Religion in Russia Many recent visitors to the U.S.S.R. have
remarked on the growing freedom and practice of religion ; it is interesting to find the same comment made, though with less sympathy, in the Russian Press. Pravda indeed admits the development only to attack it ; it emphasises especially that religious belief has not only increased but has a growing hold upon the young. It insists also that freedom of belief and the practice of religion is now guaranteed by the new Constitution ; therefore crude methods of suppression, or the closing of churches, are impossible. They are also, as the article says, inadvisable, as they only succeed in driving religion underground. What Pravda advocates is more energetic and alert propaganda and a sterner opposition to religion within and by the Communist Party itself, for which any intellectual compromise with it is impossible. Such anti- religious zeal is intelligible and inevitable in Communists ; but more interesting is the admission that it-has failed in its object. If Pravda says that religion is on the increase and admits that it must be tolerated by the State, many people will feel that the liberalism recently professed by the U.S.S.R. may have more in it than they suspected.
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