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When the era of Communist rule began in Russia in 1917, religion was seen as a hindrance to a thriving socialist society. As Karl Marx, coauthor of the The Communist Manifesto, declared, Communism begins where atheism begins.

Joseph Stalin, as the secondleader of the Soviet Union, tried to enforce militant atheism on the republic. The new socialist man, Stalin argued, was an atheist one, free of the religious chains that had helped to bind him to class oppression. From 1928until World War II, when some restrictions were relaxed,the totalitarian dictator shuttered churches, synagogues and mosques and ordered the killing and imprisonment of thousands of religious leaders in an effort to eliminate even the concept of God.

He saw this as a way of getting rid of a past that was holding people back, and marching towards the future of science and progress, says the historian Steven Merritt Miner, author of Stalin's Holy War: Religion, Nationalism, and Alliance Politics. Like most of what Stalin did, he accelerated the violence of the Leninist period.

WATCH: Hitler and Stalin: Roots of Evil on HISTORY Vault

On a personal level, Stalin was well-acquainted with the church. As a young man in his native Georgia, he had been first expelled from one seminary and then forced to leave another, after he was arrested for possessing illegal literature. As the young seminarian grew increasingly disillusioned with religion, the all-encompassing nature of Marxism, almost religious in its universality, was tremendously appealing, writes Oleg V. Khlevniuk, in his 2015 biography of the dictator.

Joseph Stalin, c. 1902

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That all of human history had been leading up to the higher stages of socialism was a seductive prospect, and one that endowed the revolutionary struggle with special meaning, he writes. By this view, the end more than justified even the most extreme means.

By the time Stalin came to the height of his power, in the 1920s, the Russian Orthodox Church remained a powerful force, despite more than a decade of anti-religious measures under Vladimir Lenin. Russias peasants were as faithful as ever, writes Richard Madsen in the Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism, with the liturgy of the church still deeply embedded in [their] way of life, and indispensable for their sense of meaning and community. A powerful church was a risky prospect, and one that might threaten the success of the revolution.

The Godless Five-Year Plan, launched in 1928, gave local cells of the anti-religious organization, League of Militant Atheists, new tools to disestablish religion. Churches were closed and stripped of their property, as well as any educational or welfare activities that went beyond simple liturgy.

Leaders of the church were imprisoned and sometimes executed, on the grounds of being anti-revolution. The few clergy who remained were replaced by those deemed to be sympathetic to the regime, rendering the church still more toothless as a possible focal point for dissent or counter-revolution.

There was a relatively simple idea at its heart of this plan, explains Madsen: It was possible and desirable to eradicate traditional national consciousness, in order to create a society based on the universal principles of socialism. More than that, the steps were replicable: The plan was eventually exported to other communist countries that had chosen to ally themselves with the USSR.

On the ground, social reforms and pro-atheism publications sought to eliminate religion from day-to-day life altogether. Launched in 1929, the new Soviet calendar initially featured a five-day continuous week, designed to do away with weekends and so revolutionize the concept of labor. But it had a secondary function: By eliminating Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, the days of worship for Muslims, Jews and Christians, the new calendar was supposed to render observance more trouble than it was worth.

READ MORE: For 11 Years, the Soviet Union Had No Weekends

An Anti-Religious Museum displaying various religious icons, statues, & paintings,August 1941.

Margaret Bourke-White/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

At the same time, the sacked churches, synagogues and mosques were transformed into anti-religious museums of atheism, where dioramas of clerical cruelty sat alongside crisp explanations of scientific phenomena. Icons and relics, meanwhile, were stripped of their mystique and treated as ordinary objects. The general public didnt seem to have been especially swayed by these exhibitsthough they enjoyed the attractions themselves. The most popular of these museums remained open as late as the 1980s, the New York Times reported..

All the while, the nominally independent League of Militant Atheists disseminated anti-religious publications, organized lectures and demonstrations, and helped atheist propaganda work its way into almost every element of socialist life. The popularity of these publications didnt always indicate that atheism was winning out, says Miner: Some believers bought atheist publications because that was when they found out about what was going on.

By 1939, barely 200 churches remained open, out of about 46,000 before the Russian Revolution. Clergy and laymen had been executed or placed in labor camps, while only four bishops remained at liberty.

The Orthodox church was all but vanquished, explains Madsenuntil World War II. After Nazi invaders reopened churches in Ukraine to encourage sympathy from the local population, Stalin followed suit throughout the country, in a naked attempt to drum up national support for the Fatherland.

