Why wasn't the USSR able to stamp out religion while China (PRC) did?

by andrepoiy

Communist states are known to be anti-religion. If one looks at the Wikipedia demographics page of all the post-Soviet states, however, one could see that most of the population still follow a religion. However, in China, most people are atheists. So, why wasn't the USSR able to stamp out religion while China was?

Georgy_K_Zhukov

For the Soviet side of things, this might be of interest.