p The young Soviet state had no precedents to follow in devising statutes to reflect citizens’ complete freedom in religion’s matters. It could only use the legal practice of the Paris Commune. The Paris Communards had issued a decree on April 2, 1871 which proceeded from the first principle of the French Republic—the principle of freedom—and, taking into account “that freedom of conscience is the most important of all freedoms”, proclaimed separation of the church from the state and abolition of the budget for religious purposes because it “taxes citizens contrary to their own convictions”. The decree declared everything belonging to religious organisations to be national property and ordered “to register and place it at the disposal of the nation”. The Commune abolished the religious oath and decided that religious symbols should be removed from schools and prayers be stopped there.

p Marx highly praised these very important measures of the Paris Commune. He put it to the credit of the Communards that they undertook straightaway “to break the spiritual force of repression, the ’parson-power’, by the disestablishment and disendowment of all churches as proprietary bodies. The priests were sent back to the recesses of private life, there to feed upon the alms of the faithful in imitation of their predecessors, the Apostles. The whole of the educational institutions were opened to the people gratuitously, and at the same time cleared of all interference of church. . . ."  [42•1  But as noted by the founders of Marxism there were also some mistakes made by the Communards in their actions with respect to religion. Having announced that religion was the cause of all the shortcomings and injustice, the Communards thought it possible to ban religion by legal and administrative measures. However, any attempt to ban religion is unrealistic and incompatible with real freedom of conscience.

p The Soviet republic regarded freedom of conscience as an important principle of democratic freedoms. In late 1917, M. V. Galkin, an Orthodox priest, sent a letter to the Council of People’s Commissars suggesting that the separation of church from state should be legalised by one decree. Galkin attached his article on the subject to the letter and asked to publish it in the press. The letter was discussed by a meeting of the Council of People’s Commissars, chaired by Lenin. Galkin’s article was published in Pravda on December 16, 1917 as “First Steps Toward Separation of Church from State”. The author proposed urgent measures for disestablishment of the church, to proclaim all the church and religious communities as private associations and religion to be a private affair. The teaching of Scriptures at schools was to be made optional and certification of births, marriages and deaths was to be placed in charge of special bodies under the new government. The proposal to adopt a single statute of the Soviet state on freedom of conscience was unanimously supported by workers and peasants.

p The counter-revolutionary clergy put up every possible resistance to adoption of new Soviet laws regulating the relations between the state and the church organisations. In particular, epistles of Patriarch Tikhon and a letter of Metropolitan Veniamin of Petrograd to the Council of People’s Commissars pursued that end. They used threats and demanded that the Soviet government rescind the adopted decrees and not endorse a new decree guaranteeing all citizens the right to believe or not believe in God.

p The RSFSR Council of People’s Commissars met on December 11(24), 1917 under Lenin’s chairmanship to discuss “ acceleration of the process of disestablishment of the church”. It was decided to issue a decree that would guarantee complete freedom of conscience. The meeting set up a commission composed of A. V. Lunacharsky, P. I. Stucka, P. A. Krasikov, M. A. Reisner and the priest M. V. Galkin. The Commission was entrusted with drafting a decree.

p The Commission completed its work on the Decree late in January 1918 and presented a draft entitled “On Freedom of Conscience, Church and Religious Societies”. Lenin read the draft and made some comments of fundamental importance. Considering that the freedom of conscience is impossible without separating church from state and school from church, Lenin radically changed the wording of the first clause. Having crossed out the original text of the wording, “Religion is a private affair of every citizen of the Russian Republic”, suggested by the Commission, he worded this paragraph in the following way: “Church shall be separated from state.”

p Lenin’s wording of the complete separation of church from state and school from church was a political step of immense significance. It completely met the demand of the Party Programme adopted at the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP and was identical with the wording of the first article in the corresponding decree of the Paris Commune. The profoundly democratic meaning of the Bolshevik Party’s demand for separation of church from state and school from church was thoroughly explained in Lenin’s writings. He thought that only complete disestablishment of church would make it possible to put into effect freedom of conscience. In accordance with the demand of the Party 44 Programme, Lenin changed the very title of the Decree. As suggested by the Commission, the title of the Decree coincided almost to a word with the decree “On Freedom of Conscience" issued by the Provisional Government on July 14, 1917. That decree contained only general declarations about abolition of religious and national disablements but not even a hint about separation of church from state and school from church. The Provisional Government’s decree did not provide for any guarantees of real freedom of conscience. Wishing to emphasise even by the title that the proletarian state had broken off resolutely with the old policy of the overthrown classes toward religion and the church, Lenin proposed that the original title, “On Freedom of Conscience, Church and Religious Societies”, should be replaced by another, “On the Separation of the Church from the State and the School from the Church".

p The exacting attitude to the wording while the Decree was being prepared attests to the fact that the disestablishment of church is not a purely formal act in a socialist country as it is in capitalist countries. ”. . .Bourgeois ’freedom of conscience’,” Marx pointed out, “is nothing but the toleration of all possible kinds of religious freedom of conscience. . . ."  [44•1  The bourgeois governments declare religious freedom and restrict the rights of unbelievers by campaigning against atheism.

