Faith Under Fire: The Soviet War on the Church and Religion

After the 1918 Russian Revolution, the Communist government enacted sweeping reforms that went beyond politics and economics, reshaping the spiritual landscape.

Karl Marx had called religion "the opium of the people," and the new regime took that to heart. Determined to erase entrenched religious traditions, the state used law, education, propaganda and terror to hasten the death of faith. The belief that history demanded the end of religion fueled a relentless secularisation campaign.

 

The War on Religion: Legal and Educational Fronts

The first wave of religious suppression came through legal decrees. Within months of seizing power, the state nationalised church lands and secularised birth, death, and marriage registrations.

Next, it turned to education. The 1918 Decree on Separation of Church from State and School banned religious instruction. This was more than just policy—it was the Party’s main weapon against religion, aimed at severing faith’s transmission from one generation to the next. 

Schools became ideological battlegrounds. The young were indoctrinated with secular ideologies to shield them from religious influence at home. Curricula were rewritten, replacing religious teachings with Marxist-Leninist ideology. Schools and universities became hubs for promoting atheism, using science to systematically debunk religious beliefs.

In the 1920 book ABCs of Communism, Nikolai Bukharin and Yevgeny Preobrazhensky—both later executed under Stalin—laid out the state’s anti-religious mission: “One of the most important tasks of the proletarian state is to liberate children from the reactionary influence of their parents…We must see to it that the school assumes the offensive against religious propaganda in the home.”

The attack on faith extended into the home. The ABCs of Communism also encouraged children to create an "atheist's corner"—a shrine to anti-religious imagery, poems, and slogans—mirroring the broader goal of replacing religious icons with symbols of the state.

While the government officially proclaimed religious freedom, Soviet propaganda painted a different picture. Posters from the era didn’t just promote secularism—they pushed an aggressive, persecutory anti-religious agenda.

The Decade of Terror: The Dismantling of the Russian Orthodox Church

By the late 1920s, the anti-religious campaign escalated into outright persecution. The Russian Orthodox Church, seen as a relic of Tsarist rule, became a prime target. Clergy were arrested, exiled, or executed en masse.

When church leaders demanded religious freedom as promised in the Soviet constitution, the regime responded with terror. Churches were destroyed with ruthless efficiency, their numbers plummeting from 29,584 in 1927 to fewer than 500 by 1940. In 1937 alone, more than 85,000 Orthodox priests were executed. Faith was a competing ideology the state would not tolerate it.

Even neutrality was dangerous. Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow emphasized that the Church was separate from the state and that believers could be loyal Soviet citizens—so long as that loyalty did not contradict their faith. But official propaganda twisted his words, portraying him as a counter-revolutionary and an enemy of progress.

The state also seized religious wealth. Lenin ordered the confiscation and sale of religious treasures, stripping churches of their valuables. Yet faith proved resilient. Even in 1937, official Soviet figures estimated that nearly half the population still believed.

The anti-religious crusade began to lose steam. Atheist museums closed, university courses on "scientific atheism" were abandoned, and attendance at anti-religious lectures plummeted. Membership in the League of the Militant Godless—a key institution in the war on religion—dwindled.

When Nazi Germany invaded the USSR in 1941, the campaign came to an abrupt halt. Stalin reversed course, reviving the Russian Orthodox Church to rally national unity. In 1943, Metropolitans Sergius, Alexius, and Nicholas were received by Stalin, marking a turning point. The Church was granted the right to reconvene, and for the first time since 1918, the Moscow Theological Academy and Seminary reopened. Between 1945 and 1959, the number of open churches reached 25,000, signalling a temporary reprieve.

A New Idol: Science, Reason, and a Space Odyssey

Even after decades of repression, faith endured. The persistence of religion forced Soviet propagandists to shift tactics. By 1959, Nikita Khrushchev launched a new campaign against the Church, closing 12,000 churches and executing an estimated 50,000 clergy. Yet his approach was more sophisticated than brute force.

The state worked to elevate Soviet science as a direct challenge to religion. Space exploration, nuclear physics, and medical breakthroughs weren’t just framed as achievements of the USSR—they were presented as proof that religion was obsolete. Art and literature reinforced this narrative, portraying Soviet citizens as enlightened, free from the superstition of faith. Scientists became cultural heroes, celebrated in film, novels, and propaganda.

Khrushchev even used space exploration to attack religion. In a 1961 speech to the Communist Party, he invoked Yuri Gagarin’s historic spaceflight to declare: “Gagarin flew into space but didn’t see any god there.” Though there’s no evidence Gagarin ever said this himself, his image was soon plastered across posters bearing the slogan: “There is no God.”

The Limits of Atheism

By the 1970s, it was clear the Soviet project had miscalculated. Despite decades of propaganda, young people raised under the atheist system were turning to religion in growing numbers. The state’s assumption—that religion would fade with time—proved false. A new, more nuanced propaganda strategy emerged.

Posters no longer simply denied God’s existence. Instead, they mocked religion as an empty ritual that robbed people of joy. One depicted a boy being dragged to prayer by his grandmother while his friends played outside in their red Young Pioneer scarves. Another painted clergy as con artists who exploited believers for money.

Yet despite the vast resources poured into promoting atheism and scientific rationalism, faith endured. The Soviet state had underestimated religion’s emotional and cultural grip. No matter how forcefully the regime tried to erase belief, faith refused to be dictated by reason alone. In the end, it proved far more resilient than the Party had anticipated.