Would Soviet Communism be considered a religion?

[RFCalifornia]

8. Let me make the case first here:

Lenin and Trotsky had a hard task to perform

The Romanovs had been killed to end any idea of "Tsar=/=God"

The people were longing for something, something beyond themselves

So Lenin and Trotsky, mostly Lenin, decided that they would promote the idea of the "New Soviet Man"

It was minor at first, but it was aligned with the idea of ultimate sacrifice for the proletariat

Vladimir Lenin presented himself as that, but more so when he was dying and Stalin was trying to take over

Lenin dies, Trotsky is outed, and Stalin wants to be that "god"

Not only that but he wants to kill Trotsky, someone who had fought against this cult of personality from the beginning

Stalin remakes himself as "Uncle Joe" -- protector of the revolution

They use all the tricks religion has used: even to the point of using "baby Lenin" for New Years celebration, in place of the baby Jesus

It works, and people are now stuck on the deification of a man

It's a cult, which IS a religion and it lasts for a while

Khruschev tried to end all that, and for the record so did Brezhnev, because no man wants to be a living god

But one could describe all of it as a religion in a sense

There was the "promised land" which was "true communism"

There was eternal life as evidenced by the "model worker" statues around the ex-USSR

The USSR also promoted many martyrs as living saints, worthy of being "painted"

No difference than the devotion of Icons in the Russian Orthodox Church

I visited the USSR under Gorbachev

Every family you met wanted to show you all the medals they had received as "model workers" or "model soldiers"

There was religion at work there, even disguised as atheist