SOVIET ATHEISM

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21910, 20 September 1934, Page 15

SOVIET ATHEISM

PERSECUTION IN RUSSIA ANTI-RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY MILITANT MATERIALISM BY RIGHT REV. .TAMES M. LISTON, D.D. According to Bolshevik theory, the State is supreme in every department of life and it therefore claims unlimited jurisdiction over the inner life of its citizens, their intellect and their conscience. There must be no divided allegiance: that would be contrary to the materialistic principles of Karl Marx, upon which the Soviet regime is built. Obviously, then, the religious instinct must be rooted out of the hearts of men, for if that survived there would bo one challenge left to the supreme domination of the State. Any conception of God, Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan, would be a denial of Marxian theory, and therefore wholly out of place in the new order of things. The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, and the A.B.C. of Communism (a" prescribed text-book in Soviet schools), look upon religion as "opium for the people," a narcotic to deaden their minds and delay their economic development. This slogan was affixed (perhaps, still is) to a; Government building outside the Kremlin in Moscow.

Vladimir Ulianov, better known as Nicholas Lenin, is perfectly frank in his attitude to religion. In his 16th year he tore from his neck the cross, the emblem of Russia's traditional faith, trampled it under foot and declared himself forever a rebel against God and society. "Religion," he writes in his work, Socialism and Religion, "is an opiate for thd people, a sort of spiritual vodka meant to make the slaves of capitalism tread in the dust their human form and their aspirations to a semi-decent existence." He suspected the great writer Maxim Gorky of some secret religious leanings and warned him: "Is it not horrible to think what you will come to in this way? God-seeking differs from Godcreating or God-making and other things of that kind much as % yellow devil differs from a blue devil." Propagating Atheism Lenin's widow, Madame Krupskaya, is equally emphatic: "The need is imperative that the State resume systematic anti-religious work among children, We must make our school boys and girls not merely non-religious, but actively and passionately anti-religious.

. . . The home influence of religious parents must be vigorously combated." Zinoviev, when president of the Third International, proclaimed the official attitude of the Soviet State to a group of visiting English and Swedish Protestants: "Our programme is based on scientific materialism, which includes unconditionally the necessity of propagating atheism." (June 17, 1923.) At Christmas, 1924, he had this say:— "We shall pursue our attacks on Almighty God in due' time and in an appropriate manner. We are confident we shall subdue him in his'empyrean. We shall fight him wherever he hides himself, but .we must go about such a question as .religious propaganda more carefully in the future. Our campaign against- God arid religion must be carried out only in a pedagogic way, not by violence or force." Anatole Lunarcharsky, Soviet Minister of Public Instruction from 1917 to 1933, and appointed in 1933 as the Ambassador to Spain, is the master of militant atheism, and has ample opportunity of voicing and carrying into Effect his brutal theories. In setting the powerful and subsidised "Association of the Godless" on its way in 1925,' he declared:—"With all my heart I wish the 'Godless' every success in its fight against the repugnant spectre of God, which has caused such diabolic harm to all humanity throughout. history." e Active Fight Against Religion

In 1929 he issued a regulation dismissing from Soviet schools all teachers who were not fighting religion energetically. Another order of the same year enacted that "in all its work the school . . . must fight actively against religious influences, under whatever form these might appear" (lavestia, Jan. 8, 1929.) This order was followed by an instruction from the Commissariat of Education that "the whole system of elementary and technical education, including also the teachers' training centres, must take its place in the forefront of antireligious activity. Their duty is to form detachments of Militant Godless." According to Soviet law, education is completely secular, but under the fostering care of the Minister of Education it has become naturalistic, materialistic and positively irreligious. The attitude of the Soviet State toward religion was defined once for all in it has not varied sinow then —by Rrylenko, the Public Prosecutor, in the course of the trial of the greatly respected Monsignor BudkieWJCZ: — "Will you stop teaching the Christian religion ?" "We cannot," came the answer from this intrepid priest and his companions. "It is the law of God." "That law does not exist on Soviet territory," replied Krylenko. "You must choose. . . As for your religion, I spit on it, as I spit on all religions." The victim paid for his constancy by having his brains blown out on the night between Good Friday and Holy Saturday, March 30, 1931. The revolution of October, 1917, ushered in an ideal of human life that has no place for God, and so long as God remains in the hearts of the Russian people its authors and friends will find it incomplete. Ho is to be hunted out of Russia, and in due time out of the other countries of the world. "We haVo dethroned the earthly Czars, now we shall destroy the heavenly ones," ran the slogan in the first number of the notorious and ribald atheist magazine, Bezbozknik.