Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.)

UNION OF THE SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS (U.S.S.R.). – The use of the abbreviation U.S.S.R. dates back to 30 Dec. 1926 (in Russian S.S.S.R., or, in Cyrillic characters, C.C.C.P., that is, «Sojuz Sozialist-česciich Sovietskich Respublik»). It denotes the vast political entity which, following the Revolution of Feb. 1917, inherited the Empire of the Tsars, transformed into a state with a communist structure and constituted (nominally) as a federation of several units gravitating, with varying degrees of attachment, around the federal power. The abbreviation tends to replace the old name Russia, which nevertheless is still retained both for the U.S.S.R. as a whole and for its European part, and, not infrequently, for the R.S.F.S.R. (Russian Federated Socialist Soviet Republic), which is in every respect the pre-eminent member of the Federation.

The territory of the U.S.S.R. is the largest on Earth when considered as a single contiguous whole: before the last world war it extended over 21.2 million sq. km., of which more than 4/5 lay in Asia (of which it occupied 37%) and 1/4 in Europe (43% of the latter), thus representing 14.3% of the emerged land; with the annexations carried out between 1939 and 1945 (690,000 sq. km.; of these no fewer than 478,000 in Europe), its area rose to 22.8 million sq. km. (of which 5.1 in Europe), amounting to just under 1/6 of all the continents and 2/3 of the Eurasian landmass. The territory of the U.S.S.R. is bounded along approximately 2/3 of its perimeter (45,000 km.) by seas, almost all of them enclosed or blocked by ice for a more or less prolonged period of the year, and therefore not always favourable to navigation. Its land frontiers (25,000 km.) properly touch 11 states: 4 of the 6 European ones (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania) and 2 of the 5 Asian ones (China and North Korea) concern political units concretely functioning as satellite organisms. In any event, even more than because of its geographical position and its dimensions (greater than those of an entire continent), the U.S.S.R. is involved in all the major problems of world politics because of its resolute and tenacious determination to

UNION OF THE SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

Autonomous Republics and Provinces in the U.S.S.R.

an ideological function: the spread of communism throughout the world; in Europe, moreover, it controls, through a military occupation that has now continued for more than 8 years, a large portion of Germany (107,000 sq. km., 30% of the entire state, and 25% of its population) and of Austria (23.5 thousand sq. km., 31% of the state and 34% of the population), including their respective capitals. Particularly noteworthy is the position of predominance assumed, after 1940, in the Baltic, with the annexations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania: the entire southern basin of that sea, taking into account the occupation still in progress in eastern Germany, is practically under Soviet domination.

The U.S.S.R. extends from 35° 48' N. (Afghan frontier) to 77° 37' N. (C. Čeljuskin) and from 19° 32' E. (Frische Nehrung) to 169° 50' E. Greenwich (C. Dejnev on the Bering Strait); that is to say, approximately 9700 km. from W. to E. and at least 4000 from S. to N. It evidently follows that there is a great variety of natural conditions and aptitudes, and likewise of climatic environments. From the depressions surrounding the Caspian (whose level is 26 m. below mean sea level) and the cryptodepressions of Bajkal (which, at 1280 m. below the same mean sea level, is the deepest on earth), one rises to 7600 m. on Stalin Peak in the Trans-Alai (the highest summit of the Federation); and thus from the frosts of the extreme north-eastern Asian regions — where, at Oimekon on the Indigirka, the «pole of cold» is located (absolute minima of — 70°!) — one passes to the tropical heat of Central Asia, where summer temperatures sometimes approach 70°. Differences in precipitation are also considerable: maxima of more than 2 m., as in western Transcaucasia, are contrasted with the aridity of the great deserts east of the Caspian (Kara and Kizil Kum), where, over areas as extensive as, or larger than, continental Italy, not a drop of water falls for whole summers and years.

