Trade Unions in the anti-religious campaign “Thaw” (based on the materials of the Ukrainian SSR)

The purpose of the article is to identify the political reasons for the anti-religious campaign of the “thaw” times in the activities of a mass public organization, as well as to determine the influence of the trade unions on its course in the context of the political transformations of the era. The scientific novelty. The political reasons for the anti-religious campaign are traced based on the analysis of a wide range of sources in the three-dimensional plane of their analysis. It is assumed that its real motives lay in the concern of the ruling party about the political potential of religious communities, which in the future threatened the loss of political monopoly. The conclusions. Firstly, the method of three-dimensional analysis of the subject of the study has allowed identifying not direct, but only indirect features of the specified threat, which requires further expansion of the tools of scientific research. Secondly, it is proven that representatives of the ruling party and state authorities objectively could not officially acknowledge their caution regarding the political threat posed by religious communities due to the real risk of losing political authority in society. The latter shifts the search for the evidence base of the study towards its latent manifestations. Thirdly, the involvement of the trade unions in the anti-religious campaign was determined both by their broad propaganda potential in the form of clubs, houses of culture, libraries, and the so-called “red corners” and by their capabilities as the organization. To successfully struggle with this organization that was in its infancy, it was necessary to use the potential of another organization.