League of Militant Atheists

The league embraced workers, peasants, students, and intelligentsia. It had its first affiliates at factories, plants, collective farms(kolkhozy), and educational institutions. By the beginning of 1941 it had about 3.5 million members from 100 nationalities. It had about 96,000 offices across the country. Guided by Bolshevik principles of anti-religious propaganda and by the Party's orders with regards to religion, the League aimed at exterminating religion in all its manifestations and forming an anti-religious scientific mindset among the workers. It propagated atheism and scientific achievements,conducted "individual work" (a method of sending atheist tutors to meet with individual believers to convince them that gods do not exist); most of the peasantry was unimpressed, and even the party apparatus regarded the League as meddling and inefficient



The League of Militant Atheists aided the Soviet government in killing clergy and committed believers. The League also made it a priority to remove religious icons from the homes of believers. Under the slogan, "the Storming of Heaven," the League of Militant Atheists pressed for "resolute action against religious peasants" leading to the mass arrest and exile of many believers, especially village priests. By 1940, "over 100 bishops, tens of thousands of Orthodox clergy, and thousands of monks and lay believers had been killed or had died in Soviet prisons and the Gulag."


Under the doctrine of state atheism in the Soviet Union, there was a "government-sponsored program of forced conversion to atheism" conducted by Communists. Many priests were killed and imprisoned. Thousands of churches were closed, some turned into hospitals. In 1925 the government founded the League of Militant Atheists to intensify the persecution.


More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Militant_Atheists