Talk:USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964)

Weasel words

"It is estimated that 50,000 clergy were executed by the end of the Khrushchev era." - this is weasel words. Majority, if not all, of these people must have been killed under Stalin. While maybe you could find some clergy executed on fake charges under Khruschev (as well as some others who might have been killed by lightning) this would be a very exceptional occurrence given the overall situation back then. After Stalin people were routinely executed for murder, treason or egregious corruption, but not for religious beliefs.

Also, note that the source article does not say "execution", it says "liquidation". So it may well be that they are counting not executions but rather the difference between number of registered priests at time T1 and T2. Obviously, there were lots of ways that priests could stop appearing in state registration lists under both Stalin and Khruschev without being killed. 76.24.104.52 (talk) 20:33, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi, you appear to be correct. That figure was written by someone else in the original 'persecution of christians in the Soviet Union' article and when I incorporated it into this one, I failed to contextualize it by stating somethinkg like 'by the end of Khrushchev's reign it is estimated that 50,000 clergy had been liquidated since Red October', because at the moment it looks a lot like it is saying that 50,000 were executed under Khrushchev. There were certainly people who were killed as a result of religious belief after Stalin, although it was a far more common occurrence under Stalin than it was later and the methodological was not always the same (eg. use of trumped up charges in show trials). :I find it unlikely that the figure of 50,000 would represent the number of deregistrations since 1917, because I strongly suspect that that figure would be a lot higher than 50,000. Thank you for pointing this out, I'll change it if no one else does when I try to add more sources later this week. God Bless, Reesorville (talk) 04:01, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I removed the whole section as partly irrelevant, partly unref/dubious. - Altenmann >talk 06:02, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Krushchev Claiming Gagarin Didn't See God in Space

Hi. I was just looking at the source for citation 22B in the article, and I was wondering where someone found that the article was stating that this is merely a claim made by Stalin?

Searching the article, I found the paragraph that starts and ends with: "Similarly, scientific atheists thought that atheism was empirically proven because God remained unseen or because certain religious stories were scientifically inconceivable ... In one of the most famous examples, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin proclaimed upon his return from the very first space flight in history that he did not see God in space," but I could not find any mention of Khrushchev talking about Gagarin claiming this.

I am wondering if I am missing something in the article, or if another source should be used to corroborate the statement that Khrushchev attributed the claim to Gagarin should be used? Aidann1 (talk) 14:06, 31 August 2024 (UTC)