Victims or Instigators?

Examining the Role of the Religious During the Soviet Union’s First Two Decades.

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A common historical conception in the West, held by scholar and layman alike, is that

once the atheistic Soviet Union came to power in 1922 religious leaders and adherents were

persecuted into submission. Such perceptions, however, have been carefully fostered by means

of purposeful historical obfuscation and ideological bias on the part of numerous Western anti-

communist intellectuals. In fact, initially, the USSR reacted rather passively towards the Church,

motivated predominantly by a strict adherence to Marxist ideology that blinded the Soviets to the

true power of religious believers. Each time the Church would engage in religiously motivated

counterrevolutionary attacks, the Soviets were forced to respond with increasingly harsh methods

of repression. Western revisionism, on the other hand, has asserted that the State alone was to

blame for the persecution of the Church and the seemingly unrelated famine that occurred due to

collectivization in the mid 1930s. Contrary to these popular beliefs, the Russian Orthodox

Church and other religious groups were not mere victims, but in many ways, the instigators to

both their own repression and to the crimes to which the Soviet government has traditionally

been assigned complete blame.

Due to the confrontation between the ideologies at the centre of the Cold War, much of

the West’s historiography has been purposefully filtered through an anti-communist lens. This is

particularly evident in writings that pre-date the opening of the Soviet archives by Gorbachev in

the late 1980s. Historian Glennys Young expands upon this accusation by highlighting what has

been referred to as the “Cold War consensus” in Western historical analysis – an intentional

obfuscation of facts in order to promote a certain ideology and discredit another.1 Such

obfuscation has primarily been achieved by omitting important historical precursors and motives

for events and redirecting the narrative to focus on a primary target to discredit. It has also often

1 Glennys Young, Power and the Sacred in Revolutionary Russia: Religious Activists in the Village, (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997) 253.

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been accomplished by obfuscating or ignoring the motivating role of religious beliefs, preferring

instead to attribute collective motives to those of individuals or political or economic entities.

Young describes an implicit assumption amongst many Western historians that the Soviets

merely spun propagandistic lies, whereas other more amenable, historical revolutionaries, such

as the early 19th century French, employed ideologies that should be a proper subject of historical

analysis.2 Young further highlights the popular study surrounding the early anti-religious

campaigns of the communist Bezbozhniki (The Godless) and the common Western perception

that their rhetoric is little more than “the linguistic crystallization of evil.”3 Despite the

prevalence of anti-communist perspectives and purposeful obfuscations in the vast body of

Soviet era Western historiography, a cross-analysis of several compiled histories of the first 20

years of the Soviet Union sheds light on the active role of the Russian Orthodox Church and its

adherents in regards to crimes which have had the responsibility popularly attributed solely to the

state.

Although, as Young previously highlighted, many Western historians dismiss Soviet

ideology as being unworthy of close analysis, an in depth examination of the Marxist-Leninist

position on religion provides a tremendous insight on the way the State reacted to the church and

its followers in its early years and why. Marx viewed religion as a historically transient

phenomenon, or part of the ‘superstructure,’ that arose out of the socio-economic base of

society.4 Because it was therefore bound to the socio-economic system of capitalist and pre-

capitalist exploitation, as a kind of crutch, Marx believed that religion was doomed to wither

2 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 253. 3 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 253. 4 Jane Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church: A Contemporary History, (London: Croom Helm, 1986), 251; George L. Kline, Religious and Anti-Religious Thought In Russia, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 131.

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away with the establishment of a non-exploitative, classless socio-economic system.5 What

would come to fill the gap of natural inquisition that religion had historically filled would be the

empirical sciences and secular attitudes and morality.6 Lenin closely adhered to Marx’s

assertions and in certain respects expanded upon them. While Lenin agreed with Marx that

religion was a capitalist “opiate” that kept people sedated and ignorant of the personal alienation

inflicted by capitalist oppression, he somewhat disagreed with the benign nature of the ideology

and saw religion as a superstition with a sinister social purpose.7 Effectively, this adherence to

Marxist-Leninist perspectives on religion would blind the Soviet leaders to the impact that

religious belief was capable of within their struggle to establish a communist society.

