Society of the Godless
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Society of the Godless (Общество безбожников in Russian); other names include Союз воинствующих безбожников (The Union of Belligerent Atheists) and Союз безбожников (The Union of the Godless), a mass volunteer antireligious organization of the Soviet workers in 1925-1947.
S.o.G. was an antireligious movement that developed in Soviet Russia after the October Revolution under the influence of the ideological guidance and cultural "enlightment" on the part of the Communist Party. The newspaper Bezbozhnik (Godless, Atheist) (1922-1941) played a significant role in S.o.G.'s establishment, which had a wide network of correspondents and readers. In August of 1924, they founded the Club of 'Bezbozhnik's friends in Moscow. In April of 1925, the First Congress of this club took place, where they established a united All-Soviet antireligious society under the name of The Union of the Godless. In 1929, the Second Congress changed the society's name to The Union of Belligerent Atheists. The Central Committee chose Yemelyan Yaroslavsky as its leader (who occupied this post continuously).
S.o.G. embraced workers, peasants, students, and intelligentsia. It had its first affiliates at factories, plants, collective farms (kolkhoz), and educational institutions. By the beginning of 1941, S.o.G. had about 3,5 million members of 100 nationalities. It had about 96,000 offices across the country. Guided by Lenin's principles of antireligious propaganda and party's orders with regards to religion, S.o.G. aimed at fighting religion in all its manifestations and forming scientific mindset among the workers. It popularized atheism and scientific achievements, conducted individual work with religious people, prepared propagandists and atheistic campaigners, published scientific literature and periodicals, organized museums and exhibitions, conducted scientific research in the field of atheism and critics of religion. S.o.G.'s slogan was "Struggle against religion is a struggle for socialism", which tied atheistic propaganda with economy, politics, and culture. S.o.G. had vast international connections and was a part of International of Proletarian Freethinkers and later - Worldwide Freethinker's Union.
In 1947, S.o.G.'s duties of scientific and atheistic propaganda were transferred to the All-Soviet society Znaniye (Knowledge).