A marked change in the Soviet attitude toward religion is announced in Pravda, Communist Party organ, copies of which have reached Paris from Moscow.
No longer will a drive be conducted against ministers and rabbis, nor will administrative pressure be used to fight religion, Pravda states. “Our new policy is based on the simple fact that when people are economically well provided for on earth, then they do not look for aid from heaven.”
The Communist organ publishes a declaration by the Propaganda department of Bezbozhnik, the militant Soviet atheist organization, admitting that the methods of administrative pressure which it has used during the past 20 years are “nothing but an imitation of the methods usually used by the capitalists and represent an attitude basically contradictory to the teachings of Lenin and Stalin.”
The declaration informs members of Bezbozhnik that their principal aim henceforth should be to see to it that Soviet citizens who are religiously inclined should have their economic situation improved to the point where they feel that it is the Soviet, not any god, who is helping them.
The Soviet statement, coming as it does a few weeks before Passover, is of particular interest to the Jews since in previous years the Bezbozhnik organization has conducted a pre-Passover drive against the Jewish religion.
It remains to be seen whether the new policy will be applied to Soviet-occupied Poland, where in recent months the anti-religious campaign has reportedly assumed tremendous proportions.
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.
