of worship which were left to the Church were legally viewed as state property which the government permitted the church to use. After the advent of state funded universal education, the Church was not permitted to carry on educational, instructional activity for children. For adults, only training for church-related occupations was allowed. With the exception of sermons which could be delivered during the celebration of the divine liturgy, it could not instruct the faithful nor could it evangelize the youth. Catechism classes, religious schools, study groups, Sunday schools and religious publications were all declared illegal and banned. This caused many religious tracts to be circulated as illegal literature or samizdat. Even after the death of Stalin in 1953, the persecution continued, and it did not end until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church has recognized a number of New Martyrs as saints, some of whom were executed during the Mass operations of the NKVD under directives like NKVD Order No. 00447. Both before and after the October Revolution of 7 November 1917 (25 October Old Calendar), there was a movement within the Soviet Union which sought to unite all of the people of the world under Communist rule (see Communist International). This movement spread to the Eastern European bloc countries as well as the Balkan States. Since the populations of some of these Slavic countries tied their ethnic heritages to their ethnic churches, the people and their churches were both targeted for ethnic and political genocide by the Soviets and their form of State atheism. The Soviets' official religious stance was one of "religious freedom or tolerance", though the state established atheism as the only scientific truth (see also the Soviet or committee of the All-Union Society for the Dissemination of Scientific and Political Knowledge or Znanie which was until 1947 called The League of the Militant Godless and various Intelligentsia groups). Criticism of atheism was strictly forbidden and sometimes resulted in imprisonment. Some of the more high-profile individuals who were executed include Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd, priest and scientist Pavel Florensky. According to James M. Nelson a psychology professor at East Carolina University, the total number of Christian victims under the Soviet regime may have been around 12 million, while Todd Johnson and Gina Zurlo of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary at Boston University estimate a figure of