Why blame the violence in Soviet Russia on atheism when it was caused by economic and political factors?

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thank you very much question can the violence and persecution in soviet union be blamed on atheism after all communism was primarily an economic and political force for reshaping society so why blame atheism for the death of millions during this economic and political restructuring of society answer atheism is responsible for the persecution of millions to the same extent that religion is responsible for terrorism religious terrorism and religious violence no human action individual or collective operates in a vacuum nor does ideology operate in a mental or intellectual vacuum isolated from cultural from political and economic realities if religion were a universally malefic force as atheists some of the new atheists portray then every single religious person in the world would be violent would be out to kill those who disagree with their religious beliefs but you don’t see that happening at all so as a complex intersection of economic political and possibly cultural factors which interface with religious ideology and practices to impel violence this is the argument that atheists often use to say that atheism was not responsible for the states for the actions of the soviet state and similarly religion but that same argument could be used for religion also that religion is not responsible but somebody may say no it is religious beliefs that make people act in particular ways atheism does not have a belief in anything and so it will not make people act in particular ways against religion but that is simply not true because atheism especially anti-theism of the kind that was propagated during the soviet union centered on destroying on an explicit cultural and social discrimination against believers so let’s consider some examples of this that from when the bolshevik revolution happened historians say that that in 1914 the number of churches that were there in 1941 number of churches that were there that went down to eight percent the churches did not simply mystically disappear they were destroyed and they were they were destroyed specifically by groups that were taught to believe that religion was an anachronism that religion needed to be destroyed for the soviet dream to come to reality and they had explicit organizations such as also the league of the militant godless so yes what were the economic imperatives so for example there was a collectivization of the land that soviet union wanted to do all property would be owned by the state and the state would use modern means of agriculture to expand its production but even after the bolshevik revolution till 1928 barely a small percentage of the land had been nationalized and so then the government decided to use aggressive means only one percent of the land was collectivized but from 1920 to 1937 private land by the culture entirely destroyed by a violent and chaotic campaign and one and a half million kulaks kulaks are wealthy peasanters wealthy peasants relatively peasants who had their own land and often they employed others so this was seen as a remnant of capitalism they were deported to siberia they were left to die over there and the collectivization of agriculture was an economic disaster it decreased agriculture production so much that resulting famine killed about five to seven million people now why was it so important to collectivize agriculture one part of it was that it was economic for it was hoped that state ownership would lead to economic gains but it was that the individual farming by the peasants it centered on a lot of supernatural beliefs which were which the atheist government meant to destroy so for example people would people saw that agriculture was at the mercy of natural forces which needed to be placated with various rituals not that those forces could be controlled by agricultural technology so the land would be um ritually sanctified of evil spirits sowing would done be done only on particular days just say monday and thursdays and earlier sprinkling of the seeds and fields would be done with holy water brought from the church now of course some rituals were more graphic than others so to increase the productivity of the land sometimes an effigy of the human penis would be buried under the ground or to control rains the local clergyman would be submerged in river with full vestments or if that was not possible in a dummy in women’s clothing would be similarly submerged now here we are not looking at whether the validity or the absurdity of the particular rituals the point was that all these rituals were um central to the way agriculture was practiced and the collectivization of the agriculture was not just an economic initiative because as you said economically it turned out to be a disaster it led to catastrophe with five and three to seven million people being killed but it was impelled also by ideology as long as people continue to believe that they would as long as people continue to believe in god and some supernatural and they had the facility to practice the supernatural beliefs in the air agriculture those beliefs would not be stamped out and stamping out those beliefs is also a was a significant purpose of the atheistic government and along with that so sure even more explicit was the destruction of the churches the church the so there were beliefs that the bodies of saints wouldn’t decompose and they were kept in tombs but those the descent the centering of the that means digging the bodies of the saints was done and there’s a decomposed remains were shown and churches were destroyed or converted into museums or factories prohibited taxes were put on clergymen so that they would not be able to pay and then they would be defined as resistors as to the revolution and punished sometimes even killed and the same was done to lay believers or the laity also not the clergy alone but the laity also so the laity experienced clerical discrimination discrimination society the state would send spies to the church just to see who all were coming and then they would be ridiculed they would be marked out normally people go to any religious institution this place to gain some peace but if visiting such a place itself is filled with fear then the impetus to go there is significantly decreased and there was also intellectual torment where there was the idea of that the state was given or the state authorities were given the right to anti-religious propaganda where anybody who was known to go to church go to a religious place was forced to hear arguments against about the absurdity of religious beliefs and there was absolutely no right to respond to that this was indoctrination plain and simple the people who mean who went to churches had to pay often several times more taxes just because of their affiliation in the church and as the icons in the churches were brought down and destroyed especially