Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

tion, the restoration of two state agencies meant that the Orthodox church was once again receiving preferential treatment. Khrushchev’s religious policy was relatively more. successful against the Orthodox church, so that finally, by 1965, a single state agency with increased powers could attempt to deal with all religions equally. Still another motivation that has been advanced is that during the 1930s many Bezbozhniki (workers in the Godless League) had been trained. These were said to be chafing under enforced unemployment and inability to have a fulfilling career. A new antireligious campaign would give them something to do! This was an insignificant factor, since, by. 1964, a major campaign had to be launched to train the necessary atheist cadres and in a real: sense Soviet antireligious policy continues to stumble due to inadequate man- power. Vospitanie vs. Administrirovanie (Brains vs. Brawn—Very Free Translation) © a Communist: ideology assumes the -unalterable advance of history toward the dictatorship of a proletariat that is attaining ever-greater enlightenment as science progresses. That means that all vestiges of the capitalist and religious past are doomed to disappear. But communists have The Khrushchev Campaign Against Religion 135 always argued with each other whether this will happen automatically through proper education (vospitanie) or whether the process should not be given a helpful historical push (administrirovanie). The history of Soviet re- ligious policy can be described as a history of vacillation between these two methods. Which method became primary depended on which Bolsheviks were in power.” Khrushchev had a natural leaning toward administriro- vanie, although in the antireligious campaign his spokesmen, as well as he himself, repeatedly condemned administrirovanie and urged educational methods. As many as eleven different variations on these two general ap- proaches can be identified for the Khrushchev campaign against religion. An All-Union conference in 1957 of the Znanie society (which had re- placed the League of Militant Godless) focused on the subject of scientific atheist propaganda. In’ 1959 this society finally launched its long-promised monthly, Nauka i religiia (Science and Religion). Two years later ‘ts Ukrainian branch launched Voiounyichyi ateist (Militant Atheist). Also in 1959, the large-scale publication of antireligious books began. By 1962 this had increased toa production of 355 titles with a total: circulation of 5,422,000, twice as much as had been produced in 1980 when antireligious propaganda had reached its previous peak. : Generally speaking, the propaganda ‘tried to demonstrate the incom- patibility between religion and. science and the opposition between com- munist and religious morality. But as propaganda, it was characterized much more by slander, scandal-mongering about the clergy; and accusa- tions of collaboration with t