p The Soviet people defended their socialist gains, honour, freedom and independence and saved the nations of Europe from Nazism in the battle against a strong, insidious enemy. The victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War was a victory for the socialist system, for Marxist-Leninist ideology, and the Soviet armed forces.

p Thousands of heroes reared by the Communist Party on the ideals of true freedom, Soviet patriotism and proletarian internationalism gave up their lives for their country’s independence and freedom, for socialism. Marxist-Leninist ideas cemented the people’s morale and made them steadfast, courageous and invincible.

p Religious people fought alongside atheists on the frontlines and at the rear. They worked and died not for the glory of God, nor for religious ideals, but fought against foreign invaders —defending their country, their homes, families and relatives. They did their patriotic duty. The believers who worked selflessly at the rear or fought on the frontlines were people educated by the Soviet system, who recognised the truth of the Soviet way of life and were willing to defend it. Many clergymen, too, showed patriotism during the War, but their patriotism was dictated primarily by the patriotism of their parishioners. Any different stance would have brought about the clergy’s total isolation from their flock.

p Some modern theologians tend to overestimate the contribution made by the church to defeating the enemy. The behaviour of believers during the War, of course, was influenced first and foremost by the advantages of the Soviet socialist system, which had liberated the working people from poverty and exploitation, by democratism of public life, freedoms given to the people by the Revolution, although it cannot be denied that from the very start of the War, almost all the religious organisations in the USSR took a patriotic stand. Metropolitan Sergii, who headed the Russian Orthodox Church at that time, sent an epistle to the country’ s believers on June 22, 1941 stating that the church was faithful to the socialist system and strongly condemning the fascist German aggression. In his patriotic speech on June 26, 1941 the Metropolitan called upon believers to rise up against the invaders.

p His closest associate, Metropolitan Aleksii, led believers’ patriotic activities in besieged Leningrad. A majority of the clergy supported the people’s war efforts and that, undoubtedly, was good for the cause. But the church took advantage of the wartime situation to strengthen itself organisationally. A council of bishops was convened in September 1943 to elect Metropolitan Sergii Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.

p Patriarch Sergii died on May 15, 1944. His successor—the Patriarchate locum tenens Aleksii—sent a letter to Joseph Stalin on May 20, 1944 confirming that the course of the Orthodox Church directed to a loyal relationship with the Soviet state and social system remained unchanged. “In my impending activities,” he wrote, “I shall be guided invariably by the principles which marked the deceased Patriarch’s church work: following the Church’s canons and statutes, and constant loyalty to my country and government headed by you.”

p Representatives of other denominations and most believers and clergymen in the occupied territories also acted patriotically. Some priests helped partisans behind the enemy’s lines.

p But there were also churchmen who collaborated with the Nazis during the War. They committed treason and were guilty of complicity in the bloody atrocities of fascism. Traitors in cassocks turned up who blessed “die neue Ordnung", prayed for 104 Nazi military victory, helped the Nazis send Soviet people olf into German slavery, and tried to undermine resistance to the invaders. At the start of the War, the Nazis helped to open places of worship, to distribute religious literature and intensify activities by the clergy in the occupied territories. While acting in this fashion, they did not care, of course, about religion or the religious feelings of believers but looked to the church for support in their designs to exterminate the Soviet people. It was common practice to raid churches during prayers and “to catch slaves”, aided by Christ-loving traitors. In August 1941, for instance, a so-called Pskov Orthodox Mission was set up in the occupied regions near Pskov, Leningrad and Novgorod. It was headed by Metropolitan Sergii of Riga and encouraged by the German High Command.

p A group of treacherous clergymen formed a Byelorussian Orthodox Autocephalous (“independent”) Church in Byelorussia in 1942. Its organisers included Metropolitan Panteleimon, Archbishop Philopheus of Mogilev and Mstislavl, Bishop Athanasius of Vitebsk and Polotsk and Bishop Stephan of Smolensk and Bryansk. The traitors in cassocks collaborated with the invaders. Archbishop Philopheus thus outlined the church’s main objective when he wrote to Byelorussia’s Commissar General, SS Gruppenfuhrer von Gottberg on July 30, 1942: “The Orthodox hierarchy and priests should use all their religious and moral influence and their authority as priests to separate our people from Bolshevism and its alien mentality.” There were traitors among the Orthodox priests in the Ukraine. They formed an autocephalous church of their own with Bishop Sikorsky of Vladimir-Volynsky, a former follower of Petlyura, at its head. Especially zealous in collaborating with the enemy were ministers of the Uniate Church, headed by Count Sheptitsky and preachers of some sectarian communities.

