Lenin And Religion
By Adrian Chan-Wyles PhD
Author’s Note: Lenin may well have been surprised to see the upsurge of a right-wing religionism that has been spreading throughout Western and Eastern Europe since the start of the 21st century, and which has supported various neo-Nazi regimes in Western Ukraine, Poland, Estonia and elsewhere. The US has generated an ‘Islamo-Fascism’ within the Middle East which is now out of control and killing untold numbers of people in the world (many being progressive or free-thinking Muslims), although similar terrorist attacks have been carried-out in the West and in China. Furthermore, the US finances and controls the Pro-Tibetan Movement (a fake religious organisation that peddles pseudo-history in an attempt to separate the Tibetan region from the rest of China), and the Falun Gong Cult (which is a Western ‘racist’ take on the Chinese practice qigong). The US also supports a number of Christian organisations in their attempts to infiltrate China with Churches that openly support and advocate capitalism whilst rejecting Socialism. The irony is that Chinese Socialist Law guarantees freedom of religion, freedom of thought and freedom of expression, and supports an individual's right to practice any religion or none. The point is that right-wing religion is obviously in league with the bourgeoisie, freemasonry and predatory capitalism. The mainstream Churches in the West support the capitalist system because the capitalist system privileges mainstream religion. Those who control these Churches are invariably ‘White’ and middle-class. Obviously, any religion that supports capitalism is the enemy of humanity and a barrier to the establishment of Socialism. This was the situation when Lenin was leading the Bolsheviks to victory in the early 20th century. Religionists that support Socialism are not to expect any special treatment, and they may well be expected to try harder to prove their convictions. If a religion openly (and sincerely) supports Socialism, then that particular aspect of it ceases being a direct threat to the Revolution. As Thatcher destroyed the power and effectiveness of the Trade Unions, readers might be surprised to learn that in 2007, the largest demonstration staged by migrant workers in the UK – campaigning for their rights – was arranged by a coalition of Churches and had no Trade Union input at all! Many people share short quotes of Marx and Lenin, etc, throughout social media without understanding the historical context of what they are conveying, and then incorrectly assume that Marxist-Leninism is ‘anti-religion’! If this was the case, the Constitution of the USSR would have straightforwardly ‘banned’ all forms of religions, but instead Lenin ‘guaranteed’ any and all religious practice providing it was a ‘private matter’.
ACW (6.9.2020)
‘Freedom of religion and equality of all nationalities. Transfer of the registration of births, marriages and deaths to independent civic offices, independent, that is, of the police.’
Lenin: 1895-1896 - Draft and Explanation of a Programme for the Social Democratic Party (Collected Works: Vol 2. 95-112-117
The work of Lenin must always be viewed within the context of the situation in Russia he had to operate within. The Russian Orthodox Church, for instance, associated itself intimately with the Czarist regime, and assisted the Russian State in attacking and oppressing all other religious groupings and cultural minorities. Atheism – or the right not to believe in any religion – was illegal within Czarist Russia. Lenin, therefore, had to follow three strands of action. He had to a) apply the thinking of Marx and Engels regarding religion, b) confront the hegemonic power of the Russian Orthodox Church and c) protect the religious rights of all ethnic minorities and cultural groupings living throughout the vast geographical area that comprised Russia and the Russian empire. Russia and its surrounding areas contained substantial populations of Christians (of various denominations), Jews, Muslims and Buddhists (Tibetan, Chinese and Mongolian), including small populations of (Chinese) Daoists and Confucianists as well as various types of shamanic-practicing tribes, and other forms of primitive beliefs, etc. This diverse and vibrant religious presence also included ancient populations of Romany people (from various tribes), all speaking their own languages and dialects. Indeed, religion was a major facet of Russian identity, a fact that the Bolsheviks under Lenin had to take into account when attempting to transition the country into a Socialist State that ‘officially’ advocated the power of scientific thought as its guiding light.
