p In addition to Orthodoxy, Islam and Roman Catholic Church, tsarist Russia had a large network of sectarian associations and groups of bejievers. Many of them were regarded as mistaken creeds and were brutally suppressed. There were quite a few victims of despotism of the tsarist regime and of the Russian Orthodox Church among rank-and-file sectarians. The 112 sectarian leaders who had generally managed to escape persecution at pre-revolutionary time, took advantage of the freedoms guaranteed by Soviet power to the believers of all denominations and began publicising themselves and their sects as former fighters against tsarism. This propaganda increased the membership of the sects during the early years of Soviet rule.
p The New Economic Policy resulted in a temporary revival of private enterprise and growth of the petty bourgeoisie in the cities and in the countryside. The petty-bourgeois environment had always been a source of sectarianism. Religious preachers profited by the situation. Thus the number of sectarian communities in Leningrad and Leningrad gubernia increased by nearly 50 per cent from 47 in 1923 to 58 in 1924, 73 in 1925 and 80 in 1926.
p The sects expanded for many reasons. First of all, the October Revolution stopped persecuting sectarians as they had been under tsarism. Furthermore, the well-being of peasants was improving rapidly at the start of the reconstruction period. This caused the neutralist sentiment to spread among them, such sentiment being in tune with sectarian ideology.
p Sectarianism also spread because believers were leaving the Russian Orthodox Church. The latter had been defending the interests of the exploiter classes for centuries. Having been given land by Soviet power, the numerous rural poor and middle peasants witnessed the furious resistance to Soviet power put up by the overthrown classes together with Russian Orthodox clergymen. They were not prepared yet for a complete rupture with faith and for acceptance of proletarian atheism. Denial of God and the Russian Orthodox Church oriented against the Soviets were two “extreme” ideologies that could not satisfy the middle peasants and the petty bourgeoisie in the cities who were neutral and temporising at the moment. Aroused to activity in matters of belief, they sought a middle way. That was why some adherents to the Russian Orthodox Church turned to sects whose leaders did not call openly upon their followers to fight against Soviet power. The petty-bourgeois elements in the cities and in the countryside were attracted by the sectarian preaching of mutual assistance and voluntary sharing of property. And while the people’s religiosity in general did not increase at that time, 113 the specific social processes in the classes led to the outflow of believers from Orthodoxy into sects.
p There were also subjective reasons why the sects had suddenly become active. The growth of sectarian membership soon after the Revolution was partially a result of (he atheistic propaganda being too narrow in scope. The propagandists were better prepared to expose the reactionary meaning of the Orthodox Church and there was almost no combatting the sectarian ideology at that initial stage. Dissatisfied with the priests who were clearly against the people, some of the believers converted to a priestless denomination, i.e. joined sects. But this tendency towards sectarianism was short-lived.
p During collectivisation, the kulak elements, who had become leaders of many sects, tried to provoke their adherents to antisocial actions, causing masses of ordinary members to protest. As a result, things came to a head in the sects. Faced with the successful socialist industrialisation and collectivisation of agriculture, the Party’s immense effort to educate working people in the communist spirit, and the great economic and cultural improvements, sectarianism in the USSR in general entered a deep crisis in the early 1930s. Sects started to collapse after the First Five-Year Plan was adopted and after the success of complete collectivisation became apparent. The sectarians began joining collective farms and leaving their sects. The formerly numerous sects of Sabbatarians, New Israelites, Christ Believers, Dukhobors (the deniers of the divinity of the Holy Ghost), Castratoes and Molokans practically ceased to exist. Baptists, Adventists and Pentecostals managed to prevent their sects from total collapse, but their membership greatly diminished before the War.
p The militant actions of the sect leaders against collectivisation, as well as the Christian preaching of forgiveness in the atmosphere of an acute class struggle and the growing threat of war increasingly made the believers wonder if they were on the right track. This and the direct collaboration of sectarian leaders with the invaders during the War were the reasons why many sects did not succeed in attracting new members even the war years. The Adventists, for example, lost more than half their members during the War.
