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Urbanization, Operation Antireligion and the Decline of Religion in the USSR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2018

N. S. Timasheff
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Extract

The first half of the twentieth century in Russia has been characterized by a sharp decline in the influence of religion. At the same time there has been an exceptionally rapid growth of industrialization and urbanization. The concomitance of these two processes favors the conclusion that urbanization has been, if not the exclusive, at least the major cause of religious decline. Relative to the majority of countries showing the same concomitance of processes, no serious doubt arises. The relationship between urbanization and decline of religion may be well understood, and no other major factor working in the same direction seems to be present. But, relative to Russia, the situation is different. Since the days of the Communist revolution, there has been another major force working in the same direction as urbanization, that is the systematic antireligious activity of the Government. The decline of religion in Russia, consequently, may be imputed to two concomitant causes.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , April 1955 , pp. 224 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1955

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References

1 The table, except the last line, is borrowed from Timasheff, N. S., The Great Retreat (1946), p. 450.Google Scholar

2 I am indebted for this estimate to Professor S. N. Prokopowicz, Geneva.

3 The summary of the antireligious activities of the Soviet Government until 1941 is based on N. S. Timasheff, Religion in Soviet Russia (1942).

4 The compromise has been studied in detail in N. S. Timasheff, “Religion,” in W. Gurian (editor), The Soviet Union (1951); see also Curtiss, John, The Russian Church and the Soviet State(1952), pp. 290–325.Google Scholar

5 The data on the Russian Orthodox Church before the Revolution have been compiled from the Reports of the Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod for the years 1909 and 1910 (the last published), as summarized in Russkij kalendar (1914), pp. 135-39.

6 On these movements see Weidle, W., Russia Absent and Present (1951), pp. 80–90.Google Scholar

7 Op. cit., p. 223.

8 On the state of religion in the middle twenties see Timasheff, N. S., Religion in Soviet Russia , pp. 58–63 Google Scholar and Curtiss, J., op. cit. supra, pp. 217-27.Google Scholar

9 Bolshakoff, S., The Christian Church and the Soviet State (London, 1942), p. 59.Google Scholar

10 On the state of religion shortly before the outbreak of World War II see Timasheff, N. S., op. cit., pp. 64–76.Google Scholar

11 Compiled by Harvey F. Fireside, The Russian Orthodox Church under German Occupation, unpublished Harvard honor thesis, 1952, pp. 13 ff., 98 ff.

12 On the number of bishops see W. Alexeev, Orthodox Bishops in the Soviet Union (mimeographed series, No. 61, in Russian), Research Program on the U.S.S.R. (1952), pp. 40, 49, 50, 86. The figure 22,000 concerning the parishes appears in the Information Bulletin of the Soviet Union, January 28, 1949; the higher figure consistently appears in sources going back to the Patriarchate; thelatest of these statements is that of a Danish Lutheran pastor who visited Russia in 1952; cf. The Pilot,January 17, 1953. The statement about the number of priests is based on a report of two priests who visited Russia in 1946; the figure is probably exaggerated.

13 This figure has been compiled by taking into consideration the number of parishes in the Western dioceses of Russia in 1914 and the percentage of the population of the dioceses left within the boundaries of the USSR, as computed by Frank Lorimer, The Population of the Soviet Union (1946), p. 209. The high density of the parishes in these regions is confirmed by the disproportionately large number of bishops ruling the corresponding parts of the Orthodox flock. According to the cited investigation by W. Alexeev, in the newly annexed area II bishops out of 69 (or 16 percent) preside over no more than 10 percent of the total Orthodox flock.

14 Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, No. 10 (1946); Nos. 1, 8 and 9 (1947); and No. 7 (1948).

15 Ibid., Nos. 7-12 (1952), and Nos. 1-3 and 5-7 (1953).

16 Among the numerous articles on the subject most important are those published in Komsomolskaja pravda, Dec. 18, 1953; Trud, June 28 and July 25, 1954; and Komsomolskaja pravda, July 1 and September 8, 1954.