That atheists can be good without God, does not mean they can’t be evil. Stalin usually comes to mind. Now we have Hicks.
The best reads on this here at FtB so far are the short, informative, spot on commentaries by Heina Dadabhoy, Ed Brayton, Greta Christina, and Dana Hunter. I concur with them all.
Is it confirmed that Stalin really was an atheist?
It’s often claimed that he became an atheist after reading Darwin, however:
“we need not believe one later Soviet claim that he read The Origin of Species at the age of thirteen while still at Gori, and told a fellow pupil that it proved the nonexistence of God. The story fails on several obvious accounts, including Stalin’s remaining religious, even pious, for some years longer.”
Stalin: Breaker of Nations by Robert Conquest page 20
“As Stalin noted in 1952: “Jesus Christ also suffered, and even carried his cross, and then he rose up to heaven. You, then, have to suffer too, in order to rise up to heaven””
Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth Century Revolutionary Patriotism By Erik van Ree
“Influenced by his years in an Orthodox seminary, Stalin resurrected the vocabulary and symbolism of religion to make his ruthless social engineering more palatable to the masses”
Soviet Fiction Since Stalin: Science, Politics and Literature by Rosalind J. Marsh page 132
In the Document “The ‘Purge’ of the Libraries” Stalin ordered the withdrawal of “all anti-religious literature, exposing religion on the basis of natural science data” Source: The Stalin Era By Philip Boobbyer
I think you are being misled by data manipulation and rhetoric merely trying to spin things that way.
Here are some more competent analyses of the evidence:
Why Stalin Tried to Stamp Out Religion in the Soviet Union
USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941)
And Stalin let up on religion later in order to use its institutions to fight the Nazis and other political opponents, not because he converted (so don’t confuse “Stalin abandoned atheism as state policy” with “Stalin abandoned his own personal atheism,” and even his change of policy came late in life and was entirely situational):
World War II Rapprochement
How Stalin Enlisted the Orthodox Church to Help Control Ukraine
As an example of how you might be misled, we do not have that quote about Jesus from Stalin, but Malyshev. Sources like that are often of dubious authenticity, but if you trace that one (Malyshev’s diary, “Dnevnik Narkoma,” Istochnik 5: 138) you’ll find the context is sarcasm (Stalin is not actually advocating the belief, but mocking it, in frustration at the indolence of Christian troops; and as such, being merely a recollection of Malyshev, might be embellished, much like the myth of the Roman general who declared of the oracular chickens preventing his going to battle, “If they will not eat, let them drink!” and drowned them, then was promptly defeated in battle).
By contrast, Stalin’s daughter attests her father was an atheist to his very death (“my father would have shot me” for converting to Catholicism, she says—rather than, perhaps later in his life, supported her or been indifferent to her abandoning atheism).
0) the page has a holy image of stalin with a saint, right off the bat, not very convincing
1) they’re quote mining Marx, he continues to say that atheism is far from communism and is not needed
2) they’re not giving a source to the claim ““socialist man,” Stalin argued, was an atheist one” nor the time nor even the full quote so I can’t say for sure what he said or meant
3) Wikipedia says ” after World War II, the anti-religious campaign stormed on for decades, with Bibles forbidden” they are definitely exaggerating hotels still had bibles and nobody planted bibles in their enemies to accuse them of breaking the law this is worthy of a Monty python
4) Wikipedia says “officially the state claimed that no such persecution existed and that the people being targeted – when they admitted that people were being targeted – were only being attacked for resistance to the state or breaking the law.[7]”
“Metropolitan Sergii told foreign press in 1930 that there was no religious persecution and that Christianity shared many social goals with Marxism.[7] ”
[7]
Reesorville (20 February 2012). Metropolitan Sergii of Vilnius, Exarch of Latvia and Estonia, Unpublished Report (to the Germans) on the Church under the Soviet Regime. Church Social Media Inc. Retrieved 9 December 2022.
https://gloria.tv/post/cjG3jYSycwv12YxjPxDMS1PDr
“Under the USSR’s policy of denying the existence of religious persecution, the press only admitted the existence of persecution in the past during the Russian Civil War and during the campaign to seize church valuables, and this was justified by claiming that the Church was conducting counter-revolutionary activities. Under the same policy, it was claimed that the mass closure of churches represented a voluntary decline in religion of the population (and closed supposedly as a result of demands of the workers).”
some of it is downright funny “Students were given homework assignments to try to convert a member of their family to atheism.”
Wikipedia is not a peer-reviewed source and much like their Hitler’s religious beliefs article, their religion in the USSR articles should be taken with skepticism
5) stalin btw was not a member of the “League of the Militant Godless”. And just like how America has atheist organisations, Russia had them too, for the first time only after 2 centuries and only for it to be closed down anyway some two decades later and forced to write articles like “Why religious people are against Hitler” (“Почему религиозные люди против Гитлера”). Notice how they never had stuff modern day religious countries had like an atheist bus campaign, atheist billboard campaign, atheist out campaign, much less things like a “there is no god” adhan(which exists in Norway)
6) the quote “You know, they are fooling us, there is no God… all this talk about God is sheer nonsense.” comes from the story of stalin reading Darwin, we already know this didn’t happen and stalin wasn’t a Darwinist even in adulthood, infact Darwinists and geneticists were often persecuted. the quote “One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic” is also probably a misquote
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/21/death-statistic/?amp=1
7) speaking of Stalin’s daughter. Stalin told to his daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva-Stalin that Christ existed.
