Communism, according to Marxist ideology, was based on the principle of a ‘sec-ular state’ proclaimed since the French Revolution of 1789, which provided for the separation of church and state and of school and church. The most rigorous form of this ‘separation’ was carried out in the Soviet Union in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917. In effect, by separating the church from the state, the Soviet state denied the churches the right to internal autonomy and established the format in which the church, as a community of believers, could be officially registered with the authorities. Regardless of the proclaimed ‘freedom of conscience’, brutal persecution of the church began, which only changed with Stalin’s ‘new course’ during the Second World War. The authorities ended their policy of destroying the Orthodox Church and decided to allow a limited degree of church life in the USSR, albeit under total control and standardisation of church life. This new course was also implemented after the end of the Second World War in the churches of the countries that had newly come under communist rule. In principle, all legal possibilities for believers to exercise their right to ‘freedom of conscience’, which was declared in the constitution of the USSR, were limited to ‘worship’ in ‘specially designated places, under continued strict state control. Nev-ertheless, there were deviations and inconsistencies, with the GDR marking one ex-treme and the Soviet Union the other. In terms of the conference topic, the churches in communist countries are the historical examples where the conference title is least appropriate. Churches were allowed to exist in the communist state, especially since the 1960s, as private cult associations, but they were marginalised and lived in a ghetto, most of them conforming to the outside world.