Putin Goes to Church

Photo ~ Vladimir Putin lights a candle as he attends an Orthodox Christmas service in the XIX century church of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God in Turginovo village, about 160 km. (100 miles) northwest of Moscow January 7, 2011/Alexander Zemlianichenko )

Putin Goes to Church
Russia’s unholy new alliance between Orthodox and state

In 1918 Soviet Russia became the world’s first atheist state, and its rulers launched a ruthless, sustained attack on religion. Thousands of priests, monks, and nuns were killed, and many more were imprisoned. Churches were sacked, converted to warehouses and social clubs, or razed.

The persecution eased after Hitler’s 1941 invasion. Seeking to rally Christians to a “holy war,” Joseph Stalin scuttled the anti-religion campaign and allowed thousands of churches to reopen.

Official attitudes fluctuated during the next four decades, but atheism always remained central to state ideology.

In the 1970s and early ’80s, as Soviet communism limped toward the ash heap of history, believers generally had to stay in the closet or face unpleasant consequences.

Being a churchgoer could cost you your job or get you kicked out of college.

Those who stepped out of bounds—priests whose sermons were too bold, laypeople who published Christian samizdat—were harassed, terrorized, and sometimes thrown into labor camps or mental hospitals.

All of this changed in the late 1980s, when Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms opened up Soviet society. Interest in religion surged, just in time for the millennial anniversary of Russia’s conversion to Christianity in 1988 (the occasion for the first-ever broadcast of church services on Soviet television).

Two years later, communist-era restrictions on faith were formally abolished, and equality for all believers and nonbelievers became law.

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