In accordance with this passive perspective, once the Bolsheviks seized power after the

October 1917 revolution, the Russian Orthodox Church actually enjoyed a brief period of

freedom. On November 5th, Church leaders were permitted to openly elect Patriarch Tikhon; an

act that had not been permitted since Peter the Great suppressed the Patriarchate and the

independence of the Church over 200 years earlier.8 Initially, Lenin preferred that religious

organizations be allowed to function openly, publicly and legally so that they were in the least

subject to a measure of supervision.9 Closing a church prematurely, he believed, would

inevitably result in the burgeoning of underground religious organizations.10 Furthermore, by

allowing religious life to continue in the Soviet Union, the state’s assertion that it was truly

5 Kline, Religious and Anti-Religious Thought, 131. 6 Kline, Religious and Anti-Religious Thought, 130. 7 Kline, Religious and Anti-Religious Thought, 140. 8 Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, 3. 9 William C. Fletcher, The Russian Orthodox Church Underground, 1917-1970, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 3. 10 Fletcher, Russian Orthodox Church Underground, 3.

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democratic, and permitted true freedom of conscience diminished the impact of any foreign

criticisms asserting the contrary.11

Patriarch Tikhon, however, was no fan of his apparent liberators and took every

opportunity to encourage his flock to resist any cooperation with the Bolsheviks. Further fuelling

his opposition was the 1918 Decree on the Separation of Church and State, which nationalized

Church property and guaranteed the right of both religious and antireligious propaganda.12 This

was a clear establishment on the part of the government of an ideological divide, but little was

enacted at this point that was not merely ‘in principle,’ other than the requisition of inventories

of Church assets.13 Church leaders did not have their voices taken away, the State merely

attempted to move them out of the religious sphere and into the political as equal members of the

newly established Soviets through legislation.14 Tikhon and the rural priests saw this as a clear

affront to both their power and their faith on the part of the Bolshevik ‘Antichrist,’ and used their

pulpits to denounce the Decree as “open persecution of the Orthodox Church, as well as of all

religious societies, whether Christian or not,” openly threatening the faithful who disobeyed his

perspective with excommunication.15

Asserting the aforementioned ‘Cold War consensus,’ historian William C. Fletcher

claimed that “[t]he Church itself, speaking officially or corporately, at no time indulged in an

ideological struggle against the new Government.”16 Fletcher believed that the Church’s early

resistance to the Bolsheviks during the revolutionary years was primarily due to the loss of

11 Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, 253-54. 12 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 2, 3. 13 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 56-59. 14 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 60. 15 Evgenia Kirichenko, Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior: It’s Creation, Destruction, and Rebirth 1813-1997, trans. By Thomas H. Hoisington and Sona S. Hoisington, (Moscow, 2012) p. 251-64. accessed online: http://www.thomashoisington.com/pdfs/Moscows_Cathedral_Kirichenko.pdf; Young, Power and the Sacred…, 70. 16 Fletcher, Russian Orthodox Church Underground, 19.

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privilege and the belief that the Bolsheviks took power through unethical means during the

October Revolution.17 While this is partially true, historically, rural priests held a tremendous

influence over their flock and did so through the employment and adaptation of religious ritual

and theology.18 In the latter half of the 19th century, parish priests were set up by the Tsarist

regime to be, in effect, mini tyrants who reigned over their village with an iron fist and forced to

espouse pro-tsarist propaganda.19 V.N. Panin, who was the tsarist Minister of Justice from 1841-

62 once remarked that the most important task of parish clergy was to remind peasants to

“zealously and continuously fulfil their duties to the state” both inside the walls of the church

and the peasants’ homes.20 There is little reason to believe that this well-established order

suddenly ceased once the Bolsheviks rose to power; rather, it merely shifted focus.

Though historians such as Fletcher argue, as did Marx, that the true motivating factor on

the part of the clergy was economic power, the actions that they took following the confiscation

of their economic holdings in 1918 highlight that they were more interested in the influential

power of control over the peasants as well as the maintenance of that control through the

continued manipulation of theological interpretation and ritual religious practice. Priests

commonly equated communism with the concept of the ‘common blanket,’ which implied

communal sleeping arrangements and wife sharing, no doubt a somewhat irksome suggestion to

puritanical Christians.21 Priests would also feed the susceptibility of the peasants to react based

on intense superstitions, thus making them easily coerced by the priests.22 Erratic weather

patterns, or the occasional meteorite was interpreted as a bad omen, and the priests would

17 Fletcher, Russian Orthodox Church Underground, 19. 18 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 252. 19 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 14. 20 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 14. 21 Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 46. 22 Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 53.