114p This crisis was also typical of the sects in the post-war years, which was deeper than that of the Orthodox Church and Moslem religion, as can be seen from dynamics of the sect memberships.
p Under their existing internal regulations and rules, most of the sects register their members by name, thus permitting to find their exact numbers. At the moment, there are several hundred thousand sectarians left in all the sects functioning in the USSR, half of them being Evangelical Christian Baptists. The crisis in the sects and withdrawal of believers from religion are slanderously portrayed by bourgeois propaganda as a result of manipulation by atheists and of alleged religious “persecution”. But in reality, the adherents of small denominations, just like all Soviet citizens, enjoy all the benefits of socialism. Most of them work honestly and selflessly and support the domestic and foreign policies of the Communist Party and the Soviet government. Along with the adherents of other creeds, the sectarians celebrate their rites freely, go to public prayers or perform other acts of public worship. The state authorities do not interfere in their internal affairs. They are only required to observe the laws on worship and maintain public order.
p Take, for example, the Evangelical Christian Baptists. Their activities are not hindered in any way. They freely gather for public prayers and celebrate their rituals. They publish religious literature as needed. The believers elect their pastors themselves without any interference from the authorities. Conventions held every 5 years in accordance with their rules elect their religious centre—the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists. It publishes a journal entitled Bratskii vestnik (Brotherhood Herald), prayer-books and theological works. The Council maintains contacts with related church organisations in other countries. The absolute majority of the members of this sect are loyal to the Soviet state and work honestly together with all the Soviet people. They strictly adhere to the socialist standards of behaviour.
p However, several years ago a small group of fanatical preachers (Kryuchkov, Vins, Minyakov, Baturin and some others) began campaigning for totally unrestricted sectarian activities and incited the believers to violate Soviet legislation on religious 115 worship. These extremists managed to break away some believers deceived by their mendacious propaganda from the official church. They went underground and appointed themselves leaders of the splinter sectarian group. In opposition to the legally functioning religious centre—the Ail-Union Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists—the leaders of the dissenters set up a so-called Council of the Churches of Evangelical Christian Baptists.
p Splits in the church and especially in sects are nothing new. In the late 19th century, Engels noted perennial squabbles between believers because “each individual sect considers its specific vagary to be the only panacea." [115•1 When a church splits over an interpretation of the fundamentals of .faith, the socialist state does not interfere in its internal affairs.
p The matter was quite different when the Evangelical Christian Baptists had split. The followers of the Council of the Churches of Evangelical Christian Baptists have no serious controversy on their creed interpretation with the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists, which complies with Soviet law on worship. Seeking ways to hinder the objective process of believers leaving religion, the dissenters try to explain the crisis in the church by faults in the Soviet legislation on worship. In gross violation of the law, the extremist leaders of the dissenting sectarians incite their followers to have public prayers in the open and to perform religious rituals and ceremonies in the streets and squares. The sectarians attempted to organise schools and groups to teach children religion. When the bulk of the believers did not support them, the fanatics resorted to provocation and went underground. The Council of the Churches of Evangelical Christian Baptists declare demagogically that they recognise the decree “On the Separation of the Church from the State and the School from the Church" but spread inventions that the current legislation on religious worship is against the Soviet Constitution. Deceiving the believers, they try to justify gross violations of public order and other illegal actions. They arrange underground gatherings where they encourage their coreligionists to evade their civic duties, violate the laws on 116 worship, urge them not to go to the cinema, theatres, civic centres, not to listen to the radio or watch TV. They do not allow them to participate in public organisations.
p But such activities, though disguised by religion for deception, cannot be tolerated, of course. The decree “On the Separation of the Church from the State and the School from the Church" stressed specifically that no one could evade, on the grounds of his religious beliefs, the civil obligations laid down by the Constitution of the USSR for all citizens. “Enjoyment by citizens of their rights and freedoms must not be to the detriment of the interests of society or the state, or infringe the rights of other citizens,” says Article 39 of the USSR Constitution. Each citizen is obliged to observe Soviet laws, to respect the socialist standards of behaviour and to uphold the honour and dignity of Soviet citizenship.
