Was Stalin an atheist?

Answer

Stalin is quoted as saying "You know, they are fooling us, there is no God...all this talk about God is sheer nonsense" in E. Yaroslavsky, Landmarks in the Life of Stalin, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow 1940

However it's important to emphasize that Stalin's religious life has contradictions of whether he truly was an atheist or not:

Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva Stalin said (documentary "Mysteries of the Century: Kremlin Kids" ("Тайны века" - "Дети Кремля") 2003-03-19, 1 Channel 1 Russia), how Stalin told her that Christ existed.

Journalist: It is interesting, that from all Kremlin' residents, maybe, just Stalin believed in God...

S.Alliluyeva: In father's library, between other books, were few tomes of "Christ". It was history of Christ written by vox populist Morozov. I said to my father: "But Christ didn't exist!" and he answered "Oh no, Christ, surely existed."

Under Stalin's insisting In 1939-11-11, Politburo of the Central Committee has admitted prosecutions of believers "inexpedient". In 1939-11-11 Stalin canceled Lenin's instruction from May, 1st, 1919 for N 13666-2 "About struggle against priests and religion" and gave orders to People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) to release from custody already arrested priests "if activity of these citizens didn't harm the Soviet authority".

Stalin "hated" religion so much, that in 1951-06-27 he gaved "Stalin's Prize" to English clergyman Hewlett Johnson. Various prizes under Soviet authority received and other priests.

So the common claims that Stalin was an anti-theist is wrong, a deeper research into Russian history will give you a different percpective.

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