Even so, the immense domain is not without a distinctive geographical unity. In the appearance of the landscape,

because of the absolute predominance of plateaux, or rather uplands, and consequently of immense flat or gently sloping surfaces over the folded regions, which occupy almost all the peripheral sectors; in the relative arrangement of the various natural units, which follow one another from N. to S. according to a gradual and, on the whole, regular climatic differentiation; and finally in the climate itself, because of the continental character that dominates virtually the whole territory of the U.S.S.R., even where it is close to the peripheral seas, owing to the substantial uniformity of thermal and pluviometric regimes over vast areas. The much greater extent of this territory from W. to E. corresponds to the latitudinal arrangement of the typical landscape zones of the U.S.S.R.: the Arctic tundra, in the sector nearest the Arctic Ocean; the broad forest belt (the Siberian taiga) that follows it, at first (to the N.) consisting entirely of conifers, then increasingly mixed (to the S.) with deciduous trees, with extensive patches of heath or bog; the grain-growing lands (černozem) that replace the original steppe vegetation in Ukraine and west-central Siberia; and finally the arid and saline steppes, which gradually pass into the true desert (Central Asia). In the peripheral sectors, as stated, but at times also interfering with the zones just named, are the mountain ranges, likewise varying from sector to sector: the high and compact Caucasian wall in the SW.; the reinforced mountain chains of Central Asia (from the Alai to the Sajani) and eastern Asia (still known in part rather imperfectly), and the Urals, which, although extending from N. to S. for more than 2000 km., in reality form only a modest swelling between entirely similar flat sectors.

The natural regions of the U.S.S.R. therefore generally assume considerable dimensions; over broad areas, local differences, although not absent, appear almost negligible. On the whole, one may distinguish: a) the great Eurasian plain, consisting of two vast tabular blocks on the two sides of the Urals: the general flatness is disturbed only slightly, here and there, by small hill ranges

The 16 Federated Republics of the U.S.S.R.

of hills (along the Volga, Don, and Dnieper), which rise only slightly—at most to 250–300 m.—while only in the north, on the Kola Peninsula, do elevations reach 1,000 m. The Urals do not constitute a barrier at all, except in the north: railways and roads cross them everywhere in the open. This is a region extending approximately 4,000 km. from west to east and at least 2,000 from south to north; it contains nearly 85% of the population of the U.S.S.R.; b) the plateaus of central Siberia, beyond the Yenisei; elevated 500 to 800 m. above a surface of more than 2,000,000 sq. km. Toward the south, the plateau gives way to a series of ranges rising above 2,000 m. (Jablonovi, Stanovoj), which dominate more or less depressed troughs, the largest of which, that occupied by Lake Baikal, is more than 1,600 m. deep. It is a rugged country, with a harsh climate and numerous elevations, but still in the process of development; c) the territories of the Far East, bounded approximately on the west by the 125th meridian E. of Greenwich and extending to the Pacific. Great mountain arcs (Khirigan, Sirohota Alin, Čerskij, Verchjansk), with their concavity turned northward, rise to more than 4,000 m., overlooking, in the intervals between them, inland basins, the most important of which, economically, are the southernmost (50° N.) ones of Blagoveščensk and Chabarovsk, joined by the broad valley of the Amur. It is still a very sparsely populated region, even along its cold and humid maritime fringe, with the exception of the narrow border zone near Korea; d) Central Asia, that is, the flat or depressed tract opening east of the Caspian; an arid and partly desert territory, but one benefited by the waters of the numerous high or very high ranges (from 4,000 to more than 7,000 m.)—Alai, Ala tau, Tien Shan, Pamiri—which frame it to the south and southeast. It is one of the districts in which the economic transformation brought about by the Soviet regime has been most decisive: the original nomadism and the continuing seasonal migrations are gradually giving way to the formation of permanent settlements, encouraged by the development of industry; e) the Caucasian sector, comprising a broad complex of summits extending for more than a thousand kilometres from the Black Sea to the Caspian and rising to more than 5,500 m. in Elbruz. On both sides of the axial line, the mountains open into labyrinths of valleys, which have given rise to a complicated ethnic and political mosaic, strongly conservative in the north (Ciscaucasia), while in the south (Transcaucasia) the contrast remains vivid between humid Colchis (Georgia), facing the Euxine, and the bare, desolate plain of the Kura (Azerbaijan), both closed off from Iran by the Armenian plateau, a wild complex of mountains, basins, and uplands, nevertheless not without resources.