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reinforce their interpretations with apocalyptic rhetoric.23 Communism was represented as the

Antichrist on earth, and often when asked, peasants would deny the existence of communists

within their village, choosing instead to refer to them as ‘atheists’, which clearly highlights the

lens through which the peasants were predominantly viewing the world.24 In short, the Church

leaders were speaking the language that the peasants understood, and that language was littered

with demonization of the communists’ intentions.

Due in large part to the anti-state rhetoric fostered by the Church during the Civil War

period, the Bolsheviks decided to ramp up their efforts on the “cultural front” after consolidating

power.25 Partly due to weather, partly due to a lack of bureaucratic strength and infrastructure,

and partly due to the havoc wreaked by almost a decade of war, the Russian countryside fell into

the grips of a catastrophic famine by 1921.26 In order to aid the starving, the State called for the

confiscation of all remaining Church valuables.27 Patriarch Tikhon announced his cooperation

with regards to un-consecrated valuables, but resisted the expropriation of items specifically

consecrated for religious usage.28 No doubt the viewpoint on what comprised and quantified

‘consecrated’ valuables differed greatly between both sides. When the State pushed back, Tikhon

called for riots, which erupted all over and, subsequently, the State began to try Church leaders

for sedition.29 At the Tenth Party Congress, in March of 1921, there was a call for intensified

antireligious agitation and propaganda in order to counter the sedition emanating from the

Church leaders.30

23 Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 46-47. 24 Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 44, 49. 25 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 2. 26 Fletcher, Russian Orthodox Church Underground, 26. 27 Fletcher, Russian Orthodox Church Underground, 26-27. 28 Fletcher, Russian Orthodox Church Underground, 26-27. 29 Fletcher, Russian Orthodox Church Underground, 26-27. 30 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 2-3.

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In a temporarily successful attempt to stifle Lenin’s prediction of the church scurrying

underground, the State sponsored the creation of the ‘Renovationist (obnovlencheskaya) Church,’

or ‘Living Church,’ which was led by former Orthodox Priests who publically declared their

loyalty to the socialist cause.31 The establishment of the Living Church in 1923 mirrored the

State’s parallel attempts to bolster the economy through the establishment of arguably capitalist

policies through the New Economic Policy (NEP). Just as Marx described capitalism to be a

necessary step on the path to communism, the State most likely realized that encouraging a

socialist friendly Church would be preferable to the aftereffects incited through an all out

elimination of the existing religious institutions, and therefore a more effective step on the path

towards State endorsed atheism. The Living Church was given permission to maintain a central

administration, permission to publish, and permission to organize a theological academy.32 One

of the first actions of the Living Church, no doubt at the behest of the State, was to publically

announce the deposition of Patriarch Tikhon who was, at that time, under house arrest.33 The

Living Church found temporary success due to the support from the State as well as the

confusion within the ranks of existing Orthodox laity, but would quickly fizzle out and

completely dissolve by the start of World War 2.34

In April of 1923, the Communist Party issued a directive that called for intensive

antireligious activism what would cause workers and peasants to discard religion and embrace a

scientific worldview; a clear sign that the religious were proving to be more of a roadblock to

progress than Marx or Lenin had predicted.35 Two organizations would take the lead in this

crusade, the Society of the Friends of the Newspaper Bezbozhnik (1924-25) and the League of

31 Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, 4. 32 Fletcher, Russian Orthodox Church Underground, 32. 33 Kirichenko, Moscow’s Cathedral…, 262. 34 Fletcher, Russian Orthodox Church Underground, 33. 35 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 3.

