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The Plurality of Soviet Religious "Policy" Barry Childers

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The Plurality of Soviet Religious Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2012 The Plurality of Soviet Religious "Policy" Barry Childers Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES THE PLURALITY OF SOVIET RELIGIOUS “POLICY” By BARRY CHILDERS A Thesis submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2012 Barry Childers defended this thesis on April 6, 2012. The members of the supervisory committee were: Jonathon Grant Professor Directing Thesis Peter Garretson Committee Member George Williamson Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii This thesis is dedicated to all of the history teachers whose love of the profession and indispensable advice have inspired its creation, my family and friends for their constant support, and, most importantly, God for granting me His guidance, strength, and patience, without which I would have failed long ago. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................................................................v 1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................1 2. LENIN AND RELIGION ........................................................................................................6 2.1 Early Anti-Religious Legislation ...................................................................................8 2.2 Overt Action against the Russian Orthodox Church ....................................................16 2.3 Stalin and the Russian Orthodox Church .....................................................................22 3. THE CONFUSED POLICY TOWARD ISLAM ..................................................................33 3.1 Anti-Religious Policy Implementation ........................................................................34 3.2 The Hudjum and the Push to Destroy Islam ................................................................41 4. WORLD WAR II AND THE CESSATION OF POLICY ...................................................48 4.1 The Church to the Rescue ............................................................................................48 4.2 Soviet Islam Policy Contradictions ..............................................................................53 5. KHRUSHCHEV’S CONTINUATION OF STALIN ...........................................................59 5.1 A Reversal of Stalin’s Policy? .....................................................................................61 5.2 Khrushchev’s Floundering Policy Toward Islam ........................................................68 6. BREZHNEV AND DÉTENTE .............................................................................................73 6.1 The Russian Orthodox Church and the Dissidents ......................................................74 6.2 Nationalism and the Invasion of Afghanistan ..............................................................81 7. GORBACHEV AND THE MILLENNIUM .........................................................................88 7.1 The Road Toward Religious Freedom .........................................................................88 7.2 A New Freedom of Conscience Law ...........................................................................93 8. CONCLUSION .....................................................................................................................99 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................109 Biographical Sketch .....................................................................................................................113 iv ABSTRACT This thesis examines and analyzes the Soviet Union’s religious policies through a comparison of policy toward the Russian Orthodox Church and that toward Islam. It explains the differences in religious policy between each Soviet leader, while further breaking down each leader’s policies for both religions. It argues that a universal Soviet religious policy did not exist, each Soviet leader instead creating his own religious policy. It furthermore argues that the Soviet ideology of Leninist-socialism was not the motivating factor in the formation of policy, but that the personal goals of each leader, as well as the inherent need to protect the state’s power and image, comprised the main factors in policy creation. The scope of this thesis is the entire span of the Soviet Union’s existence. v CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION There is not an overabundance of resources that describe Soviet religious policy. Several archival readers and document histories exist which provide raw legislation concerning religion, and there is a scarce corpus of scholarly work on Soviet religious policy that is spread out across the Soviet Union’s existence and beyond, each succeeding book building upon the foundation created by the book or article before it. Unfortunately, these sources all tend to recite the same repetitive idea that Soviet religious policy was focused on the eradication of religion. While it is true that official Soviet ideology demanded the eradication of religion before the establishment of communism could take effect, it does not mean that Soviet religious policy was entirely oriented toward this end. This study seeks to provide a new perspective on Soviet religious policy through a closer examination of the primary sources and the nuances of the secondary sources to prove that Soviet religious policy should be viewed in a different light. Its subject is important because this reevaluation of Soviet religious policy casts doubt on the state’s ideological faithfulness to Leninist-socialism toward religion. If one studies the historiography of Soviet religious policy it becomes painfully obvious as different sources are compared by publication year that scholarly understanding of Soviet religious policy is a progression of thought. As more information from Soviet archives became open to the public, each succeeding article, monograph, or essay took the existing literature and built directly from its premises, merely adding new documentation to support the same arguments. In fact, almost the entirety of Soviet religious scholarship can be summed up in two main arguments: firstly, that the Soviet government created legislation specifically to oppress religious organizations which it improved over time to combat the churches’ responses, and secondly, that the Soviets did not strictly adhere to its legislation and often acted in opposition to the statutes dedicated to the control of religion in the Soviet Union. The defining force behind historiographical development has not been to diversify the argument that was originally produced in the 1930s, but to support it. Some of the earlier scholarly works on Soviet religious policy include historians obviously influenced by agendas: Fr. James A. Cleary’s 1931 monograph War on God in Russia (funded by the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland) and Serge Bolshakoff’s 1942 monograph The 1 Christian church and the soviet state (a Christian’s perspective on religious policy). Other historians answered the call to explain religion’s treatment in the Soviet Union in search of greater understanding, but still with obvious bias, as Paul Anderson’s 1944 People, Church and State in Modern Russia shows. Anderson explains how Marxist thought tied into Soviet religious policy, but also openly admits his admiration for the struggle given by the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) to maintain its legitimacy since he has worshipped with them. The scholarship fluctuated in terms of bias and scope after World War II. John Shelton’s 1953 The Russian Church and the Soviet State, Walter Kolarz’s 1961 Religion in the Soviet Union, and Robert Conquest’s 1968 Religion in the USSR all vary tremendously in the level of bias and areas of focus within religious policy. All three are written from the viewpoint of the ROC, as the literature before them had been. This perspective naturally portrays the ROC, the largest religion in the Soviet Union, as a victim to the harsh religious persecution of the state. The turbulent 1960s began producing revisionist historians; these historians contested the Orthodox-oriented, status quo interpretations offered by historians before them. Bodhan Bociurkiw’s 1969 article “Church-State Relations in the USSR,” Gerhard Simon’s 1974 Church, State and Opposition in the U.S.S.R., and David Powell’s 1975 Antireligious Propaganda in the Soviet Union: A Study of Mass Persuasion are representative of this revisionist reinterpretation of Soviet religious policy. These sources utilize the state’s viewpoint instead of the ROC’s viewpoint, probably a result of Brezhnev’s liberal stance as historians had access to even more documents. Since the leaders before Brezhnev were exceedingly harsh in their religious persecution, the ROC’s viewpoint was a natural angle from which to analyze state policies. The shift in focus from the persecution of the ROC to the policies of the Soviets signaled a reevaluation of state actions from the state’s
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