Russian Life & People Digest
Question by Skipper loves Pepsi: Were the Communists who controlled the USSR and much of eastern Europe atheists?
Or, as some scholars maintain, was the Marxist-Leninist ideology more akin to a religious system?
Answers and Views:
Answer by matthew p
Yes, they practiced a form of scientific atheism. A lot of Christians were jailed, tortured and killed. It was at it’s worse in the 1970s-1980s
Read all the answers in the comments.
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Yupa says
Read Robert Conquest. Read Solzhenitsyn.
Atheists if ever there were any.
vorenhutz says
yes. I mean, you seem to think there's some contradiction there, but I don't see it. they didn't believe in god and followed marxist ideology.
Mom says
Officially yes.
There are several leaders who it's hard to tell about. Stalin was studying to be a priest, he failed out and went into politics as one example. Who know what he really thought.
But yes….Communism is a lot like a religion.
Tristie says
For some people it was definitely at least quasi-religious. You could even say that their form of atheism was a religion. They had their dogma, saints, catechisms, etc. They even believed in miracles (human will causing wheat to grow above the arctic circle or causing machines to work beyond their tolerances). Having studied the revolution quite a bit, I just don't think most of the leaders really believed in it, especially after Lenin when things didn't go the way they expected. (so, like many religions the predicted end of the world didn't come but that didn't stop the true believers!)
Aphetoros says
Yes they viewed religion as an enemy of the state
eric k says
Those two choices aren't mutually exclusive.
One can be an atheist, not believing in deities, and yet still be bound by a dogmatic belief system such as Marxism, or religious ones such as Buddhism or LaVeyan Satanism. Remember, atheism isn't lack of religion, it is lack of belief in deities.
To answer more directly, yes.
supertop says
Yes.