p The German occupation authorities permitted many religious sects to openly operate, provided their members collaborated with the invaders. When I. Panko, an active Pentecostal, asked the Nazi authorities for permission for Pentecostal religious communities to function openly, he received an insolently frank reply from an SD officer who said that the Germans would permit such Pentecostal communities if the believers obeyed all the 105 invaders’ orders, did not participate in any subversion against them and did not help the partisans. At his trial in 1950, Panko admitted that he had accepted the demands made by the SD officer. But the cassock-garbed Quislings were grossly mistaken in thinking the Nazis had no ulterior motives in encouraging the revival of religious communities on the occupied territories. In fact, it was a ruse to conceal far-reaching plans for complete destruction of the peoples’ traditional faiths and customs in the occupied countries. Talking to his retinue on April 11, 1942, Hitler cynically said that “in the interests of governing the conquered peoples in the East of the Empire, the main principle should be the utmost possible encouragement of striving for individual freedom and suppression of any state organisation”. Hitler gave instructions at this meeting to split up churches against their will, to force the population in the occupied regions to change their religion and “to forbid setting up single churches for any large Russian territories”. Said Hitler: “Such a situation would be in our interests—if every village would have a sect of its own developing its own image of God. Even if, in this case, shaman cults similar to those of Negroes or American Indians would spring up in some villages, we should welcome this, because it would increase the number of factors subdividing the Russian space into smaller units.”

p The Nazis desecrated the customs and faiths of nations in the territories that they had managed to occupy for a time, did violence to Orthodox sacred places and objects of worship, unceremoniously offended believers’ religious sensibilities and crudely trampled upon religious freedom. “The German occupation has disrupted the unity of the Church life,” said Metropolitan Filaret at a Council of the Russian Orthodox Church. “ Dioceses lost archbishops and bishops, there was shortage of priests, many places of worship have been destroyed.” The clergy and believers saw for themselves what the policy of Nazi Germany really meant for the church. The Truth about Religion in Russia, a book published by the Moscow Patriarchate, stated: “One could not imagine a more insolent and cynical outrage upon places and objects of worship.”

p The Nazi invaders have proved themselves to be not only sworn enemies of all freedom, but of religious freedom as well, 106 and the traitors in cassocks revealed their true faces in the eyes of believers. Modern theologians do not like to recall such sad facts as the collaboration of churchmen with the Nazis. Sermons and the church press, however, tend to overestimate the patriotic contribution made by the church to the Soviet people’s struggle against the Nazi invaders. The Soviet state had not been indifferent to the clergy’s behaviour during the War. Most of the clergymen supported the people’s efforts in the War and this was undoubtedly good for the cause.

p People became more religious during the War and the clergy did not fail to take advantage of the situation. Supervision of observance of the legislation on religious worship had declined and scientific atheistic propaganda was greatly curtailed. The church was gathering strength through the people’s misery and sufferings. The patriotic stance taken by the clergy, including a drive to raise funds for the Red Army also helped. There is no doubt, of course, that faith in God was of no help to the people in their fight against the insidious enemy.

p The political loyalty of the church and of the majority of clergymen at this trying time clearly attested to the change in the church’s social position under the socialist system and to the triumph of real freedom of conscience in the Soviet Union.

p The Second Council of the Russian Orthodox Church was held in January 1945. It had a decisive significance for the Church’s further evolution and for its adaptation to Soviet life. Following the sentiments of the believers, the Church openly condemned imperialism, recognised the superiority of socialism over capitalism, praised the progress of socialist construction in the USSR, and stated its support for the liberation movement of nations oppressed by imperialism. The Council elected Metropolitan Aleksii Patriarch of All Russia. It was the first time in history that the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church was elected in the presence of heads (or their deputies) of almost all autocephalous churches, thus demonstrating the unity of Orthodox churches the world over. The Council denounced slanderous fabrications about alleged persecution of the Church in the USSR. The Local Council and Patriarch Aleksii completed the normalisation of relations between the Church and the state begun by Patriarch Sergii.

