On social media, we often hear conversations about communism, how it killed millions of people and how it hated religion. Karl Marx, the father of communism once said that ‘Religion is the opium of the people’. He also thought that religion is the ‘sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. Marx thought that despite the suffering that comes from capitalism, religion provided an outlet to that suffering. People could worship deities and attempt to understand that their own sufferings originate from their own sinful lives.

Why on earth did the Communists hate religion so much that they burnt and closed down churches and mosques, enforced atheism in schools and sent priests into labour camps? This video is dedicated to understanding Why Communism Hates Religion.

Sources:

The ABC of Communism:
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Das Kapital, Karl Marx
The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx

John Anderson. The Council for Religious Affairs and the Shaping of Soviet Religious Policy. Soviet Studies, Vol. 43, No. 4 (1991), pp. 689-710

Father Arseny 1893-1973 Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father. Introduction pg. vi - 1. St Vladimir's Seminary Press ISBN 0-88141-180-9

Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory, and Practice, and the Believer, vol 1: A History of Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Anti-Religious Policies, St Martin's Press, New York (1987) pg 46

N Vozenesensky, 'Imena i sud'by' and 'Materialy k istorii Akademii nauk', Pamiat', a historical miscellany of samizdat (respectively: no. 1, Moscow, 1976- New York: Kronika Press, 1978; and no. 4, M., 1979 - Paris: YMCA Press, 1981) pp. 353 and 459.

Helene Carrere d'Encausse, The National Republics Lose Their Independence, in Edward A. Allworth, (edit), Central Asia: One Hundred Thirty Years of Russian Dominance, A Historical Overview. Duke University Press, 1994.

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Marx, Karl. [1843] 1970. "Introduction." A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, translated by A. Jolin and J. O’Malley, edited by J. O’Malley. Cambridge University Press. – via Marxists.org.

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