"Godless Communists"

Author: William B. Husband

Publisher:

Published: 2002-09

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 9780875805955

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"Godless Communists" offers a fresh interpretation of early Soviet efforts to create an atheistic, scientific society. Husband shows that religion, contrary to Bolshevik assertions, was not merely an expression of gullibility and ignorance but a firmly entrenched system for ordering family and community relationships. The Bolsheviks' efforts to abolish the Church failed because they underestimated how tightly religious beliefs were woven into the fabric of the Russians' daily lives. Exploring the confrontation between secularism and the lower classes' traditional beliefs, "Godless Communists" illustrates how developments between 1917 and 1932 shaped the attitudes toward religion and atheism that endure in Russia today.

Storming the Heavens

Storming the Heavens PDF

Author: Daniel Peris

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 9780801434853

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A member of the first generation of scholars allowed access to formerly closed Soviet archives, Daniel Peris offers a new perspective on the Bolshevik regime's antireligious policy from 1917 until 1941. He focuses on the activities of the League of the Militant Godless, the organization founded by the regime in 1925 to spearhead its efforts to promote atheism and he presents the League's propaganda, activities, and personnel at both the central and the provincial levels. On the basis of his research in archives in rural Pskov and industrial Iaroslavl', as well as in the central party and state archives in Moscow, Peris emphasizes the transformation of the ideological agenda formulated in Moscow as it moved to its intended audience. Storming the Heavens places the League within the broader context of a Bolshevik political culture that often acted at cross purposes to undermine the regime's stated goals. The League's lack of success, argues Peris, reflects the bureaucratic orientation of Bolshevik political culture, particularly in how it pursued the radical social vision of 1917. His book provides a framework for undertanding secularization in revolutionary contexts as well as contributing to the on-going reassessments of the Bolshevik era.

The Plot to Kill God

The Plot to Kill God PDF

Author: Paul Froese

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2008-08-06

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0520255283

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“The story of the survival of religion in the Soviet Union is one of the great surprises of the end of the twentieth century. Indeed, it is so surprising that many social scientists write it off, attribute it to cultural nationalism, or ignore it. It is assumed that religion simply was given a temporary reprieve and would shortly succumb to 'secularization.' Professor Froese demolishes this assumption.”—Andrew Greeley, author of The Catholic Imagination "The Plot to Kill God is refreshingly creative in bringing evidence from a neglected but hugely important case to bear on thinking through social scientific theories of religion. This is an important contribution to a field greatly in need of just this kind of solid historical case analysis.”—Christian Smith, University of Notre Dame ”A wonderful book that will break the hearts of Richard Dawkins and all the other angry atheists. After more than 70 years of intensive educational efforts and brutal persecution of religion, there were no fewer believers in Russia than in the United States.”—Rodney Stark “'Scientific' socialism in communist countries turned out to be a hollow faith incapable of replacing more traditional religions. Paul Froese beautifully shows why, and how this provides us with useful lessons about the continuing power of religion today.”—Daniel Chirot, University of Washington "Froese compellingly tests many theories about the causes of religious belief, strength, and resurgence. The Plot to Kill God highlights the close link between human nature and religious faith, thus making a broad argument about the anthropological foundation of religion while also using the tools of social science to advance our knowledge, concepts and theories about religion and society."—Margarita Mooney, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

A Specter Haunting Europe

A Specter Haunting Europe PDF

Author: Paul Hanebrink

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2020-02-18

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0674047680

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“Masterful...An indispensable warning for our own time.” —Samuel Moyn “Magisterial...Covers this dark history with insight and skill...A major intervention into our understanding of 20th-century Europe and the lessons we ought to take away from its history.” —The Nation For much of the last century, Europe was haunted by a threat of its own imagining: Judeo-Bolshevism. The belief that Communism was a Jewish plot to destroy the nations of Europe took hold during the Russian Revolution and quickly spread. During World War II, fears of a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy were fanned by the fascists and sparked a genocide. But the myth did not die with the end of Nazi Germany. A Specter Haunting Europe shows that this paranoid fantasy persists today in the toxic politics of revitalized right-wing nationalism. “It is both salutary and depressing to be reminded of how enduring the trope of an exploitative global Jewish conspiracy against pure, humble, and selfless nationalists really is...A century after the end of the first world war, we have, it seems, learned very little.” —Mark Mazower, Financial Times “From the start, the fantasy held that an alien element—the Jews—aimed to subvert the cultural values and national identities of Western societies...The writers, politicians, and shills whose poisonous ideas he exhumes have many contemporary admirers.” —Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs

