Editing Nikita Khrushchev (section)

====Anti-religious campaign====
The anti-religious campaign of the Khrushchev era began in 1959, coinciding with the [[21st Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|21st Party Congress]]. It was carried out by mass closures of churches<ref name="demokratizatsiya1">{{cite journal|doi=10.3200/DEMO.17.1.73-92|author=Daniel, Wallace L. |date=2009|title=Father Aleksandr men and the struggle to recover Russia's heritage|journal= Demokratizatsiya|volume= 17|issue=1|pages=73–92| issn=1074-6846}}</ref><ref name="regels1">Letters from Moscow, Gleb Yakunin and Lev Regelson, {{cite web |author=Yakunin, Gleb |author2=Regelson, Lev |url=http://www.regels.org/humanright.htm |title=Religion and Human Rights in Russia |access-date=18 June 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090816211643/http://www.regels.org/humanright.htm |archive-date=16 August 2009}}</ref> (reducing the number from 22,000 in 1959{{sfn|Pospielovsky|1987|p=83}} to 13,008 in 1960 and to 7,873 by 1965<ref>Chumachenko, Tatiana A. in ''Church and State in Soviet Russia: Russian Orthodoxy from World War II to the Khrushchev years''. Edward E. Roslof (ed.). (ME Sharpe, 2002) p. 187. {{ISBN|9780765607492}}</ref>), monasteries, convents, and seminaries. The campaign also included a restriction on parental rights to teach religion to their children; a ban on the presence of children at church services; and a ban on the administration of the [[Eucharist]] to children over the age of four. Khrushchev additionally banned all services held outside of churches' walls, renewed enforcement of 1929 legislation banning pilgrimages, and recorded the personal identities of all adults requesting church baptisms, weddings, or funerals.<ref name="autogenerated377">{{cite journal|jstor=3712491|author=Tchepournaya, Olga |title= The hidden sphere of religious searches in the Soviet Union: independent religious communities in Leningrad from the 1960s to the 1970s|journal= Sociology of Religion|volume= 64|issue=3 |pages=377–88 |date=2003|doi=10.2307/3712491}}</ref> He disallowed the ringing of church bells and services in daytime in some rural settings from May to the end of October under the pretext of fieldwork requirements. Non-fulfillment of these regulations by clergy would lead to disallowance of state registration (meaning clergy could no longer do any pastoral or liturgical work without special state permission). According to [[Dimitry Pospielovsky]], the state carried out forced retirement, arrests, and prison sentences for clergymen on "trumped-up charges," but in reality, he writes, said state actions were taken against clergy who resisted the closure of churches; delivered sermons attacking the USSR's [[state atheism]] and anti-religious campaign; conducted Christian charity; or made religion popular by personal example.{{sfn|Pospielovsky|1987|p=84}}