ATHEISTIC STATE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 52, Issue 3750, 1 May 1936, Page 11

ATHEISTIC STATE

The Bolsheviks believe that religion is doomed in Russia. Emelyan Yaroslavski, head of the Godless League, in a recent issue of the league’s magazine, declared that there are between thirty and forty million persons in Russia “who have severed relations with religion,” and this appears to be a reasonable calculation. In the Godless League the Communist party, the Young Communist League, and the Pioneers (the Communist organisation for children), there are alone nearly 20,000,000 members, and all are committed to atheism. The remainder of a population of 170,000,000 people, which includes adherents of almost every known creed, certainly counts scores of jnillions whose interest in religion is slight and who, though they may keep an ikon in a corner of the room, do so merely because of a superstitious fear of removing it.

Many such cases exist in Moscow. Church attendance in Moscow is slight and the Soviet six-day week, with its “Rest Days” on the 6th., 12th., 18th., 24th., and 30th., of every month is deliberately calculated to keep people at their jobs instead of in church on Sundays.