Such a combination of environmental conditions could not fail to produce anthropological and economic differentiations, even apart from the particular historical evolution experienced by the various countries; nor is it surprising that the Slavic expansion, which set out as early as the sixteenth century to conquer this immense domain, has not yet succeeded in bringing about everywhere conditions of civilization comparable to those achieved in other regions of colonization that was not even so ancient. An indication of this same fact is provided by the low overall population density, although the figure expressing it (fewer than 10 inhabitants per sq. km.) must also be related to the large share—approximately one-third—of the area of the U.S.S.R. occupied by frozen terrain (tundra) and deserts (Central Asia). Moreover, regional densities vary within fairly wide limits: while almost the entire Asian sector north of the 50th parallel has indices below or close to 1 inhabitant per sq. km. (but with vast tracts in which, in practice, there is indeed no more than 1 inhabitant every 10, 50, or even 100 sq. km.), in the regions near Moscow or the industrial centers of Ukraine, densities exceed, if only over modest areas, 100 or 200 inhabitants per sq. km. But, in order properly to understand the well-known mobility of the Soviet population, one must take into account the large number of nomads and semi-nomads living in Central and northern Asia, the ever-active rhythm of internal migrations, and the production crises (famines) that until yesterday had produced mass exoduses or patterns of settlement unknown in our countries. The Russian cities themselves are, moreover, notably different from ours, at least the traditional ones, insofar as they have escaped, to a greater or lesser extent, the leveling action exerted and still exerted by the socioeconomic transformation carried out by communist collectivism. Among the revolution’s most powerful results must be counted the increased number of urban centers and their increased demographic importance: in 1950 the Union had more than a hundred large cities (that is, each with a population exceeding 100,000 inhabitants), two of which exceeded 3,000,000 inhabitants (Moscow, with more than 5, and Leningrad), a dozen had half a million (Kiev, Baku, Charcov, Gorkij, Novosibirsk, Sverdlovsk, Taškent, Tiflis, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Rostov on the Don, and Stalino), and at least 16 had a quarter of a million.

A characteristic feature of the population of the U.S.S.R. is its great ethnic heterogeneity: at least 170 distinct groups, belonging to about ten different stocks. Although the Indo-Europeans still predominate overwhelmingly, the Russians (or rather, the Great Russians) today constitute less than half of the total population of the U.S.S.R. (100,000,000 souls in 1951), whereas they constituted 53% before the last great world war; next come,

in numerical size, the Ukrainians (36,000,000), the Belarusians (10,000,000), and 14 other groups, each numbering more than 1,000,000 individuals. After the Indo-Europeans, the peoples of Turco-Tatar stock constitute the largest nucleus (15% of the total), headed by the Uzbeks (5,000,000), the Tatars (4.3), and the Kazakhs (3.1); they are distributed not only in Asia but also in the European regions. At least another 17 groups consist of populations each numbering fewer than 1,000,000 and more than 100,000 souls, and approximately ten others of smaller numbers. The result is a Babylonian linguistic confusion, which the Soviet regime has, for its part, encouraged by promoting the preservation and development of the local idioms, insofar as these are peculiar to the political-administrative units within which they are spoken; but at the same time decreeing the predominance of Russian (which, with its 220,000,000 speakers, has risen to second place in the world, immediately after English), the official language of the U.R.S.S.

In terms of population, on the eve of the world war the U.R.S.S. held third place in the world among sovereign states; of its population, almost exactly two-thirds belonged to the European sector. Thus, while the Soviet Union comprised 8% of the Earth’s population, it alone contained slightly less than one-fourth of that of the European continent, surpassing by far any other state in this respect. With the conclusion of the Second World War, this situation became even more pronounced. The Soviet domain now contains 8.7% (1948) of the world’s population; the portion belonging to the European sector represents 26% of the total population of Europe, exceeding by a still more decisive margin the proportion belonging to all the other states.

