Life on the Soviet Precipice

Christians in the USSR are seeing revival despite the most severe repressions since Khrushchev.

In the late 1950s Nikita Khrushchev boasted that religion in the USSR would become obsolete by 1965. When that happened, he hyperbolically said he would insist that at least one Christian be preserved and placed in a museum so that future generations of Soviets could view an extinct species.

The fossilization of religion in the USSR predicted by a succession of Soviet leaders has not happened despite Communist rule that cost the lives of an estimated 60 million Soviet citizens between 1917 and 1953. Some 66 million others were incarcerated, of whom as many as half may have been Christian believers.

Not only has religion survived in the USSR, but reports—from sources as wide-ranging as the Soviet and Western press—are reaching the world of a recrudescence of religion. Not yet a conflagration, sparks of spiritual revival are discernible from the Baltic Sea to Siberia, and in some satellite countries.

This rise in religious interest is occurring despite the most severe repression since Khrushchev’s virulent antireligion crusade of the early 1960s. Beset by internal problems and international setbacks, Soviet leaders have assumed an increasingly isolationist, reactionary stance. The Kremlin’s campaign for conformity and compliance in a tightening, totalitarian society includes a crackdown on religion. “Were living on a precipice these days,” said one Soviet Christian.

Despite current repressions, some Soviet sources acknowledge that 15 to 20 percent of the adult population in the USSR are religious. David Barrett, compiler of the World Christian Encyclopedia, estimates that in the Soviet Union (pop. 273 million) there are 96,726,500 “affiliated” Christians, 23 percent of them nonpracticing. In his book Soviet Believers: The Religious Sector of the Population, Sovietologist William Fletcher estimated in 1981 that “around 45 percent, and hence 115 million of the [total] population, belong to the religious sector to some degree or another.”

That nearly half of its citizens may be religious may not be surprising in a country once called “Holy Rus,” where most citizens once belonged to the state Orthodox church. Also, as many as 50 million Muslims live in the Soviet Union, primarily in Central Asian regions. Nevertheless, strong religious adherence is remarkable in a country that has experienced 68 years of militant Marxism-Leninism, an ideology to which atheism is integral.

The number of known Christian prisoners in the USSR has risen to 332, more than twice the number at any period since the early 1960s. Most leading Christians and other dissident activists are in prison or have been exiled from the USSR.

During 68 years of Soviet rule, the “freedom of conscience, that is, the right to profess any religion, and to conduct religious worship or anti-religious propaganda” guaranteed by the Soviet constitution has consisted primarily of freedom to perform religious rites in a restricted number of houses of worship permitted by the government. In the last few years, even the limited freedoms allowed during some periods of Soviet history have been further circumscribed by new legislation. For example, a 1983 law making infractions of labor camp regulations a criminal offense has been used as a pretext for extending the sentences of Christian prisoners. Since 1984, Christians and others who accept Christian literature or funds from abroad are subject to heavy prison sentences under the revised penal code on anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. Under a 1984 decree, Christians and others who offer foreigners lodging or transportation may be fined severely.

Furthermore, continuing covert Soviet policies lead to closure of registered churches, harassment of pastors and priests, removal of children from Christian families, and discrimination against believers at all levels of life.

But a correlation exists between repression and religious revival. During some periods of severe persecution (such as the earlier Stalinist years), open religious adherence in the USSR plummeted. By the end of 1939, only four Baptist-Evangelical Christian churches remained open. During World War II, however, Stalin granted concessions to the church in order to enlist the support of Christian citizens; as many as 20,000 churches sprang up across the USSR in the 1940s and ’50s. Later, during Khrushchev’s antireligion campaign, at least 12,500 of these churches (primarily Orthodox) were closed. Citing a proverb to describe the complex relation between religious repression and revival, one Russian Christian told us, “If you pound a stick, it may break. But if you pound too hard, it will stick.”

