Atheists, Militant League of.
An antireligious organization established in the Soviet Union in 1923.The Soviet government was determined to combat religion in Russia from the time that it first assumed power in 1917. Initial efforts to develop antireligious machinery and propaganda were hampered by the preoccupation of the new government with the Civil War and by opposing theorists who can best be described as "leftist" and "rightist" in their orientations. The "leftist" group favored a massive and violent attack upon religion, whereas the "rightist" faction wished to permit religion to die a natural death.

In 1922 Emel'ian Yaroslavskii, who became head of the atheistic programs of the Communist Party during the 1920's and 1930's, began to edit the newspaper Bezbozhnik (Godless). This publication rapidly became a centripetal force for a group of dedicated atheists who, in 1923, evolved into the Soiuz voinstvuiushchikh bezbozhnikov (League of Militant Atheists), an organization destined to remain the leading wedge of the Soviet government's antireligious drives between the World Wars.

In the pages of Bezbozhnik the League soon began to argue for a middle course between the extremes of the "rightists" and "leftists." In 1925 the League began to publish a new monthly journal, Antireligioznik (the Anti-religious Worker), which further espoused the cause of compromise. In 1926 the Central Committee of the Communist Party endorsed the approach of the League and condemned both "rightists" and "leftists." Undoubtedly this circumstance adumbrated the fate of the Trotskyite and Bukharinite factions in the Central Committee. In 1929 the League was assigned the central coordination of all atheistic efforts and undertakings. From then until the early 1940s, when the atheistic policies and programs of the Party threatened to hamper the war effort of the Soviet Union, the League reigned supreme and conducted a vigorous campaign against organized religion. Ironically, once having removed all competition for the leadership of the atheistic program, the League adopted the "leftist" approach in dealing with the religious problem.

By the beginning of World War II, the League had stifled organized religion throughout the Soviet state, although it failed to suppress religious beliefs. The League never disbanded officially but, after the war, was succeeded by the All-Union Society for the Dissemination of Political and Scientific Knowledge or (as it was known more simply) the Znanie (Knowledge Society).

Bibliography:

see also the entries for Yaroslavskii, Emil'ian Mikhailovich (1878-1943), and the Znanie Society

- the Modern encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet history, vol. 2, edited by Joseph L. Wieczynski (Academic International Press: Florida 1976) pp 148-9