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CHAPTER IVTHECHURCH1. The Revolution and ReligionTHE Soviet Union was unique in being the first stateto be governed by a ruling party which proclaimed aspart of its creed opposition to all and every form ofreligion, though the latest developments have culminatedin the virtual repudiation of this attitude. Dialecticalmaterialism, as developed by Lenin, held fast toMarx's slogan "religion is the opium of the people";diagnosed it as an ideology based on fear of theforces of nature and of the prevailing powers that be;and attacked it as one of the allies of capitalism andas the inveterate opponent of science. The generalattitude of enmity towards the official state churchwas shared by all sections of the revolutionary movementin Russia. They had always regarded the Orthodoxchurch, which included the great majority of Russians,as so much a part of the organization of autocracy thatthe two blended together in a theocratic absolutism.Thus the fall of tsardom was bound to threaten thefall of the Orthodox church, and shortly after the OctoberRevolution a frontal attack on religion was bdgun, in thename of "genuine liberty of conscience.''The fact that many of the leaders of the churchsupported the Whites in the Civil War and Allied interventiongave further grounds for identifying Orthodoxynot only with reaction in the past, but with counterrevolutionin the present. The Catholics in the Russianempire were mainly Poles and could not fail to be allthe more suspect in view of the Soviet-Polish war of1920, while the international character of Catholicismaccentuated Soviet hostility. The Moslems, some twentymillions in all, though disunited, were subject to panislamicand anti-Russian influences, especially in CentralAsia, the Communist reconquest of which involved abitter struggle against Moslem vested interests, with171