Religion: No Longer Godless Communism

We must engage in a most decisive battle against reactionary clergy and suppress their resistance with such cruelty that they will remember it for several decades to come.

-- Lenin

The founder of the Soviet state wrote those words in 1922, but they were only made public last April -- at a time when Lenin's heirs were finally giving up their long antireligion battle. Perhaps the most startling evidence of the change was the celebration of the first Eucharist since 1918 in the Kremlin's Cathedral of the Assumption, barely three weeks ago. While Anatoli Lukyanov, the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet,...