"According to Harold J. Berman, a Harvard specialist in Soviet law, militant atheism was the official religion of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party was analagous to an established church": So, I will disagree with this specialist, as his base is just utterly wrong, as atheism is not religion. Atheism does not link a creature and a creator, and in order to back-up his claim, he is obliged creating a equivalence between a Political Party and a Church. Still missing the Holy books, mind you.
By the way, the text you provide is not a proof, just the opinion on why the Churches were destroyed and Religions banned, not facts. The persistent use of vocabulary such as"militant atheism" and "indoctrinated (not educated, indoctrinated) with atheism and antireligious teachings" give you a clue of the why.
It is as usual fraud by association. From Michael Sherlock: "False Analogy Fallacy:
This fallacy depends upon the existence of an often minor analogous factor, in this case, the belief in god versus a lack of belief in god, god being the analogous component, and extrapolating from this minor analogy, conditions that are alleged to affect both positions, when the truth of the matter happens to be, the two (religion and atheism) are not analogous at all.
For apologists to overcome the existence of this fallacy, they must show that atheism is a religion, but the very definition of atheism circumvents any such attempt. Atheism, although encompassing varying degrees of disbelief, is not a system of beliefs, but an unsystematic absence of god-belief, that is all. It has no doctrines, traditions and most importantly, no beliefs. Unless there is some secret atheist bible from which Stalin drew inspiration for his crimes, there is absolutely no reason to suggest that his lack of belief in a supernatural deity had anything to do with his messianic and maniacal behaviour."
He said it better than I do.
"In the first years of the Soviet regime religion (as well as other elements of the old regime) was considered to be useless and even dangerous system of beliefs that lied to people about their place and role in the world." Agree with this. All useless and opponents were killed, so nothing to do with religions, but "just" usual tools of oppressors and dictators... Killing the useless was unfortunately not only in Communist and Nazi ideologies, eugenic did took its toll as well, including the political ones.
"Part of the ideology": Even so, the author decided that the oppressive part of the regime, the fact that Churches are objectives political enemies of the regime are pushed away without too much trouble. His motives are his, not to me to dwell in them.
In the text you linked, you have one sentence which in fact tells it all: "Since religion was the ideological tool that kept the system in place, Lenin believed atheistic propaganda to be of critical necessity." Not because Lenin was atheist, but because religions were not only tools but part of the threats against the regime. And to be fair, he was quite right on this assessment.
"Is isn't it an kind of ideology if if is PROPAGATED OFFICIALLY?" So is history which is part of how to built a National Identity. However, none will pretend that history is the equivalent of a religion or an ideology (of course, history is part of an ideology). Even if teachers, schools and books might offer similarities.... Sorry, can't resist.
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