the russian orthodox church had icons whereas in the catholic church the believers confessed to the priest in the russian orthodox church the believers confessed to the icon in the presence of the priest so when the icons were removed the wooden paint of the icon the stone and mortar of the church all these were a cultural space where believers experienced some peace and communion with the divine when all these were destroyed it caused a traumatic disruption the psychological level in the lives of the believers and so they suffered primarily because of their beliefs and just as we have gender discrimination where our racial discrimination is just because of the race or gender people have to suffer there’s religious discrimination but it was not one religion discriminating against another it was atheism discriminate against religion per se and even people if they had some icons in their own homes there will be visitors who would come in uninvited especially in festival days to check if icons were being worshipped and people would get fired from their jobs just because they maintained icons at their homes the communist party one condition for its membership was that one should free one’s wife and one’s children from the anachronism of belief and one should stop them from worshipping so the sacred space was not only allowed peacefully in the in the sacred place like temples but even in the home where there would be a prayer corner that was also threatened so at a collective as well as a individual level there was persecution and destruction of religion by the atheistic communistic government and they definitely believed that atheism was the opium of the masses that atheism prevented made people lethargic and apathetic a fatalistic superstition made people incapable of facing adversities the point here is not that atheism caused all this but that atheism was definitely a significant element in causing all these and not just atheism but anti-theism so there’s persecution of the church structures and there was a persecution of the individual believers for their personal worship also and where there was no wholesale destruction there was definitely a widespread discrimination and all this is a sign of intolerance sometimes the atheists knew atheists just christopher hitchens to say that they were these people were as simple-headed as crude as any totem worshipping believers and in the in the russian museum of atheism there was a picture of a cosmonaut who said that went to space and they did not find any god over there so god does not exist and this hitchens uses to say that the atheism was so crude that he didn’t be taken seriously we may choose to take it not seriously but those who lived there didn’t have a choice for them it was the atheism the intellectual superiority of atheism was a presumption and that use that was used as the rationalization for discriminating against believers so discrimination and destruction are two characteristics of intolerance of any kind and these two were seen in a widespread way under the atheist region and so was atheism responsible no but was atheism part of what was responsible definitely and the point here to recognize is that atheism is in no way superior to theism in terms of its human role or human effect on human society if religion can can impel people to violence they can release absolutism which is what we are talking about which the fear of which is often talked about in today’s world our historical memory should not be so short and poor that just less than a century ago we have had one of the most disastrous experiments in world history of of atheistic into atheistic absolutism also and that was a so remembering the lessons from history but recognize that any ideology absolutized can lead to problems so it is not religion or god per se or it is not the absence of religion or god per se humans are power hungry power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely and when religion gains absolute power there is a possibility to get abused but so is atheism and that has been demonstrated historically so at the very least blaming religion for violence is something which atheists need to stop if they don’t want atheism to be blamed for the violence that happened in atheistic countries and recognizing that atheism can also become militant and violent and absolutist and yet atheists feel that atheism itself should be given fair hearing separated from whatever atrocities happened in the name of atheism so similarly religion should be given a fair hearing irrespective of whatever has been done in the name of religion more importantly atheism cannot provide any higher inspiration to people for even theoretically for self-transformation self-elevation atheism operates in the functional principle of reality the survival of the fittest and thus within the atheistic world view there is nothing to inspire people to nobility to higher values that doesn’t mean that atheists some atheists themselves may not be noble or have high values it just means the world view provides no impetus and of course we might have a we might design a set of functional ethics whereby atheists agree that there is no where atheists recognize that for us to live in harmony in society in nature we need to follow certain ethics but then that is no different from the commandments and religion uh it’s just a set of laws but there is no intrinsic ideological force behind them nor is there anything inspirational in terms of any higher reality behind those forces this is simply functional and people may or may not choose to follow them whereas religion at least in principle offers an understanding that life has a higher side a transcendent side and it is the transcendental fulfillment that is furthered the journey towards its fulfillment is furthered by one’s willingness to practice the ethical principles taught in religion so whether religious believers are ethical or not more ethical than atheists that’s a different issue but whether the world view itself provides impetus for this or not that’s the issue in concern atheism does not provide any such world impetus in itself and we could even say that atheism might provide the opposite impetus most people are governed by fear and religion by telling us that there is a higher god who observes us when nobody’s observing us can actually act as a civilizing force whereas atheism does not offer any kind of civilizing force so these are of course complex issues but at the very least you can say that atheism is as well as prone to discrimination destruction against non-atheists as religion is against those who don’t believe in that religion and whereas religion contains a world view with the necessary inspiration spiritual inspiration for self-transformation towards a nobler life atheism does not contain that so atheism is much more prone to absolutism and the evil associated with that than is religion thank you question from Ashwini Prabhu why do leaders in ISKCON share