In the Soviet Union, religion was considered an opium for the people, and Easter was also called "superdose", forbidding it to be celebrated. The government of the Soviet Union, "not sparing the purse," was spending fabulous amounts, measured in billions of rubles, writing a crazy number of reports, occupying tons of paper and hundreds of man-hours to control the situation. But as soon as propaganda eased a bit, cats and colored eggs appeared from the underground.
When it all began
In 1929, freedom of anti-religious propaganda was announced. The clergy were ordered to pay tax. In place of the first church tax paid the second came, the second - the third, and so on ad infinitum. Gradually, the taxes grew to such an extent that the church was closed, unable to withstand the burden of payment.
Olesya Stasyuk, a historian, says: it was impossible to just close the church. The community had to send "up" the "appeal of the working people" with a request to close the church. If you study the materials stored in the state archive, you can see: statements of this kind, in the majority, are written in one hand. There are letters that duplicate parts of the texts of previous messages.
Temples were released, in some of them, the most spacious, there were clubs. Historians argue that young people could not dance in the former shrines, and the functionaries of the local spill forced them to do this. Watching the dancers were the vigilant members of the party elite.
The villagers did not hurry to say goodbye to the celebration of Easter. People who tried to defend vespers and were caught with Easter cakes and painted eggs could easily be kicked from work, expelled from the collective farm.
Stasyuk said that people were terribly intimidated: even the kids were well aware that if the mother bakes cakes, you need to keep silent about it. The old-timers remember that during the hungry years one egg was brewed and shared for the whole family. Some people simply did not go out on the eve of the holiday from home, mourning that it is not allowed to celebrate it properly.
How the communists fought against Easter
In 1930, because of Easter Sunday was no longer a day off. People had to "rest" on Thursday, so that there was no time left for the celebration. After all, on Sunday forced to work. The idea did not take root, but the authorities continued their struggle. Leninist subbotniks and Sundays appeared in the cities, as well as sales in stores. There were also mass "processions" with music, stuffed priests, used for public incineration.
In honor of Easter, antiphasic lectures were held, on which students and students were taught: during festivities, hooligans and drunkards breed. Collective farm workers were gathered in brigades and on the eve of Easter they were sent to work in the fields, far away.
Children were taken away on excursions, and parents of those who did not appear were punished. On a passionate Friday, the most mournful day for believers, parties for schoolchildren and students were held until late at night.
Imposing Traditions
The revolution is over. The Bolsheviks began to introduce Soviet holidays, represented by the Red Crosses and Pascha, carnivals. They tried to distract people from traditions, to fill their lives with new ideas - so says the religious scholar Victor Elinsky. They were based on Lenin's words that people go to church instead of theater and if they start to watch performances, they will quickly accept the ideas of the Bolsheviks.
The Red Easter did not go beyond the "limits" of the 1920s and 1930s, becoming too much of a parody. Only this did not stop the antireligious commission. The churches were supervised: when, with the onset of midnight, a religious procession came out of them, the workers of schools and district organizations began to look for violators. The pupils were the first to be interested, the second was the intelligentsia.
Before the holiday it was customary to confess. But with the advent of new rules, people had to do it with the help of notes. The person listed on the paper sins and passed them on to the priest through a co-ordinator. The decision to release or impose penance was sent in the same way.
Individual churches survived, so the voyage to the all-night service was long and often difficult. The authorized representative of the Supreme Council for Religious Affairs in the Zaporozhye region B. Kozakov wrote that he witnessed how in the torrential rain the old men carrying bags and baskets walked through the mud and swamp to the Veliko-Khortitsa church. On the question of what such tortures were, they answered: on Holy Easter visit the church - great joy.
Religion on the eve of perestroika
The struggle against faith in God on the eve of perestroika turned into a professional union.