Repression
Clergy
The Bolsheviks wanted only their own ideology existing in Russia, and so restricted faith by repressing the clergy. In 1918 many leaders of the Russian Orthodox church were brutally murdered - Vladimir of Kiev, who was mutilated, castrated, shot and had his corpse put on display for public, Archbishop Vasily who was crucified and burned. A key strategy of the Bolsheviks was to split the clergy, which they did through introduction of the Living Church in 1922. Patriarche Tikhon was imprisoned and stripped of his title, his deputy exiled. At the All-Russian Church Council( April 29th-May 9th) of 1922, it was decreed that the Russian Orthodox Church was to be taken under the control of the Living Church, and the traditional …show more content…
The Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was destroyed and replaced by the Palace of the Soviets, while the Archbishops palace at Novgorod was transformed into a rest home for scientists. Jewish members of the Bolshevik party were forced to denounce their religion. In winter of 1924 there was a massive round up of priests, bishops, parishes, nuns and monks around Petrograd. The ground was too hard to dig into so they were forced to jump into a hole in the ice and drown in the freezing water. In 1929 an agitprop conference wanted to intensify anti-religious work in the educational system, and a special anti-religious faculty was established at Institute of Red Professors. From 1929-1930 there was a massive purge of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as up to 100 scholars, their assistants and graduate students arrested for random charges. Their sentences varied from three years internal exile to the death penalty. On the 5th of December 1931, by order of Stalin’s minister Kaganovich, the Church of Christ the Savior was bombed with dynamite and destroyed. In 1918 there were an estimated 50,000 Russian Orthodox priests in the USSR, and by 1935 there were only 500. Before the beginning of the Nazi-Soviet war, only 4 bishops in the whole of Russia were not exiled or …show more content…
Stakhanov was transformed into an overnight hero of the new Communist Russia, exemplifying the traits deemed desirable in Russian people: hardworking, productive and innovative. The Stakhanov movement was launched by Stalin to increase industrial tempo, ‘Stakhanovites’ given incentives by Central Committee in 1936. However, they were unpopular among regular workers as output norms had risen and workers who struggled to keep up with mandatory levels because of bad conditions were angry. The Stakhanovite movement continued into WWII and saw a slight revival in post-war