Despite its recent, grandiose industrial development, and the tendency to shift ever farther toward the East the center of gravity of its economic life, in order to exploit to an increasing degree the immense resources of every kind with which the Asian sector is endowed, the U.R.S.S. remains essentially an agricultural country (57% of its population is rural), deriving by far the greater part of its production from the European sector. In the sphere of agricultural activity, this consequence appears all the more evident since more than four-fifths of the territory under cultivation still lie west of the Urals. The new regime has, however, not only stimulated the development of all those forms of production permitted by the distinctive natural environments of the extra-European regions (it is enough to recall the growing production of cotton and fruit in Central Asia), but has also advanced considerably farther in the exploitation of the soil in the traditionally agricultural areas themselves, and above all in Ukraine, both by renewing the organization of labor (in state farms, or sovkhozy, and in collective farms, or kolkhozy), by increasingly extensive mechanization (agricultural machinery stations and tractors), and by regulating the distribution of the various crops according to plans that take account of the specific properties of the soils and the needs of the community. In cereal production (wheat, rye, oats, barley), the U.R.S.S. has therefore strengthened its world primacy, without succeeding in resuming its role as the leading exporter, owing to increased domestic consumption and the growing competition of other producers. It is not easy to provide wholly reliable figures on agricultural production—and the warning applies equally to the other statistical data—of the U.R.S.S.; with reasonable approximation, it may be stated that agricultural land there represents 16% of the world total, while the percentages of the principal agricultural crops, always in relation to world production, are approximately as follows (the first figure refers to cultivated area, the second to the harvest): wheat 13–14.5 (450,000,000 quintals in 1950); rye 68.5–62.5 (162 million quintals in 1950, compared with 255 in 1935–38); oats 28–23; barley 18–14; potatoes 40–36. As can be seen, the figure for production is generally lower than that for cultivated area; this indicates that yields per unit are rather low (that of wheat, for example, is approximately half the corresponding Italian yield).

In contrast to the almost absolute predominance of cereals over the other crops characteristic of the tsarist period,

there is today a clear tendency toward the development of specialized crops, among which oil-producing crops predominate (sunflower, castor bean, flax, hemp), followed by cotton (from Ukraine to Transcaucasia; taking into account the other regions in which the same crop is grown, the U.R.S.S.’s share in world production is only 6%) and sugar beet. Within the framework of Soviet agriculture, one must not overlook the care devoted to the problem of artificial irrigation, which has enabled—and will enable still more in the future—new land to be brought under human cultivation (it is estimated, for example, that the area reclaimed from the desert could be increased from 400,000 to 1.3 million hectares). By contrast, hydroelectric-energy production (two-thirds of the available capacity is located in Europe) is still far from reaching its potential, despite the large power stations already established (Dneproghes, once the largest in the world) or under construction. The zootechnical wealth is considerable: sheep (100,000,000 head) and cattle (60,000,000) rank among the highest figures, and the regions of Central Asia and southern Siberia in particular are well suited to their raising. The products of fishing are likewise considerable: in freshwater fishing, highly active in the numerous rivers, the U.R.S.S. has no rivals (caviar production). Nor are its forest resources any less impressive (23% of the world’s productive forest areas, 21.5% of those accessible; the latter in turn amount to half of the forest area of the U.R.S.S.); at least 1.5 of the territorial area is today considered accessible and exploitable, placing the U.R.S.S. among the leading countries in the world in the export of the related products.

Mineral resources are abundant on a comparable scale. In order to ascertain their location and extent, the new regime has undertaken an intensive and methodical exploration of the entire territory of the U.R.S.S., whose reserves increase from year to year as the geological surveying of the many regions still unknown or little known becomes more precise. The results achieved thus far show that this immense domain possesses substantial quantities of nearly all the minerals required as the basis of a great economic power. The Soviet Union has iron reserves amounting to more than one-fifth of the world total; petroleum reserves amounting to slightly less, coal reserves representing 10–15%, and varying but always considerable proportions of copper, zinc, lead, manganese, gold, platinum, nickel, asbestos, chromium, potash, bauxite, mercury, magnesite (more than one-third), etc. Even if these resources are calculated with some optimism, they are in any case such as to assure the Soviet Union substantial autarky in this respect, as well as industrial expansion whose limits certainly do not lie in any deficiency or scarcity of the raw materials needed to sustain II. It is therefore understandable that the extractive industry should have been the field in which, from 1917 to the present, the economic transformation sought by the communist regime has been pursued with the greatest determination; until the First World War, Russian industry, although it possessed such a foundation, had remained far too underdeveloped to meet the expansion required, determined less by its policies than by the very needs of its growing population.

