Hotmail  |  Gmail  |  Yahoo  |  Justice Mail
powered by Google
WWW http://www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com

Add JFNC Google Bar Button to your Browser Google Bar Group  
 
 
Welcome To Justice For North Caucasus Group

Log in to your account at Justice For North Caucasus eMail system.

Request your eMail address

eMaill a Friend About This Site.

Google Translation

 

 

Window On Eurasia: Khrushchev’s Anti-Religious Drive Helps Explain Russian Orthodox Attitudes toward Stalin

posted by eagle on October, 2009 as Imperialism


WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2009

Window on Eurasia: Khrushchev’s Anti-Religious Drive Helps Explain Russian Orthodox Attitudes toward Stalin

Paul Goble

Urbanna, October 28 – Fifty years ago, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev launched the most sweeping anti-religious campaign in the USSR since the very first years of Soviet power, a campaign the recollection of which continues to help explain why so many Russian Orthodox leaders and the faithful have a far more positive attitude toward Stalin than others might expect.
Most people in the West and many members of the Russian intelligentsia have a positive image of Khrushchev because of his attacks on Stalin and of his shift away from the longtime Soviet dictator’s totalitarian system, but many in the Russian Orthodox Church remember Khrushchev not for that but for his concerted effort to wipe out the church in 1959-1964.
During that period, Khrushchev, who has been celebrated for his “liberalization” of the Soviet system, closed down half of the Orthodox congregations and three quarters of the monasteries that had either survived from the pre-Soviet past or had been allowed by Stalin during and after World War II to reopen.
And the contrast between Khrushchev’s “Leninist” antagonism to religion and Stalin’s pragmatic use of the faith during and after the war, Deacon Vasilik Vladimir argues in the current issue of Bogoslov.ru, is why many Orthodox Russians have more positive feelings toward Stalin and less positive ones toward his successor (bogoslov.ru/text/487477.html). 
Both because of his own experience in “the terrible communist school” of the 1920s and 1930s and because of his “blind hatred to Stalin” and to everything connected with the dictator, including his more tolerant approach to the Church during the war and after, the deacon says, Khrushchev launched his attack on religion.
“In the consciousness of Khrushchev,” Vasilik insists, “the Church was connected with the former Georgian seminarist. And objectively, the persecution of the church was linked to a rejection of the Stalinist model of foreign and domestic politics.” If Stalin felt that he needed the Church to help win the war, Khrushchev believed that he did not need the Church at all.
According to the Bogoslov.ru commentator, “in the last years of his life, Stalin was not seeking ‘to build communism’ or to extend the socialist camp to the entire planet. His task was to preserve the Union along with the bloc of satellites” the USSR had acquired as a result of the World War II.
“Khrushchev’s model in contrast,” Vasilik says, “was in a certain sense a return to ‘the Leninist heritage’ – to internationalism, cosmopolitanism, communist construction throughout the entire world, and a policy directed at moving beyond the natural geopolitical borders of Russia.” 
Indeed, the deacon argues, “objectively the Khrushchev thaw, just like the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church, in a certain sense was the first step to the disintegration of the USSR and the destruction of Russia,” as can be seen, he says in “the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine, the undermining of the peasantry of the Russian countryside,” and other policies.
Khrushchev’s aides –from the Komsomol and security agencies like Shelepin and Semichastny as well as from among “Marxist fundamentalists” like Suslov, Pospelov, and Ilichev – all encouraged the Soviet leader in his hatred of the church and helped carry out his anti-religious policies.
The direction Khrushchev wanted to pursue was indicated in July 1954 with the CPSU Central Committee decree “On major shortcomings in scientific-atheist propaganda,” but only after Khrushchev consolidated power in 1957-58 was he able to move against the church using all the administrative resources of the state.
After launching a propaganda campaign against religion that recalled “the bacchanalias of the 20s and 30s,” Vasilik continues, Khrushchev in 1959 closed 348 Orthodox parishes and 18 monasteries. And his aides struck positions so radical that the Moscow Patriarchate looked for ways to prevent “the liquidation of the Church.”
Khrushchev himself offered one such occasion, the deacon writes. In February 1960, the Soviet leader organized a conference on disarmament to which Patriarch Aleksii was invited. The Russian churchman delivered what for those times was a remarkable attack on the policies of the state and an equally remarkable defense of the Church.
Not surprisingly, Khrushchev was outraged, and he stepped up the campaign, installing more committed anti-religious figures in key state agencies and moving to close more churches and monasteries. During the remainder of 1960, the Soviet government closed 1437 churches, many of which were then confiscated or destroyed, and 11 monasteries.
Several dozen priests were arrested, and “for the first time after 1945,” Soviet officials arrested a member of the Orthodox hierarchy, Archbishop Iov of Kazan. But those actions did not slow the campaign: In 1962, 1423 more churches were closed as well as more monasteries and seminaries. And the following year, 1700 more Orthodox parishes were shut down.
Khrushchev showed no signs of letting up: He even declared that he intended by 1980 to “show the last priest on television.” But in October 1964, he was overthrown by what Vasilik describes as “a more national and more realistic leadership.” As a result, Khrushchev’s persecutions “quieted down, but not immediately because of inertia.”

comments (0)


1 - 1 of 1



 RSS FEED


New Posts



Search Imperialism



Imperialism



Archive


 january 2015

 march 2014

 november 2013

 september 2013

 july 2013

 march 2013

 february 2013

 january 2013

 december 2012

 november 2012

 september 2012

 july 2012

 april 2012

 february 2012

 july 2011

 june 2011

 april 2011

 march 2011

 february 2011

 january 2011

 december 2010

 november 2010

 october 2010

 september 2010

 august 2010

 july 2010

 june 2010

 may 2010

 april 2010

 march 2010

 february 2010

 january 2010

 december 2009

 november 2009

 october 2009

 september 2009

 august 2009

 july 2009

 june 2009

 may 2009

 april 2009

 march 2009

 february 2009

 december 2008

 november 2008

 october 2008

 september 2008

 august 2008

 july 2008

 june 2008

 may 2008

 april 2008

 march 2008

 february 2008

 january 2008

 december 2007

 november 2007

 october 2007

 september 2007

 august 2007

 july 2007

 june 2007

 may 2007

 april 2007

 march 2007

 february 2007

 january 2007

 december 2006

 november 2006

 october 2006

 september 2006

 august 2006

 july 2006

 june 2006

 may 2006

 april 2006

 march 2006

 february 2006

 january 2006

 december 2005

 november 2005

 october 2005

 september 2005

 august 2005

 july 2005

 june 2005

 may 2005

 april 2005

 january 2005

 july 2000





Acknowledgement: All available information and documents in "Justice For North Caucasus Group" is provided for the "fair use". There should be no intention for ill-usage of any sort of any published item for commercial purposes and in any way or form. JFNC is a nonprofit group and has no intentions for the distribution of information for commercial or advantageous gain. At the same time consideration is ascertained that all different visions, beliefs, presentations and opinions will be presented to visitors and readers of all message boards of this site. Providing, furnishing, posting and publishing the information of all sources is considered a right to freedom of opinion, speech, expression, and information while at the same time does not necessarily reflect, represent, constitute, or comprise the stand or the opinion of this group. If you have any concerns contact us directly at: eagle@JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com


Page Last Updated: {Site best Viewed in MS-IE 1024x768 or Greater}Copyright © 2005-2009 by Justice For North Caucasus ®