On measures to strengthen anti-religious work
Archive: RGASPI. F. 17. Op. 3.D. 723.L. 9-11.
Appendix No. 1 to item 4, ave. PB No. 61.
Secret
On measures to strengthen anti-religious work.
(The final version, adopted by the PB commission on the basis of the PB decree of January 24, 1929, Protocol No. 61, p. 4 ).
1 . Despite the revitalization of the activities of religious organizations and their continuing attempts to adapt to the changed social conditions, the Central Committee states that the process of the elimination of religiosity is taking place in the USSR, which is characterized by the decomposition of old forms of Christianity and partly Islam, an increase in the number of members of the Union of Atheists, and a slowdown in the growth of sectarianism in some districts, the departure of workers and part of the peasants from the celebration of religious holidays, the gradual introduction of new forms of everyday life among the peasantry, the continuous growth of trust in the Soviet school, a decrease in the number and decline of the authority of confessional schools in the East, active support by teachers of anti-religious education in schools, the strengthening of the social movement of workers and peasants in favor of closing prayer institutions, etc.
At the same time, the intensification of socialist construction and the socialist offensive against the kulak-NEP elements provokes the resistance of the bourgeois-capitalist strata, which finds its vivid expression on the religious front, where there is a revival of various religious organizations, often blocking each other, using the legal position and traditional authority of the church. ...
Church and religious organizations use the difficulties of socialist construction in order to mobilize the reactionary and unconscious elements of the country and counter-offensive against the measures of the Soviet government and the Communist Party.
The Central Committee draws special attention to the fact that the activity of some religious organizations has been intensifying lately, even in some workers' districts. The influx of new cadres of workers from the countryside into industry and construction work undoubtedly brings the influence of village moods, and the presence of economic difficulties intensifies this influence, causing such phenomena as fees for the construction of churches in Sobinka and other points of the Vladimir province, at the Yartsevskaya manufactory in Smolensk Gubernia, in the Perm and Kuban districts, etc., in some places the massive involvement of workers in sectarian organizations, in particular, the creation of Khrmstomolsk evangelical and Baptist circles, brotherhoods and "sisterships", etc.
With the intensification of the class struggle in the countryside, as one of the forms of this class struggle, the activity of religious organizations among the reactionary and unconscious strata of the peasantry is especially intensified. Members of religious organizations take an active part in the anti-Soviet work of the kulaks, often using church councils as instruments of their influence in re-election to councils, campaigning against the surrender of grain to procurement bodies, against the Soviet school and measures for collectivization and socialist reorganization of agriculture, against the activities of the party, the Komsomol , the youth movement, our work among women and against other social and cultural events of the Soviet government and the party.
The activity of sectarian organizations - evangelists, Baptists, Adventists, etc., as well as Catholic organizations associated with the capitalist organizations of Europe and America, using more sophisticated methods of struggle for influence, adapting to the social changes and shifts that have occurred in the country and often covering up their activities a sign of collective farms, sometimes using state funds and loans.
2 . The only anti-religious organization in the country, the Union of Atheists, has undoubtedly achieved positive results in recent years, has grown in numbers, created around itself a certain active of non-party workers and atheists peasants, strengthened the publication and distribution of anti-religious periodic and non-periodic literature and improved its quality, developed more carefully measures of anti-religious propaganda based on the development of a scientific materialist worldview.
However, the Central Committee considers it necessary to draw attention to the fact that the “Union of Atheists” at the present time is not yet a sufficiently mass organization and a sufficiently significant force capable of powerfully resisting the activity of religious organizations. Relatively, it is still small, not growing enough at the expense of non-party working strata, women, youth and the poor and middle peasantry and workers of large enterprises, insufficiently centralized, little connected locally with various scientific institutions, laboratories, museums, voluntary societies, etc. ., weakly involved the progressive rural intelligentsia, natural-scientific and artistic forces in anti-religious work, not using the general party and Soviet press in the localities to fight religion.