In some nations, such as Albania, restrictions, repressions, and persecutions have seemingly annihilated religion. In others, such as Poland, adversity has roused Christians, and religion has rooted more firmly. Even during the most severe periods of persecution in the Soviet Union, seeds of the gospel were sown by Christian prisoners and martyrs. “The churches of the Soviet Union can easily be closed,” Stalin once said. “But then the peasant and the peasant woman become a church underground and build the church in their souls. Such churches cannot be controlled by the secret police.”

Even before the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin sounded the battle cry against religion: “Religion and communism are incompatible in theory as well as in practice.… We must fight religion.” Although strategies and tactics have varied, Lenin’s successors have all waged war against religion and promoted atheism as a crucial part of that campaign. Six million professional propagandists promulgate atheism in the USSR. In 1982 in Ashkhabad, the capital of mostly Muslim Turkmenistan, local Soviet authorities announced the opening of the first of 22 new “universities,” featuring a two-year curriculum to train missionaries of atheism.

From kindergarten through university, atheism courses are compulsory in Soviet education. One book, Atheistic Education in the Schools: Questions of Theory and Practice, states: “The atheistic education of youth in our country is realized through a system of educational and upbringing institutions and through Young Pioneer and Komsomol [Young Communist League] organizations … a major role in this system belongs to the schools.…”

Annually, the Kremlin invests millions of rubles to produce a plethora of atheistic publications, films, lectures, exhibitions, and other presentations. In the Soviet press, articles regularly appear calling for more convincing atheistic propaganda and greater vigilance in the struggle against religion.

The October 11, 1984, issue of Pravda exhorted, “It is imperative to carry out more active propaganda of scientific-materialistic opinions, pay more attention to atheistic education.… The Party is particularly concerned that young people should form firm atheistic convictions.” The steady stream of articles related to religion and atheism in the Soviet press indirectly confirms continued and seemingly spreading spiritual interest in those areas of the USSR where religion is strongest.

The surfeit of atheism in the Soviet Union has helped ignite spiritual curiosity. University students are increasingly asking, “Why, if there is no God, is it necessary to speak against him so much?” Staff members of the Slavic Gospel Association have heard of many conversions of atheists and agnostics. In the Ukraine, an atheism propagandist permitted to read the Gospels so as to combat Christianity became a believer in the process. In Siberia, a scientist, whose mother was an ardent member of the Znanie Society (an organization that propagates atheism), had never attended a church, read the Scriptures, or been well acquainted with Christians. He became a believer as he read the account of Nikolai Gogol’s conversion in Gogol’s letters.

The chasm that exists today between Marxist promises of another generation and the reality of the present situation in the Soviet Union has severely shaken the Russian soul. It is almost as if the country has lost its moral moorings. Commenting on this phenomenon, observer George Feifer says, “People from nonideological societies cannot easily grasp the significance of this. It is as if the American Bible Belt had lost its faith in God. A traveler in Russia has a sensation of moving in the wake of an epidemic of rejected belief.” Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovski states, “From top to bottom no one believes in Marxist dogma anymore, even though they refer to it and use it as a stick to beat one another with.”

Even jokes often display disdain for Marxism. One such joke asks and answers three questions: “What is philosophy? Searching in a dark room for a black bed. What is Marxism? Searching in a dark room for a black bed that isn’t there. What is Marxism-Leninism? Searching in a dark room for a black bed that isn’t there and shouting, ‘I’ve found it!’ ”

The spiritual emptiness created by the bankruptcy of Marxism is especially abhorrent to Russians, an innately ideological people. In his book Origins of Russian Communism, Russian Orthodox philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev characterizes this idealism, which initially attracted many to Marxism: “What was scientific theory in the West, a hypothesis or, in any case, a relative truth, partial, making no claim to be universal, became among the Russian intelligentsia a dogma, a sort of religious revelation. The Russian spirit craves for wholeness.… It yearns for the absolute and desires to subordinate everything to the Absolute.…”

Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote, “Yes, for real Russians the questions of God’s existence and of immortality, or, as you say, the same questions turned inside out, come first and foremost, and of course they should.… For the secret of man’s being is not only to live, but to have something to live for.”

