Fact, every single german nazi was a christian

[Dystopia]

My point is, there are a lot of theists out there who insist that Stalin persecuted the churches and outlawed religion and that's all there is to it, when that view is factually incorrect.  Nobody is saying Ol' Joe Stalin was a nice guy, he wasn't, but he wasn't the religion-hating atheist that the religious desperately want to make him out to be, especially when they want to blame his atheism for his actions, which is likewise, entirely untrue.  Stalin was pushing communism, a political system which requires functional adherence to the state, he was wiping out other institutions which got in the way of that and religion was one, but hardly the only, one of those systems that he got rid of, at least for a while.  But there are a lot of Christians out there who are trying desperately to twist the historical facts to their religious narrative, that atheists are religion-hating, baby-eating monsters, and they're doing history entirely wrong.

That's the sum total of what I was saying.

I'm certainly not arguing with that, just pointing out that there was indeed some persecution of the church and that was justified by appealing to Marx's "opium of the masses" quote, and official Bolshevik policy regarding the ROC in particular. We each simply have a slightly different perspective on the matter and that's fine.

It is true other institutions were persecuted, but if religion was just one more troubling institution like any other why do these states always or almost always declare state atheism and generally pursue measures to diminish religious belief and increase the number of those who don't believe? Yes, other institutions were destroyed, but anti-religion was almost as rampant as anti-capitalism, the latter is much more prevalent as it is essential to communist ideology but, the former was also important as religion was seen as a form of the powerful Czars to control the masses during the recession and extreme poverty years. You don't necessarily need to hate religion to be a Marxist, but it is strongly frowned upon to be religious yourself.