Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

ll Union republics. One critic noted that perhaps a “ministry for the Soviet cult” will soon be created, similar to the “ministry for opium,” the popular designation for the Council for Religious Affairs. State Atheism That is, in fact, the major factor which explains the massive atheist program. Soviet atheism is state atheism, it is the official confession of faith of the majority of Soviet citizens and is sponsored and protected by the state in the same way that Roman Catholicism was the state religion of Austria in the eighteeneth century. Austrian Roman Catholic Cardinal Kénig, who developed this argument at length in a widely publicized newspaper article in 1975 and thereby touched a tender nerve, has been repeatedly attacked by no less-a personage than Vladimir Kuroedov himself as a falsifier of Marxist atheism.22 Soviet protests, however, remain mere rhetoric, because the evidence clearly supports Cardinal Kénig’s conclusions. Churches are permitted ac- cording to the constitution the freedom to practice religious rituals but only atheism is granted the freedom to propagandize. The Znanie Society, which began its work in 1947, places major emphasis on atheist propaganda and the training of atheist cadres. It now has a membership of 2.9 million.* In addition, both party and state apparatus are deeply involved in the atheist program directly. A Party Central Committee decision in 1964 ordered its Department for Propaganda and Agitation to direct its atheist program not only toward party members but toward the entire population. Regional councils to coordinate scientific atheist propaganda and research were es- tablished. Councils for scientific atheism were created in the 4,243 regional and city executive committees of the party, and even in 390,000 party cells such councils were established. In the state structure, special commissions 304 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II were established which had the task to ensure that Soviet legislation on reli- gion was not being violated: Each local Soviet was ordered to create such a commission where the vice-chairman of the executive committee for the local state administration served as chairman.* It is these commissions that keep track of all religious activity on card files and thereby try to restrain its growth. Estimated figures are unavailable for the amount of money the state has invested in the atheist campaign, but the sum would be astronomic. Christians naturally regard state sponsorship of atheism as unfair, but there is also widespread sentiment in the population generally that state sponsor- ship is undesirable. Alexander Solzhenitsyn called on the Soviet leaders in 1973 to stop the state subsidies, to allow atheism to compete freely with reli- gion. This, he argued, would permit the entire agitprop apparatus “to prove the true strength of their ideological convictions and sincerity.” And he we