Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

the recognition that the reasons for the persistence of belief are complex. Individual atheist counselors are encouraged to become personally acquainted with believing individuals, to become a personal friend who demonstrates concern for them and whose advice they gradually come to appreciate. Many books and articles have been printed in recent years describing case histories which usually involved sustained effort over a time span of several years.2° The principles and methodology are obviously borrowed from some Christian personal worker’s manual. The fact that believers fear their young people will become friendly with such a personal worker indicates that this method has been relatively successful. It is a method, however, which is labor-intensive and in spite of all the many atheist seminaries there is still a shortage of dedicated atheist workers, especially of those prepared to live in the villages where religious convictions are still strong. Newspaper articles regularly urge all members of Soviet society to assume responsibility for fellow citizens and to befriend and influence individual believers in order to help them find their way to a full and happy integration into Soviet society. How Successful Are They? A total of 600 experts met in Kiev in 1978 to evaluate the achievements over the past fifteen years since the introduction of socialist rituals.2! Par- ticipants were told that in recent years more than eighty percent of those persons that broke with religion did so because they had been influenced by the new rituals. Although the editors of Nauka i Religia protested that the socialist rituals had not simply been introduced to replace religious rituals, still they did emphasize that they were a legitimate weapon in the struggle with religion. Substitute rituals were introduced as early as 1923, but the systematic introduction of a wide range of rituals is directly connected to the Khrushchev campaign. The first Wedding Palace was opened in Len- ingrad in 1958. The Ukraine became the major experimental region. Today there are 400 offices for socialist rituals, 940 special ritual societies, ninety-: Children and Youth 303 four palaces and houses for festive occasions, 8,500 ritual halls, and 500 sa- lons for ritual feasts. In addition the Ukraine has 1,500 vocal collectives or choirs and 1,150 orchestras available to serve at ritual functions. Yet in spite of this effort, Soviet criticism continues. A Soviet ethnographer comparing an Orthodox priest and a Soviet ritualist con- cluded that the latter lacked the moral authority and the personal contact with the recipient that the priest had. In addition there were still many re- ligious rituals for which no substitute had been developed. One particular failure was the inability to devise an appropriate Soviet burial ceremony. Participants at the Kiev conference also expressed the wish for the creation of a coordinating center for a