I know Stalin was Christian at one point, even studying at a seminary to become a priest, but was he still Christian by the time he was general secretary?
Yeah reading more into the struggles the USSR had with the orthodox church you're right to say that Stalin 100% ditched this outlook by the 1930s as he was calling for state athiesm in the 1930s and kept trying to purge the 'reactionary' orthdox church members from positions of infulence.
I am wrong to say that the direction of this was because of fears of Stalins orthodoxy, my mistake.
The key thing though to take away was, that he mostly failed; Russia was just that much orthodox. The key points where how he made concessions like recriminalizing abortion in the 1930s; not a position he likely would have wanted to do due to his ideological position, but one he had to do to maintain a cohesive country.
I know Stalin was Christian at one point, even studying at a seminary to become a priest, but was he still Christian by the time he was general secretary?
Yeah reading more into the struggles the USSR had with the orthodox church you're right to say that Stalin 100% ditched this outlook by the 1930s as he was calling for state athiesm in the 1930s and kept trying to purge the 'reactionary' orthdox church members from positions of infulence.
I am wrong to say that the direction of this was because of fears of Stalins orthodoxy, my mistake.
The key thing though to take away was, that he mostly failed; Russia was just that much orthodox. The key points where how he made concessions like recriminalizing abortion in the 1930s; not a position he likely would have wanted to do due to his ideological position, but one he had to do to maintain a cohesive country.