p During the last years of his life, Patriarch Aleksii was a passionate peace worker; he exposed the instigators of a new war and participated actively in the peace movement. He was awarded orders and medals by the Soviet government for his patriotic peace activities. A loyal attitude to the Soviet state predominated in all religions after the War. The communities of Moslems, Buddhists, Jews, or members of the Armenian, Georgian, Roman Catholic, Evangelical Christian churches, Old Believers, adherents to Evangelical Christian Baptists and many other denominations functioning in the USSR actively support the socialist system and the foreign and domestic policies of the CPSU and Soviet government.

p While the overwhelming majority of the clergy and believers are loyal to the socialist system, there are people among them who try to incite believers to illegal actions. For example, illegal activities of religious fanatics have recently taken place in some parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church. Individual parish priests began to preach and perform religious ceremonies outside places of worship and tried to interfere with religious associations’ finances and management. They were not supported by most of the clergy and faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church. This became clear at the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, which took place in 1971. The Council, where priests as well as laymen were present, again spoke in favour of the official stance of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was patriotic and loyal to the Soviet state, to its domestic and foreign policies. “We know,” the Council stated, “how difficult were the relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Soviet state in the post-revolutionary period. We do not exonerate from blame the many church figures who failed to comprehend the historical significance of the October events for beneficial transformations in our country and for alterating the course of history for the whole world, as they had been closely connected with the ruling classes and lost their advantages during the Great October Socialist Revolution.”

p This loyalty toward the Soviet socialist system is characteristic of all religions, including Islam. Moslems, just like other believers, enjoy complete freedom and inviolability in the USSR. The October Revolution has abolished social and national 108 inequality and created the conditions for spiritual emancipation of the formerly backward nations. The ruling classes overthrown by the Revolution left a poor legacy. The population of the outlying areas was almost completely illiterate. As late as the mid-1920s, 82 per cent of the population of Kazakhstan and over 90 per cent in the Central Asian republics were illiterate.

p Religion controlled the people’s spiritual life and their family relations before the Revolution. The enormous economic and socio-political reforms introduced during the socialist construction to equalise the development of all the nationalities of the USSR helped the peoples of the Soviet East overcome their former backwardness. The growth of culture, of public education and the Party’s varied work on communist education of the masses were prerequisites for extensive dissemination of a scientific materialistic world-outlook among working people. Just as in the other regions of the country, the influence of religion on the population decreased considerably and Moslems gave their unqualified support to the domestic and foreign policies of the Communist Party and the Soviet government in the same way as did the adherents to other creeds. The mood of mullahs has also changed radically. Moslem priests today prefer not to remember the former confrontation with Soviet power and often even claim, contrary to the historical fact, that the Moslem priesthood welcomed Soviet power and its reforms immediately after the Revolution. Nowadays, following the sentiments of believers, the mullahs try to convince them that communism, as a world-outlook, can co-exist with religion. They proclaimed communism to be a “living embodiment of the ideas and aspirations of Muhammad”. “One can say without any hesitation,” stated one of the preachers at a Moslem conference held in Tashkent in October 1970, “that the capitalist system based on injustice and exploitation is bound to fall and will be replaced by the socialist system based on just laws. The laws of God are inexorable and justice will triumph on earth.”

p A message that the Moslem Religious Board for Central Asia and Kazakhstan sent out to all the mosques on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of Soviet power said: “It is difficult to overestimate the immense importance of the Great October Socialist Revolution for comprehensive development of 109 the peoples of Central Asian republics and Kazakhstan, who have reached such a level of economic and cultural growth over several decades that they have surpassed many of the developed countries in Western Europe in such short a time.” The message expressed deep gratitude on behalf of all Moslems for the great changes introduced into their life by Soviet power and pledged that Moslem believers would work selflessly to build up the new society together with the entire Soviet people.

The political loyalty of the priests does not mean that they have reconciled themselves to the ideological concepts of communism. Unfortunately, few people realise this. Having heard a lot of such preaching, believers are sometimes inclined to think that religion does not contradict the communist world-outlook. But the clergy’s adaptation to present-day conditions lulls not only believers, but also some atheists who cease to see the harmful side of religion. It is not chance that some intellectuals tend to consider certain moral precepts of the church useful. It would be appropriate to recall what Lenin said about philistines and liberal intellectuals who were afraid to combat religion, forgot about their task, and tolerated belief in God.