ANTI-RELIGION IN RUSSIA

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3445, 19 March 1932, Page 4 (Supplement)

ANTI-RELIGION IN RUSSIA

THE ATTACK ON CHRISTMAS.

ATHEISTS MOBILISE THEIR FORCES.

Christmas in Russia is chiefly celebrated by active atheists. Of the traditional world-wide holiday spirit that finds expression in decorated Christmas trees, cards, displays of gifts m shop windows, etc., there is no visible trace in Moscow. It is easy to suppress these outward manifestations of Christmas in a country where the State, in one way or another, controls everything, from the printing of cards to the decoration of shop windows. Moreover, under the first day, or six day week system, traditional holidays, like Sundays, disappear as general days of rest. Finally, the majority of Russians who still observe religious rites adhere to the pre-Revolutionary calendar in the matter of Church festivals and regard as Christmas not December 25, but January 7. But Christmas, if unhonoured, is not unnoticed in the Soviet Union. About the middle of December one sees in every book store an especially ".arge display of anti-religious literature, including many tracts which are specially directed against the celebration of Christmas. The pamphlets are reinforced by posters, which display such slogans as: "Let us build our lives without god (always written in small letters) and capitalists, "With books, sporb and work we shall get on without god and devil," and show fat kaluks attending Christmas service as part of their diabolical scheme for enslaving the poor peasants .(Although the kulak, or rich peasant, is actually as extinct as the dodo in present day Russia, he is still made to function as a bogey and scapegoat).

All over the country the Union of Militant Atheists mobilises its forces for the anti-Christmas campaign. On Christmas Day anti-religious meetings are held in schools and fiactones, the radio and the kinema are pressed into service for the same end, and the more athletic and irrepressible atheists rush about the countryside _ on skis, carrying anti-religious exhibits with them. The special attention of the atheists this year has been focussed on the big new construction enterprises, where among the new workers there are masses of peasants who still cling to religious holidays somewhat more tenaciously than do city folk. It is very inexpedient for a Soviet worker or employee to be absent on Christmas Day. An excuse that might pass muster on an ordinary day is certain to be _ scrutinised very suspiciously at this time. The writer was recently present at a conference in which some of the Moscow teachers were receiving instruction in the technique of carrying out anti-Christmas meetings. Such meetings, the teachers were told, should consist of three parts, beginning with the reading of an antireligious short story or the performance of a play, followed by games, and ending with an atheistic film. Parents often come to these meetings; and the teachers were urged to convert the parents to unbelief through the efforts of the children. The speaker at the conference referred to the psychological problem that sometimes comes up when parents retain religious ideas themselves. He sugge'sted that in such cases the teachers should appeal to the parents' feeling for tiheir children, and urge them not to introduce an element of conflict and doubt into the child's life by opposing the anti-religious influence of the school, which was, of course, unchangeable. There are still Russian homes where Christmas is privately celebrated, sometimes Wtith the aid of a smuggled "yolka," or tree, a commodity which is not supposed to be sold. But with the unmistakable decline of religious faith among the youth, the time may come when the memory of religious holidays will be paradoxically kept alive by the strenuous campaigns which are launched against them.