You're right, I misspoke here in saying that the Orthodox church had power during this time. I should say that many of the people who had once latched onto the Orthodox Church (and thus the Tsar, as he was defender of the faith and kind of tangled into the church as sort of a Higher position person. Divine right of rule and all that jazz.) for their power simply moulded the idea of the Soviet State into a religion of sorts, as elizabeth mentions. After the break up of the USSR, the Kremlin started to reattach itself to to Orthodox Church as a way to legitimize the new government and separate it from the previous one (even though it was, in many ways, the same people running the show). So, all that to say I simplified the issue, and by doing so made an erroneous statement. apologies. I think what I was trying to get across was that the power structure, and many of the people in power didn't really change that much.