Soviet Atheist IdeologyNew Atheist responses to the historical problem Soviet atheism poses for them are largely a response to a bad historical argument presented to them by many of their religious opponents. This is understandable, given that the Russian Orthodox Church had long since been made an integral part of Tsarist autocracy. This means that in the century before 1917 Revolution, the Orthodox Church was completely entangled with the Tsarist Regime. The push for greater industrialisation and the collectivisation of agricultural production meant fundamental elements of Soviet ideology were imposed on workers from above, often by force. Some try to rescue the argument by admitting that Soviet ideology did have atheism as a central tenet and people were oppressed and killed as a result.