How Faith Survived Seventy-Four Years of State Atheism

The Soviet Union's seventy-four-year experiment in state atheism was unprecedented in scope and brutality, yet religion not only survived but eventually revived with astonishing vigor. Sandra West's Religion and the Soviet State offers a meticulously researched account of this collision between ideology and faith, revealing how an aggressively atheist state sought to eradicate spiritual belief across its vast territories while millions of believers adapted, resisted, and endured.

What the Book Is About

The book spans twenty-five chapters, moving chronologically from the Marxist-Leninist critique of religion through the Bolshevik Revolution's radical decrees, Stalin's "atheist five-year plan," the Great Purge, wartime rapprochement, Khrushchev's space-age anti-religious campaigns, Brezhnev's "slow strangulation," and finally the dramatic religious revival under Gorbachev and after 1991. West casts a wide net, examining the Russian Orthodox Church, Islam in Central Asia and the Caucasus, the Catholic and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Churches, Protestant communities (Baptists, Evangelicals, Pentecostals), Judaism, and minority faiths including Lutheranism, Buddhism, Jehovah's Witnesses, and indigenous Shamanism. The work balances top-down policy analysis with ground-level lived experience, drawing on legislative records, propaganda materials, and the stories of clandestine believers. It is written for readers who want a comprehensive, non-polemical history of religion under Soviet rule — scholars, students, and general readers interested in twentieth-century history, religious studies, or the dynamics of state power and civil society.

The Ideological Engine: Marxism-Leninism as Anti-Religious Blueprint

West begins by grounding the Soviet campaign in its intellectual origins. Marx's famous characterization of religion as "the opium of the people" was, she explains, "a profound analytical statement within his broader critique of capitalism" — religion offered illusory happiness that discouraged revolutionary action. Lenin intensified this view, calling religion "spiritual gin" and linking it directly to the tsarist autocracy. The Bolsheviks therefore treated religion not as a private matter but as a political competitor: "The Party could not tolerate any rival claim to truth or authority, especially one that offered an alternative vision of morality, community, and purpose." This ideological framework justified the systematic dismantling of religious institutions from the revolution's earliest days.

Islam's Paradox: Repression and the Rise of "Unofficial" Practice

One of the book's most striking sections traces Islam's trajectory across Central Asia and the Caucasus. The state closed mosques, abolished Qazi courts, nationalized waqf endowments, and executed thousands of imams — reducing an estimated 25,000 mosques in 1917 to roughly 500 by the 1970s. Yet the Hujum campaign against veiling («paranja» and «pardah») backfired: "Forced unveiling often led to violence against these women by conservative elements in their own communities, or even retaliatory attacks from activists. Ironically, in some areas, the forced unveiling campaigns led to a paradoxical increase in the popularity of Islamic veiling practices, as they became an act of cultural and religious defiance against the atheist state." Meanwhile, "unofficial" Islam flourished through clandestine makans, secret mazar pilgrimages, and family-based transmission of the Quran, often with the tacit tolerance of local Communist officials from Muslim backgrounds.

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church: Liquidation and the Catacombs

West devotes a full chapter to the UGCC, which the Soviet regime viewed as a triple threat — Catholic, Ukrainian nationalist, and a rival to the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1946, the NKVD orchestrated the "Council of Lviv," a "sham synod" that declared the Union of Brest null and void and forcibly "reunified" the UGCC with the Moscow Patriarchate. Bishops like Metropolitan Josyf Slipyj spent decades in the gulag. Yet the Church survived underground: "Secret seminaries trained new clergy in private homes, and clandestine Masses were celebrated in forests, apartments, and remote areas, often at immense risk." This "Catacomb Church" became "one of the largest and most resilient clandestine religious organizations in the entire Soviet Union," a testament to communal solidarity and the intertwining of faith with national identity.

Women as the Quiet Custodians of Faith

A recurring theme across denominations is the disproportionate role of women in sustaining religious life. In the Russian Orthodox Church, women outnumbered men "by a ratio of four or five to one," leading to the saying, "The white scarves saved the Church." Muslim women preserved Islamic knowledge through clandestine girls' maktabs and domestic rituals. Protestant communities were 70-80% female, with women serving as worship leaders, prophetesses, and «samizdat» publishers. Jewish women became "the guardians of Judaism" in the home, organizing Passover seders and transmitting tradition. Soviet propaganda alternately depicted religious women as "naïve dupes" or "depraved fanatics," but West shows them as strategic actors who "negotiate their relationship with religion" and ensure intergenerational continuity.

From "Slow Strangulation" to Sudden Revival: The Gorbachev Turning Point

The Brezhnev era replaced terror with bureaucratic suffocation — the CRA denied legal personhood to religious bodies, controlled clergy appointments, and embedded KGB informers in hierarchies. Yet the system cracked under Gorbachev. The 1988 Millennium of the Baptism of Rus' became a watershed: Gorbachev allowed "widespread public celebrations, including religious services, cultural events, and academic conferences, unprecedented in their scale and openness." His meeting with Patriarch Pimen signaled that "believers are Soviet citizens, and they have the right to full enjoyment of their rights." The 1990 Law on Freedom of Conscience granted legal personhood, property rights, and religious education. Thousands of churches reopened, the UGCC emerged from the catacombs, and Islam saw a mosque-building boom. West notes the revival's complexities: property disputes, spiritual illiteracy after generations without formal instruction, and the persistence of state oversight in post-Soviet successor states.

Who Should Read This

Readers seeking a single-volume, balanced history of Soviet religious policy across all major faiths will find this book indispensable. Its chronological structure and comparative approach make it useful for scholars and students of Soviet history, religious studies, and totalitarianism. General readers interested in how communities preserve identity under repression will appreciate the human stories — the babushkas crossing themselves under coats, the Baptist families printing «samizdat» Bibles, the Muslim women veiling in defiance. Those looking for theological analysis or a focus on a single denomination may find the breadth dilutes depth in places, but the trade-off is a panoramic view of one of history's most ambitious attempts to engineer belief out of existence — and its ultimate failure.

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