‘The Russian working class is able to wage its economic and political struggle alone, even if no other class comes to its aid. But in the political struggle the workers do not stand alone. The people’s complete lack of rights and the savage lawlessness of the bashi-bazouk officials rouse the indignation of all honest educated people who cannot reconcile themselves to the persecution of free thought and free speech; they rouse the indignation of the persecuted Poles, Finns, Jews, and Russian religious sects; they rouse the indignation of the small merchants, manufacturers, and peasants, who can nowhere find protection from the persecution of officials and police. All these groups of the population are incapable, separately, of carrying on a persistent political struggle. But when the working class raises the banner of this struggle, it will receive support from all sides. Russian Social-Democracy will place itself at the head of all fighters for the rights of the people, of all fighters for democracy, and it will prove invincible!’
Lenin: 1899 – Our Immediate Task (Collected Work: Vol. 4: 215-220)
From the very beginning, Lenin acted in accordance with the teachings of Marx and Engels and sought to separate the powerful Russian Orthodox Church from its interference within the political process of running the country, and in the classroom with the education of young minds. The Russian Orthodox Church was responsible for all kinds of ignorance and discrimination throughout Russian society, including anti-homosexual laws (which Lenin abolished in 1917 as part of the annulling of all Czarist law). Marxism has never advocated the destruction of religion (despite capitalist-supporting propaganda to the opposite), but has always sought to separate ‘religion’ from its support of ‘capitalism’, and the interference of religion in the State-education process. A young mind is not yet able to understand about the reality of the material world, and should not be exposed to theological views of reality before maturity has set-in, and an individual is able to make informed choices. Marxism, and Marxist-Leninism is not ‘anti-religion’. Those brought-up with an appreciation of science may not need a religious belief to sustain their lives, but on the other hand, some people are excellent scientists whilst still subscribing to a religious belief. Throughout Revolutionary Russia, ALL religions enjoyed freedom of expression and equality in the eyes of the State, but obviously the Russian Orthodox Church resented losing all its political and educational power. Like the Roman Catholic Church in the West, this often led to members of the Russian Orthodox Church openly supporting far-right and right-wing causes in the mistaken view that fascism would a) protect Church power and b) reinstate Church power where it had been dissolved.
‘Why do the Russian workers still manifest little revolutionary activity in response to the brutal treatment of the people by the police, the persecution of religious sects, the flogging of peasants, the outrageous censorship, the torture of soldiers, the persecution of the most innocent cultural undertakings, etc.? Is it because the “economic struggle” does not “stimulate” them to this, because such activity does not “promise palpable results”, because it produces little that is “positive”? To adopt such an opinion, we repeat, is merely to direct the charge where it does not belong, to blame the working masses for one’s own philistinism (or Bernsteinism). We must blame ourselves, our lagging behind the mass movement, for still being unable to organise sufficiently wide, striking, and rapid exposures of all the shameful outrages. When we do that (and we must and can do it), the most backward worker will understand, or will feel, that the students and religious sects, the peasants and the authors are being abused and outraged by those same dark forces that are oppressing and crushing him at every step of his life. Feeling that, he himself will be filled with an irresistible desire to react, and he will know how to hoot the censors one day, on another day to demonstrate outside the house of a governor who has brutally suppressed a peasant uprising, on still another day to teach a lesson to the gendarmes in surplices who are doing the work of the Holy Inquisition...’