READ MORE: How Stalin Starved Millions in the Ukrainian Famine

Stalin appeared to have had absolute conviction in his anti-religious war. I have no doubt that he was a thoroughgoing atheist, says Miner. He just thought [religion] was stuff and nonsense, and a way to throw dust in the eyes of people so you can control themreally, that it was childish to believe something else.

Meeting Franklin D. Roosevelt, Stalin seems to have been genuinely surprised to learn that the president attended religious services, asking the diplomat W. Averell Harriman whether the president, being such an intelligent man, really was as religious as he appeared, or whether his professions were for political purposes.

An anti-religious poster in a closed church in the Soviet Union, c. 1950.

General Photographic Agency/Getty Images

Even as Stalins measures succeeded in sucking the center out of the Russian Orthodox church, they had minimal impact on peoples actual faith. As late as 1937, a survey of the Soviet population found that 57 percent self-identified as a religious believer. Stalins central beliefthat every rational person would, as Miner puts it, naturally discard religious superstitions just as a baby outgrows its rattleproved misguided.

Even after World War II, the anti-religious campaign stormed on for decades, with Bibles forbidden and little to no religious education. Still, by 1987, the New YorkTimes reported, Soviet officials have begun to admit that they may be losing the battle against religion.

Culturally speaking, urban Bolsheviks had had little in common with rural peasants who made up much of the general populace. For the peasants, militant atheism was never quite captivating enough to replace centuries of religious practice, especially as the memory of the 1917 revolution, and Stalins rule, grew increasingly dim.

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Why Stalin Tried to Stamp Out Religion in the Soviet Union - History

BOISE Teachers are in the spotlight again in Idaho, but once more, they are denied funding after House Bill 354 failed after a long debate. This hour and a half discussion on the floor involved fears that House Republicans have regarding teachers talking about race theory with their students, and even Christopher Columbus true contribution to history.

The bill in question would have given almost $10 million to Idaho teachers and school staff to support development, training, evaluations, increase learning, other resources and be distributed by the Department of Education where needs lie. The bill would also use part of the federal COVID-19 relief money that hasnt been completely distributed yet.

This comes after a pandemic wiped out in person teaching and cost many their own resources to keep students learning. One other bill, House bill 226, involving a grant for early childhood development, failed after a similar discussion about race and diversity only this one was more passionate, each member had something they felt was extremely necessary to add.

The main discussion regarding the bill was House Republicans explaining how they dont want money going to teachers who will use it to teach critical race theory and equity, even though the funding in the bill text had nothing to do with curriculum.

Rep. Priscilla Giddings, R-White Bird, was quoted as saying that equity is redistribution of resources, and that is socialism, something that other Republicans agreed has no room alongside Idahos conservative values. Her reasoning came from a substitute teacher that she said told her teachers in the classroom were teaching about race.

For reference, critical race theory is a way of interpreting issues from a race-conscientious standpoint, something that many House Republicans believe does not align with Idahos values.

Giddings gave a passionate example of how she saw a poster in a school classroom about Christopher Columbus being wanted dead or alive for his crimes, something she believed was not appropriate to be teaching in school, and that instances like this prove her point of teachers not providing the right curricula.

Giddings even stated that teaching this way is unconstitutional.

Ron Nate, R-Rexburg, explained he didnt want taxpayers paying for Idahos students to be learning social justice.

Not a lot of evidence has been physically shown these things are being taught in schools, but lawmakers like Rep. Julianne Young, R- Blackfoot, and Rep. Tammy Nichols, R- Middleton, have both spoken on things they feel have been concrete examples of critical race theory that needs to be addressed.

Rep. Nichols, when addressing past education bills, has touched on the fact that her son had to write a paper about the wage gap within black Americans in school, and that he is not responsible for it. Rep. Young said that she has talked to parents in her district that have told her it is a problem as well.

I have talked to parents in my school district that say their kids are getting critical race theory from their government teacher, said Young.

The discussion was a hard line between those who were saying Idahos teachers were long overdue for their extra funding, and those who had fears about race theory and social justice teachings.

Members like Caroline Nilsson Troy, R-Genessee, explained she believed teachers are doing the best they can, and that is helping Idahos economy.

Idahos economy is doing so well because our teachers went back to work, said Troy.

Rep. John McCrostie, D-Boise, is a high school teacher, who has said he has never seen any teachers talking about critical race theory, and he has never been given any professional development on it, either.

I dont have time to teach critical race theory, said McCrostie. The whole discussion about critical race theory coming into our classrooms, thats nuts.

Rep. Sally Toone just reminded the body that Idaho has been punishing their teachers and breaking their promises.

