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the drive against religion, particularly through the secretpolice and the League of Militant Godless. In thesame year the provision that had existed on paper in the1918 constitution assuring freedom of both religious andanti-religious propaganda was rescinded by an amendmentwhich left only the right of anti-religious propaganda.This was repeated in the new constitution of 1936, which,however, reflected an easing in the position of thechurches by cancelling the previous electoral disqualificationsof "monks and priests of all religious denominations'' and by specifically re-enacting freedom ofreligious worship. By then also the original attitude ofvilification of marriage and the family had been completelyreversed. Sunday was reinstated as the rest-day.Except during renewed attacks on the clergy in 1937-38,the general policy, at least towards the Orthodox, tendedtowards leniency.Since the early thirties it seems that the League ofMilitant Godless, despite a membership (1941) of threeand a half million, has been apathetic and intermittentin its activities, and that religion has maintained a stronghold at the least in many rural parts of the country. In1937 the president of the League estimated that in thetowns about two-thirds of those over sixteen were unbelievers,but in the villages perhaps only about onethird.At the same time the fact must be faced that itis probable from Soviet figures that there were in 1941ten times fewer Orthodox churches than in 1900 andat the very least six times fewer secular clergy, whilemonks and nuns have disappeared. Much the greaterpart of the drop seems to have occurred since 1928.Since June 1941 the patriotic rallying of the churchesagainst the German invasion of Russia has led to theelimination of one of the main causes of communistmilitant hostility, namely, the branding of the churchesas the allies of foreign designs upon the Soviet Union.The result has been that the attitude of the governmenttowards the churches has very significantly changed, asis most notably shown by Stalin's approval of the electionof a patriarch (September, 1943). Further, it is likelythat the new Soviet patriotism, with its appeal to Russian173