Lenin: 1902 – What is to be Done? (Collected Works: Vol. 5. 426-429)
Throughout his text 1902 entitled ‘What is to be Done?’, Lenin continuously calls upon the workers to unite not only to protect their own best interests, but also to come to the aid of the religious sects which are being persecuted for siding with the Socialist Movement by the Czarist State and the Russian Orthodox Church. This demonstrates the very real difference between religions that support Socialism and religions that support capitalism and suggested in the work of Marx and Engels. Religion is only attacked by the Bolshevik Movement if it doesn’t support Socialism and is the enemy of the people! If religion supports the brutal oppression inherent within the capitalist system, then obviously this type of religion is an enemy of the people. Religions are not ‘special cases’ just because they are ‘religions’, but neither are religions attacked out of hand simply for being ‘religious’. As many people subscribe to a religion out of fear rather than because they possess any genuine faith, the bourgeoisie harnesses this ‘fear’ and attempts to turn it against Socialism by inventing all kinds of weird and bizarre lies and fabrications! A truly religious person who subscribes to Socialism is in fact a great asset for the Socialist Movement and not a hindrance or a barrier. This is because religion still remains surprisingly popular throughout the world and cannot be ignored as a significant social and cultural power by Socialists. Lenin was pleased to publish a letter he received from the Russian Orthodox Priest - Father George Gapon in 1905:
‘An Open Letter to the Socialist Parties of Russia
The bloody January days in St Petersburg and the rest of Russia have brought the oppressed working-class face to face with the autocratic regime, headed by the blood-thirsty tsar. The great Russian revolution has begun. All to whom the people’s freedom is really dear must either win or die. Realising the importance of the present historic moment, considering the present state of affairs, and being above all a revolutionary and a man of action, I call upon all the socialist parties of Russia to enter immediately into an agreement among themselves and to proceed to the armed uprising against tsarism. All the forces of every party should be mobilised. All should have a single technical plan of action. Bombs and dynamite, individual and mass terror – everything that can help the popular uprising. The immediate aim is the overthrow of the aristocracy, a provisional revolutionary government which will at once amnesty all fighters for political and religious liberties, at once arm the people, and at once convoke a Constituent Assembly on the basis of universal, equal, and direct suffrage by secret ballot. To the task, comrades! Onward to the fight! Let us repeat the slogan of the St Petersburg workers on the Ninth of January – Freedom or Death! Delay and disorder now are a crime against the people, whose interests you are defending. Having given all of myself to the service of the people, from whom I myself have sprung (the son of a peasant), and having thrown in my lot irrevocably with the struggle against the oppressors and exploiters of the working-class, I shall naturally be heart and soul with those who will undertake the real business of actually liberating the proletariat and all the toiling masses from the capitalist yoke and political slavery. George Gapon’
Lenin saw much merit in this letter, but did comment that it was highly unusual for a priest to take the side of the workers in Russia, particularly one that was known to have been an ardent supporter of the Czar in the past. However, Lenin believed that this priests conversion to Socialism did seem genuine, but that time would tell. George Gapon, although trained in theology, demonstrates a sound grasp of Socialist ideology and its application according to the existing conditions within Russia. Just two years later, the Socialist Revolutionaries, a right-leaning group at odds with Lenin, are believed to have murdered George Gapon – accusing him of being a Czarist informant. Another theory is that the Socialist Revolutionaries resented a priest gravitating close to Lenin’s developing (and competing) Bolshevik Movement and decided to ‘remove’ him from the picture. Evidence from other sources suggest that the Russian Orthodox Church Authorities were concerned about the number of priests who were drawn toward the Socialist Movement in the name of freeing the people, and who were willing to defy the official Church position of unquestionably supporting the Czar. Priests were reminded that each Czar was crowned by the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, and therefore directly ‘ordained’ by god! To oppose the status quo (regardless of its character) – the Church insisted – was nothing less than to oppose the Will of god! This entrenched conservative attitude is exactly why Lenin opposed the Church, as it represented a barrier to real change throughout Russia! This position was correct even if many workers loyal to Socialism continued to hold religious beliefs and to gain comfort from religious ritual.
‘We are deeply convinced that those workers who share Socialist-Revolutionary views and yet are fighting within the ranks of the proletariat are inconsistent, for they retain non-proletarian views while championing a truly proletarian cause. Their inconsistency we must combat, from the ideological point of view, with the greatest determination, but in so doing we must see to it that the revolutionary cause, a vital, burning, living-cause that is recognised by all and has brought all honest people together, does not suffer. We still consider the views of the Socialist-Revolutionaries to be revolutionary-democratic and not socialist. But for the sake of our militant aims, we must march together while fully retaining Party independence, and the Soviet is, and must be, a militant organisation. To expel devoted and honest revolutionary democrats at a time when we are carrying out a democratic revolution would be absurd, it would be folly. We shall have no difficulty in overcoming their inconsistency, for our views are supported by history itself, are supported at every step by reality. If our pamphlet has not taught them Social-Democracy, our revolution will. To be sure, those workers who remain Christians, who believe in God, and those intellectuals who defend mysticism (fie upon them!), are inconsistent too; but we shall not expel them from the Soviet or even from the Party, for it is our firm conviction that the actual struggle, and work within the ranks, will convince all elements possessing vitality that Marxism is the truth, and will cast aside all those who lack vitality. And we do not for one moment doubt our strength, the overwhelming strength of Marxists, in the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party.’