p Exercise of rights and freedoms by the citizens in the Soviet Union is inseparable from the performance of their duties. The leaders of the Council of the Churches of Evangelical Christian Baptists conduct anti-social activities and grossly violate Soviet laws, and then claim they are being persecuted for faith.
p Demanding renovation and reform of their church, the adherents of the Council of the Churches distribute leaflets, letters and appeals to believers aimed at isolating them from everyday life and strengthening their fear of “God’s judgement" and “torment in Hell”. In their sermons and letters to believers, the dissenters defame “the sinful ways of the world”. They ignore the law and urge their co-religionists to teach children religion at schools specially set up for that purpose.
p The most far-sighted leaders of Evangelical Christian Baptists realise that all their attempts to provoke their supporters to disrespect for the Soviet state have met with distrust of the believers and the church has always lost a considerable part of its flock that way. This fact, in particular, brought about a paper entitled “The Christian and the Motherland" by A. V. Karev, a prominent Baptist preacher. The paper was widely discussed in communities. Resolutely objecting to the dissenters and stating that the believers cannot be “hermits keeping aloof from life of their people”, Karev called upon his co-religionists to love their Motherland, to respect their government and obey 117 the law. He said to the believers: “One cannot forget that the Motherland is not only one’s loved country with wonderful nature, with the people dear to one’s heart, with great achievements in science and arts and with a glorious history. The Motherland is a state with the state power and laws and the tasks of a Christian also include a correct attitude to the authorities.” Karev was a faithful adherent of the Church of Evangelical Christian Baptists, but he was aware that all attempts to push believers into a conflict with the Soviet state have always led to an acute crisis in the church and to a loss of a large part of its supporters.
p Many ordinary believers who had responded to the appeals of the dissenters soon returned to registered associations after explanatory work conducted by local authorities. Still others began to doubt whether their leaders were right in their action and break off with sectarianism for good.
p The evolution of Christians of Evangelical Faith ( Pentecostals) is complex and contradictory.
p Religious Pentecostals in the USSR are divided into followers of Voronaev, Shmidt and Smorodin and into Pentecostals of God. Most of the Pentecostals function in the Western regions of the Ukraine and Byelorussia, in Moldavia and Kazakhstan. There are small groups in the RSFSR and in Kirghizia and Georgia.
p The collaboration of many Pentecostal leaders with the Nazi invaders in the occupied territories during the War compromised and greatly damaged the sect’s influence. A large part of the Pentecostal groups turned to legal activities in the first years after the War in response to their members’ demands. There is not much difference between the creeds and practices of public worship of Pentecostals and Baptists and, as a result, many Pentecostal communities merged with societies of Evangelical Christian Baptists and joined the All-Union Council of the latter in the first post-war years to perform their religious rites within the current law on religious worship. Fanatic leaders of this sect, however, such as Bidash, Ivanov and Ukrainets, soon managed to take away part of the believers. Having proclaimed the registration of religious communities by the authorities to be against the Gospel, they began inciting their followers to violate laws and to organise secret gatherings.
118p Extreme mysticism and fanaticism, denial of everything earthly and of the Soviet way of life are preached in such Pentecostal groups. Some of them maintain cruel forms of worship, speaking with other tongues is encouraged and propagated, as are various visions, prophesies, long fasts, and exhausting prayers detrimental to the health. Some Pentecostals have held such gatherings until recently with limited attendance, deeply underground and at night, as a rule.
p Considering that many Pentecostals hold Voronaev, the founder of the sect, in particularly high esteem, the fanatics and extremists deliberately distort Voronaev’s socio-political views, trying to take advantage of his former prestige in order to keep the believers under their control. This stance caused protests some time ago from those sincerely religious people who had known Voronaev personally and were his associates in the Pentecostal Union, which existed in the 1920s. In May 1960, Znamya kommunizma, a newspaper published in Odessa, received an open letter from G. G. Panurko, the former chairman of the Pentecostal Union, and M. S. But and N. V. Kuzmenko, its Board members. They wrote: “We worked together with Voronaev in the Union organised by him and were members of its leadership. Voronaev always protested against various fanatical acts ... namely: prophecies, visions, leading by spirit and other phenomena contradictory to the sane doctrine. . . We confirm that there was a resolution at a convention of Pentecostals in 1927 proposed by Voronaev and approved by the whole convention on the attitude to the Soviet state and on doing military service on equal terms with all citizens.” Panurko made similar statements in the church press. Thus, the deceptions of the extremist leaders were exposed. Developments and concentrated atheistic work had a decisive effect on the Pentecostals that made them change their stance.
