page_title: Collectivization in the Soviet Union
section_title: Religious persecution
hierarchical_section_title: Collectivization in the Soviet Union / Peasant resistance / Religious persecution
caption_attribution_description: English: The anti-religious activists remove the large (5000 kg) bell from the St Volodymyr's Cathedral central Kiev USSR (now Ukraine). The caption reads: the precious metal will be used much more effectively elsewhere.
context_page_description: The Soviet Union implemented the collectivization of its agricultural sector between 1928 and 1940 during the ascension of Joseph Stalin. It began during and was part of the first five-year plan. The policy aimed to integrate individual landholdings and labour into collectively-controlled and state-controlled farms: Kolkhozy and Sovkhozy accordingly. The Soviet leadership confidently expected that the replacement of individual peasant farms by collective ones would immediately increase the food supply for the urban population, the supply of raw materials for processing industry, and agricultural exports. Planners regarded collectivization as the solution to the crisis of agricultural distribution that had developed from 1927. This problem became more acute as the Soviet Union pressed ahead with its ambitious industrialization program, meaning that more food needed to be produced to keep up with urban demand.
  In the early 1930s over 91% of agricultural land became collectivized as rural households entered collective farms with their land, livestock, and other assets.
context_section_description: Collectivization did not just entail the acquisition of land from farmers but also the closing of churches, burning of icons, and the arrests of priests.  Associating the church with the tsarist regime, the Soviet state continued to undermine the church through expropriations and repression. They cut off state financial support to the church and secularized church schools. Peasants began to associate Communists with atheists because the attack on the church was so devastating. The Communist assault on religion and the church angered many peasants, giving them more reason to revolt. Riots exploded after the closing of churches as early as 1929.
  Identification of Soviet power with the Antichrist also decreased peasant support for the Soviet regime. Rumors about religious persecution spread mostly by word of mouth, but also through leaflets and proclamations. Priests preached that the Antichrist had come to place "the Devil's mark" on the peasants. and that the Soviet state was promising the peasants a better life but was actually signing them up for Hell. Peasants feared that if they joined the collective farm they would be marked with the stamp of the Antichrist. They faced a choice between God and the Soviet collective farm. Choosing between salvation and damnation, peasants had no choice but to resist policies of the state. These rumors of the Soviet state as the Antichrist functioned to keep peasants from succumbing to the government. The attacks on religion and the Church affected women the most because they were upholders of religion within the villages.
  Dovzhenko's film Earth gives example of peasants' skepticism with collectivization on the basis that it was an attack on the church.
caption: The removal of the bell from St Volodymyr's Cathedral Central Kiev USSR 1930
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