The following is an excerpt from the chapter:

A self-confessed atheist, Marx came from a poor Jewish family who had converted to Christianity to avoid persecution, no doubt contributing to his lack of faith. In contrast, Engels was the son of a wealthy textile manufacturer without whose financial support Marx work might never have been completed. Their theory that everything is always about economics had little room for religion, which Marx viewed as an illusion maintained by capitalist oppressors to relieve the distress of the working class whom they exploit, hence his comment that religion is the “opium of the people”.

The timing could not have been better. Europe was on the brink of war. The rights of ordinary Russian people suffered increasingly over 400 years of autocratic rule by the czars supported by the nobility and higher clergy. By the turn of the 20th century the workers were united under the Bolsheviks (majority) and Mensheviks (minority) of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. The first revolution of 1905 resulted in the formation of an elected body, or duma, and the council of workers, or soviet. The soviets grew in strength and in 1917, under the direction of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his Bolshevik party, seized power forcing czar Nicholas to abdicate. The dictators that replaced the czars, in particular Joseph “Steel Man” Dzhugashvili (or Stalin), nationalized banks, abolished private ownership of property, introduced collective control over industry and enforced atheism. Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Jewish religious communities were persecuted and all but removed in less than a decade.