Journalist: It is interesting, that from all residents of Kremlin, maybe, just Stalin believed in God…
S.Alliluyeva: In father’s library, between other books, were few tomes of “Christ”. It was history of Christ, written by vox populist Morozov. I said to my father: “But Christ didn’t exist!” and he answered: “Oh no, Christ, certainly, existed.”
source: “Mysteries of the Century: Kremlin Kids”
2003-03-19, Channel One Russia
In other-bigger Interview to Russian magazine “Version” («Версия») and second Russian TV channel RTR (РТР) (1998) Svetlana spoke more about her father’s belief in God. She said, that Stalin told history of Christ her later. And she thinks that he was believer.
8) at Stalin’s funeral. The representative of the Russian Orthodox Church – Metropolitan Nicholas (Николай), Archbishop Nikon (Никон) and archpriest Nikolai Kolchitsky (Николай Колчицкий) – were part of the honor guard at the coffin of Joseph Stalin.
From speech of the most holy patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Aleksii before requiem on I.V.Stalin, told in the patriarchal cathedral in day of Stalin’s funeral (1953-03-09).
“We, who gathered for a pray about him, can not pass with silence his always benevolent, sympathizing attitude to our church needs. Any question, with which we addressed to him, has not been rejected by him; he satisfied all our requests. And a lot of good and useful, thanks to his high authority, has been done for our Church by our Government.”
source: Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate (JMP), 1953, №3, p. 5; №4, p. 3-4 (Журнал Московской Патриархии (ЖМП), 1953, №3, стр. 5; №4, стр. 3-4)
I don’t see how anything you state here contradicts anything I just said.
Maybe you misunderstood what I said. Give reading my remarks another try.
But, for example, millions of atheists believe Christ “existed.” So that has no relevance to whether Stalin was an atheist.
Possibly you are unaware of the backstory of Soviet anti-historicity propaganda, which was launched during the atheism-as-state-policy period; Stalin’s daughter is simply revealing he didn’t buy that propaganda, as propagandists usually don’t (that’s why it’s called propaganda), but that doesn’t make him a theist.
millions of atheists believe that a vague guy with the title of Jesus existed(Josephus himself mentions over twenty jesuses so no surprise there), not in “christ”, not with such “certainty”, not with keeping apologetic works, and not for bedtime stories, not to the extent that your daughter says she thinks they’re believers in christ.
English historian Simon Sebag Montefiore studied Stalin’s hobbies, personal library, what Stalin liked to read, what kind of marks he left in his books. He found that Stalin liked to quote long quotes from the Bible.
Stalin: A Biography – Page 462 by Robert Service
“all that is in the past , and the past belongs to God” – Stalin
It is not without reason told, that God takes brains from whom He dooms to die”. – Speech on 5-th All-Union conference of A-ULYCL 1927-03-29, I.V.Stalin
According to Stalin’s grandson Alexander Burdonsky, Stalin confessed.
Moskovsky Komsomolets number 25303 on March 17, 2010 E. Svetlova, “Stainless Stalin”
Alexander Burdonsky: “Stalin was a very clever man, he knew and understood what to do. It was interesting for me also to understand, what he was thinking, when he sat for hours at night in a chair and looked out the window, which faced the woods. What kind of thoughts went through him, why he wanted to confess? There was a confession. The priest was interrogated under Khrushchev with terrible force, but he said nothing.”
Stalin attended Temple of All Saints to pray.
Newspaper “Moscow Falcon” №1(77) 2005-01-??; Sofia Pavlova “Only Church, visited by Stalin …”
Тhe head of the Temple of All Saints Michael Aleksandrovich Rodin: “Joseph Vissarionovich come during war in our temple to pray. And even today there are parishioners alive – a few very older persons, who remember this fact and saw Stalin themselves. Stalin, as tell, came to a temple three times and stood long, facing to two icons, – Nikolay Chudotvorets and Kazan Divine Mother. Joseph Vissarionovich has not stood all service, his visits last 15-20 minutes.”
Antireligious literature for Stalin is waste-paper.
M.V.Shkarovskii “Russian Orthodox Church under Stalin and Khruschev” p. 201
Before war, selecting library for a summer residence, Stalin has attributed for executors: “Please, no any antireligious maculature! (maculature = paper waste, junk)”
Photocopy in magazine “New and contemporary history” (historian B.S.Ilizarov).
Book “Stalin” by Dmitri Antonovich Volkogonov.
“A note to the librarian (Ivan Pavlovich Tovstukha). My advice (and request):
…
3) All the others (books) to assort by authors, excluding from classification and having put aside: any textbooks, small magazines, antireligious waste-paper, etc.). 29.V.25 y. I.Stalin”.
None of that evinces anything useful to the point.
What point?
Of the discussion.
You must have forgotten what your point was.
Try starting over:
Go to your original comment and what it’s point was (“Is it confirmed that Stalin really was an atheist?”), to which point I responded. Read my response to your point. If you are still confused, read your impertinent reply (that ignored my point), and then my reply (pointing out that you ignored my point).
Then you’ll be caught up.