The quest for spiritual reality is particularly pronounced among Soviet youth. Significantly, the ranks of Christians are being replenished by many young people from nonreligious families—some from the Soviet elite. These trends alarm Soviet authorities, who may tolerate religion among the old and ignorant but cannot ideologically explain its existence among youth, inculcated from infancy in Marxist atheism.

Even official Soviet sociological surveys reveal increasing indifference toward atheism among youth. One 1982 survey asked young workers what their attitude would be toward a colleague who participated in the baptism of a child. Between 1969 and 1978, those who would openly condemn the colleague fell from 12.4 percent to 10 percent. Those who would tacitly condemn him fell from 15.7 to 8 percent. Those to whom the matter was immaterial rose from 60.5 percent to 66.3 percent.

Evident among all Christian denominations, the revival of Christianity among youth is most visible among evangelicals. In a 1982 article in the Los Angeles Times, Robert Gillett wrote: “Interest in religion in the Soviet Union has unquestionably declined in the more than 60 years since the Bolshevik revolution, but many young men and women are now turning back toward religion—and often not to the relatively passive and ritualistic Orthodox faith of their grandparents but to the passionate and proselytizing evangelical Christian sects that Soviet authorities find much harder to co-opt and control” (© L.A. Times; reprinted by permission).

One young Baptist, Valeri Barinov—recently sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for his impassioned Christian witness—composed music that struck a resonant chord among many searching youth. In response to his opera, Trumpet Call, young people across the Soviet Union wrote to Barinov, asking about the message of his music. In a letter to the West, the musician wrote, “On the basis of these letters it is evident that people, especially young people, are beginning to wake up from a spiritual slumber which has been caused by official atheism. People are beginning to understand that a desolate soul cannot be satisfied wth alcohol, drugs, or even wealth. It is as if the cry of the spirit of our people is expressed in these letters—we want to know about God, we need God.…”

Besides the noticeable numbers of young people in church meetings, spiritual renewal also is manifest by unofficial groups and gatherings held outside churches. One of these, the Christian Seminar for the Problems of Religious Renaissance in Russia, is representative of an unknown number of similar house groups that meet secretly. They are often dismantled if discovered by the KGB (the Soviet secret police). Formed in 1974 among newly converted young Orthodox Christians, Christian Seminar pursued obschina (community) and sobornost (fellowship), and considered the works of a spectrum of Christian writers, including Berdyaev, Solovyov, and Billy Graham. One member, Vladimir Poresch, now in prison, notes that seminar members welcomed “the normal human speech” they were able to cultivate with each other in unfettered discussions.

The founder of Christian Seminar, Alexander Ogorodnikov, also now in prison, followed a path illustrative of other young Soviet intellectuals who have turned to Christianity. An outstanding student, Ogorodnikov’s interest in Christianity was stirred when he was permitted to see Pasolini’s film The Gospel According to St. Matthew at the cinematography institute where he was studying.

Youth and intellectuals are the two often-overlapping sectors of Soviet society where flames of spiritual revival are today burning most brightly. For example, spiritual themes are becoming increasingly visible in the arts. Reports also are reaching the West of spiritual probings among scientists—intellectuals who should have no spiritual inclinations according to Marxist cosmology.

“We Used to Think the Churches Would Disappear”

Articles in the Kremlin-controlled Soviet press are confirming the phenomenon of religious renewal in the USSR by deploring the resilience of religion and acknowledging its resurgence.

• In an August 24, 1984, interview with Christian Science Monitor, Yuri Smirnov, head of international information for the Soviet Council for Religious Affairs, conceded, “We used to think in a primitive way, after the revolution, that the old people would die and the churches would disappear. But that hasn’t happened.”

• The Soviet armed forces newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), expressed concern in a March 21, 1984, article about signs of religiosity among recruits. Urging instructors to “step up atheistic work,” the writer of the article complained, “Time and again one sees the glint of a copper cross on the chest of a recruit.”

