Soviets believed in Marxism-Leninism, an ideology centered on communal ownership, state control, and a classless society led by the vanguard Communist Party (CPSU) to overthrow capitalism, promoting atheism, collective economic/social rights (healthcare, housing, jobs), and opposition to individualism, nationalism, and religion, though reality often involved centralized totalitarian rule and suppression of dissent.
Marxism–Leninism was the ideological basis for the Soviet Union. It explained and legitimized the CPSU's right to rule, while explaining its role as a vanguard party. For instance, the ideology explained that the CPSU's policies, even if they were unpopular, were correct because the party was enlightened.
Soviet policy toward religion was based on the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, which made atheism the official doctrine of the Communist Party.
Orthodox Christianity was demographically, politically, and culturally by far the most important religion of the Russian Empire and remained as such during the Soviet period and beyond.
Stalin's doctrine held that socialism could be completed in Russia but that its final victory could not be guaranteed because of the threat from capitalist intervention. For this reason, he retained the Leninist view that world revolution was still a necessity to ensure the ultimate victory of socialism.
From 1928 until World War II, when some restrictions were relaxed, the totalitarian dictator shuttered churches, synagogues and mosques and ordered the killing and imprisonment of thousands of religious leaders in an effort to eliminate even the concept of God.
Karl Marx was a revolutionary, sociologist, historian, and economist. He cowrote The Communist Manifesto (with Friedrich Engels), and he was the author of Das Kapital, which together formed the basis of Marxism. Marx was born in Prussia in 1818 and lived in Paris, Brussels, London, and elsewhere in Europe.
So in the early 1920s, the Soviet government effectively banned Islam in Central Asia. Books written in Arabic were burned, and Muslims weren't allowed to hold office. Koranic tribunals and schools were shuttered, and conducting Muslim rituals became almost impossible.
Most Americans believe in God, and a majority observe some form of religion or spiritual practice. Communism—theoretically, ideologically, and historically—opposes God and all forms of religion. From the time of Karl Marx to today, communism is based on the abolition of religion.
Hitler considered the invasion of the USSR as part of his plan to provide the German nation with “living space” (Lebensraum) and an opportunity to destroy Communism, which he loathed.
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people," Marx wrote. The abolition of religion as "illusory happiness" would lead to real happiness, he said — but only if people were freed from oppressive material conditions.
Freedom of speech was suppressed and dissent was punished. Independent political activities were not tolerated, whether they involved participation in free labor unions, private corporations, independent churches or opposition political parties.
Following Stalin's death, there was a liberalisation of attitudes toward sexual issues in the Soviet Union, but homosexual acts remained illegal. Discrimination against LGBT individuals persisted in the Soviet era, and homosexuality was not officially declassified as a mental illness until 1999.
Presently, there are five states which are officially communist in the world: China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam. In accordance with Marx's theory of the state, communists believe all state formations are under the control of a ruling class.
Bolshevism (derived from Bolshevik) is a revolutionary socialist current of Soviet Leninist and later Marxist–Leninist political thought and political regime associated with the formation of a rigidly centralized, cohesive and disciplined party of social revolution, focused on overthrowing the existing capitalist state ...
For decades the Soviet government tried to seal off its people inside a cultural iron curtain. Western radio broadcasts were jammed. Western rock music was banned, and records were confiscated at the border.
The rise of Arab nationalism, which had replaced Islamism as the leading ideology in the region after the establishment of nation states in the aftermath of the First World War, presented the Soviet Union with an opportunity to establish consistent relations with the Arab world, as the movement had anti-Western ...
Muslim populations have lived in Russian territory since at least the tenth century AD (Islam took root in Dagestan in the eighth and ninth centuries, and Volga Bulgaria adopted it in 922).
In Hitler's eyes, Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves; he detested its ethics in particular. Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest.
I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene." Einstein was then asked if he accepted the historicity of Jesus, to which he replied, "Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word.
He laid out a Marxist position against the oppression of homosexuals, as a social minority, and compared homophobia to racism, xenophobia and sexism.
Marx was already named an ideological enemy in Hitler's early writings. Unsurprisingly, he received special mention in a "fire oath" as promulgator of class conflict.
The main difference is that under communism, most property and economic resources are owned and controlled by the state (rather than individual citizens); under socialism, all citizens share equally in economic resources as allocated by a democratically-elected government.