Marxist-Leninist atheism

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin enshrined the dissemination of Marxist-Leninist atheism as a task of the Communist Party, believing it to be an "urgent necessity." Lenin held a hostile attitude towards religion and this came to characterize Bolshevik atheism. He was a staunch critic of Anatoli Lunacharsky, who proposed the concept of God-Building, which held that because religion "cultivated in the masses emotion, moral values, [and] desire", revolutionaries should take advantage of that fact. As such, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin "appealed to militant atheism as a criterion for the sincerity of Marxist commitments as a testing principle." This rigid stance in favour of atheism and against religion resulted in the alienation of "some of the sympathetic, leftist-minded yet religious believing intellectuals, workers or peasants."