The rigid theology of scientific, rational atheism as an antidote to the problems of religion was not found in Marx and Engels. Marx did see religion as fostering apathy to class divisions and as kind of a 'sop' to appropriate anger and revolutionary solidarity, but he believed that it would disappear of its own accord once the populace was made sufficiently aware of the cruelties of the class system. Lenin vehemently disagreed and believed that religion must be eradicated. A review of Dimitry V. Pospielovsky's A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory and Practice and the Believer noted: "The bloody persecution of the Orthodox church was well under way…on January 19, 1918…Sympathies toward the Whites during the Civil War (e.g. As shown by reciting a Te Deum) merited execution. However, even completely apolitical and even left-leaning clerics like Metropolitan Veniamin of Petrograd were tried and condemned. Veniamin's crime was to...
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