The Party's Chief Atheist, Called 'the Soviet Priest'
Khrushchev recalled: "In the Party we called Yaroslavsky 'the Soviet priest.'" His own maxim: "The struggle against religion is the struggle for socialism."
Yaroslavsky was the supreme ideologue of Soviet anti-religious policy. As chairman of the League of Militant Atheists (1925–1943), he directed the USSR's organized campaign against religion. Joining the RSDLP in 1898, he led the Moscow armed uprising in October 1917 and served as Military Commissar of the Moscow Military District. As Secretary of the Party Collegium (1924–1934), he helped enforce party discipline and purges. He authored The Bible for Believers and Unbelievers, was Stalin's loyal supporter and the official interpreter of Party history, and was elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1939.
Career Timeline
- 1898Joined RSDLP; organized Social-Democratic circles on the Transbaikal Railway
- 1905–1907Led military-combat organizations in Petersburg & Moscow; delegate to 4th & 5th Party Congresses
- 1907–19175 years' katorga, then exile in Yakutia; served as director of Yakutsk Museum of Local Lore
- 1917.10Member of Moscow MRC; first Commissar of the Kremlin
- 1918–1919Military Commissar of the Moscow Military District
- 1921Secretary of the CC RKP(b); member of the Orgburo
- 1924–1934Secretary of the Party Collegium, Central Control Commission
- 1925–1943Chairman, League of Militant Atheists & Anti-Religious Commission
Related historical events
- 1905–1907The Revolution of 1905Bolshevik military organizerHe organized workers and Bolshevik military-combat activity in Yaroslavl and Moscow and attended the Tammerfors party conference.
- 1917.10–1918.01The October RevolutionMoscow insurrection leadershipAs a member of the Moscow Party Centre and Military Revolutionary Committee, he helped lead the armed uprising and became the Kremlin's first commissar.
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionMilitary commissar of the Moscow Military District
League of Militant Atheists and the Vanguard of Soviet Anti-Religious Struggle
Yaroslavsky etched his name into history as the supreme ideologue of Soviet anti-religious policy. From 1925 until his death, he chaired the Central Council of the League of Militant Atheists (Союз воинствующих безбожников), a mass atheist movement encompassing workers, peasants, and the intelligentsia that grew to millions of members by the early 1930s. Simultaneously, as chair of the Anti-Religious Commission attached to the Party Central Committee, he directly designed and executed the Party's anti-religious line.
His work The Bible for Believers and Unbelievers (Библия для верующих и неверующих, 1923–1925) analyzed the content of the Bible as an assemblage of ancient myths, legends, and literature, becoming a foundational text of Soviet atheist education. How Gods and Goddesses Are Born, Live, and Die (1923) was also translated into multiple languages and exerted international influence. The journal Bezbozhnik (The Godless), which he edited, along with the satirical Bezbozhny Krokodil, served as the central organs of mass anti-religious propaganda.
Yaroslavsky formulated the maxim 'The struggle against religion is the struggle for socialism,' and from 1929 to 1935 he spearheaded the abolition of the Christmas holiday and the campaign against Christmas trees. Yet immediately after the German invasion of 1941, acting on Stalin's instructions, he was compelled to publish an article titled 'Why Religious People Oppose Hitler,' whose tone diverged sharply from all his previous anti-religious writings, a sign that wartime mobilization required a temporary accommodation with the Church. His anti-religious work formed the core axis of the Soviet regime's historic experiment in confronting religion as a social institution and a worldview, and his legacy remains a subject of sharp historiographical assessment to this day.