This could imply that “God” has mastery over space-time, possibly capable of affecting things far away as easily as those nearby, performing acts that would normally require vast amounts of energy without restrictions, and interacting with entities and objects of any size in the universe. The implementation of policy toward a particular religion, therefore, depended on the state’s perception of the bond between that religion and the nationality practicing it, the size of the religious community, the extent to which the religion accepted outside authority, and the nationality’s willingness to subordinate itself to political authority. Thus the smaller the religious community and the more closely it identified with a particular nationality, the tighter were the state’s policies, especially if the religion also recognized a foreign authority such as the pope. After the Red Army reoccupied western Ukraine in 1944, the Soviet state liquidated the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church by arresting its metropolitan, all of its bishops, hundreds of clergy, and the more active church members, killing some and sending the rest to labor camps. Their place was taken by docile clergy who were obedient to the state and who were sometimes infiltrated by KGB agents, making the Russian Orthodox Church useful to the government.

The Jewish Autonomous Oblast, created in 1928 by Stalin, with Birobidzhan in the Russian Far East as its administrative center, was to become a “Soviet Zion”. Now, God has thrown all that out the window – by wholly endorsing a Palestinian demand for their prospective state on the borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war – a war brought upon by Arabs of numerous nations with the express desire to “drive the Jews into the sea.” But who remembers? This situation led Leonid Brezhnev to declare at the 24th Communist Party Congress in 1971 that the process of creating a unified Soviet people had been completed, and proposals were made to abolish the federative system and replace it with a single state. Despite a massive domestic and international state propaganda campaign, the Jewish population there never reached 30% (as of 2003 it was only about 1.2%). The experiment ended in the mid-1930s, during Stalin’s first campaign of purges. They created a special Jewish section of the party, whose tasks included propaganda against Jewish clergy and religion. Soviet propaganda films depicted Jehovah’s Witnesses as a cult, extremist, and engaging in mind control. As for the Russian Orthodox Church, Soviet authorities sought to control it and, in times of national crisis, to exploit it for the state’s own purposes; but their ultimate goal was to eliminate it.

Being predominantly German settlers, the Russian Mennonites in World War II saw the German forces invading Russia as liberators. Before America’s involvement in World War I, Tesla outlined a means of detecting enemy ships and submarines using electromagnetic induction. Moreover, having children does not appear to affect religious involvement. What can we do to counter the spread of religious movements that we consider dangerous? In the 1970s, however, a broad movement of national dissent began to spread throughout the Soviet Union. By the end of the 1970s, however, massive and concerted efforts by the KGB had largely suppressed the national dissent movement. In this way, the civil religion was able to build up without any bitter struggle with the church powerful symbols of national solidarity and to mobilize deep levels of personal motivation for the attainment of national goals. Under Operation North, the personal property of over eight-thousand members was confiscated, and they (along with underage children) were exiled to Siberia from 1951 until repeal in 1965. All were asked to sign a declaration of resignation as a Jehovah’s Witness in order to not be deported.

After the war, the remaining Russian Mennonites were branded as Nazi conspirators and exiled to Kazakhstan and Siberia, sometimes being imprisoned or forced to work in concentration camps. By 1975 the number of active Russian Orthodox churches was reduced to 7,000. Some of the most prominent members of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy and some activists were jailed or forced to leave the church. In April 1948, Council for Religious Affairs sent out an instruction to its local commissioners to halt the registration of new religious communities and from that point churches were no longer opened. The leadership of both churches was decimated; large numbers of priests were shot or sent to labor camps, and members of their congregations were harassed and persecuted. During World War II, however, it was allowed greater autonomy in running its affairs in return for calling its members to support the war effort, although it did not achieve the kind of accommodation with the authorities that the Russian Orthodox Church had. During the first five years of Soviet power, the Bolsheviks executed 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and over 1,200 Russian Orthodox priests. So was the pastor who delivered the sermon and most of the college students packing the first few rows.