Red Star over Islam - A Study of the Soviet Regime's Treatment of Islamic Institutions and its Policies with Respct to Adherence to their Traditional Faith by the Islamic Peoples of the USSR

Stated first printing, January 1961. Original green printed wraps bound inside untitled black cloth 22x29cm. 24, (1)pp. Ex-Library of Congress copy, with their neat "Surplus" / "Duplicate" ink stamp to the front wrap, and "Withdrawn" stamp to the small reference ticket on the upper board. This also has an Army Library blind stamp to the title and two ink stamps inside, and a Department of Defense Library pocket at the back. Otherwise very good with horizontal fold crease, and boards near fine. Rare, with 9 locations on Worldcat and Jisc. The American Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia was formed in 1950 to undermine the Soviet government. It was headed by Eugene Lyons (formerly Yevgeny Natanovich Privin) the Russian born US journalist. It supported the CIA's QKACTIVE initiative, which also used Radio Liberty to broadcast propaganda into the USSR, and Radio Free Europe into its satellites. The unidentified author is described as an American who spent some years in Soviet Russia in the early years of the Revolution, where he began to study its attitude towards religious institutions, and was able to return in 1958 to confirm some of his information. He prepared this for Radio Liberty, the Voice of Former Soviet Citizens, which broadcasts to the USSR in Russian and 17 other languages from transmitters in western Europe and the Far East. He also wrote "The War Against Religion in the USSR" (1958). He describes how in the 1930s there was mass deportation of Islamic intelligentsia, of which only a few survived the labour camps, and the Mecca pilgrimage was stopped. In the 1940s, specially trained agents were sent to Islamic regions stirring doubt and dissension. Stalin needed the Muslims onside during WW2, but afterwards pressure was resumed, with propaganda circulated through the Society for the Diffusion of Scientific and Political Knowledge. He concludes that "It is evident that 40 years of intense, psychologically planned effort to eliminate Islam from the USSR have not been without effect. The sweeping changes in social life, the attacks against Islam as outmoded, unscientific and harmful to the state, all the possible forms of moral and physical pressure on believers, have evidently reduced the number of the Islamic faithful, with the major decrease among youth" (pp23-24).…