p The study of the draft decree shows that the Commission took into account Lenin’s opinion on the attitude of the Communist Party to religion and believers. The first part of Clause 3 in the draft decree reproduced almost word for word the lines from Lenin’s “Socialism and Religion" written in 1905 to explain the Party Programme adopted by the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP. The draft decree said: “Everyone must be absolutely free to profess any religion he pleases, or no religion whatever. . . . Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable.” Lenin altered only the last paragraph of this clause with the following note: “Even the bare mention of a citizen’s religion in official documents should unquestionably be eliminated.” Lenin’s note is of exceptional importance. Inasmuch as a person’s belief or unbelief belongs to his or her private life 45 and is a manifestation of his/her conscience, there should be no mention of religious affiliation or non-affiliation in any official identification documents, during census and other official actions. The wording of this clause makes perfectly clear the difference between the proletarian and bourgeois concepts of freedom of conscience.

p The socialist state has proclaimed freedom not only to profess any religion, to perform religious rituals and ceremonies unimpeded but also freedom of conscience for those persons who freed themselves from religious prejudices and did not profess any religion. Those citizens were granted the right to conduct scientific and educational propaganda in accordance with their convictions without hurting the religious sensibilities of believers.

p Clause 4 prohibits any religious rituals and ceremonies to accompany government public functions and orders that religious symbols be removed from all the state and public institutions (schools, hospitals, railway stations, children’s homes, etc.).

p Lenin introduced an important correction into Clause 5 of the draft and formulated the last sentence of Clause 6 more clearly. He also edited Clause 8 to stress the incompatibility of the former ties between the church and the state in registering marriages, births and deaths.

p Clauses 10 and 11 prohibit both central and local authorities from subsidising church organisations from state funds and deprive the church of the right to impose levies on the population or to take coercive or punitive measures with regard to believers.

p Clause 12 deprived church organisations of the right to act as a juridical person. The socialist state thus guaranteed that henceforward no economic and financial forces could be concentrated against the interests of working people under the cover of religion.

p While working on the draft, Lenin struck out Clause 13 of the Decree, which dealt with the right of church organisations to use property. Soviet power had expressed its attitude to this problem unequivocally in its very first Decree on Land, and in the decision of the RSFSR Council of People’s Commissars of December 11, 1917 placing church property and buildings belonging to the former Department on Religions at the disposal of local Soviets, but the issue was still used by anti-Soviet churchmen 46 for their political ends. Unfortunately, Clause 13 had not been worded clearly enough in the draft. “All the estates of church and religious societies existing in Russia,” the draft decree said, “shall be proclaimed national property. The procedures for inventory, maintenance and use of the buildings or articles intended specifically for divine services shall be set by decisions of local and central authorities.”

p Such a wording threw doubts upon the legality of the earlier decrees and decisions of the government on nationalisation of lands belonging to churches and monasteries and on forfeiture of the church’s right to own property.

p Lenin left only the first sentence of Clause 13 worked out by the Commission as it was and formulated its concluding part anew. “Buildings and articles,” Lenin wrote, “intended specifically for the purposes of divine service shall be placed at a free disposal of appropriate religious societies by special decisions of local or central state authorities.” The wording of this clause, as well as Lenin’s other corrections, carry on the idea of guarantees for religious freedom.

p Clauses 12 and 13 provided for the working people’s complete emancipation from economic dependence on the church. The Decree deprived the church organisations of all their properties such as church buildings, lands, capitals, houses, shops and hotels. These became the property of the working people. Public prayer buildings and the church-plate required for worship were not given to clergymen, but to authorised representatives of believers, founders of the given religious society for free use.

p In keeping with the Decree, 827,540 dessiatines of land, over 4,247 million roubles in cash and deposits, 84 factories, 704 hotels and town houses, 1,112 tenement houses, 277 hospitals and children’s homes, 436 dairy farms and 602 stockyards were expropriated from the church and monasteries by late 1920. The expropriated land was given to peasants for their use and former monastery buildings provided housing for over 1.5 million people. Forty-eight monastery complexes were rebuilt to be used as sanatoriums and resorts, 168 facilities of this type housed social security agencies and 197 accommodated public education offices, 349 former monastery buildings were turned into hospitals and rest homes for working people.

p The draft decree was discussed at a meeting of the Council of People’s Commissars on January 20, 1918. Lenin chaired the meeting. After discussing the important corrections introduced by Lenin, the meeting approved the Decree. The final text of the document was first published in the press on January 23, 1918 under the title “Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR on the Separation of the Church from the State and the School from the Church”. This date is taken to be the day when the Decree was made public.

The fact that the document was entitled “Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars" and signed by all People’s Commissars, together with Lenin, emphasised its immense political significance. This historic document expressed the will of the people and was a great revolutionary action which legally formalised the Leninist principles of the attitude to religion, the church and believers.