• In a June 1983 speech to the Central Committee Plenum, Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko acknowledged that religion still influences the lives of “not a very insignificant part of the population.”

• A 1982 article in the Soviet publication Questions of Scientific Atheism examined what the author, P. Kurochkin, called “causes of a definite revival of religion or at least of the interest in religion in certain regions and in some population layers” of the USSR.

• On October 18, 1984, Pravda indicated increased Kremlin concern that large numbers of young people are drifting to religion and called on schools and youth organizations to intensify atheistic propaganda. The editorial accused “imperialist circles” in the West of using religion as a weapon against communism.

Recently, Western media also have spotted signs of religious renewal in Iron Curtain countries.

• A 1984 report from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the publication of the broadcasting service to the USSR and Eastern Europe sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency, states, “A new phenomenon, which is often described as a ‘religious revival,’ can be observed in Eastern Europe and in parts of the Soviet Union, especially the Baltic States.”

• A January 23, 1984, New York Times article entitled “Signs of Religious Renewal Rising Across East Europe” reported: “Eastern European communist parties, with the exception of Albania, appear to have abandoned the hope that religion—Marx’s opiate of the people—will vanish in some foreseeable future.”

• On September 10, 1983, The Economist observed, “Church attendances are increasing in many cities in Russia, Rumania, and Bulgaria … the religious stirrings are viewed with apprehension by communist governments.”

• In a February 1981 article in Harper’s magazine, Soviet observer George Feifer wrote: “Hence the return-to-roots search for ‘new’ values in old Russia. This is linked to the religious revival, the country’s most important social movement by far, despite persecution whose severity and range is scarcely [comprehendible] to Westerners.”

An acquaintance of ours, a Christian Eastern European scientist, told us about working at a science research institute in the Soviet Union. Although none of his colleagues dared attend church, several were intensely interested in spiritual subjects and eagerly participated in a clandestine Bible study that our friend organized.

In 1970, dissident publicist Mark Popovsky unofficially conducted a survey to analyze the extent of religious belief among scientists. One hundred questionnaires were cautiously distributed among scientists from several cities in the Soviet Union. Ninety-five percent of the respondents maintained that there was no contradiction between science and religion. Some went to considerable lengths to explain that the two have again come very close after a period of mutual estrangement in the nineteenth century.

In response to a question asking how widespread are religious convictions among Soviet scientists, most respondents said that of 1,200,000 natural scientists in the USSR, 100,000 to 150,000 were religious believers—some 10 percent on the average. Almost all respondents stated that religious convictions have a direct positive impact on man’s creativity and, hence, on his productivity as a scholar.

Religious renewal among intellectuals, youth, and other strata of Soviet society is a complex phenomenon, of which evangelical Christianity is only one strand. For some Russian Orthodox Slavophiles, for instance, Christianity is inextricably interwoven with patriotism and nationalism. Nationalism is also a potent force in spiritually fervent Catholic Lithuania and in the religious revival occurring in Poland.

A return to Christianity for some Soviets appears to be motivated primarily by the desire to dissent. Christianity, with its historic and nationalistic supports, provides a strong challenge to the Soviet Communist government and, even with all the restrictions imposed upon religion, offers almost the only officially tolerated alternative to communism within Soviet society.

The search for spiritual reality by some Russians is characterized by a fascination with the occult and with Eastern religions. In 1983, the Soviet newspaper Trud reported that some young people are seeking the services of fortune tellers rather than relying on the Komsomol. All of this is a manifestation of the current religious renaissance, and Western Christians may wonder how strong an element biblical Christianity is among the swirling currents of religious revival.

Statistics seemingly do not indicate significant growth among evangelicals. However, in a nation where religious manifestations are restricted, statistical data may primarily reveal the cost of open membership in registered churches and the difficulty in obtaining government permission to build new churches. Neither do statistics shed much light on the number of catacomb churches and crypto-Christians.

