During the winter of 1929–30, Russian persecution of religious believers aroused considerable public indignation in Britain. This article considers why the Labour government refused to make formal complaints to the Soviet government, and why protests against the persecution soon subsided. A Christian Protest Movement failed to gain support from many church leaders, because of its right-wing political associations. English church leaders arranged their own protests and a day of special intercessions, causing some friction with the government; but in what might be termed ‘Christian realism’, they accepted that there were principled and practical limits to government actions.
Philip Williamson (2026) studied this question.