution, calling for the intensification of atheistic propaganda by the mass media, was issued in 1945, soon after the end of the war.1 As long as Stalin lived, the renewed atheistic propaganda was mostly limited to words, and was only rarely accompanied by direct harassment or acts of vandalism. The main target of verbal attacks was the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican in particular; although on the local level Orthodox bishops, parish priests and believers had to fight for the survival of churches opened during and immediately after the Second World War. Here and there local officials of the Council for the Affairs of the Orthodox Church did close some parishes and made life difficult, particularly for the bishops, by trying to prevent any disciplinary measures that the bishops might take against immoral or otherwise unworthy clerics and church activists.