p Work with ordinary Pentecostals to explain the humane principles of freedom of conscience assured under the Soviet Constitution and under Soviet laws on religious worship has been intensified everywhere lately. It helped to liberate believers from the influence of their fanatic leaders. As a result, a great number of Pentecostals stopped illegal activities and joined registered societies of Evangelical Christian Baptists.
119p In 1969, the Council for Religious Affairs sent out special explanatory circulars advising local authorities not to interfere with those Pentecostals who have turned away from illegal activities and were joining registered communities of Evangelical Christian Baptists and, in some cases, to register Pentecostal communities autonomously, provided they discarded cruel rites and recognised and observed Soviet laws.
p Reactionary Pentecostal leaders tried their hardest to prevent believers from converting to registered societies. In some places, they even went to houses of prayer of registered societies and tried to keep their former adherents out. But in most cases the process of Pentecostals turning away from illegal activities and their quest for ways of satisfying their religious needs within the legislation on religious worship was not to be reversed.
p The Seventh-Day Adventists were a prosecuted sect before the October Revolution and therefore were few in Russia. They started vigorous propaganda of their creed in the early years of Soviet power, when given freedom for unrestricted preaching. Before the Revolution, Seventh-Day Adventists could be found mainly in the Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, in the Baltic regions and in the Crimea, whereas in the early 1920s the sect succeeded in setting up its communities also in some regions of Central Russia, the Volga Area, Siberia and in the Far East. There were more than 7,000 adherents of that sect in 1920, and this number almost doubled by 1925, although the growth rate slowed down in the next 5 years, despite vigorous missionary activities. The Adventist movement entered a deep crisis in the early 1930s caused by enormous changes in the country’s public and economic life. Inasmuch as village individual households had been the source of Adventism in the pre-revolutionary era and in the first decades of Soviet rule, the triumph of the collective-farm system caused this source to shrink. Many communities diminished so much in the late 1930s that they had to declare themselves closed. There were no more than 10,000-11,000 Adventists left in 1940.
p During the War, despite the fact that the sect had well-versed preachers who were very active in missionary work and that the communities dissolved in the pre-war years began functioning again, not a single one of them managed to exceed their 120 pre-war membership. Very few people joined religious societies of Adventists anew during the War. The number of Adventists had declined by the end of the War even in their traditional strongholds, such as Latvia and Estonia. Similar processes took place in other regions. For example, the Novosibirsk community had 34 members in 1932 and there were only 14 left in 1947. The number of believers in Tula decreased from 47 to 39 during the same period and Moscow had only 151 Adventists when they were registered in 1945 while they were 538 in 1930. The AllUnion Council of Seventh-Day Adventists, a religious centre of the sect that existed in the post-war period, admitted that the number of followers of Adventism declined more than twice during the War. The sect regained its pre-war level only in 1947. The war severely damaged the country’s economy and brought misery and suffering to millions of Soviet people. The hardships of the first post-war years gave rise to a religious revival of sorts. Seventh-Day Adventists made use of these hardships in order to swell their ranks. The characteristic features of the sect are strictly centralised administration, high prestige of the preachers, and constant emphasis on “the forthcoming advent of Christ" which allows the Adventist leaders to keep their flock under control.
p Taking advantage of the weakened control over observance of the legislation on worship and grossly violating these laws, the Council launched a wide missionary campaign with travelling preachers. Instructed by the religious centre, large groups of missionary sectarians, using the system of government-sponsored recruitment of workers to outlying areas, began moving after the War from the Ukraine and Moldavia to the Northern Caucasus, Central Asia, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East and started to enlist members at new settlements. The membership of Adventists was growing almost everywhere soon after the War. Many of their communities increased rapidly in Western regions of the Ukraine and Moldavia. There were 21,500 Adventists in 1964.