The Central Committee of the party draws attention to the fact that party, Komsomol and other public organizations provide the "Union of Atheists" and the cause of anti-religious propaganda too little support (out of 128 party committees in January-June 1928, 64 did not discuss anti-religious propaganda at all), and party committees , where this issue was under discussion, in most cases was limited to the adoption of resolutions of a general nature, without ensuring the actual possibility of their implementation. The Komsomol pays almost no attention to systematic anti-religious propaganda. In the overwhelming majority of trade unions, anti-religious work is not carried out, and in some places there is a neutralist attitude towards the issue of religion. In the Red Army, there is also no systematic mass anti-religious propaganda. The anti-religious press is still insignificant, and the general periodicals (newspapers and magazines) do not pay sufficient attention to the issues of anti-religious propaganda. In the cinema, theaters and other forms of mass artistic influence and education, sufficient attention has not yet been paid to the tasks of anti-religious propaganda. Thus, religious organizations do not meet with serious opposition to their activities.
3... The Central Committee draws attention to the fact that the success of anti-religious propaganda is hampered by the fact that in the ranks of party members, Komsomol members, members of trade unions and other Soviet organizations, there is an underestimation of such phenomena as the strengthening of the reactionary influence of religious organizations not only on the broad masses of workers and peasants, but where, especially in the Muslim East and Belarus, and on the lower apparatus of Soviet power; underestimation of such phenomena as the political speeches of sectarians, as the development of the religious press, as the saturation of religious and mystical ideas of fiction, as a wide spread of the economic and organizational activities of sectarian societies (the development of sectarian cooperatives, sectarian funds for mutual assistance with them, work on contempt, charity, etc. .); how the work of religious organizations among women and children; as the penetration of clergymen into public organizations; as the lack of struggle with the economic services of Soviet organizations for religious holidays, etc.
But even where there is a struggle against religious influences, it is often carried out incorrectly. On the one hand, instead of in-depth anti-religious propaganda among the masses, falling under the influence of religious organizations, propaganda closely linked to the whole of socialist construction, a superficial anti-clerical struggle is waged against the priests; in some places the indiscriminate application of administrative measures takes place: the closure of churches, the administrative prohibition of the performance of religious rites (in the East) without a serious public need and without serious necessary preparation of the public opinion of the working people. This sometimes not only does not weaken, but further enhances the influence of the clergy and sectarians.
On the other hand, there is often a different kind of wrong approach. Any application of administrative measures against sectarian or religious societies is considered unacceptable. This is used by the leaders of the sects, deploying all the time under the banner of religious propaganda, anti-Soviet propaganda, calling for non-observance of Soviet laws and orders of the Soviet government. Such activities, of course, cannot be tolerated. But every administrative measure taken in order to stop such activities should be accompanied by an explanation to the working masses that administrative measures are being taken against anti-Soviet, and not religious activities of religious societies, are not "persecutions" of faith, persecution for the very practice of religious worship.
At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish between the activities of the top of religious organizations and the religious sentiments of the masses. For the top of the religious organizations, religious beliefs often serve only as a cover for their anti-Soviet activities. The religious sentiments of the masses are in most cases rooted in the slow pace of development of socialist construction. We must learn to use skillful agitation to weaken the influence of the leaders and draw the masses into the broadest participation in Soviet construction, waking them up and organizing them on this basis around the Soviets.
4 . In order to overcome the noted shortcomings in the field of combating religion, the Central Committee proposes:
- to infuse members of their organizations - especially those who are able to conduct anti-religious and cultural-educational work among the masses - into the Union of Atheists, the party and the Komsomol must oblige their members to recruit non-party workers and peasants into this union and take an active part in the struggle against religion. Party and Komsomol organizations should pay special attention to the widespread organization of anti-religious propaganda among women, relying in this work on the activities of the women's departments, involving delegates 'meetings in an active struggle against religion, strengthening anti-religious work in the workers' centers of influence of sectarian and other religious organizations, party and Komsomol organizations should in the countryside, to properly direct the struggle against religion in collective and state farms, among the agricultural laborers and the rural poor,
b) A particularly difficult task in the matter of anti-religious propaganda falls on the trade unions, which by their structure are in a special position - they also include religious workers, therefore, all the more energy, perseverance, and persistence in staging anti-religious propaganda are required from the trade unions. The factions of trade unions must decisively overcome the indifferent attitude observed in a number of cases towards the issues of anti-religious education of trade union members, remembering that without fighting the religiosity of the workers, trade unions cannot fulfill their main task - to be schools of communism. Particular attention should be paid to the anti-religious education of women (the union of textiles, the union of narpit) and the backward strata of the working class (recent migrants from the countryside, seasonal workers, the unemployed - the union of agricultural forest workers, etc.), providing premises for clubs,
c) The factions of the councils need to take the initiative in the development of a number of events, around which it was possible to organize broad masses to fight religion, the correct use of the former monastery and church buildings and lands, the establishment of powerful agricultural communes, agricultural stations, rental points, industrial enterprises, hospitals, schools, school dormitories, etc., not allowing under any circumstances the existence of religious organizations in these monasteries. Moreover, the discussion of issues related to the nature of the use of all these premises and farms should be raised at broad mass meetings, and not only decided in the governing bodies of the councils (executive committees).