Lenin: 1905 – Our Tasks and the Soviet of Workers Deputies (Collected Works: Vol. 10, 19-24
Being part of the growing Bolshevik Movement was open to anyone who agreed with its cause. However, supporting the ‘Communist Party’ in achieving its general aims, was not the same as being an ‘official’ member of the Communist Party, as Lenin started to make clear in his writing. As religion within a Socialist society is to have no access to political power, it logically followed that a religionist could not join the Communist Party as this would be the same as yet again granting political power and influence to religion! If a number of religionists could gain access to the Central Committee, then the religious take-over of the Party would be complete. Religionists might abolish the Communist Party or distort its machinations to such a degree that it would become just another reactionary platform for the corruption and superstition of religion to take over the administration of society. This is not an attack upon religion, but a logical safeguard to the well-being of the people, as within Socialism every individual has the legal right to follow a religion or not to follow a religion. Indeed, the Socialist State ‘protects’ this right firmly as it is an offence to prevent anyone following a religion, or to force anyone to follow a religion, etc. In his text entitled ‘Socialism and Religion’ Lenin states:
‘Present-day society is wholly based on the exploitation of the vast masses of the working class by a tiny minority of the population, the class of the landowners and that of the capitalists. It is a slave society, since the “free” workers, who all their life work for the capitalists, are “entitled” only to such means of subsistence as are essential for the maintenance of slaves who produce profit, for the safeguarding and perpetuation of capitalist slavery.
The economic oppression of the workers inevitably calls forth and engenders every kind of political oppression and social humiliation, the coarsening and darkening of the spiritual and moral life of the masses. The workers may secure a greater or lesser degree of political liberty to fight for their economic emancipation, but no amount of liberty will rid them of poverty, unemployment, and oppression until the power of capital is overthrown. Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of the people, over burdened by their perpetual work for others, by want and isolation. Impotence of the exploited classes in their struggle against the exploiters just as inevitably gives rise to the belief in a better life after death as impotence of the savage in his battle with nature gives rise to belief in gods, devils, miracles, and the like. Those who toil and live in want all their lives are taught by religion to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward. But those who live by the labour of others are taught by religion to practise charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in heaven. Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.
But a slave who has become conscious of his slavery and has risen to struggle for his emancipation has already half ceased to be a slave. The modern class-conscious worker, reared by large-scale factory industry and enlightened by urban life, contemptuously casts aside religious prejudices, leaves heaven to the priests and bourgeois bigots, and tries to win a better life for himself here on earth. The proletariat of today takes the side of socialism, which enlists science in the battle against the fog of religion, and frees the workers from their belief in life after death by welding them together to fight in the present for a better life on earth.
Religion must be declared a private affair. In these words socialists usually express their attitude towards religion. But the meaning of these words should be accurately defined to prevent any misunderstanding. We demand that religion be held a private affair so far as the state is concerned. But by no means can we consider religion a private affair so far as our Party is concerned. Religion must be of no concern to the state, and religious societies must have no connection with governmental authority. Everyone must be absolutely free to profess any religion he pleases, or no religion whatever, i.e., to be an atheist, which every socialist is, as a rule. Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare mention of a citizen’s religion in official documents should unquestionably be eliminated. No subsidies should be granted to the established church nor state allowances made to ecclesiastical and religious societies. These should become absolutely free associations of like-minded citizens, associations independent of the state. Only the complete fulfilment of these demands can put an end to the shameful and accursed past when the church lived in feudal dependence on the state, and Russian citizens lived in feudal dependence on the established church, when medieval, inquisitorial laws (to this day remaining in our criminal codes and on our statute-books) were in existence and were applied, persecuting men for their belief or disbelief, violating men’s consciences, and linking cosy government jobs and government-derived incomes with the dispensation of this or that dope by the established church. Complete separation of Church and State is what the socialist proletariat demands of the modern state and the modern church.
