Yemelyan Yaroslavsky was an Old #Bolshevik who, in 1901, had written for Iskra (The Spark), Lenin’s first revolutionary magazine. Yaroslavsky headed up the Society for the Friends of the Newspaper Bezbozhnik, later called The League of Militant Godless. 
The League was a state–sanctioned vehicle: after churches were plundered, they were turned into warehouses or workshops, or sometimes bulldozed by members of the League.
Members of the Militant Godless League under Bolshevism destroyed icons and precious religious books, and conducted parades with mocking effigies of Christ and with actors blasphemously portraying God embracing a naked woman: the Virgin Mary.
In Moscow and St. Petersburg, wild pageants ridiculed Christmas. It was illegal to celebrate religious holidays, even privately in the home. The icon corner in most Russian homes was banned.
Religious holidays were replaced with holidays celebrating proletarians (the Day of Industry for the Feast of Transfiguration, Harvest Day for the Feast of the Intercession) and festivities were scheduled for Sundays to lure young people from the religious worship.
Lenin and other communist leaders became the New Saints, to replace the Christian saints. The New Saints were to be worshipped and feared in the new secular religion (death cult) of communism.
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