Association of the fighting wicked
The Association of the Fighting Godless ( Russian. Сою́з вои́нствующих безбо́жников ) was an atheist association that existed in the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1947 . It was founded on the basis of the Association of the Wicked , which had existed in Moscow since 1925 , and which in turn emerged from the Society of Friends of the newspaper "Besboschnik" . The organization was close to the Soviet Communist Party . Their leader was Yemelyan Yaroslavsky .
Religious politics
According to Lenin's formula that the fight against religion is “the ABC of all materialism and consequently also of Marxism”, the declared aim of the organization was the propaganda fight against the Russian Orthodox Church , but also other religious communities. The association was a member of the International Freethinker Union .
The wicked movement controlled by the CPSU peaked in 1932 with five and a half million members. In 1936 the Stalin Constitution ended the discrimination against the civil rights of clergymen, at the beginning of 1941 the organization still had 3.5 million members from 100 nations.
After Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin temporarily stopped anti-religious publications, and the Orthodox Church, following its Russian patriotic tradition, blessed the weapons of the Red Army .
Successor organizations
Since atheism was seen as a fundamental component of Marxism-Leninism , follow-up movements were founded after the war, the declared aim of which was so-called “scientific-atheist propaganda”. Therefore, in 1947, the All Union Society for the Dissemination of Scientific and Political Knowledge was created ; it was renamed in 1963 All Union Society Knowledge .
Atheism as an educational goal
Atheism was part of the school curriculum in the Soviet Union. The historical and dialectical materialism was since early 1960s compulsory subject at universities and colleges.
Individual evidence
- ^ Günther Stökl : Russian history. From the beginnings to the present (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 244). 4th enlarged edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-520-24404-7 , p. 734 f.
literature
- Party and Churches in the Early Soviet State: The Protocols of the Anti-Religious Commission at the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party 1922–1929 ; Translated by Ludwig Steindorff; Berlin, Hamburg, Münster: LIT Verlag, 2007; ISBN 3-8258-8604-2
- Efraim Briem: Communism and Religion in the Soviet Union: A Struggle for Ideas ; Basel: Friedrich Reinhardt, 1948.
- Daniel Peris: Storming the heavens: the Soviet League of the Militant Godless ; Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1998; ISBN 0-8014-3485-8