Though now remembered chiefly as a reformer, and perhaps as a precursor of Gorbachev, Nikita Khrushchev was also the man who from the late 1950s onwards presided over a renewed and vicious assault on organised religion. Some indication of what was to come emerged towards the end of 1954 when the first secretary was locked in combat with his chief rival, Georgii Malenkov. A Central Committee resolution of 7 July (not published at the time) criticised the past failings of atheist work in the USSR and called for a revived attempt to overcome religious prejudices. Over the next four months the press carried numerous, often crude attacks on religion. Then, just as suddenly, the campaign was called off by a decree of 11 November which criticised ‘errors’ in carrying out atheist work, a decree signed personally by Khrushchev rather than the more anonymous Central Committee. This ‘hundred days campaign’ has never been fully explained. Some have seen Malenkov's hand in this new assault, but others argue more convincingly that it bore all the hallmarks of Khrushchev style campaignovshchina. As Joan Delaney Grossman has pointed out, ‘the stress on party responsibility for anti-religious work and concern over the bad effects of religious practice on agriculture’ took up issues dear to Khrushchev's heart. Equally importantly the brief assault of 1954 bears a striking resemblance to the opening stages of the attack of the late 1950s.

The campaign launched in 1958 went much further in utilising administrative and police pressure to discourage religiosity and undermine the institutional structures of religious organisations.