p This was followed by a short period of stabilisation in the numerical strength of Adventism and then a decline has started in many communities since the mid-1960s, which the leaders have been unable to stop for many years. New members do not make for natural losses in most of the communities. The process of 121 weakening that started in the sect of Seventh-Day Adventists two decades ago still continues. This was also a result of measures taken by central and local authorities to increase control over observance of laws on worship and also of atheist work conducted among believers.
p Now, as before, Adventists who recognise legislation on worship, gather in their houses of prayer for public worship, celebrate their rites and perform religious ceremonies without any hindrance. But the activities of many communities recognising the laws on worship are autonomous today. The most fanatical of the sectarian leaders try to restore their lost position by resorting to illegal work. But they fail in their designs.
p Things came to a head in other sects as well. Associations of Molokans, very active in the past, now almost ceased to exist. Most of the Molokan communities functioning in the USSR, have public prayers only on Sundays attended by no more than 30-40 per cent of registered members and of old age as a rule. Children and young people almost never go to prayers. Funeral services and prayers for the dead are the most regular rituals celebrated by Molokans. Baptism and marriage ceremonies have virtually come to naught. No more than 7-8 baptisms and 30-40 marriage ceremonies have been performed annually for the last few years in all the registered Molokan houses of prayer.
p A sect of Khlysts, who branched away from the Molokans in the distant past, is also fast on the decline. Secrecy, denial of the flesh, mysticism, and ascetism have compromised the creed and its preachers in the eyes of modern believers, as have its prohibition against members going to the cinema and theatres, listening to the radio and watching TV, so the Khlyst leaders have been unable to gather even small groups of adherents for prayers for the last decade. The most zealous supporters of the sect cannot even hope nowadays to organise the traditional flagellant rites.
p But perhaps the most complex and contradictory is the evolution of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The organisers and inspirers of this sect outside the USSR have taken great pains to make their struggle against the revolutionary movement under the guise of religion more effective, to poison the masses with anti- Communism and anti-Sovietism. The spread of Jehovism in the Soviet 122 Union began after World War I. Sect ideologists based in Brooklyn (New York) started their missionary work in the Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia in the early 1920s with the consent of the Polish government. Then they moved to the Transcarpathian area, the Baltic regions and to Moldavia. They were legal and actively cooperated with the pre-war Polish regime and reactionary circles of the bourgeois Baltic governments. They succeeded in setting up a branch office of the Brooklyn centre in Lvov just before World War II. It provided a religious cover for active anti-Soviet propaganda suggesting to supporters that socialism in the USSR was just a “zigzag in history, an accidental, temporary development”. By praising the supposed advantages of the bourgeois way of life, the ideologists of the Brooklyn centre of Jehovah’s Witnesses spared no effort to penetrate inside the USSR and to win over ideologically wavering Soviet people to their creed. In 1942, Nathan Knorr, the leader of Jehovah’s Witnesses, set up (in Berne, Switzerland) a so-called European office of the New World Society which controlled, among others, a “regional bureau" of the sect, which acted in the territories of the Ukraine and Byelorussia, occupied at that time by the Nazis. The sectarian leaders collaborated with the invaders and did not even speak out against the atrocities of the Nazis.
p After Nazism was routed and the Soviet land liberated, the groups of Jehovah’s Witnesses set up on Soviet territory went underground and continued their missionary work in secret. But despite great efforts by their overseas patrons, Jehovah’s Witnesses have not been a success in the USSR and their field of operation is quite narrow. Most of Jehovah’s Witnesses are concentrated in several regions, territories and republics where there are small groups of their followers. This sect is an extremely reactionary, anti-social religious group in its creed and inner organisation. It is highly centralised, based on strict discipline and mutual responsibility, preaching extreme mysticism and isolation of the members from their milieu. Their Brooklyn centre still tries to insinuate anti-communist ideas under religious cover in its publications and often openly urges the adherents to evade their civic duties and to violate the laws of their country. In his speech at a convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses in New York on August 3, 1958, Knorr boasted shamelessly that theirs was the only 123 religion able to liberate the earth from godless communism in the near future.
