> you know i was wondering the other day that if the soviets had state-mandated atheism and weren't shy about not only killing but trying to damnatio memorae those it considered a threat how did the orthodox church manage to survive the bolsheviks, stalin, and the rest of the ussr's time of existence? the russian populace was still overwhelmingly religious, it was impossible to undermine 80 or 100 million people's belief in the divine overnight; the priests escaped the most violent liquidations partially because the government could not afford a general uprising in the form of counter-revolution that a total pogrom of the religious would incite, but also because, as caesaro-papists, they could be very effectively suborned by the state to preach fealty to a totalitarian institution that mandated state atheism - china operates in much the same way, with limited success
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