Throughout the history of the Soviet Union (1917–1991), there were periods when Soviet authorities brutally suppressed and persecuted various forms of Christianity to different extents depending on State interests.[1] Soviet Marxist-Leninist policy consistently advocated the control, suppression, and ultimately, the elimination of religious beliefs, and it actively encouraged the propagation of Marxist-Leninist atheism in the Soviet Union.[2] However, most religions were never officially outlawed.[1]
The state advocated the destruction of religion, and to achieve this goal, it officially denounced religious beliefs as superstitious and backward.[3][4] The Communist Party destroyed churches, synagogues,[5] and mosques, ridiculed, harassed, incarcerated and executed religious leaders, flooded the schools and media with anti-religious teachings, and it introduced a belief system called "scientific atheism," with its own rituals, promises and proselytizers.[6][7] According to some sources, the total number of Christian victims under the Soviet regime has been estimated to range around 12-20 million.[8][9]
Some actions against Orthodox priests and believers included torture, execution or sending them to prison camps, labor camps and mental hospitals.[24][25][26][27] Many Orthodox (along with peoples of other faiths) were also subjected to psychological punishment or torture and mind control experimentation in order to force them to give up their religious convictions (see Punitive psychiatry in the Soviet Union).[25][26][28] During the first five years of Soviet power, the Bolsheviks executed 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and over 1,200 Russian Orthodox priests. Many others were imprisoned or exiled.[2]
In the period which followed the Second world war, Protestant Christians in the USSR (Baptists, Pentecostals, Adventists etc.) were forcibly sent to mental hospitals, or they were tried and imprisoned (often for refusing to enter military service). Some were forcibly deprived of their parental rights.[29]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecu ... viet_Union