Peculiarities of anti-religious policy and atheistic upbringing in Soviet Ukraine in the 20s and 30s of the twentieth century

In the 20s and 30s of the XX century. anti-religious propaganda in Soviet Ukraine was gaining momentum. In the course of the anti-religious Soviet policy, the school occupied a rather important place. The goal of the declared anti-religious policy was to destroy Orthodox, Catholic (Greek Catholic, Muslim, Protestant, etc.) ideological social canons, to break age-old family foundations, to educate a person of a new «Soviet» model. In large settlements, nurseries, 24-hour kindergartens and boarding facilities of various profiles began to be opened in large numbers. Under such conditions, family education has dramatically lost its authority, especially in cities. A normal phenomenon was the universal rejection of parents, whom the Soviet authorities suspected of collaborating with the then class enemies. Even in kindergartens, children were taught by educators that priests in temples are bad people who distract gullible hardworking people from work and promote very dubious narratives. Atheism became the new dominant ideology of the Soviet government. That is, the younger generation witnessed unpunished crimes against humanity. Soviet atheist education as a flagrant phenomenon of violation of human rights is especially noticeable when analyzing the life of Muslim families in Ukraine (their children have always lived isolated from the Ukrainian population, and received education at temples and learned to live under classical Muslim education). Anti-church and state literature, which was published at that time, despite the significant level of ignorance of the majority of the population, did not withstand any criticism and did not fulfill high party tasks. One of the forms of fighting against the religiosity of the population was demonstrative psychological pressure on believers from the side of employees. Therefore, in their majority, people were forced to hide their religious views in order not to harm their families. Communist carnivals, held on the days of major religious holidays and aimed at destroying religiosity among the average population, were the most vivid manifestations of the Soviet anti-church state policy.