@Khandro
Thanks for the insulting language. Your kind, religious nature becomes more diaphenous by the day.
I did not write about "weather related trees". The dendrochronology of a *specific* 1000+ year old tree has shown that the Medieval Warm period (look it up) also affected east asia (Most of the data is Eurocentric so this is a valuable data point from a remote part of the world. Ancient trees are very scarce, as you can imagine).
When I find the news article I got this factoid from, I'll post a link.
In the meantime, I did get the whole setup harris backwards. According to this book
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-5OEBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA50&lpg=PA50&dq=mongol+horde+medieval+warm+period&source=bl&ots=JE9_7Dh5CO&sig=Cu-FtMhV6O6PB7d5rL4PAyXT6IY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi59dHypt3LAhVGrRoKHTjkBFkQ6AEIHjAB
the warm period *increased* rainfall in that part of the world, enriched the grazing potential of the steppe and increased populations of both nomads and settled peoples, eventually leading to clashes. Cities produced metal goods that nomads needed but couldn't make for themselves, so they would raid and just steal it.
Secular, I agree. Amoral, I agree. But this is a longgggg way from atheists killing people of faith [i] _for_ being people of faith [i] which is what theists often seem to be implying when they rail against atheism.
Stalin probably dismantled the church because they were a competing power structure. Faithful folk would tend to obey their pope or bishop ahead of any politbureau order and anything which countermanded the man at the top undermines his authority and risks encouraging les autres, do gas to be stopped.
His views on matters of faith we can only guess at. What if he was happy to have people continue to hang icons and worship in the privacy of their own homes?
You contend that there was violent oppression and mass deaths, inspired by secularism's desire to extinguish faith. Where are Stalin's pronouncements against faith and/or what he thought it could do to damage communism?