ANTI-GOD IN RUSSIA

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 60, 12 March 1937, Page 9

ANTI-GOD IN RUSSIA

MOVEMENT DECLINES

DWINDLING MEMBERSHIP

MOSCOW, March 10.

The anti-religious movement in Russia is apparently declining. It is announced officially that the membership of the Godless League has dwindled from 5,000,000 in 1933 to less than 2,000,000. Five anti-religious colleges have been closed. The Communist League of Youth is also reported to .have abandoned its anti-religious efforts.

The statement that clergy in Russia were reviving their activity and "trying to recover the lost sheep they have been shearing for ages" was made by Emilian Yaroslavsky, President of the semi-official Atheist League, in a recent issue of "Besbojnik ("The Godless One"), the official organ of the Militant Godless League.

Yaroslavsky, a veteran Jewish Bolshevik, has for many years directed the Soviet campaign against all religions. He also holds the main post in the key Department of Soviet Control.

Seeking to reassure those of his followers who felt qualms of conscience regarding Article 135 of Stalin's new Constitution, permitting church members, including Jews and Mohammedans, together with their priests, rabbis, and mullahs, to vote in the election of Deputies and be elected, he wrote: —

"Besides guaranteeing to all believers the right to practise their religion, the new Constitution gives to all citizens of the Soviet Union freedom to undertake antw*->ligious propaganda."

"We ncca this freedom for anti-re-ligious propaganda," Yaroslavsky continues, "to fight the reactionary influence ox the clergy and to struggle against all religious prejudices. As Stalin has said, 'the religious prejudices are against science, since every religion contains something contrary to science.' The maintenance of Article 135 in the new Constitution proves that a great number of believers with their organisations and professional priests still exist in Russia. Therefore anti-religious propaganda is still necessary. But we must not, by excesses, push all believers into hostile camps."

Yaroslavsky then outlined a fourpoint propaganda campaign for the future struggle against religions:—

"1. We must explain why religion impedes the construction of Socialism, why it contradicts science, whom it serves, and who is interested in supporting it. We must show the role of religion in the Capitalist world.

"2. In every village Soviet we must find out those who are protected by the clergy. We must know them so well that we know what is under their finger-nails.

"3. We must show to what extent faith in God, saints, devils, familiar spirits, water nymphs, satyrs, and the life hereafter, and belief in religious services and other rites, helps to forward the business of raising wheat. We must show how much time the whole country loses by celebrating religious feasts.

"4. Most important of all, we must intensify our work. There is no doubt that in many places clergy are trying to revive fading religious sentiments. To this we must oppose the activity of an organisation of millions."