@Pastoralan, no the Bolshiviks saw that religion was a tool for controling people, so they tried to get rid of it and replace it with their own system. Their system was not atheism.
Atheism is merely the lack of belief on god, atheism plus a belief in something is a belief in something. If they had ised a belief in L Ron Hubbard's Scientology, then you wouldn't be making this categorisational error, because you'd see his fantastical fiction as a religion.
There have been no atheistic states, because atheism on its own doesn't make any claims. It can't be used to control people because it isn't a belief system, it is the lack of belief.
But you as much as admit that religion is used to control people. The question remains, is this a good thing. And i would say, sometimes. We know instinctively how to be violent (and sexual, as it happens) but we learn when it is appropriate to be violent. Our instinct is biology, and our learned/conditioned behaviour is sociology.
Without a culture which teaches is to curtail our instincts, to control violence, or in the absence of culture, you see something like Papa New Guinea before the 60s. Whenever you meet a stranger you either attack them or you run away (because they are assumed to be about to attack you). Where stranger means someone not from your village - the extended family you grew up with, plus perhaps a few other families.
Learning rules to interact with others has its positives, it may start small with mutual gift giving (like we do at christmas and birthdays), because if someone is giving you gifts you have an alternative means of interaction other than violence. This is the begining of trade, but it is an important social tradition. So inportan it has survived in our culture (despite, i would claim being taken over by commercialism/comsumerism).
So yes, there are positives to religion, it can facilitate larger groups interacting without violence, a set of rules and social norms to create peaceful cities. Bounds between non-family members, and an understanding of what to expect from strangers.
Now in the modern world we preach tolerance of other religions aswell. This has become an accepted part of much of the world's culture. There are many places you can go without fear of being attacked, and this tolerance is perhaps secualar. It also tries to prevent discrimination based on religion, because that can lead to conflict. But it became necessary because many religious groups have NOT respected others (if the whole point of religions is to bring everyone under one umbrella of social norms, then respecting ithers isn't a benefit to what religion is driving at).
I would still say it has been a mostly positive force in this way. How and ever, when it comes to sexual behaviour, most religions have been used to consistantly control women's sexuality, for about 10,000 years. And i don't think this is anywhere near a good. Of course it is a consequence of patriarchal family structures, marriage where the daugther is sold/given away to another family*, property rights associated with farming and learning about breeding animals which farmers obviously discovered at some point...
It is not necessary to have all of these things in your culture. But to treat women like property, to be traded as breeding stock, requires a clear property transaction (marriage, with its dowrys, or bride-price) and understanding breeding animals is required because otherwise paternity is not something which we can easily know. And who the 'legitimate' heirs are is importat if you have property and injeritance rights.
So farming, on its own about 10,000 years ago, made the subjugation of women and control of their sexual behaviour, a successful (and i would argue possible) strategy for societies to adopt.
And you can see the remnants of this control of women's sexual behaviour in a lot of world religions today. And i would say this is exclusively an evil thing.
*i can't remember the name for this in antropology. But it is distinct from cultures where the make leaves their family and becomes a member of another.