This article analyses the relationship between the Soviet state and the Russian Orthodox Church. There was a clear dividing line between Lenin’s approach to this question and the zig-zag policy later adopted by Stalin. First published in Workers International News, October 1945.

Founded after the Russian Revolution, the Third Communist International was a mighty force in the fight for world revolution. But under Stalin, it was transformed into a tool of the Soviet bureaucracy, and then abandoned altogether in 1943.