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Moscow, Berlin Push Plans for United Drive on Religion

May 6, 1940
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Reports from Moscow today indicated that Soviet Russia and Germany were intensifying plans for a united campaign against religion.

The French Agency Radio quoted Boris Deborin, member of the Soviet Academy, as declaring in Moscow following a tour of Germany that the principal achievement of Nazism that he saw was the disappearance of the Jewish religion in the Reich.

Deborin had been sent to Germany to confer with Nazi leaders on plans to combat religion, the French agency said, and reported in a public lecture on his return to Moscow that it was the duty of Soviet atheists “to come to the aid of the Germans in their fight against religion.”

Meanwhile, the newspaper Bezbozhnik, organ of the Soviet atheists, publishes the following “ten commandments” for Soviet cooperation with Germany:

“(1) Whoever opposes Soviet-German cooperation is an enemy of the Soviet Government and of Communism; (2) Germany and the Soviet are unitedly fighting against capitalism, against religion and for a new social order; (3) the German nation, like the Soviet people, are against religion and for Socialism; (4) the German-Soviet pact killed the war campaign conducted by the Church; (5) Stalin and Hitler are against religion and capitalism; (6) the pact with Germany resulted in creation of new political positions for the Soviet in northern and eastern Europe; (7) the political and economic structure of the Soviet and Germany are as yet not the same; (8) It is already clear that after the war Germany will have to continue on the road to real Socialism; (9) Owing to the cooperation with Germany, it has been made possible for Communism to penetrate into other countries; (10) Stalin requires loyalty to Communism, world revolution and atheism.”

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