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the Godless (1925-41).36 The tactics employed by these groups, collectively referred to as the

Bezbozhniki, is referred to by Young as the ideology of “militarized socialism,” consistent with

the developing general concept that communism needed to be achieved by ‘jumping the gun,’ so

to speak and forcing into existence or skipping altogether the prescribed stages that Marx

established in order to bring about a communist society.37 Ultimately, the campaigns of the

Bezbozhniki to eliminate the foundations of religious life in the countryside would fail during the

NEP period due to the fact that it was hampered by structural inadequacy, indifference and often

incompetence amongst its ranks, and ineffective and even counterproductive tactics.38 In fact,

their efforts had the opposite effect of catalysing the remaining clergy and laity to defend their

religious interests; similarly, antireligious debates sparked by the Bezbozhniki only stimulated the

villagers’ interest in religious answers to their questions.39

The traditional structure of the Church had been effectively suppressed within the first

few years of the NEP, which ultimately forced laity to go underground, as Lenin had feared. As

early as 1920, many monasteries reorganized themselves superficially into working collectives or

artels.40 Other disbanded Church leaders worked their way into the village Soviet’s as a means of

hijacking the political process, maintaining their power over the peasants through theology and

ritual, and delegitimizing the state from within.41 Church leaders would frequently hijack their

regional Soviet voting processes by inducing the faithful majority into spontaneous prayer or

song.42 Such displays became so widespread through the Soviets that correspondents for

36 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 3. 37 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 254. 38 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 274. 39 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 274. 40 Fletcher, Russian Orthodox Church Underground, 26; Young, Power and the Sacred…, 70. 41 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 252, 273, 276. 42 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 248; A 1927 protocol of the Smolensk Provincial Party Organization warned that: “In connection with … international relations and the growing threat of war, the activity of clerical and sectarian organizations has especially quickened in recent time. Religious organizations are attempting to disrupt

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Bezbozhnik wrote titles such as, “not a village soviet, but a chapel” (1925), or “not a village

soviet, but a cathedral of believers” (1927).43

By the time Stalin had consolidated his power, brought an end to the NEP, and had begun

to institute collective farming in his desire to ‘jump the gun’ on every State level

organizationally, the standard line in antireligious State circles was that religious ‘ideas’ were

used “in every possible way by class enemies … in their battle against the building of socialism

and against Soviet power.”44 Counterrevolutionary rhetoric began to be spread by means of

rumour from village to village, and the substance of these rumours were heavily draped in

religious ritual and iconography.45 Again, the most prominent of these rumours were that the

Soviet state was the Antichrist who was initiating his rule on earth through the collective farm,

and that, in turn, was a sign of the impending apocalypse.46 Though effectively their positions of

power were eliminated, there is little doubt that former priests and laity played a tremendous role

in the spreading of these rumours, as their status would have lent credence to their

believability.47 One antireligious activist in the Middle Volga region reported that,

“everywhere priests are spreading the legend that in Penza at the Maiden’s Convent a light issuing from the cross is burning day and night, and it is necessary to say that the people go there, the devil knows how many, to look at those miracles. Besides this [the priests] say that soon the Roman pope will come, the government will fall, and tall the communists and collective farmers will be crushed.”48

elections to the soviets, cooperatives, to present their own candidates … and in general are a serious brake in the path of socialist economic development … All these facts bear witness to the aspiration of religious organizations to use the difficulties and contradictions of economic growth in the USSR for their own interests.” (Young, Power and the Sacred…, 263) 43 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 258. 44 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 265. 45 Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 61. 46 Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 235. 47 Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 61. 48 Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 62.

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The State believed that the originators of these counterrevolutionary rumours were the

Priests and the Kulaks, as only they were capable of holding such ideas.49 Such an assertion

provides further backing to the previous assertion that Marxist doctrine blinded State leaders and

shaped their employment of certain descriptive terminologies over others. Lenin transferred

Marx’s assertion of capitalism as the necessary precursor, or ‘womb’ of socialism onto the

Russian countryside by maintaining that a socialist countryside would be born from the victory

of the poor peasants over the Kulak.50 The term Kulak (fist) referred to the greedy peasants who

(in theory and claim) made their livings off of the backs of the poor and loomed as a symbol not

only of the lingering shadow of capitalism but also of the failure of socialism to take root in the

countryside.51 Due to the vague nature of its definition and the wide-ranging application of its

use as a defamation, historians have greatly debated the true meaning of ‘Kulak,’ though the

common consensus seems to be one that focuses on economic status. Arguably, however, the

term ‘Kulak’ always referred to rural church leaders as they predominantly held positions of

authority over the peasants by means of both land ownership before the Bolshevik revolution,

and religious influence afterwards. Perhaps it is most likely that Lenin employed the term ‘Kulak’

rather than directly attributing blame to the clergy in order to reinforce Marx’s theories of

economic class struggle while ignoring or diverting the acknowledgement of power held by

religion.

