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Bolsheviks assassinated the tsar and his family
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the Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin began the Communist International
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party organised the League of the Godless to harass and persecute churchgoers
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Joseph Stalin seized control of the Communist Party
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Stalin’s Five Year Plan
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priests were not considered workers
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Pope Pius XI, in direct response to the increasing and severe persecution of Christians in Russia, published his encyclical Divini Redemptoris -
constitution allowed religious freedom, the Communist Party systematically suppressed the Christian churches
