ABSTRACT
A survey of the USSR would be incomplete without an appraisement of its cultural development. The absolute Government monopoly of thought prevailing in the Soviet State gives to it an exceedingly peculiar moral aspect of which the totalitarian and authoritarian States of Western Europe can only furnish a very vague idea. The decree of May 15, 1932, inaugurated the "Five-Year Plan of Atheism", whose avowed object was the eradication of religion. According to that plan, "by May 1, 1937, not a single house of prayer shall remain in the territory of the USSR, and the very concept of God must be banished from the Soviet Union as a survival of the Middle Ages and an instrument for the oppression of the working masses". Russian literature of the XIXth century revealed to the world a large number of highly talented writers, including such great men as Pushkin, Leon Tolstoi and Dostoievsky.
