After 22 years of effort, the Union of Militant Jewish Atheists virtually admitted today that it has not been able wipe out practice of the Jewish religion in Soviet Russia.
The tacit admission was contained in a report that the Union last years, despite a campaign covering two decades, still found it necessary to organize 15,000 to 20,000 lectures throughout Russia to combat Judaism.
The ineffectiveness of the campaign is causing considerable perturbastion in Jewish Communist circles, according to long articles appearing in the press. One paper, the Kiever Stern, campaigns that anti-religious propaganda is being carried on halfheartedly among the Jewish masses and that no such propagandas is carried on in the Yiddish tongue.
The same paper cites as an instance of the campaign’s failure the fact that the former secretary of the atheists’ union arranged a Jewish religious ceremony for the circumcision of his recently born son. “It can be easily imagined what value the anti-religious activities of such an atheist can have had when he himself persists in superstitious beliefs.”
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.
