Russia has been in the news a lot in recent years, and for good reason. With the war in Ukraine and America’s heightening military tensions with Russia, not to mention Russia’s history with America extending back to the Cold War era, Americans have generally had uneasy feelings about Russia for at least a century.
Modern anxieties concerning Russia aside, there is an old area of concern that was largely cast aside after the early 90’s that I think is important to examine, namely communism. It’s not that Russia is explicitly looking to overtake America with communism in our day, though some have made that case. But everywhere we look – from drag queen performances for children to skyrocketing rates of youth identifying as queer or trans, from the anti-American, anti-capitalist, pro-socialist sentiment of young people to perhaps more radicalized youth today than even seen in the 1960’s, all of this is connected with a neo-Marxist takeover of culture in America. Communism can only make big inroads into a culture when the historically dominant ideology comes to be abandoned. In both Tsarist Russia and America, that dominant ideology is Christianity.
I lived in Russia in the late 90’s and then came back to the U.S. and got a dual master’s in Russian (language & literature) and Russian & East European Studies in the early 2000’s. During that time, I studied Soviet history and communism in-depth. I wrote my master’s thesis on clandestine Christians in the Soviet Union, their survival tactics, and the tactics of Soviet state to try to destroy Christianity. Within a few years of defending my thesis, I began to see the same tactics that the Soviets used to try to destroy Christianity being enacted here in America, and with similar results. To understand where we are with faith and culture in America today, it behooves us to take a look back into another time and place.
A Little Soviet History
When the communist Bolsheviks violently seized power in Russia in 1917, the Russian Orthodox church found itself to be a major target for attack. Churches were demolished, clergy were arrested, tortured, executed, and sentenced to the Gulag. Propaganda campaigns turned the populace against the church and toward communism as the supposed answer for all their ills. Soon, all churches in the Soviet Union came under similar attack, as communism is both a political and quasi-religious system that can allow for no competition.
In the first few decades of Soviet rule, the communist authorities found that there was no amount of arrests, interrogations, imprisonments, and executions of Christian clergy, and harassment of everyday Christians, that would cause Christianity to collapse into oblivion. In fact, many of these tactics bred underground religious activity that was difficult to track. So the Soviets had to make some adjustments to their anti-religious tactics.
Communist Tactics to Dismantle Christianity
In the aftermath of World War II and the death of the tyrant Stalin, the Soviet state fine-tuned its anti-religious tactics. Anti-religious and pro-socialist propaganda campaigns continued broadly, throughout the schools, media, and the arts. Winning the minds and hearts of the people, especially the rising generation, continued to be a prime goal. From every possible angle, the Soviet apparatus worked to turn the people against Christianity, portraying it as oppressive, abusive, and backward, and to indoctrinate the people to accept and embrace the new religion of communism.
In the meantime, Soviet authorities softened their stance against more mainstream Christians, giving some perks to those churches that fell in line and registered with the state. Then they infiltrated these churches so as to control them from within. KGB agents were sent into the seminaries to pose as up-and-coming clergy, then once they completed their training they would rise up quickly in the ranks of church leadership.
From the 1960’s and on, the unregistered Christians who dared defy the Soviet state and insisted on worshipping God according to the dictates of their conscience experienced a ramping up of persecution. These dissident Christians – Baptists, Pentecostals, 7th-Day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused to comply with the state – were considered by most to be “cults”, therefore the state could continue to persecute them without alienating the general populace. Up through the mid-80’s, the Soviet dissident Christians routinely experienced nighttime raids on their homes, raids their worship services, arrests, imprisonments in the Gulag, the forcible confiscation of their children, and internment in psychiatric prison/hospitals to cure them of their “delusions” about God. The state went to great lengths to attempt to disrupt and disband these renegade, uncontrollable churches.
How This is Relevant to Us in America Today
Today in America, we are in the end stages of a communist takeover of Christianity and culture that parallels Soviet history in many ways. The communist takeover of culture has advanced to the point that it is no longer safe to allow our children to freely engage with mainstream culture within the schools, media, and otherwise without a great deal of our countering the messages they are receiving.
To the degree that the bedrock of American culture, Christianity, is successfully subverted, America will be at grave risk. The new religion of woke Marxism will be able to more fully take hold. But instead of the equitable utopia that is promised, we should expect to experience the same fruits that communism has brought to every society where it has taken hold – namely mass impoverishment, enslavement, and death.
There is still time to shift the tide, but not much. Before we can successfully counter these tactics, we must thoroughly understand them. We are going to need a mass awakening of Christians, parents of school-age children, and anyone and everyone who cares about freedom. I hope you are ready to join this awakening!
To learn more, read Julie’s book “Beneath Sheep’s Clothing – The Communist Takeover of Culture in the USSR & Parallels in Today’s America” and watch the upcoming documentary Beneath Sheep’s Clothing (view the trailer now at SalemNOW.com, the film drops this Friday July 26, 2024). Follow Julie on X @JulieABehling
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