By 1948 the small forces that continued to oppose the Communists were finally eliminated. Many opposition Socialists and their leader, Lulchev, were arrested, and the Socialist Party was abolished. The only remaining Socialist party--the Fatherland Front Socialists--was forced to merge with the Communists in August 1948. Thus, absolute communist control was achieved within four years of the seizure of power. Bulgaria underwent a series of rapid changes in the early years as a communist state. Agricultural collectivization--initiated in 1946--was begun in the form of cooperative farming. By the end of 1947 nationalization of banks, industry, and mines was well under way. Nationalization was not a new phenomenon for the country, as railroads, ports, and mines had been under state control since 1878, but it was greatly extended by the Communists (see ch. 13; ch. 14). Religion was viewed by the Communists as a means for manipulating and indoctrinating the people, much as it had been during the periods of Byzantine and Turkish rule. Since its founding in the ninth century, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church had claimed most of the population as members. The Communists perceived a dual purpose in their cooptation of this institution. On the one hand, by patronizing the Bulgarian church, they believed that they would receive support from its members. On the other hand, they sought to unify the churches by placing the Bulgarian Orthodox Church under close control of the Russian Orthodox Church. Therefore, the regime reestablished the Bulgarian patriarchate; the patriarch, in turn, required all church members to support governmental policies. Minority religions were treated as separate entities, although all of them had to register with the Committee for Religious Affairs, a body attached to the Council of Ministers. The leadership of all churches was considered responsible ultimately to the state. The churches became financially dependent upon the government as all church funds were in the hands of the bureaucracy. A certain percentage of Muslims--who constituted the largest minority religion--were expelled from the country. Those Muslims who remained were organized into small communities, and their religious leader, the grand mufti, was allowed to retain his position as long as he remained subservient to the state.