Several identifiable factors are, however, fueling the flames of biblical Christianity. Forbidden to proclaim their faith verbally, Christians provide powerful witness through the presence of Christ radiated in their lives. In Moscow, a Christian youth group regularly visits nearby villages and seeks out widows, invalids, and other needy people for whom they can chop wood and perform other chores. In a city in Siberia, an atheistic agitator persistently harassed believers meeting in an unregistered congregation. The agitator became ill with cancer. Dying in the hospital, he received few visits from his atheistic comrades, but the Christians he had persecuted, laden with flowers and food, came to his bedside daily.

No missions or parachurch organizations are permitted in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, Soviet believers strive to fulfill the Great Commission. “In our country, every Christian is a missionary,” a Baptist leader once told us. Although Soviet Christians cannot travel to foreign countries as missionaries, some are moving to unevangelized areas of their own country, primarily for missionary purposes.

Soviet authorities regularly blame rising religious interest in the USSR on external influences. An article in Radyanska Ukraina (Aug. 18, 1984), titled “Blessing—in the name of the CIA: Clerical Anti-Soviets—an Instrument of Anti-Communism,” condemns religious organizations in the West that are preoccupied with the religious situation in the USSR. The May 25, 1984, issue of Pravda charged that there was a worldwide conspiracy by Christians, Muslims, and Jewish extremists to undermine the Soviet Union by fostering religion there. “One must not underestimate the danger,” Pravda cautioned.

It is true that many Christian individuals and organizations are actively stoking embers of spiritual revival in the USSR. Western Christians are officially and unofficially importing Bibles and Christian literature into the USSR. Also, monthly, more than 2,000 broadcasts are beamed into the Soviet Union from Protestant international radio stations. Catholic and Orthodox programs also are transmitted from Radio Vatican, Voice of America, Radio Liberty, the BBC, and elsewhere.

Christian broadcasts have stirred spiritual renewal. David Barrett estimates that there are 39,750 congregations of isolated radio churches scattered across the Soviet Union. Radio missionaries emphasize the significance of Christian broadcasting to church growth. One reports: “In one town of Russia there were no Christians at all. Eight people of that town began listening to the Christian broadcasts.… Because of those eight friends, today there is a registered church there. Many young people are being converted. There are revivals all over the country.… Many Russian believers fast and pray every Friday for better reception of shortwave broadcasts and for revival.”

While the future path of religious revival in the USSR is impossible to predict (“the wind blows where it wishes”), many Christians in the East and West are expectant. Russian Orthodox priest Dmitri Dudko, for example, forecasts a religious revival in the USSR—particularly among youth—that cannot be halted. “Persecution and attacks on religious themes accelerate the religious process,” he says. “Young people who are always sensitive to contemporary processes of any sort are interested in religion and this can’t be halted anymore. It’s useless to even try. Everyone must hurry to take part in the process.”

In a samizdat (underground press) article circulated in 1984, a Russian Christian named N. Alexiev, wrote: “But the ‘transmission of religion’ in our country is occurring outside the limits of the religious ‘family.’ It escapes the control and even the observation of the forces that would like to see the church annihilated from Russian soil.… The authorities can, with great effort and loss, slow the growth of religiousness in our country.… But to stop this movement, this growth, to crush it, to annihilate it, they can’t do it.”

Malcolm Muggeridge has written, “After more than half a century of authoritarian government bent on extirpating the Christian religion and all its work, Christ is alive in the USSR as nowhere else.”

French Catholic writer François Mauriac once said that if he saw light anywhere in the world, it was coming only from Russia.

Some East European Christians envision a spiritual fire in the USSR and Eastern Europe that will spread beyond their borders, kindling revival in other countries. An East European scientist told us, “Communism with the suffering it has brought to believers has swept away corrupt and lukewarm Christianity in our country. It has created a vacuum in millions of people … which can be truly filled only with vital Christianity. And that is what is happening—Christianity, purified and revitalized, is spreading throughout our country. Perhaps the day will come when our suffering church will be sending missionaries to your country.”

After 68 years of militant Marxist atheism, religion has not been incinerated in the Soviet Union. In fact, out of the ashes of atheism, a phoenix of religious revival is rising.