A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism PDF
Preview A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism
A SAcred SpAce IS Never empty A Sacred Space Is Never Empty A HIStory of SovIet AtHeISm Victoria Smolkin prINcetoN UNIverSIty preSS prINcetoN & oxford Copyright © 2018 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR press.princeton.edu Jacket design by Amanda Weiss All Rights Reserved ISBN 978- 0- 691- 17427- 3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018935161 British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Miller Printed on acid- free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For my family coNteNtS Acknowledgments · ix Abbreviations · xv INtrodUctIoN 1 cHApter 1. The Religious Front: Militant Atheism under Lenin and Stalin 21 cHApter 2. The Specter Haunting Soviet Communism: Antireligious Campaigns under Khrushchev 57 cHApter 3. Cosmic Enlightenment: Soviet Atheism as Science 84 cHApter 4. The Ticket to the Soviet Soul: Soviet Atheism as Worldview 106 cHApter 5. “We Have to Figure Out Where We Lost People”: Soviet Atheism as Social Science 142 cHApter 6. The Communist Party between State and Church: Soviet Atheism and Socialist Rituals 165 cHApter 7. The Socialist Way of Life: Soviet Atheism and Spiritual Culture 194 coNclUSIoN Utopia’s Orphan: Soviet Atheism and the Death of the Communist Project 228 Notes · 247 Bibliography · 303 Index · 333 [ vii ] AckNowledgmeNtS every book reqUIreS a tremendous mobilization of resources and support— intellectual, material, and moral. I am grateful to finally have the chance to thank those institutions and individuals that made this book possible. First, there are the many and diverse forms of intellectual support. This project was born at the University of California, Berkeley, where I was fortu- nate enough to work with many remarkable and inspiring scholars over the course of my graduate studies, including Thomas Brady, John Connelly, Victo- ria Frede, Thomas Laqueur, Olga Matich, Yuri Slezkine, Edward Walker, and the late Viktor Zhivov. Thomas Brady’s course on “Immanence and Transcen- dence” stimulated me to consider how the story of Soviet atheism’s attempts to grapple with existential questions is both particular and universal. John Con- nelly has been a rare model of academic discipline and human empathy. Vic- toria Frede was generous in sharing her expertise on the intellectual history of Russian atheism. Thomas Laqueur’s visionary work was an inspiration. Olga Matich was an invaluable guide into the Russian and Soviet cultural imagina- tion. The late Viktor Zhivov opened up the world of Russian Orthodoxy and inspired me to compare disciplinary regimes, both religious and ideological, across time and space. Edward Walker continuously challenged me to artic- ulate why any of this actually matters. Finally, my advisor, Yuri Slezkine, who has been at the foundation of this project from the beginning, taught me the value of asking big questions and showed me that good history can also be a good story. I am grateful to him for his constant support—o f the scholarship, but also of the scholar. In the process of working on this project, I have presented my ideas at many conferences and workshops. The valuable and challenging feedback I received on each occasion has undoubtedly improved the book. In particu- lar, I would like to thank the organizers and participants of the Russian His- tory Workshop at the University of Pennsylvania; Russian and East European Reading Group at Yale University; Shelby Cullom Davis Center at Princeton University; Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Pub- lic Life at Trinity College; research group on “Religious Cultures in 19th and 20th Century Europe” at the Center for Advanced Studies of the Ludwig Max- imilians Universität in Munich, Germany; Virginia and Derrick Sherman Endowed Emerging Scholar Lecture at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington; and UC Berkeley Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eur- asian Studies, which has remained an intellectual home, hosting me on mul- tiple occasions, including its Carnegie Seminar on Ideology and Religion and, of course, the Russian history kruzhok. [ ix ]
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