• PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Maybe it will die off completely in the future, but that hasn’t happened in any AES country to date and that’s really important to note.

    There was significant decrease in religiousness in all socialist countries and its a steady trend as long as state remain focused on proper materialist education.

    Really, looking at all the current and former AES, i would say that getting rid of religion is easier than getting rid of petty bourgeois sentiment (something that Lenin said it would be the hardest thing to do, and which was also not successful but with some progress in AES).

    • JamesConeZone [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Sorry, I don’t really have the capacity to write the long response that this deserves but I can add few things that complicate that overall picture.

      • Reported religiousness plummets when religion is outlawed but skyrockets when its re-legalized or tolerated again (e.g., China, USSR). This isn’t because a lot of people suddenly convert – proselytizing is almost always still illegal – but rather they feel safe enough to self-report and identify as religion followers on official and unofficial surveys. Religiosity has been resilient in most AES countries. See China and Cuba’s remarkably steady Christian population and folk religion adherents or Buddhism in Vietnam.
      • There are many reasons people claim religions including national heritages, family history, spiritual connections to some practice, or genuine superstition. Education can address the latter but struggles with the former. As I recommended below, I’d recommend reading China’s statement on this from 1982.

      Agreed on the petty bourgeois sentiment. Religion overlaps with that in huge amounts, of course, so if religion is to be allowed in AES countries, it needs regulation and proper education that both re-educates indigenous populations especially those that were converted from, say, American evangelicals and makes sure cults like Shen Yun don’t pop up – this obviously happens outside of religion too but it’s particularly insidious within it.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        You’re basically right, but note even in the formerly AES countries, despite plunging into deep crisis, the number of atheists remain at much higher levels than it was before socialism - even in country like Poland. It’s most visible in Czechia iirc. So it does work. Few more generations (it was like not even 2 basically) and much more would disappear, though probably not entirely (see Japanese christianity emerging after Meiji restoration, though it emerged 95% reduced and heavily influenced with buddhism).

        I think there isn’t much problem with disorganised and decentralised religions, at least as the party remains strictly atheist, but something like the catholic church is immense danger, the worse that every move against them, even for completely nonrelated reasons (again look at Poland where some priests were arrested for spying and other antisocialist activities) will be always portrayed as attack on religion, so the socialist country would necessarily have aim to remove their political power, most likely by expropriation of their property - something that for example again Poland failed to do (PRL even gave them some of postgerman land!) which caused unending trouble.

        There are many reasons people claim religions including national heritages, family history, spiritual connections to some practice, or genuine superstition. Education can address the latter but struggles with the former.

        All those aren’t as immutable as you probably see it, there are historical examples of all this changing more or less rapidly. I think it’s again that socialism simply did not had enough time and had too much outside opposition to properly adress that.

        Lenin once wrote interesting article “On the significance of militant materialism”