Expecting more out of teachers and school staff but not giving them anything in return is a problem both parties feel needs to be addressed regardless, but the bill failed 34-34 anyway.

This failure comes right after the failure of another education funding bill that was shot down for the same problems.

The bill goes back to JFAC to be reworked, where a new budget bill will return to the House.

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'Equity is redistribution of resources, and that is socialism' Rep. Giddings; Columbus, critical race theory cause for teachers denied funding -...

Socialism (or its even scarier cognate, communism) was for a good part of the 20th century the equivalent of what COVID has become for us, the terrible virus that lurked everywhere and perpetually threatened destruction to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

After the Bolshevik Revolution, it had a home, at least theoretically, in the geographically largest nation in the world, Russia; and after 1949 in the most populated one, China. The fight to contain or roll it back was called the Cold War, and the potential cost of doing so, in the Atomic Age, was the destruction of the planet a cost from which successive administrations did not shrink, at least until the nuclear standoff called the Cuban Missile Crisis brought us to the brink of actual disaster. Future historians can look back and make some sense of that if they are able to.

Russia shed communism in 1991, or what had supposedly passed for it. China did not repudiate its own version of it, but slipped quietly into the autocratic capitalism it faces us with today. Republicans like to keep the bogeyman of Communism alive, still attached to even mildly helpful initiatives such as President Joe Bidens relief and infrastructure bills, but, since hardly anyone still remembers what the word was supposed to mean, they interchangeably denounce liberalism or progressivism, signifying anything that involves the government with the exception of tax cuts for the rich or voter suppression laws. If politics, as George Orwell suggested, is the art of corrupting language to the maximum possible extent, then-Senator Mitch McConnell and Representative Matt Gaetz have few peers. It has to be admitted that Soviet Russia and Communist China had little to do with anything Karl Marx would have understood as socialism, collective ownership of the means of production.

Looking at them with rose or red colored glasses, Americans vaguely identifying themselves as liberals or socialists saw in them what they wanted to see up to about 1970, namely societies that sought to promote the general welfare rather than the wealth of a few. And it was true that, in theory, this was the professed goal of so-called socialist states. That perception had real-world effects, particularly as the capitalist world wrestled with the devastating effects of the Great Depression of the 1930s that virtually shut the global economy down. If capitalism could lead to such systemic paralysis, why not give communism a try? The result of this was a mid-century period when developed Western countries experimented with something called social democracy, namely the attempt to graft populist reforms onto a capitalist framework. This was galvanized by World War II. The fight against Nazi Germany had to be one not only against tyrannical fascism but for something else. Democracy alone parliamentary governments whose leaders were chosen by popular vote would not fill the bill, since it had not prevented an economic collapse that had exposed transparent social injustice. And in the wake of the war, communist parties in France and Italy had come uncomfortably close to winning national elections with their programs.

To forestall the possibility that Soviet-style communism might not only succeed by violent revolution or military occupation but peacefully at the ballot box, Western leaders undertook to offer reforms premised on the idea that stable prosperity was compatible with, and indeed dependent on, government-supported welfare programs. This was enunciated in President Franklin D. Roosevelts so-called Four Freedoms speech of 1941, which included a freedom from want that defined economic security as a basic human right. Roosevelt meant this as a permanent extension of the social commitments of the New Deal, while in Britain, the Beveridge Commission envisioned a broad postwar program to create what would come to be known as the welfare state. Nor were these merely national initiatives; Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill jointly affirmed the principle of social welfare in the Atlantic Charter, and it was universalized after the war in the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights.

The grand rhetoric of freedom from want did not mean an abandonment of the national interests of the victorious Western powers, or of capitalism, with its boom and bust cycles of prosperity that made economic insecurity a standing threat. The fine print of Roosevelts promise enjoined worldwide free trade and tariff reductions, which favored advanced industrial countries at the expense of developing ones. Britain, which elected a Labour government in 1945, did go some distance toward a welfare state, creating a national health care system and, for a time, nationalizing some basic industries and services. In most of Western Europe, a system of social services was instituted, including government-run or regulated health care, child and elder care and unemployment benefits. Strong union pressure contributed to much of this, but underlying it was the fear, particularly acute in the postwar period, of Soviet expansion. Russia had occupied most of Eastern Europe during the war, asserting political control over it and introducing its version of communism, with state ownership of the means of production, centralized economic planning and a one-party system. It advertised itself as more stable, efficient and socially just.

