alt Hacker NewsThere are old and atheistic cultures that maintain strong value systems that follow similar principles to western ideas of law and "right and wrong." Therefore the assertion that Eastern Europeans being atheistic is the reason they are more open to doing crime is an extraordinary one, and unless you can provide extraordinary evidence, your assertion should be ignored.
My assertion is that this is mainly because of Communism and the Atheism it brought in. Surely it won't happen because of historical/cultural Atheism e.g. in China. Communism has destroyed the very idea of "society" as we understand it - both due to ideology ("society as a construct put forward by the exploiter classes to keep people in check") - they originally even considered nuclear family to be such institution as well ("family as a cell of exploitation") but quickly realised that destroying the family results in depopulation and lack of muskets to fight the "capitalist pigs" and reverted on that one. For Communists, there is a state and there are people, but no "society" - it is a dangerous thing that can get in the Party's way as a quasi-organised third subject. State keeps people in check and exploits them to meet the Party's goals, people are free to do whatever they can get away with when the Party and the State are looking the other way, morally 100% free to cheat it and each other - hard power is the only thing that can stop them. Now the Party is gone, society has not formed, and the people are set free...
Society and God are about the same thing right? Something that keeps people in check without a threat of hard force. Totalitarianism destroys that because it won't tolerate anything getting in it's way.