for their lack of cooperation, lack of support from the party and some branches of the Komsomol, and a ban operating on their activities in Ukraine, as well as an inadequate finances. Yaroslavsky, Stalin's loyal aide in the secretariat and one of the founding editors of Kommunist, came out on top despite the Moscow group's resistance in an effort to retain autonomy and the support for that group from the daily Komsomol'skaia Pravda. The problems that Yaroslavsky outlined in his response were addressed in 1929 at the second congress. The CPSU Central Committee delegated to the LMG full powers to launch a great antireligious attack with the objective of completely eliminating religion from the country, granting them the right to mobilize all public organizations. In 1929, the Second Congress changed the society's name to The Union of Belligerent (or Militant) Atheists. At this Second Congress of Atheists, Nikolai Bukharin, the editor of Pravda, called for the extermination of religion "at the tip of the bayonet." There, Yaroslavsky also made the following declaration: It is our duty to destroy every religious world-concept... If the destruction of ten million human beings, as happened in the last war, should be necessary for the triumph of one definite class, then that must be done and it will be done. The Central Council chose Yaroslavsky as its leader; he occupied this post continuously. The League of Militant Atheists sometimes took a violent approach to those who would not accept the League's message. For example, "bishops, priests, and lay believers" were "arrested, shot, and sent to labour camps." Atheistic periodicals published in various languages Authority on antireligious methodology The debate on how to best exterminate religion was argued among the Soviet leadership, until in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when it was resolved by Stalin who condemned the extremes of both sides, and Yaroslavsky followed suit. The do-nothing approach of the rightists who thought religion would die away naturally and the leftist approach to attack all forms of religion as class enemies were both condemned as deviations from the party line. Yaroslavsky argued against the leftists (who had earlier criticized him) that if religion was simply a class phenomenon there would be no need to combat it if a classless society was truly being produced. He affirmed that an all-sided attack on religion was needed, but did not subscribe to the leftist deviation that had