d) The People's Commissariat of Education needs to take a more decisive course in overcoming the elements of school neutralism towards religion, which is expressed in the so-called non-religious education, instructing it to provide in a most serious way anti-religious training and retraining of teachers, especially teachers of advanced schools, to introduce an appropriate anti-religious cycle in technical schools and pedagogical universities, to introduce this into their correspondence courses, having developed methods of anti-religious propaganda in the school, to make appropriate amendments to the school programs, paying special attention to second-level schools, allocating special funds through the Glavpolitprosveta, Glavprofobra and Glavsotsvos. To set the task of organizing in the near future an anti-religious department in the IKGI for the training of highly qualified anti-religious people,
e) To recognize the need for regular and deeper coverage of the issues of the struggle against religion in the periodical press, especially in newspapers and mass magazines.
f) Glavpolitprosvet to pay special attention to the development and strengthening of the network of political education institutions in the places of the greatest influence of sectarian and other religious organizations: reading rooms, folk houses, Timiryazev's and anti-religious museums and offices, libraries, supplying these institutions with movie vehicles, radio installations organizing a cycle of anti-religious lectures and supplying them with anti-religious literature.
g) To support and encourage art workers to create anti-religious theater and film plays, fiction, paintings and other works of art, avoiding bullshit and works that could exacerbate religious fanaticism.
h) Glavlit, while supporting the publishing work of the Central Social Security Service and local “Unions of Atheists”, at the same time decisively fight against the tendency of religious publishing houses, both to mass dissemination and to go beyond strictly religious issues in their propaganda. Likewise, fight against the publication of mystical works.
i) Draw the attention of the State Publishing House to the inadmissibility of publishing mystical works and reprinting works of art with pronounced religious and mystical tendencies. With regard to the classics, they should not allow such works as mass literature to be published. Pay special attention to the translation and publication of anti-religious fiction for children and youth.
j) The Committee on Press Affairs should include the publishing house of the Union of Atheists in the top-priority paper supply plan and stop supplying religious publishing houses and organizations with paper.
k) The People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs and the OGPU should not allow religious societies to violate Soviet legislation in any way, bearing in mind that religious organizations (church councils, mutavalliats, synagogue societies, etc.) are the only legally operating counter-revolutionary organization that has influence on the masses. The NKVD draws attention to the fact that residential and commercial premises are still leased for houses of worship, often in workers' districts. Schools, courts, civil registration must be completely removed from the hands of the clergy. Party committees and executive committees need to raise the question of using the registry offices in order to combat clergy, church rituals and remnants of the old way of life.
l) Cooperative organizations and collective farms pay attention to the need to master vegetarian canteens and other cooperative associations created by religious organizations and sectarians under the guise of handicraft-industrial and other cooperative associations. Kustpromsoyuz to attend to the creation of new handicrafts in the areas of manufacture of religious items (icon painting, etc.).
m) PUR should include anti-religious propaganda issues in the daily educational work in the Red Army, aiming to train active anti-religious people from the Red Army soldiers for the village, linking anti-religious propaganda with the discussion of economic and other issues concerning the village and highlighting in detail the class role of religion and religious organizations in tsarism, as well as the role of the anti-religious organization in capitalist countries, especially during the imperialist war, civil war. It is necessary in the general system of political education to pay attention to a more profound atheistic education of the command staff.
n) Fractions of voluntary societies (especially ODN, Osoaviakhim, Tekhmass, Combating Alcoholism, Yunnat, Chief. Society, etc.) in educational work should also pay attention to the issues of combating religion, linking it with their main tasks.
o) Soviet and economic organizations decisively get rid of the practice of economic services for religious holidays, and those organizations that use the labor of sectarians of the Labor Army should allocate funds for political education among the labor army, drawing the attention of the Union of Atheists and the Political Education to the need to organize anti-religious work among them.
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