Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

. One resourceful Orthodox girl confessed to her priest that she had committed a sin by wearing the red tie of the Young Pioneers. But she explained: “Of course, we're powerless. They make us do it. So this is what we did. First we blessed it with holy water, and then put it on.” The schoolteacher not only has the task of including teaching units on atheism in her curriculum, she also has to play the role of antireligious spy. Regularly, children are asked whether they or their parents go to church. Sometimes teachers are expected to keep watch at the church to note which of their students are attending. Legally, any reference to religious affiliation may not appear in state documents, including school grades, but in practice this is often violated. Rita Goge, tenth-grade student, reported that her literature teacher had indicated to her that if they would receive one more report from the authorities that she was attending church, then she would get the grade “unsatisfactory” for the next exam.!! In school No. 31 in Sim- feropol lecturer Moskivitin had: spoken so viciously about believers, espe- cially the Dubrovik family, whose son attended the school, that the listeners responded by shouting, “They should be hanged.” Some of the older students thereupon beat up young Dubrovik so severely that he suffered:a concussion and was admitted to hospital. Later the mother discovered that Dubrovik’s teacher and the deputy director of the school had stood by while the beating was taking place without interfering.” It is no secret that many schoolteachers do not enjoy teaching atheism and authorities regularly complain that the teachers are not presenting the material with sufficient conviction or even omitting it altogether. School curriculum planners were also criticized by the recent Pravda article. Net only did it complain about the lack of antireligious content in children’s literature, it was discovered that only four books containing antireligious material were included in the publication plans for children’s literature until 1980. None of the books recently published by the youth publishing house, Molodaia Gvardia, were worth mentioning, for here, too, Pravda com- plained that they were “boring and superficial.’’ 8 Particularly since 1966, the 360,000 libraries, 140,000 clubs, and houses of culture, plus the 11,900 museums in the Soviet Union are all required to engage in constant atheistic propaganda." To achieve this task and to build up a cadre of workers to read the lectures on atheism, to write the news- paper articles or to do the personal counselling with believers, special Children and Youth 301 schools were introduced. These are the so-called schools for Marxism-Len- inism. In Belorussia in 1972, 10,000 persons completed the program in scientific atheism. There are also people’s universities for atheism and schools for atheist lecturers. At present there are 35,000 People’s Univers