The Russian revolution must put this demand into effect as a necessary component of political freedom. In this respect, the Russian revolution is in a particularly favourable position, since the revolting officialism of the police-ridden feudal autocracy has called forth discontent, unrest and indignation even among the clergy. However abject, however ignorant Russian Orthodox clergymen may have been, even they have now been awakened by the thunder of the downfall of the old, medieval order in Russia. Even they are joining in the demand for freedom, are protesting against bureaucratic practices and officialism, against the spying for the police imposed on the “servants of God”. We socialists must lend this movement our support, carrying the demands of honest and sincere members of the clergy to their conclusion, making them stick to their words about freedom, demanding that they should resolutely break all ties between religion and the police. Either you are sincere, in which case you must stand for the complete separation of Church and State and of School and Church, for religion to be declared wholly and absolutely a private affair. Or you do not accept these consistent demands for freedom, in which case you evidently are still held captive by the traditions of the inquisition, in which case you evidently still cling to your cosy government jobs and government-derived incomes, in which case you evidently do not believe in the spiritual power of your weapon and continue to take bribes from the state. And in that case the class-conscious workers of all Russia declare merciless war on you.
So far as the party of the socialist proletariat is concerned, religion is not a private affair. Our Party is an association of class-conscious, advanced fighters for the emancipation of the working class. Such an association cannot and must not be indifferent to lack of class-consciousness, ignorance or obscurantism in the shape of religious beliefs. We demand complete disestablishment of the Church so as to be able to combat the religious fog with purely ideo logical and solely ideological weapons, by means of our press and by word of mouth. But we founded our association, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, precisely for such a struggle against every religious bamboozling of the workers. And to us the ideological struggle is not a private affair, but the affair of the whole Party, of the whole proletariat.
If that is so, why do we not declare in our Programme that we are atheists? Why do we not forbid Christians and other believers in God to join our Party?
The answer to this question will serve to explain the very important difference in the way the question of religion is presented by the bourgeois democrats and the Social-Democrats.
Our Programme is based entirely on the scientific, and moreover the materialist, world-outlook. An explanation of our Programme, therefore, necessarily includes an explanation of the true historical and economic roots of the religious fog. Our propaganda necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism; the publication of the appropriate scientific literature, which the autocratic feudal government has hitherto strictly forbidden and persecuted, must now form one of the fields of our Party work. We shall now probably have to follow the advice Engels once gave to the German Socialists: to translate and widely disseminate the literature of the eighteenth-century French Enlighteners and atheists.[1]
But under no circumstances ought we to fall into the error of posing the religious question in an abstract, idealistic fashion, as an “intellectual” question unconnected with the class struggle, as is not infrequently done by the radical-democrats from among the bourgeoisie. It would be stupid to think that, in a society based on the endless oppression and coarsening of the worker masses, religious prejudices could be dispelled by purely propaganda methods. It would be bourgeois narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion that weighs upon mankind is merely a product and reflection of the economic yoke within society. No number of pamphlets and no amount of preaching can enlighten the proletariat, if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against the dark forces of capitalism. Unity in this really revolutionary struggle of the oppressed class for the creation of a paradise on earth is more important to us than unity of proletarian opinion on paradise in heaven.
That is the reason why we do not and should not set forth our atheism in our Programme; that is why we do not and should not prohibit proletarians who still retain vestiges of their old prejudices from associating themselves with our Party. We shall always preach the scientific world-outlook, and it is essential for us to combat the inconsistency of various “Christians”. But that does not mean in the least that the religious question ought to be advanced to first place, where it does not belong at all; nor does it mean that we should allow the forces of the really revolutionary economic and political struggle to be split up on account of third-rate opinions or senseless ideas, rapidly losing all political importance, rapidly being swept out as rubbish by the very course of economic development.
