The growing severity of the Russian legal restrictions against religion since the death of Lenin in 1924 and the departures in the Soviet’s attitude toward religion since the promulgation of the 1918 decree dealing with the separation of church and state are revealed in a White Paper published here by the British government. The material contained in the White Paper is based on information obtained by the British embassy in Moscow.
The issuance of the White Paper is in conformity with a promise made by the Labor government to the Conservatives at the height of the world-wide protests against religious persecution in Russia earlier in the year.
The White Paper points out that while in 1918 it was decreed that “each citizen is free to profess any or no religion” and all laws banning civil rights as a result of the profession of any particular religion were revoked, by 1924 the religious legislation was amended to bar from election to office and the right to vote all “ministers of religion of all beliefs and doctrines, actually following their profession, and monks.”
By 1926 the religious decree of 1918 was further changed and extended to persons “formerly or at present serving as “servants of religious cults of all religions and persuasions, such as monks, lay brothers and sisters, priests, deacons, psalmists, mulaps, muezzins, rabbis, cantors, Roman Catholic clergy, pastors, readers and persons with other names who carry out similar duties independently of whether they receive a salary for the execution of those duties.”
The White Paper points out that the 1918 decree has been extended in other directions, too. While religious education was originally only banned in all state, public and private educational institutions where general education was given citizens were permitted to teach and be taught religion privately. This has since been changed to make it a violation of the criminal code punishable by compulsory labor for a period of not more than a year to teach religion to persons under age in state or private educational institutions.
The full text of the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive and the Soviet of the People’s Commissars of the U. S. S. R. was first made available in English in this country by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. It was reprinted in Bulletin No. 261 of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
