greedy by many members of the intelligentsia. Many peasants, while highly religious, also viewed the church unfavorably. Respect for religion did not extend to the local priests. The church owned a significant portion of Russia's land, and this was a bone of contention – land ownership was a big factor in the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 induced Stalin to enlist the Russian Orthodox Church as an ally to arouse Russian patriotism against foreign aggression. Russian Orthodox religious life experienced a revival: thousands of churches were reopened; there were 22,000 by the time Nikita Khrushchev came to power. The state permitted religious publications, and church membership grew. During the final years of Joseph Stalin's rule, there was once again a tightening of anti-religious measurements. In April 1948, Council for Religious Affairs sent out an instruction to its local commissioners to halt the registration of new religious communities and from that point churches were no longer opened. The "Knowledge Society", which was established a year earlier, was engaged in educational activities and again began to publish anti-religious literature. Khrushchev reversed the government's policy of cooperation with the Russian Orthodox Church. Although it remained officially sanctioned, in 1959 Khrushchev launched an antireligious campaign that was continued in a less stringent manner by his successor, Leonid Brezhnev. By 1975 the number of active Russian Orthodox churches was reduced to 7,000. Some of the most prominent members of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy and some activists were jailed or forced to leave the church. Their place was taken by docile clergy who were obedient to the state and who were sometimes infiltrated by KGB agents, making the Russian Orthodox Church useful to the government. It espoused and propagated Soviet foreign policy and furthered the russification of non-Russian Christians, such as Orthodox Ukrainians and Belarusians. The state applied a different policy toward the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Viewed by the government as very nationalistic, both were suppressed, first at the end of the 1920s and again in 1944 after they had renewed themselves under German occupation. The leadership of both churches was decimated; large numbers of priests were shot or sent to labor camps, and members of their congregations were harassed and persecuted. The Georgian Orthodox Church was subject to a somewhat different policy and fared far worse than the Russian Orthodox