Everywhere the reactionary bourgeoisie has concerned itself, and is now beginning to concern itself in Russia, with the fomenting of religious strife—in order thereby to divert the attention of the masses from the really important and fundamental economic and political problems, now being solved in practice by the all-Russian proletariat uniting in revolutionary struggle. This reactionary policy of splitting up the proletarian forces, which today manifests itself mainly in Black-Hundred pogroms, may tomorrow conceive some more subtle forms. We, at any rate, shall oppose it by calmly, consistently and patiently preaching proletarian solidarity and the scientific world-outlook—a preaching alien to any stirring up of secondary differences.
The revolutionary proletariat will succeed in making religion a really private affair, so far as the state is concerned. And in this political system, cleansed of medieval mildew, the proletariat will wage a broad and open struggle for the elimination of economic slavery, the true source of the religious humbugging of mankind.
Notes [1] See Frederick Engels, “Flüchtlings-Literatur”, Volksstaat, Nr, 73 vom 22.6.1874.’
Bourgeois religion is infected with many types of superstitions, ignorance, lies and blatant inconsistencies. Religion was never created by its numerous founders to direct and oversee the development of society. Purifying the mind and disciplining the body has absolutely nothing to do seeking-out political power and amassing vast amounts of material wealth! Transcending human suffering and bringing peace to the world is a subjective affair and has nothing to do with the objective mechanism of governance. Helping people, assisting animals and caring about the environment are personal matters that should have no direct political involvement other than the official channels that are concerned with these aspects of society within a legitimate Socialist government. What a religionist must do is exhibit loyalty toward the Socialist Movement and the Socialist government. As religious freedom is secured within a Socialist System, then a religionist will have the time to pursue other activities, using the time that used to be spent on ‘defending’ his or her belief from oppressive attack within a reactionary system of governance. This is because religious freedom is complete and secure within Socialism, as all bigotry and prejudice is permanently outlawed following the Revolution. For the truly religious, this new sense of three-dimensional freedom can only be a bonus for the genuine study of authentic religion. Peace and security in the outer world can only help to import peace and security into the interior mind of the religionist. This is why there is a deeply ‘spiritual’ element to living within a Socialist System.
Lenin trained (and worked) as a lawyer and he does seem to possess a mind that functions with a legal clarity of thought! He had to come to terms with all kinds of trials and tribulations in his life, which included becoming disabled and dying relatively young. Everything he achieved was the product of weighing-up the cause and effect of each situation and attempting to ‘predict’ to a certain extent, how situations might develop. This is the scientific method applied to social phenomena. The problem is that there might well be ‘new’ conditions arising that could not possibly be predicted that interfere with the calculation, or hidden alternatives not originally taken into account suddenly making themselves felt. As life is a complex interaction of myriads of possibilities, even the best planners can have problems (just like leaders in wartime). When things did go well, the entire process from start to finish often appears spectacular! Lenin, of course, held no religious views and never relied upon miracles enacted by hand of an unseen deity, but through the brilliance of his ‘human’ mind he led the Russian people to a successful Revolution! It is quite often the case that even certain capitalists in the West who detest Socialism, nevertheless, still view Lenin with a begrudging respect! He did not need religion in any way or any sense, but this did not make him ‘anti-religion’, far from it. Whereas religious persecution was widespread throughout Czarist Russia, it ceased completely when the Communist Party came to power in 1917! Socialist Russia (as confirmed by the famous Boxer Muhammed Ali in 1978), possessed a very advanced form of religious freedom, and tolerance towards ‘difference’! People with religious views were better off within the Socialism of the USSR than the oppressive capitalism of West, as a religion freed from the bourgeois-need to interfere in governance can instead focus on its primary function of ‘freeing’ its aspirants from any real (or imagined) suffering!
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2020.