As we have seen, it had considerable appeal through communist political parties in the West. And, somewhat more belligerently, it was backed by the worlds largest army, which had just defeated Adolf Hitler. All these reasons, and the additional problem of resettling millions of war-displaced refugees, impelled West European governments to play a more active role than they had formerly, including the provision of social benefits. Some of their policies might have occurred in the ordinary course of events.

Some, such as urban policing, public education and sanitation, were already in place. But the prime impetus for the welfare state was the challenge of the communist model. Western states could tout the benefits of freedom and opportunity. But economic security was precisely what the capitalist model had failed to provide, and what a planned economy with guarantees of subsistence and benefits seemed to offer. In the ideological battle between capitalism and socialism, the former had to demonstrate what, besides spasmodic growth and sudden contraction, it could work.

The welfare state was the West European answer. The U.S. did not follow suit, except for an expansion of public sector post-secondary education. It was not until the mid-1960s that a very limited public health program, Medicare, was instituted for seniors and the disabled over the fierce opposition of the medical profession, and a so-called War on Poverty, abandoned far short of its goal, was undertaken as the only general effort to realize freedom from want in the richest country on earth. America has been very generous to its wealthy, but for the rest of the country, any effort at social equity has been routinely decried as socialism a term that carries its own terrible if never precisely defined opprobrium.

These events have coincided with a massive turn to the right in the past half-century. The reasons for this are many, but perhaps the major one has been the abandonment of socialism as a coherent ideology and a political goal. This climaxed with the fall of the Soviet Union, whose last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, admitted catastrophically that, after seven decades, it had not achieved true socialism. With China, too, now a de facto capitalist society, there is no present alternative to the capitalist order. It seems no coincidence that we are also on the brink of ecological disaster and global anarchy. The question to be asked perhaps is whether socialism, with its dream of a just and egalitarian society, failed us, or whether we failed socialism.

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What Losing Socialism Has Cost Us - The Triangle - Drexel University The Triangle Online

John Odom, Letter to the Editor Published 12:22 p.m. CT April 13, 2021

To subscribe to The Times go to https://help.shreveporttimes.com/subscription-services Shreveport Times

President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeh Warrens wealth tax would cause a disruption in the markets that could cause losses of value in the retirement and investment accounts of the middle class.

This is because the wealthys wealth is not in cash but largely in stocks, real estate and art. To pay a wealth tax they would have to sell large blocks of stock that would force market prices down for everyone invested in the markets.

Warren is not ignorant of the market disruption her proposed Wealth Tax could take. Indeed, it is the opening salvo toward government control of industry. The next step is for a responsible Congress to intervene and prevent the disruption in the markets that could cause the middle class to incur losses in their retirement accounts when significant stock liquidations occur as the wealthy prepare to pay their taxes.

The cure will be to require the taxes be paid by transferring stock to the government in a private sale.'' The government may even state what stocks it will accept. The end game is to have enough stock transferred to the government for the government to be able secure seats on the boards of selected companies which will eventually result in government representatives controlling senior management.

As long as we maintain free and fair elections, which are also under attack, the citizens can maintain some control, but the march toward government control of all aspects of our society is underway.

I, for one, do not think Warrens wealth tax is intended as a short-term solution to pay off massive debt, but a plan designed with a socialist outcome intended, probably with a lot of input from Sen. Bernie Sanders.

John Odom

Shreveport

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Letter: Wealth tax is a giant step toward socialism - Shreveport Times

I would like to thank The Tullahoma News for giving our city and surrounding communities a platform to express their opinions. While some opinions dont agree with mine, I would like to offer two other excellent forms of media to enlighten those who are in desperate need of understanding whats happening in our world today.

NewsMax, channel 216 on Dish, is an excellent source of truthful, up-to-date coverage from around the world as well as how the United States of America is falling into the hands of Socialist Democrats and failing to uphold the Constitution written by the founders of America.

I recently subscribed to Epoch Times. It is a weekly newspaper full of honestly reported news. Reporters actually report factual news, not lies the liberal left wants us to believe.

Both of these media outlets are reporting the facts which the American public is not aware of, mainly because we dont take time to check the facts. We believe what the liberal left and Socialist Democrats want us to believe. This dereliction of our rights state in the First Amendment will cause America to become a third world country, where fascism, socialism and communism thrive and freedoms are lost forever.

Quoting Mr. Bobby Fanning in the April 11 issue: God wanted our country to have new leadership. Yes, God wants our country to have new leadership, but I believe He had His Son, Jesus Christ, in mind.

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Don't take the word of Socialist Democrats - Tullahoma News and Guardian