February 5, 1918 the Soviet government decreed the separation of church and state and church and school, thereby bringing freedom of conscience to a nation of diverse faiths in which Russian Orthodoxy had been the state religion for centuries. The decree established complete freedom of worship and ended all persecution of minority religious groups. All faiths were granted equal rights, their churches, publications, seminaries to be maintained by their communicants, not by state funds, and with equal freedom to proselytize. The freedom to carry on antireligious educational work was granted to atheists. -- USSR Magazine, 1963
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