We must engage in a most decisive battle against reactionary clergy and suppress their resistance with such cruelty that they will remember it for several decades to come.
-- Lenin
The founder of the Soviet state wrote those words in 1922, but they were only made public last April -- at a time when Lenin's heirs were finally giving up their long antireligion battle. Perhaps the most startling evidence of the change was the celebration of the first Eucharist since 1918 in the Kremlin's Cathedral of the Assumption, barely three weeks ago. While Anatoli Lukyanov, the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, and Ivan Silayev, prime minister of the Russian republic, and other Communist dignitaries looked on, Alexi II, Patriarch of All Russia, conducted services in the formerly pre-eminent church of Russia. The Patriarch then led the first Procession of the Cross in 70 years from the Kremlin through downtown Moscow to the Church of the Great Ascension, restored after decades of use as a workshop and potato warehouse.
Last week the renewed religious freedom that Alexi had so publicly celebrated finally became official. Culminating a two-year thaw, the Soviet parliament passed a new Law on Freedom of Conscience by a vote of 341 to 2. The statute bestowed great opportunities on believers, estimated to number as many as 131 million, who have maintained their faith despite the oppression of Lenin and his successors. But with freedom come some grievous problems, principally shortages of money, trained clergy and just about everything else needed for religious restoration. At the same time, ugly sectarian conflicts, also long repressed, are boiling up within and among religious factions.
The new law removes the most formidable barriers to church life, starting with the absence of property rights for religious groups. Previously, houses of worship existed at the whim of Communist bureaucrats, who confiscated tens of thousands of churches and mosques. Charitable and pastoral work beyond church walls was forbidden, while atheists had power to meddle in church affairs and propagandize against belief in God in schools and the media. Seminary training was severely restricted, and rank-and-file clergy were even cut off from formal food privileges. No faith could conduct religious education of children.
All that is gone, but certain limitations remain. The parliament did not allow voluntary religious classes in state-run schools. Until a new legal regime for conscientious objectors is developed, they will still be drafted by the Soviet military. The law leaves intact a less powerful version of the Council for Religious Affairs, through which the KGB previously controlled religious organizations. But all of that may soon change further. The Russian republic, for one, plans an even more liberal religious statute of its own.