p The Brooklyn centre tries its hardest to prevent the religious activities of its adherents from being legalised. Their magazines The Watch Tower and Awake, that are distributed to the believers, do what they can to hold them always on the alert, in a state of suspicion to all which is related to the advance of science and technology and which could convincingly refute the tales of theologians. They instill in their co-religionists alienation, distrust and enmity for the atheists.
p The sect’s extremist leaders demand that members should not be engaged in social production, they forbade them to join trade unions or participate in elections, and incite the youths from Jehovah’s Witnesses’ families to dodge their military duty. Groups and individuals are being worked on with the objective to hold every rank-and-file believer in obedience, to keep his everyday life, as well as his liturgical and preaching activities, under control and to establish unshakeable authority ofr the preachers and strict discipline. Their members are taught they must obey every instruction of the Brooklyn religious centre.
p The creed of Jehovah’s Witnesses is based on a myth of an inevitable Armageddon, i.e. a holy war of Jehovah, the God they worship, against adherents of other faiths and atheists. In their attempts to make the sect more active, the ideologists of Jehovah’s Witnesses placed their hopes on the preaching of the approaching Armageddon which was to break out in the autumn of 1975. But it is well known that the Brooklyn leaders have set the date of the “holy war" more than once before: in 1914, 1925, 1927 and 1929. Every time when the believers were disappointed, many members left the sect. In the latest case, the clamorous campaign urging the believers to get prepared for the Armageddon was launched at a convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Munich in 1969. In April 1969, Awake even published a chart of mankind’s history for 6,000 years with figures pointing to October 1975 for the Armageddon. The leaders of Jehovah’s Witnesses related their missionary work to the approach of the Armageddon. The believers were told again and again that the salvation of everyone in that war would depend on how active his religious and missionary work would be. There were some fanatics among the 124 sect adherents who spread rumours that the Armageddon was approaching but most of the sectarians did not believe the prophesies from Brooklyn.
p In the Soviet system, the believers are under the influence of ideas and views directly opposite to and incompatible with traditional religious perception. That is why no exhortations or threats with chastisement from God can stop the profound and inexorable effect made by the Soviet way of life even on the adherents of this closed, reactionary creed. Just as in the past, this Brooklyn provocation of Armageddon has flopped. Faced with the blatant deception, many believers stated that they would leave the sect. “I ... threw away a veil from my eyes having broken off with this sect of darkness and gloom,” said I. Sharaburak, a former leader of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the USSR. “We filled our members’ heads with the rot of Brooklyn propaganda and they believed us. They believed it because so few of them were literate and they couldn’t understand the truth. Brooklyn is very afraid of the literate and tries to keep the believers in the dark.”
p One of the former leaders of a community of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Transcarpathian area, N. I. Varga, frankly said that it was the desire to get rid of the fear of the Armageddon, which he felt for many years, that was decisive in his liberating himself from religion. “We are happy now,” writes I. Forkosh, another resident of that area who had left the sect. “We are happy as people can be when they have built a large house with wide windows in place of a decayed hut where smoke smarted the eyes. Oksana, my wife, and me work in a collective farm. Our eldest son-Mikhail is an electrician. He works in Siberia on the construction of the Baikal-Amur Railway. Ivan, another son, will soon go to serve in the Soviet Army. Nikolai, Nadezhda and Vassily still go to school. Vitya, our youngest, will go next year. Our children will never know the fear of the Armageddon that had tormented us for many years.”
