completely seized and perverted by opportunists

except in the places it was most successful and influential as actual policy? literally what did the soviets do besides what could be judged not far enough in retrospect? the actual history of atheism is not richard dawkins, its a straight line from jacobins to the bolsheviks, a legacy the nu-athiests were actually very keen to avoid. this bending over backwards to amend for the time imperialists figured out how to posture atheism against state enemies (for a vanishingly small portion of these respective country's populations) in effect ignores the almost universally positive effects of state atheism and revolutionary action against organized religion have achieved in the past 300 years.

like i know you specified anglo-french but when they constitute both a minority in their own nations and a speck of the worldwide mass of atheists it feels terribly misleading