High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In the beginning of the USSR, a campaign began to be done to make the state atheist by removing the influence of all religion, and the Russian Orthodox church especially, from Soviet society from the earliest days after the revolution in 1917, continuing until the fall of the USSR in 1991. The initial anti-religious campaign after the revolution focused especially against the Orthodox church and it was characterized by brutal terror tactics that killed thousands accompanied by legislation meant to deprive the Church of its capacity to function.