Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 2, Number 27, DeMotte, Jasper County, 26 January 1933 — ATHEISM CAMPAIGN OF RUSSIA EXPOSED [ARTICLE]

ATHEISM CAMPAIGN OF RUSSIA EXPOSED

Details of Five-Year Plan Never Fully Published.

New York.--Details of a “five-year plan of atheism,” never published in full by the Soviet government, were made known by Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The organization received a report on the plan, it was said, from a European correspondent. The anti-religious decree, effective last May 15, appeared in part in the Advance Guard of Youth, described as the journal of the Pan-Unionist Commission Extraordinary for the Fight Against Religion, according to the correspondent. The complete decree is said to have 118 articles divided into five sections, corresponding to the five years. During the first year measures were to be taken to close all religious schools, academies and Catholic seminaries and to discontinue the teaching of theology. Ban All Churches. During the second year, the edict is quoted as saying, the campaign is to be conducted to the end that “from May 1, 1937, there shall not remain a single house of prayer in Soviet territory. The very concept of ‘God’ will be expelled from the Soviet Union as an instrument to oppress the working masses.” From 1933, there is to be organized a drive against religion in the home

and in the old convents, the correspondent says. “By October,” he adds, “it is expected that all Soviet institutions will be ‘purified’ through the absence of persons holding religious beliefs. The printing of religious books, brochures and reviews for the use of religious bodies will be rigorously forbidden. The preparation of objects necessary to religious worship will be punished with extreme severity. Special attention will be given to the inculcation of ‘intelligent irreligion into the psychology of the masses.’ Among the things to be used are atheistic films, of which at least 150 have already been created. Speed Up Atheism. “During the third year greater activity is to be organized in atheistic groups. During that year all who give religious instruction who shall not have renounced their religious posts are to be expelled from Soviet territory. “During the fourth year all churches, synagogues and houses of prayer are to be put in the hands of official institutions for the organization in these buildings of cinemas, clubs and ‘other means of enlightened entertainment.' “During the fifth and final year, the previously achieved results in the struggle against religious mentality will be consolidated and developed.”