The usage of such terminology gradually evolved over time. In the early 1920’s the

government referred to the rural clergy as ‘tserkovnik’, which had previously been used to refer

to a junior deacon or a person of ecclesiastical calling, but was not ordained.52 Eventually,

49 Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 62. 50 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 270. 51 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 261. 52 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 255-56.

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tserkovnik came to imply both religious as well as a political affiliation within the same figure.53

By the late 1920s the tserkovnik’s were increasingly being conflated with the Kulaks.54 By 1927,

the Bezbozhniki were claiming that the Kulaks had “seduced” the clergy to campaign against

communist candidates during elections to the soviets and attributed blame for the aforementioned

employment of religious ritual in order to sabotage the Soviet electoral process as being

organized by Kulaks rather than priests.55 By 1928-29, the Bezbozhniki had collapsed the

conceptual boundary between priest and Kulak even further.56 By dismissing the need to

investigate the actual socio-economic backgrounds of particular priests, the Bezbozhniki

appeared to assume that clerical standing alone was enough to identify a Kulak.57 Furthermore,

Soviet propaganda posters from this period clearly depict this conflation between clergy and

Kulak. Almost all depictions of Kulaks are conjoined with visual representations of the Church

or religious iconography.58 For all intents and purposes, the Kulak and the clergy were one in the

same, though both communists of the past and many western historians of the present continue to

differentiate the two.

Stalin’s process of ‘dekulakization’ went hand-in-hand with his plans for collectivization,

encouraged by the forms of both active and passive resistance that the alleged Kulaks engaged in.

Endemic in collective farming were such typical peasant acts of passive resistance as foot

dragging, shirking duties, negligence, theft, and disassembling equipment.59 Peasants also

created family farms within the collectives by means of maintaining strip forming and the pre-

53 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 256. 54 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 259. 55 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 259. 56 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 260. 57 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 260. 58 SEE IMAGES #1-5: 59 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 238.

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existing borders within the collective farms in order to sustain themselves over the collective.60

More extremist actions included what was referred to as razbazarivanie, or the “squandering” of

livestock and other property through destruction and sale.61 In October, 1929, an American

reporter named Carroll Binder interviewed the leader of a group of 5,000 Mennonite Kulaks who

were emigrating after having been expropriated from their prosperous farms and denied

permission to resume farming.62 When asked what the groups’ objection to collective farming

was, the man replied:

“We consider it serfdom and believe it impossible to operate such farms on a paying basis. The farmers will be permanently in debt to the government for equipment and seed. Meanwhile we are unable to educate our children religiously. Therefore, we will never join the collective farms.”63

Binder further recalled a gruesome extremist incident wherein a leading female member of the

Novoiakuzhkino Soviet was tied to a stake and burned to death for engaging in the forcible

collection of grain for public purposes.64 According to historian Lynne Viola, passive and active

resistance served as a powerful agent in forcing the state to modify and adapt some of its most

coercive policies.65 Peasant passive resistance, working in combination with an oppressive,

overly centralized, poorly managed, and underfunded system of collective farming, played a key

role in hobbling Soviet agriculture and hindering its further development and modernization.66 In

addition to this, the counterrevolutionary actions of the church, conflated in terminology as the

‘Kulaks’ ultimately share the responsibility with the State for the terrible famine that occurred in

1932-33 as a result of the failure of collectivization.

60 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 238. 61 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 236; Carroll Binder, “Kulak Fight on Collectivization Recalled As Key To Red Farm Ills” The Washington Post and Times Herald (1959-1973); August 19, 1955. 40. 62 Binder, “Kulak Fight on Collectivization…” 63 Binder, “Kulak Fight on Collectivization…” 64 Binder, “Kulak Fight on Collectivization…” 65 Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 238. 66 Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 238.