The already noted defect of such recent statistics on Soviet extractive industry does not negate the discernible progress achieved and the corresponding aims; the production of pig iron has increased tenfold over the last twenty years (from 2.1 to 21 million tons between 1928 and 1950), that of steel sixfold (from 4.3 to 27.6 million tons), that of coal 8.9-fold between 1913 and 1950 (from 29 to 250 million tons); while that of petroleum rose from 1.5 to 37.6 million tons during the same period. It should nevertheless be borne in mind that the increase in production represented by the Soviet share of the world total cannot simply be identified with the figures given above (the other nations have also progressed); thus, for example, the proportion represented by iron rose from 3 to 12.5% between 1927 and 1939; that of steel from 3.5 to 13%, that of manganese from 17 to 45%, that of chromite from 4.5 to 15%, and so forth. In any case, even more important than the volume of production now attained, which places the

U.R.S.S., in almost every branch of industry, but above all in the metallurgical, steel, mechanical, chemical, and textile industries, in second place in the world, immediately after and in evident competition with the U.S.A., is the gigantic effort of such vast proportions, in a country in which almost all the prerequisites for such a task were lacking or were wholly inadequate (workers, facilities, means of communication, foreign trade, etc.).

Quite apart from the relationship between this effort and the sacrifices it has imposed and continues to impose upon the mass of the population, it is evident that Soviet production is still far from having attained the optimum of its potential: a clear and balanced view of this economy is moreover rendered difficult, without consideration of its immediate or distant objectives, by a policy that seeks to establish itself, beyond the widest frontiers of this domain, as the expression of universal values. The complicated political and administrative structure of the U.R.S.S. must be referred to this same order of ideas; in it, the federal autonomies, although recently strengthened, are subject to a superior state and ideological unity that in practice nullifies them. Limiting ourselves to the external outlines of this structure, it will suffice to note here that the U.R.S.S. consists of 16 Federated Republics, within which, with decreasing degrees of autonomy, there are Autonomous Republics, Autonomous Provinces, National Districts, and oblasti (the latter being divisions of a purely administrative character), according to the appended tables.

For the history, literature, rite, and art of the European Soviet territory improperly called Russia, V. RUTENI; RUSSIA; SLAVI; SLAVORITIA; UCRAINA. See also ARMENIA; BIEGRASSIA; ESTONIA; GEORGIA; LETTONIA; LITUANIA.

The fundamental documents, still in force today, are: 1) the decree of 23 Jan. 1918, “On the Separation of Church and State” (13 articles), on the basis of which Article 13 of the 1918 Constitution of the R.S.F.S.R. (Article 4 from 1925 onward) guarantees: “Citizens are granted, without distinction, the right to engage in religious and antireligious propaganda.” 2) The decree of 18 Apr. 1929: “On Religious Associations” (68 articles), on the basis of which Article 4 of the Constitution was changed to read: “Freedom of religious profession and freedom of antireligious propaganda are recognized for all citizens.” 3) Article 124 of the Stalin Constitution (1936). The aforesaid article, still in force, based on earlier decrees, restricts freedom of conscience even further: “Freedom to practice religious cults and freedom of antireligious propaganda are recognized for all citizens.” Article 124 represents a stage, albeit one on a long-term horizon, on the road to the liquidation of the Church. Its point of departure is materialist ideology. Consequently, before Soviet law the Catholic Church exists, but only “de facto,” not “de iure.”

1) The Roman Pontiff, as head of the Catholic Church, is not regarded as a sovereign person, nor even as a juridical person; expressions such as the Holy See, bishops, deacons, etc., do not occur. The Church counts as a religious community and association, but has no rights, not even over professional and cultural organizations.

2) The Church, even as a collective body, is deprived of ecclesiastical property and is incapable of owning movable or immovable goods: buildings for worship (churches and chapels), rectories, seminaries, utensils, etc. Everything is “the property of the people.” Once registration has been completed, the community of believers may conclude an agreement with the civil authorities and receive permission to use the building for worship, but it must pay the taxes and the repair costs; the taxes in question, now more strictly regulated, are so high that the closure of the churches is inevitable. Moreover, registration entails increased surveillance and dependence on the civil authorities.

3) The law places a halt on the spread of the faith and provides for its progressive liquidation: religion is banned from all schools, and no religious activity is permitted for young people; the Church lives, but without a press, without radio, without films, without printing presses, without paper, without libraries, etc. The expenses of worship are covered by offerings from the faithful.

4) The implementation of ecclesiastical-state legislation does not take place through the judicial system, but through the administrative system, that is, through the organs of the Ministry of the Interior and through the police: trials with predetermined outcomes, convictions without trials, arrests without indication of the reasons, deportation, and forced labor.

