The Bright Light of Objectivity
I was a Russian Studies major; my mother is American Orthodox; my closest friend is Russian Orthodox, and I spent over a year living in St. Petersburg in college. Needless to say, this post held a high degree of relevance to me. I understand that it was a re-post from a Catholic blog. I find it infuriatingly inaccurate in many respects.
1) Soviet anti-religion propaganda was NOT aimed particularly towards the Catholic Church. It was aimed at religion in general, and mostly at the Russian Orthodox Church because that was the largest denomination in the Soviet Union. The analysis that Catholicism was the primary form of Christianity under attack is a typical self-centered Western understanding. It is true that the Soviet Union took Catholicism as the primary religious denomination in the Western world (not discriminating much between Catholicism and Protestantism), which they criticized WHEN their propaganda was aimed at foreign nations. But this was a political attack, not a religious attack, because the USSR associated Catholic doctrine with the denigration of black Americans and women, both of whom were fighting for civil liberties that -- at the time -- were allowed in the Soviet Union, but not in the United States.
2) The Soviet Union targeted religious organizations and the Russian Orthodox Church (as well as other churches) because of the way they manifested themselves politically and socially (and with Communism, the two become intertwined), not because of hatred toward religious sentiment itself. The Communist Revolution sought to overthrow the Russian aristocracy, which also included much of the Church. The Russian Orthodox Church had close political ties with the Russian monarchy. They had extensive influence in political and social affairs. This was very true immediately previous to the Revolution, when the monk Rasputin was a highly public figure, in direct contact with the Royal Family and said to be influencing many of their decisions. The Church was an extremely wealthy and politically influential organization, and it was targeted along with the Russian aristocracy.
3) Moreover, in terms of ideals, the Church urged Russian citizens not to worry about their present burdensome lives, but to seek God's blessing and favor, which would manifest itself after death. This was directly opposed to the Communist need to have all citizens support and participate in a worldly community.
4) Communism is an ideology. As an ideology, it is opposed to capitalism, which is also an ideology. In recent years, it has been increasingly difficult to differentiate between capitalism and western Christianity, which I take to mean Catholicism, Protestantism, and smaller religious denominations influenced by these two -- including Orthodoxy. Capitalism is NOT inherently Christian. In fact, Communism is a far closer ideology. The Apostle Peter actually enacts a form of communism in the Bible, in as harsh a way as in the Soviet Union (Acts 5:1-10). Holding a repression of capitalism and some of the personal freedoms associated with capitalism as inherently anti-religious is false. Religion does not equal capitalism. Saying that being anti-capitalistic is 'to destroy the human spirit' is a very flawed and contemporary notion.
5) Contemporary Russia has many problems, for many reasons, many of them having to do with a political history that was, essentially, a failed experiment. But holding up a lack of religion, high abortion and divorce rates, and high levels of alcoholism as evidence of its depressed state is an inherently religious judgement. These are the factors which western Churches take to measure a society, including the United States. But they are not the only factors that can be used to measure a country's success. We can look at GDP or the percentage of the middle class, civil rights records, foreign policy, transparency. Under any of these standards, Russia has problems, but I object to condemnation based on western religious delusions and misunderstandings.
We must be extremely careful when addressing complex issues that hold a high level of emotional and political relevance today, but which are extremely dependent on historical context and analytic objectivity. Propaganda and popular misconceptions about the USSR are numerous, as are those about Christianity. Historical background and accuracy must be paramount when dealing with either or both of these issues.
