Abstract
The study of religion in the Soviet Union over the last decade begins from a premise not only different from, but contradictory to, the broad lines of the recent development of Soviet society as a whole. Even in the academic community, not to mention the popular mind, Khrushchev is almost universally regarded as a liberaliser. This was the tenor of the somewhat enthusiastic obituaries published by both The Times and the Daily Telegraph when he died in 1971.1 The fact is passed over in silence that Khrushchev, who undoubtedly brought new ideas to many areas of government, was one of the greatest persecutors of the church that Christian history has known. The present-day psychology of Russian believers can be explained in this light alone. For the main body of the Russian Church, the years of liberalisation were from the end of the Second World War up to the time when Khrushchev was firmly in the seat of power (some time between 1959 and 1960).
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Notes
See Michael Bourdeaux, Religious Ferment in Russia henceforth RFR (London, 1968) pp. 3–6.
See e.g. Bourdeaux, RFR; Bourdeaux, Patriarch and Prophets: Persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church today, henceforth P&P (London, 1970); William C. Fletcher and Donald A. Lowrie, ‘Khrushchev’s Religious Policy, 1959–64’, in Aspects of Religion in the Soviet Union 1917–67, ed. Richard H. Marshall (Chicago, 1971 ) pp. 131–55.
See Anatoli Levitin, Dialogs tserkoonoi Rossiei (Paris, 1967).
The best discussion of Lenin’s anti-religious policy is contained in the chapter by Bohdan R. Bociurciw, ‘Lenin and Religion’, in Lenin, the Man, the Theorist, the Leader, ed. Peter Reddaway and Leonard Schapiro (London, 1967 ), pp. 107–34.
See Gerhard Simon, Church, State and Opposition in the USSR (London, 1974) p. 78.
See Michael Bourdeaux and Xenia Howard Johnston, Aida of Leningrad (Reading, 1972).
For an examination of some of the basic relations between the Russian churches and the outside world and their political rationale see W. C. Fletcher, Religion and Soviet Foreign Policy,1945–70 (London, 1973 ).
See particularly the report written by Trevor Beeson for the British Council of Churches, Discretion and Valour: Religious Conditions in Russia and Eastern Europe (London, 1974).
See W. C. Fletcher, Nikolai (New York, 1968 ).
For a full discussion of the sobor, see Bourdeaux,‘How Soviet State kept control of Church Council’, Church Times London, 17 Mar 1972, p. 11 (concluded on p. 8).
See Bourdeaux, ‘Three Generations of Suffering’, Church Times, 31 May 1974, p. 9.
See Bourdeaux, ‘The Harassment of a Soviet Christian’, Church Times, 13 Dec 1974, p. 3.
The most notable description of this is in Eli Wiesel, The Jews of Silence (New York, 1967) pp. 58–97.
A. N. Kochetov, Buddizm (Moscow, 1968 ) p. 156.
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© 1978 Michael Bourdeaux
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Bourdeaux, M. (1978). Religion. In: Brown, A., Kaser, M. (eds) The Soviet Union since the Fall of Khrushchev. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15847-8_7
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