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→League of Militant Atheists
====League of Militant Atheists====
====League of Militant Atheists====
{{See also|League of Militant Atheists}}
{{See also|League of Militant Atheists}}
Between 1925 and 1941 this propaganda was carried out by a big organization operating under the characteristic name of 'League of Militant Godless.' The League was in reality a department of the Communist Party and its chief, Emelyan Yaroslavsky, the official biographer of Stalin, was at the same time a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee. The League propagated atheism on a very large scale. It worked among the school youth, in trade unions, in villages and in the Red Army. It spared no religious group and was equally hostile to Christ, Mohammed and Buddha, who were the targets of blasphemous posters and of vulgar cartoons in the atheistic Press.
The League pretended to fight what it called religious prejudices by scientific means, and some of its leaders may indeed have had serious intentions in this respect. The local branches of the League, however, cared little about science and frequently threatened and terrorized the believers. Sure of the passive or active support of the state organs, they were able to enforce by administrative methods the closing of churches, mosques and synagogues, of Christian monasteries and Buddhist lamaseries, or their transformation into anti-religious museums. The League was particularly active at the time of big religious holidays, during which the League used to organize anti-religious exhibitions and processions. It held anti-Easter and anti-Christmas meetings in the Christian areas of the USSR, and staged anti-Kurbam Bairam manifestations in Moslem territories. The chiefs of the anti-religious campaign also tried to supplement every big initiative of the Soviet Government by a special anti-religious action. Thus, to parallel the Five-Year Plan for national economy the League proclaimed a Five-Year Plan for anti-religious propaganda. The [[collectivization]] of Soviet agriculture was to be accompanied by the de-Christianisation of the Russian countryside.
In 1940, the twenty-third year of the Soviet regime, the organ of the League of Militant Godless, the review ''Antireligioznik'', estimated that probably more than half, perhaps two-thirds of the Russian village population still believed in God. Also in the towns there was still a large section of believers, even if the League classified the majority of the adult population as atheist. However, most of these alleged atheists refused to participate actively in the work of the League, which therefore declined from year to year.<ref>[http://nobsblog.blogspot.com/1999/02/dechristianization-movement-and-new.html#League%20of%20Militant%20Godless League of Militant Godless]</ref>
===Peoples Republic of China===
===Peoples Republic of China===