The Glorious Church or Foolish Superstition
From an official communist viewpoint, religion is not only foolish, but dangerous. “Superstition” blunts the intellect, and prevents people from asking sociological questions about their condition.
Religious leaders are often in cahoots with the bourgeoisie to maintain the stranglehold of elites. Religion, especially Christianity, softens the proletariat with talk of love and forgiveness, whereas the global workers’ revolution needs them hot and vengeful. In Ukraine, this led to tactical shutting down of churches and intimidation of clergy. In 1918, the Bolsheviks executed the metropolitan of Kyiv. It was a bad time to be a public Christian.For all its official disdain for religion, the communist politburo nonetheless recognized its power. At times they played the You are a Russian religion, so God wants you to love Russia card. Mostly, however, they relied on easy deterrents—demolition, imprisonment, and execution.
But the “exterminated'' Church kept on resurrecting. The self-declared independent new offshoot, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, gained many early Ukrainian adherents, but was brutally suppressed. Even Khrushchev was actively hostile. Thousands of Ukrainian churches closed in the first half of the 1960s. Outwardly, it appeared that Christianity was almost entirely broken, as a sociological factor in the politics of Ukraine.
With only Pravda on TV, ordinary Russians and Ukrainians understood that religion in Russia and Ukraine was failing, as people embraced science and Marxist theory. The myth of the inevitability of the People’s Revolution was taught, enforced, and fostered. The spin-doctors of the Russian propaganda machine worked really hard to make it look like the theory was working out in actuality.
As soon as the grip of Russia began to slip, however, defiant Ukrainians began to voice their allegiance to the old Orthodoxy. Centuries of repression had taught Ukrainians how to appear to agree with overlords. Passive aggressive resistance is deeply ingrained in the Ukrainian psyche.