View source for Soviet Union and morality

== Mass rape during the occupation of Germany by the Soviet army ==
[[File:Stalin-140508 27880t.jpg|thumbnail|right|200px|When told that Red Army soldiers sexually assaulted German refugees, the atheist [[Joseph Stalin]] reportedly said: "We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have their initiative."<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1080493/Stalins-army-rapists-The-brutal-war-crime-Russia-Germany-tried-ignore.html | location=London | work=Daily Mail | first=Andrew | last=Roberts | title=Stalin's army of rapists: The brutal war crime that Russia and Germany tried to ignore | date=24 October 2008}}</ref>]]
''See also:'' [[Mass rape during the occupation of Germany|Mass rape of German women by the Soviet army]]

The [[Soviet Union]] practiced [[state atheism]] and [[militant atheism]].

The journalist Peter Hitchens is the [[ex-atheists|ex-atheist]] brother of atheist [[Christopher Hitchens]] and he covered the Soviet Union during its latter years before it collapsed.  According to Peter Hitchens, an atheistic society degraded the morals of the Russian people during the Soviet period (see: Soviet Union and morality).<ref>[https://creation.com/britain-needs-god ''Britain needs God'']</ref> 

As Allied troops entered and occupied Germany during the latter part of [[World War II]], mass rapes occurred in connection with combat operations and during the occupation which followed. The majority of scholars in the [[Western World]] conclude that the majority of the rapes were committed by [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] servicemen. 

The majority of the rapes happened in the Soviet occupation zone.  Estimates of the number of German women sexually assaulted by Soviet soldiers have ranged up to 2 million.<ref name="ElizabethHeineman">{{cite journal |first=Elizabeth |last=Heineman |title=The Hour of the Woman: Memories of Germany's "Crisis Years" and West German National Identity |journal=American Historical Review|volume=101 |issue=2 |year=1996 |pages=354–395 |jstor=2170395 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Kuwert |first=P. |last2=Freyberger |first2=H. |year=2007 |title=The unspoken secret: Sexual violence in World War II |journal=International Psychogeriatrics |volume=19 |issue=4 |pages=782–784 |doi=10.1017/S1041610207005376 }}</ref><ref name="BBC">{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/berlin_01.shtml|title=BBC - History - World Wars: The Battle for Berlin in World War Two|publisher=Bbc.co.uk|accessdate=10 December 2014}}</ref><ref name="Schissler">Hanna Schissler ''The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949–1968'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=00fCzJKt1QMC&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28&dq=soviet+estimates+rape+tens+of+thousands&source=web&ots=xzyKzJm1sj&sig=cy2AfPmp7ZvT7K9YSWPRkXoyp6E]</ref><ref name="NPR">{{cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106687768|title=Silence Broken On Red Army Rapes In Germany|date=17 July 2009|work=NPR.org|accessdate=10 December 2014}}</ref> The historian William Hitchcock declared that in many cases women were the victims of repeated rapes, some women experienced as many as 60 to 70 rapes.<ref name="Struggle for Europe">{{cite book |first=William I. |last=Hitchcock |title=The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent, 1945 to the Present |publisher=Anchor Books |year=2004 |url=http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385497992&view=excerpt |isbn=978-0-385-49799-2}}</ref>

After the atheist leader of the Soviet Union [[Joseph Stalin]] received a complaint from Yugoslav politician Milovan Djilas about rapes in Yugoslavia, Stalin reportedly said that he should "understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle."<ref>Anne Applebaum, ''Iron Curtain, The Crushing of Eastern Europe'', p.32</ref> Also, when told that Red Army soldiers sexually assaulted German refugees, Stalin reportedly declared: "We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have their initiative."<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1080493/Stalins-army-rapists-The-brutal-war-crime-Russia-Germany-tried-ignore.html | location=London | work=Daily Mail | first=Andrew | last=Roberts | title=Stalin's army of rapists: The brutal war crime that Russia and Germany tried to ignore | date=24 October 2008}}</ref>