Scholarly record

RELIGIOUS POLICY OF THE SOVIET STATE IN “THE YEAR OF GREAT CHANGE”

Anatoly N. Kashevarov, E. A. Samylovskaya

Abstract

This article shows how the developed, adopted and implemented by the Party and the Soviet power in 1929, regulations, resolutions and other acts marked the beginning of the new attack stage on the religious organizations when the state bodies in fact proceeded to their complete elimination. A particularly severe blow was inflicted on the Russian Orthodox Church. One of the main arguments of the outbreak of the anti-religious campaign was the accusation of the Russian Orthodox Church of being “counter-revolutionary”. If the persecution of the Church as of the “part of the old bourgeois state machine” began with the first days the Bolsheviks came into power, the attack on the non-Orthodox religions occurred only in the late 1920-ies. On April 8, 1929, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee adopted the decree “On religious associations”, which, although subjected to further specifying, editing, and supplementing, but in general was maintained as valid until the year of 1990. The resolution was aimed at the final replacement of the denominations of all society sectors with a complete ban on any public activity. Religious societies were in fact turned into some kind of “reservation” for the citizens professing different religious beliefs. The comprehensive control and often the dictates of the state over religious organizations lasted until the end of 1980-ies. Thus, the year of 1929 was in many ways a turning point in the religious policy of the Soviet state.

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