5) Catholic life unfolds in a hostile, atheistic, antireligious environment, whose representatives control all the means of dissemination: the press, radio, films, schools, subsidies, etc.

After 1945, the dissident Russian patriarchal Church is almost on the point of becoming a juridical person because of the tasks in favor of the Soviet State which it should fulfill. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, will never have any hope of similar favors and privileges; deprived of rights, its hierarchical organization in the U.S.S.R. has by now been liquidated; the number of the faithful has been greatly reduced; yet its potential (in number, quality, and heroism) during the years of communism has remained more or less as it was before.

There is no religious census of the U.S.S.R. In the 1937 census, the Government included the question of religion. The number of citizens who declared themselves believers was so great that the result was not published. It is certain that the generations raised under Bolshevism are largely atheistic. It is impossible to give even an approximate number of those baptized in the U.S.S.R. In its Encyclopaedia (the volume on the Soviet Union, Moscow 1948), cols. 1788–90, the Government lists the religions existing in the U.S.S.R., without, however, providing statistics for them. According to this information, the largest religious group is that of the “Russian Orthodox Church,” whose faithful perhaps number between 20 and 30 million. In 1918 they numbered 98 million (including the Old Believers). Concerning the Catholic Church, it states: “The Roman Catholic Church is spread mainly in the west of the U.S.S.R., while in the east it has only a few communities. Its hierarchy consists of Metropolitan Antonio Springovics, one archbishop, two bishops, and a large number of prelates and canons. Within the borders of the U.S.S.R. as they existed in 1939, before the war, approximately half a million Catholics lived. In practice, there is no ecclesiastical organization for them—the one established in 1926 has been destroyed—and, as far as is known, only one church remains open for worship, that of St. Louis in Moscow, belonging to the French embassy. In Moscow alone there are 15,000–20,000 Catholics. The new religious policy of the Soviet Government reopened various churches for dissidents, but none for Catholics.

After the war, in 1945, extensive regions with numerous Catholics were incorporated into the U.S.S.R.: the eastern and southeastern part (Galicia) of Poland, Lithuania, so-called Subcarpathia, Latvia, and Estonia (with few Catholics). Thus the number of Catholics rose to approximately 8 million. The Greek-Catholic ecclesiastical province of Lviv was officially suppressed in 1946. The same was done in 1949 with the diocese of Mulečovo in Subcarpathia (formerly Czechoslovakia). From eastern Poland, the Polish Catholics were deported for the most part. In Lithuania and Latvia, the struggle against the Catholic Church is under way. In Lithuania only one bishop remains at liberty, the bishop of Panevezys; in Latvia, the archbishop of Riga, Antonio Springovics. The apostolic administrator of Estonia, Msgr. Edoardo Profitlich S.I., had already been deported in 1940.

The Soviet Encyclopaedia recalls the following Christian confessions existing in the U.S.S.R.: the Church of the Old Believers, divided into three branches; the Georgian “Orthodox” Church, with its own patriarch-catholicos residing in Tiflis; and the Armenian Church, with its patriarch-catholicos residing in Echmadzin, the head of all the dissident Armenians. Also listed are the Protestant sects of the Baptists and Lutherans, as well as others. The number of Protestants is estimated at between 2 and 3 million. There are also numerous Jews and Muslims in the U.S.S.R.

Even during the period of the “New Religious Policy” (from 1943), the antireligious legislation remained in force; every religion must die and is to be liquidated. In the recently annexed neighboring countries (Catholic countries), a violent persecution is still raging, while within the U.S.S.R. ideological struggle prevails. Literature expressing antireligious ideas is disseminated in millions of copies; however, the masses read little of it and prefer the classics, because they sense the emptiness of materialist ideology. As evidence that religious life in general, and ecclesiastical life in particular, in the U.S.S.R. has not yet been extinguished, one may cite the fact that in the dissident Russian Church there are still as many as 3 million Easter communions. The number of believers was indeed greatly decimated and is sometimes concealed, but this is compensated for by heroism. Thus the potential of religious life in the U.S.S.R. is not much less than it was before the revolution.

V. BOLSCEVISMO; COMUNISMO; MOSCA, patriarcato di