On December 30, 1922, the world’s largest atheist state (at that time), The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [USSR], was officially established, born from the Russian Soviet Republic.
The USSR ruled from 1922-1991. On December 26, 1991, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR met to officially end the Soviet Union. The Russian experiment with atheist communist rule began in 1917, lasting for just 74 years but it killed or starved over 35 million people and supported the killing of another 65 million in other Communist countries.
David Satter, who has published three books on the USSR and its aftermath, wrote in the Wall Street Journal on November 6, 2017:
“Martyn Latsis, an official of the Cheka, Lenin’s secret police, in a 1918 instruction to interrogators, wrote: We are not waging war against individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. . . . Do not look for evidence that the accused acted in word or deed against Soviet power. The first question should be to what class does he belong. . . . It is this that should determine his fate.’
Such convictions set the stage for decades of murder on an industrial scale. In total, no fewer than 20 million Soviet citizens were put to death by the regime or died as a direct result of its repressive policies. This does not include the millions who died in the wars, epidemics, and famines that were predictable consequences of Bolshevik policies, if not directly caused by them.
The victims include 200,000 killed during the Red Terror (1918-22); 11 million dead from famine and dekulakization; 700,000 executed during the Great Terror (1937-38); 400,000 more executed between 1929 and 1953; 1.6 million dead during forced population transfers; and a minimum 2.7 million dead in the Gulag, labor colonies and special settlements.
To this list should be added nearly a million Gulag prisoners released during World War II into Red Army penal battalions, where they faced almost certain death; the partisans and civilians killed in the postwar revolts against Soviet rule in Ukraine and the Baltics, and dying Gulag inmates freed so that their deaths would not count in official statistics.
If we add to this list the deaths caused by communist regimes that the Soviet Union created and supported—including those in Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia—the total number of victims is closer to 100 million. That makes communism the greatest catastrophe in human history.”
My colleagues and I did surveys in the USSR in June 1991 that indicated a marked rise in a belief in God, even among the security forces. Atheism left many Soviets empty and aimless. Underground Christians, Jews, and some atheists, too, prepared the way for the fall of the Soviet state. If there is one thing that a hundred million deaths taught us is that without recognizing a God or morals transcending power politics ordaining moral restraint and compassion, then any ideological savagery can be justified without appeal.
You advance some cautions and ideas that many would agree with. So, thank you for raising your voice. Now, let me give my own cautions on some of your conclusions.
There were more massacres inspired by atheism than just the ones done by Stalin. As you probably know, the Chinese Communist Party has lately reiterated its claim that atheism is the absolute basis of its state. Over a 74-year period, Mao and his successors butchered in the name of atheism. That is a pretty long line of megalomaniacs! Maybe, we can say that there is a megalomaniac disease that reveals itself in atheists.
We both agree that genocide is really bad and that the Soviet Union of Stalin was a nightmare.
You refer to the old Roman Empire charge that the Christians were impious and atheists because they didn’t recognize the Roman gods and their emperors who claimed to be gods. The legal charge of atheism against the Christians was the excuse to slaughter them.
The Jews and Christians desacralized the state and the rulers in order to make clear that their is only one God, one legitimate ruler and creatonrs and that anyone who declares themselves like gods in the name of Christ are themselves against the whole teaching of God.
So, we probably agree that bad people have used religious (and atheist) reasons to justify their evil deeds.
Does Christianity undercut state megolamania? It appears that it does. Atheism’s weakness seems to be that by denying a God not in the control of human beings, then some atheists feel rationally justified in using unrestrained dominating power.
Unsurprisingly, this is the typical set of lies from Christians to try to demonize atheism. Unfortunately, for them these christians are atheists too, having quite a lot of gods they have concluded do not exist. Happily, atheism doesn’t cause genocide.
The Soviet Union was led by a megalomaniac, Stalin. This holds true for other places genocide happened. It’s the megalomania, not atheism that causes this.
Christians don’t like to hear that since their god also committed and commanded genocide.