State-Funded Erasure

League of Militant Atheists

This was not just separating church and state. It was an aggressive, state-funded war against belief.

• Organization: The government created the “League of Militant Atheists,” a group dedicated to mocking religion. Their newspaper, Bezbozhnik (The Godless), published cartoons of Jesus and priests to humiliate them.

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• Destruction: The most famous act of cultural erasure was demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow (1931). It was the largest Orthodox church in the world. They blew it up with dynamite and turned the holy site into a giant open-air swimming pool to mock believers.

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• Clergy Purge: Over 100,000 priests, monks, and nuns were executed. Thousands were frozen to death in Siberia or shot in mass executions.
• Warehouses: Surviving churches were desecrated. Altars were used as toilets, and sanctuaries were turned into grain storage or museums of atheism.

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Social Engineering

Attack on Family Unit

The Bolsheviks viewed the traditional family as a “bourgeois” prison that prevented loyalty to the state.

• Alexandra Kollontai: A leading Bolshevik feminist, she preached the “glass of water theory.” She argued sex should be as simple and casual as drinking a glass of water. The goal was to break the emotional bond of marriage.
• State Children: The ultimate goal was for the state to raise children, not parents. A popular Soviet hero was Pavlik Morozov, a 13-year-old boy who denounced his own father to the secret police. He was held up as the ideal citizen: one who loves the State more than his own blood.
• Laws: Russia became the first country to legalize abortion on demand (1920) and made divorce a simple mail-in process. The result was social chaos and millions of homeless orphans (“bezprizorni”) roaming the streets.

Genocide of Tradition

Decossackization

While they attacked priests and fathers, they also targeted specific cultures that were too strong to be broken.

• Target: The Cossacks were a warrior caste living in the Don and Kuban regions. They were deeply religious, fiercely independent, and loyal to tradition. They represented everything the Bolsheviks hated.
• Secret Decree: On January 24, 1919, the Central Committee issued a secret decree ordering “mass terror against rich Cossacks, exterminating them to the last man.”
• Method: It wasn’t just killing soldiers. It was burning villages, deporting women and children, and renaming their lands.

The Counter-Religion

Symbolism and Substitution

You cannot just remove a culture; you have to replace it. The Bolsheviks created a “counter-religion.”

• Red Corners: In every Russian peasant’s home, there was traditionally an “Icon Corner” with images of Christ. The Bolsheviks ordered these replaced with “Red Corners”—shrines featuring photos of Lenin and Marx.

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• New Holidays: Christmas was banned. Instead, they celebrated “Revolutionary Days.”
• Star vs. Cross: As noted in previous lessons, the Red Star was placed on top of the Kremlin towers, physically replacing the crosses that had looked over Moscow for centuries.

The Conclusion

Summary

The 1920s in Russia was a period of spiritual apocalypse. The regime understood that to control a human being completely, you must cut their roots. By destroying the Church, breaking the family, and wiping out independent cultures like the Cossacks, the Bolsheviks created a vacuum that could only be filled by the State.

Daniel Peris, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless. Details methods used to dismantle the church.
Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia. Explores state intrusion into the family and the story of Pavlik Morozov.
Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution. The definitive academic source on “Decossackization.”
Decree of the Central Committee: On the Decossackization (January 24, 1919).
Alexandra Kollontai, Communism and the Family (1920). Outlines plan to replace traditional family with collective upbringing.
Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars (January 23, 1918): On the Separation of Church from State and School from Church. (The legal act stripping the Church of property rights).
Secret Directive of the Orgburo (January 24, 1919): Circular Letter on the Decossackization. (The explicit order to “exterminate” the Cossack elite and deport the rest).
The Code on Marriage, the Family, and Guardianship (1918 & 1926): Official Soviet Law Code. (Legalized abortion, “postcard divorce,” and removed the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children).
Patriarch Tikhon’s Anathema (January 19, 1918): Official Proclamation of the Russian Orthodox Church. (Excommunicated the Bolsheviks, calling them “monsters of the human race”).
Komsomol Resolution (1929): On the Intensification of Anti-Religious Work. (Orders the formation of “shock brigades” to destroy icons and close churches).
Daniel Peris: Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless (Cornell University Press).
Wendy Goldman: Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936 (Cambridge University Press).
Shane O’Rourke: The Warriors of the Steppe: A Military History of the Cossacks (Palgrave Macmillan).
Peter Holquist: Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 1914-1921 (Harvard University Press).
Richard Stites: Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (Oxford University Press).
Nina Tumarkin: Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia (Harvard University Press).
Orlando Figes: The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia (Metropolitan Books).
Alexandra Kollontai: Communism and the Family (1920 Pamphlet).