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Glennys Young perfectly summed up the entire argument that has been presented here

when she wrote:

“[O]ne must recognized that Russian villagers were not simply passive recipients of state actions … religious belief and practice of Russian villagers actually shaped both rural and national politics during the period of [the NEP], thus, religious belief and practice served as an active agent of political mobilization and transformation.”67

Ultimately, the Soviet Union’s increasingly repressive responses towards the religious inspired

counterinsurgency only elicited the opposite response to what they had intended. The 1937

census turned up the awkward fact that 57% of Soviet citizens, nearly 80,000,000 people, were

ready to declare themselves “religious believers.”68 The Church’s reintegration of religion and

politics following its initial organizational disintegration underscores why the ‘Bukharin

alternative’ of allowing Soviet Villagers to “grow into” socialism, did not seem feasible to Stalin

and other Party leaders.69 The fact that religious activity changed the face of village politics

makes Stalin’s decision to proceed with collectivization all the more understandable; furthermore,

the acts of sabotage and resistance highlight how the blame for collectivization’s failure and

incitement of famine does not lie solely with the State.

67 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 4. 68 Kline, Religious and Anti-Religious Thought, 151; Fletcher, Russian Orthodox Church Underground, 81. 69 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 277.

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IMAGE #1:

“In Our Collective Farm, No Place For Priests or Kulaks”70 70 Artist Unknown, “In Our Collective Farm, No Place For Priests or Kulaks.” Soviet Propaganda Poster (Public Domain), JPEG, Accessed Online: http://rayuzwyshyn.net/dovzhenko/Earth.htm

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IMAGE #2:

“The Clergy Support The Kulaks - Clean Collective Farms, Destroy The Kulaks.”71 71 Artist Unknown, “The Clergy Support The Kulaks – Clean Collective Farms, Destroy the Kulaks” Soviet Propaganda Poster (Public Domain), JPEG, Accessed Online: http://www.obskura.co.uk/religion-p1/

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IMAGE #3:

“Strike the Kulak Who Is Campaigning For Crop Reduction”72 72 Artist Unknown, “Strike The Kulak Who Is Campaigning For Crop Reduction.” Soviet Propaganda Poster (Public Domain), JPEG, Accessed Online: https://dystopianf2012.wikispaces.com/Kulaks+and+Collectivization

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IMAGE #4:

“The Struggle Against Religion – The Struggle For Socialism!!!”73 (Note the Religious figures in the lead of the protest with the generic Kulak

Figure snickering in the rear.)

73 Artist Unknown, “The Struggle Against Religion – The Struggle For Socialism!!!” Soviet Propaganda Poster (Public Domain), JPEG, Accessed Online: http://thecharnelhouse.org/2013/03/01/soviet-antireligious- propaganda/#jp-carousel-6354

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IMAGE #5:

“Religion is the Narcotic of the People”74

(The “Bible” Verse reads “The Church is a Kulak Prop./ Endure the Kulak Levy.”)

74 Young, Power and the Sacred…, 104; Also Accessed Online: https://misebogland.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/soviet-anti-religious-art/

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Bibliography

Binder, Carroll. “Kulak Fight on Collectivization Recalled as Key to Red Farm Ills” The Washington Post and Times Herald (1959-1973); August 19, 1955. p. 40

Davies, R.W. The Soviet Collective Farm, 1929-1930. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980.

Ellis, Jane. The Russian Orthodox Church: A Contemporary History. London: Croom Helm, 1986.

Fletcher, William C. The Russian Orthodox Church Underground, 1917-1970. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.

Johnston, Joseph. God’s Secret Armies Within The Soviet Empire. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1954.

Kirichenko, Evgenia. Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior: It’s Creation, Destruction, and Rebirth 1813-1997. Translation by Thomas H. Hoisington and Sona S. Hoisington. Moscow: 2012. Accessed online: http://www.thomashoisington.com/pdfs/ Moscows_Cathedral_Kirichenko.pdf Kline, George L. Religious and Anti-Religious Thought In Russia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.

Nelson, Lars-Erik. “50 Years of Atheism Fail To Kill Russian Religion” The Washington Post and Times Herald (1959-1973); July 30, 1967. p. A31

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“Russians Return to Religion, But Not to Church.” Pew Research Center. February 10, 2014. Accessed Online: http://www.pewforum.org/2014/02/10/russians-return-to-religion-but- not-to-church/ Sousa, Mario. “Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union.” The Stalin Society. March 7, 1999. Accessed Online: http://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc9912/lies.htm Viola, Lynne. Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Young, Glennys. Power and the Sacred In Revolutionary Russia: Religious Activists in the Village. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997