World Notes SOVIET UNION

For decades, religion was anathema to all good Soviets. Did not Marx teach that it was the "opium of the people"? Lenin himself wrote that the Russian Orthodox Church had to be suppressed, its treasure confiscated. But last week the hold of the atheistic Communist Party loosened a bit more as the state strengthened religious freedoms. With the Orthodox Patriarch, Alexei II, and other religious leaders watching, the Supreme Soviet, by a vote of 341 to 1, gave preliminary approval to a law that forbids the government to restrict "the study, financing or propagandizing" of religion.

Among other things, the law recognizes churches as legal entities with property rights. All faiths are declared equal and separate from the state. While most clerics expressed satisfaction with the legislation, some quibbled with such details as higher tax rates for churches and Moscow's right to draft conscientious objectors. Meanwhile, legislators made sure the state did not find too much religion: they refused to allow public schools to be used for religious instruction after hours.