This chapter examines the wave of antireligious and atheist campaigns launched during the Khrushchev era, beginning with the Hundred Days campaign of 1954 and again in 1958 until Nikita Khrushchev's forced retirement in 1964. It explains why the Soviet state disrupted the postwar stability of church–state relations and again viewed religion as a problem, and why Khrushchev brought atheism back after it was cast aside by Joseph Stalin. The chapter discusses the Hundred Days campaign and its impact on Soviet religious life, Khrushchev's antireligious propaganda of 1958–1964, and the factors that led to the Soviet Communist Party's renewed offensive against religion, including anxiety about religious revival. It shows that Khrushchev's antireligious campaigns are part of his efforts to redefine the course of Soviet Communism after Stalin's death. For Khrushchev, political de-Stalinization, economic modernization, and ideological mobilization were all necessary to infuse revolutionary vitality back to the ideology of Marxism–Leninism.
