COPY                            
 
                       Enclosure "C"                        
 
                                                            
 
 
1. In the USSR the situation as regards the Catholic Church does not show   
any substanial improvement from what it was before the war. 
 
e anti-religious Soviet legislation always remains in vigour
 
                                                            
 
 
Besides, the now very few survivors of the Catholic Clergy who had been   
arrested in Russian territory since the Soviet Revolution, were not set   
free nor were they afforded any possibilty of exercising their sacred   
ministry.  Only a certain number of Catholic priests, through an agreement   
with the Polish Government, in the second half of 1942, could leave the   
USSR, together with the Polish Army which was then leaving those regions.    
Also in theis case not all the priests, previously imprisioned and   
deported from Poland, were set free, nor does it appear that they were set   
                   free after that date.                    
 
                                                            
 
 
It has never been possible to learn of the fate of Archbishop Edward   
Profittlich, Apostolic Administrator of Esthonia, arrested in Tallin in   
         June 1941 and deported towards the Urals.          
 
                                                            
 
 
2. Neither have events which have happened within the last two years, any   
value in modifying the above stated judgment about the religious situation   
                         in Russia.                         
 
                                                            
 
 
It is true that, even befor the death (December 1940) of the well-known   
director of the Godless organization -Jaroslawsk (Gubelmann)- the   
athesistic propaganda had practically been suspended.  But this   
suspension, which did not at all mean the suppression of existing   
anti-religious litterature, is very far from constituting a positive   
recognition of religious liberty, and it is not difficult to find an   
explanation for it in the desire to take into account the obvious reasons   
of political and military opportuneness and the psychological needs of a   
                       people in war.