The Spiritual-Industrial Complex

The Spiritual-Industrial Complex PDF

Author: Jonathan P. Herzog

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-08-05

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 0199830746

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In his farewell address, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the nation of the perils of the military-industrial complex. But as Jonathan Herzog shows in this insightful history, Eisenhower had spent his presidency contributing to another, lesser known, Cold War collaboration: the spiritual-industrial complex. This fascinating volume shows that American leaders in the early Cold War years considered the conflict to be profoundly religious; they saw Communism not only as godless but also as a sinister form of religion. Fighting faith with faith, they deliberately used religious beliefs and institutions as part of the plan to defeat the Soviet enemy. Herzog offers an illuminating account of the resultant spiritual-industrial complex, chronicling the rhetoric, the programs, and the policies that became its hallmarks. He shows that well-known actions like the addition of the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance were a small part of a much larger and relatively unexplored program that promoted religion nationwide. Herzog shows how these efforts played out in areas of American life both predictable and unexpected--from pulpits and presidential appeals to national faith drives, military training barracks, public school classrooms, and Hollywood epics. Millions of Americans were bombarded with the message that the religious could not be Communists, just a short step from the all-too-common conclusion that the irreligious could not be true Americans. Though the spiritual-industrial complex declined in the 1960s, its statutes, monuments, and sentiments live on as bulwarks against secularism and as reminders that the nation rests upon the groundwork of religious faith. They continue to serve as valuable allies for those defending the place of religion in American life.

Voices of the Voiceless

Voices of the Voiceless PDF

Author: Julie K. deGraffenried

Publisher: 1845 Books

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781481311236

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In 1969, at the height of the Cold War, a group of British Christian researchers and activists, moved by the persecution of believers in the Soviet Union, established an organization dedicated to the study of religion under communism. They had two major goals: to educate the public about religious persecution and to promote academic analysis of religion in communist societies. The organization they founded, eventually named Keston College, amassed an extraordinary collection of primary source and research materials, used by its personnel to document the experiences of persecuted believers in the Soviet bloc and beyond and to publicize human rights violations against believers of all faiths. This formed the basis of a unique collection, called the Keston Archive, now at Baylor University. Voices of the Voiceless, edited by Julie deGraffenried and Zoe Knox, presents readers with twenty-five essays on a curated selection of images and artifacts from the Keston Archive. Some of the world's leading authorities on religion and communism as well as experts personally involved with the operation of Keston College carefully selected and provided commentary for these images. The archival material presented in the book offers vivid testimony of this critically important era in the history of religion and of the Cold War. A guided look into the past, Voices of the Voiceless reveals the power of what atheist and antireligious regimes sought to silence. This collection documents how believers fought for religious freedom, coped with oppression, and practiced their faith, individually and collectively, in states hostile to religion. It also presents atheist propaganda produced by communist regimes that aimed to marginalize and ultimately eradicate religion. This book offers insights into how faith survived--and even flourished--during one of the most intense antireligious campaigns of the modern era.

Raised under Stalin

Raised under Stalin PDF

Author: Seth Bernstein

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2017-08-15

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 1501712020

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In Raised under Stalin, Seth Bernstein shows how Stalin’s regime provided young people with opportunities as members of the Young Communist League or Komsomol even as it surrounded them with violence, shaping socialist youth culture and socialism more broadly through the threat and experience of war. Informed by declassified materials from post-Soviet archives, as well as films, memoirs, and diaries by and about youth, Raised under Stalin explains the divided status of youth for the Bolsheviks: they were the "new people" who would someday build communism, the potential soldiers who would defend the USSR, and the hooligans who might undermine it from within. Bernstein explains how, although Soviet revolutionary youth culture began as the preserve of proletarian activists, the Komsomol transformed under Stalin to become a mass organization of moral education; youth became the targets of state repression even as Stalin’s regime offered them the opportunity to participate in political culture. Raised under Stalin follows Stalinist youth into their ultimate test, World War II. Even as the war against Germany decimated the ranks of Young Communists, Bernstein finds evidence that it cemented Stalinist youth culture as a core part of socialism.

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