(August 13, 2015 at 7:33 pm)Dystopia Wrote: Parkers dear Parkers, here's some info about the census on wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1937)
Religious part is quoted:
Quote:Another serious blow was a very high percentage of people who stated that they were religious. 55.3 million or 56.7% of those who provided answers stated they were religious (the question was asked only of people older than 16 years old), 42.2 million stated they were atheists and around 1 million refused to give an answer. Historian V. B. Zhiromskaya stated that people expected to be persecuted if they declared themselves as belonging to a religion but considered the answer to be important: If many people would say they are religious, the authorities would have to open the churches, was a common attitude.[5] The Soviet authorities were so upset by the results of the census that they did not include a question on religion in any future censuses.[
Bear in mind that additional reading is required but this is a pretty decent exposure of the mentality going on - This isn't about people killing in the name of atheism as we understand it today but about promoting state atheism and rejecting people who believe in anything other than dialectic materialism. They killed in the name of atheism and in the name of marxism, but it isn't atheism as we define it today - Arguably, it isn't marxism as defined by many marxists today. People don't share blame for what their ancestors did, so no worries there. Of course not every source will admit that these people would be executed right away, but we know that opponents of the regime, which were people who didn't share the whole common ideology, could be sent to gulags right away, or even for no reason.
The thing is, though, you strongly implied that being faithful was treated as treason -- i.e., a death sentence -- when such was not the case.
"Opponents of the regime" is the larger set, and "religious people" was a very tiny subset there, was my point. Arguing that people were sent away "for no reason" does not in any way support your point, because obviously sending someone away on religious grounds is sending them away for a reason. By widening the point, you're diffusing the discussion, and making it harder to address your point, but it doesn't make your point more valid.
And the quote you posted doesn't support the point you made earlier that religious people would have to be "taken care of". All that quote demonstrates is that the answer discomfited the government, and they stopped asking the question. That is a significant difference, and you should acknowledge as much.