p Influenced by the Soviet reality and by an enormous educational work conducted by the Communist Party, state and public organisations, many believing Jehovah’s Witnesses become less zealous; they begin to question the real nature of the religious values and political attitudes propagated by the Brooklyn centre. Serious controversy arises between the everyday consciousness 125 of the believers and the recommendations of their religious centre. More and more believers wonder why the Brooklyn centre directs its main efforts against the USSR when it has declared war on all governments which refuse to recognise the belief in Jehovah as the only God. In view of this, the believers often protest against the blatant anti-Sovietism of most of the appeals of their religious centre. In January 1968, a large group of Jehovah’s Witnesses residing in the region of Irkutsk, published an open letter in the newspaper Vostochno-Sibirskaya Pravda calling upon all adherents to this denomination to break any connections with the anti-Soviet Brooklyn centre. “We are especially worried now that Jehovah’s Witnesses become increasingly involved in fighting against Soviet power,” they wrote. “Due to this, our Bible and Tract Society, based, it seemed, on religious convictions turned essentially into a reactionary political organisation.”
p The trend in favour of autonomy and breaking the ties with the Brooklyn centre have spread rather widely in recent years among believers in Moldavia and in the Ukrainian regions of Chernovtsi, Ivano-Frankovsk and Lvov. More and more Jehovah’s Witnesses are now socially productive, no longer alienated and suspicious, join trade unions and subscribe to magazines and newspapers.
p Most of Jehovah’s Witnesses have changed their attitude toward civic duty and enjoy the benefits of modern life. Thus many of them have cars, motorcycles, refrigerators and radio sets. During the first post-war years, Jehovah’s Witnesses let their children go to school only as far as the 4th or 5th form, did not allow them to join the Young Pioneers and the Young Communist League or to study and operate engineering devices, whereas now many children of such families after 8 years of school enroll at vocational schools.
p A considerable number of Jehovah’s Witnesses go to the polls during elections. It is rare now that a young man from a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses refuses military duty because of his religion. Many former believers break off with the sect after they have served in the army.
p The crisis in religion makes ideologists of all denominations seek new ways and means to adapt to present-day conditions. 126 Sermons, especially at the Russian Orthodox places of worship, have been irregular until recently. They have been based on religious and mystical subjects. Today the sermons more often use terminology in tune with the times, they try to answer topical questions of the day and to react to the most important events in Soviet life. In their attempts to hold the believers under their influence, the clergymen lay emphasis on moral and psychological problems.
p The sacraments were also modernised. The Russian Orthodox Church, for instance, knows three forms of confession. They include an open confession in public, an individual confession in secret and a general confession. The latter had been permitted only as an exception before but today it is common practice. In the past, the priests were against reading the burial service in the absence of the body, whereas now many of them agree to this ritual formerly incompatible with the church canons. Eighty per cent of all the burial services in Russian Orthodox churches are performed in absentia. When such a burial service is performed, it may be for a person who was not in the church when alive but this does not matter for the priest.
p The priests did not have any sanitary regulations for baptism in the past. But they have to change that, too, as the social and sanitary standards of the population rise. Thus, at the request of its priests, the executive body of the main cathedral in Gorky, for instance, even devised Sanitary Regulations for Persons Performing the Sacrament of Baptism. Under the Regulations, the priest who performs baptism should wash his hands, make sure that .the font is clean and check the water temperature (no less than 34° or 35°C). He is not allowed to place more than one baby into the same water. It is recommended that the font should be thoroughly washed with soap and household soda and then rinsed with potassium permanganate solution. The oil- anointing brushes and the wiping sponge are to be disinfected. Under the Regulations, the priest and his helpers should wear white and clean smocks.
p The churchmen try to make religion more attractive for believers and thus to prolong its life. The tendency towards modernising religious creeds was noted by Lenin. He drew the attention of Marxists to the danger of renovated and sophisticated 127 forms of religion free from archaisms. “A million physical sins, dirty tricks, acts of violence and infections,” wrote Lenin in his letter to Maxim Gorky, “are much more easily discovered by the crowd, and therefore are much less dangerous, than the subtle, spiritual idea of god, dressed up in the most attractive ’ ideological’ costumes." [127•1
The modernisation of the church and its adaptation to presentday conditions are not the reasons for scientific atheistic propaganda to be less vigorous but, on the contrary, to be intensified. Religion, whether old or renovated, has always been an antiscientific ideology for Marxists because it is against the working people’s best interests and its view of the world will remain unacceptable for citizens of socialist society.