Real and Declared Individual Freedom in Legislative Acts on Freedom of Religion During the Soviet Era

This article examines anthropological grounds for the formation of fundamental documents on freedom of conscience and religion in the Soviet Union. It also considers ideological prerequisites for the development of a new type of person—the Soviet man. A comparison is made between the two main ideological struggles with religious consciousness–state-church relations and the sphere of education. The separation of the church from the state and the state from the church, which were enshrined by the relevant decrees of the Soviet government, resulted in a false idea that the Soviet citizen is free in his/her worldview choice. However, a careful analysis of the implementation of the decrees on freedom of conscience shows a total lack of this freedom. The ideological machinery of the Soviet government widely used the spheres of education, culture, and religion to build a strong negative and degrading attitude towards believers and, on the contrary, a positive and exalting attitude towards atheists. Under such conditions, there emerged a type of person—an atheist, who was not capable of critically analyzing whether he/she had his/her own worldview freedoms and who was sure he/she had them in their absence