Religion and Atheism in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe
Author: Bohdan R. Bociurkiw
Publisher: Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press
Published: 1975
Total Pages: 440
ISBN-13:
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A Sacred Space Is Never Empty
Author: Victoria Smolkin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2019-10-29
Total Pages: 360
ISBN-13: 0691197237
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off. Soviet power used a variety of tools--from education to propaganda to terror—to turn its vision of a Communist world without religion into reality. Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion and creating an atheist society. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty presents the first history of Soviet atheism from the 1917 revolution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Drawing on a wealth of archival material and in-depth interviews with those who were on the front lines of Communist ideological campaigns, Victoria Smolkin argues that to understand the Soviet experiment, we must make sense of Soviet atheism. Smolkin shows how atheism was reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of positive beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments. Through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the "sacred spaces" of Soviet life was not enough. Then, in the final years of the Soviet experiment, Mikhail Gorbachev—in a stunning and unexpected reversal—abandoned atheism and reintroduced religion into Soviet public life. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.
Cross and Commissar
Author: Sabrina P. Ramet
Publisher:
Published: 1987
Total Pages: 270
ISBN-13: 9780253315755
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"Anyone trying to understand... the recent history of Eastern Europe (including the Soviet Union) will find this book... extremely useful.... a common sense view of theory and historical study.... a successful product that both enlightens and informs." --American Historical Review "... valuable reading." --Journal of the American Academy of Religion "... welcome and insightful... " --Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists "It is an important study that produces a fairly rich bounty of information about political-religious relationships, the tie between the church and state, and the influence of religious beliefs on society." --Slavic Reviww "... deserves intensive attention by scholars... " --Journal of Church and State "The book's strengths lie in its range, documentation, strongly analytical, and subtly nuanced treatment, consistent awareness of the complexity and dynamism of the various church-state relationships, and its generally judicious blend of theoretical and empirical aspects." --History "Cross and Commissar is a sober, richly documented analysis that is useful and fascinating. It is well written, researched, and organized and fills an unfortunate lacuna in the literature in the area of church-state relations." --The Annals of the American Academy "This monograph is a tour de force... " --Modern Greek Studies Yearbook Communist regimes take an active stance vis-à-vis religion, framing religious policies with an eye toward broader political objectives. Cross and Commissar provides the first systematic, comparative attempt at applying social-scientific theories to illuminate the nature of church-state interaction and the contemporary religious scene in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
Religion and Nationalism in Soviet and East European Politics
Author: Sabrina P. Ramet
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 1989
Total Pages: 534
ISBN-13: 9780822308911
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Religious organizations in many countries of the communist world have served as agents for the preservation, defense, and reinforcement of nationalist feelings, and in playing this role have frequently been a source of frustration to the Communist Party elites. Although the relationship between governments and religious groups varies according to the particular country and group in question, the mosaic of these relationships constitutes a revealing picture of the political reform shaping the lives of Soviet and East European citizens.
Science, Religion and Communism in Cold War Europe
Author: Paul Betts
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2016-05-14
Total Pages: 307
ISBN-13: 1137546395
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Religion and science were fundamental aspects of Eastern European communist political culture from the very beginning, and remained in uneasy tension across the region over the decades. While both topics have long attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, they almost invariably have been studied discretely as separate stories. Religion, Science and Communism in Cold War Europe is the first scholarly effort to explore the delicate interface of religion, science and communism in Cold War Europe. It brings together an international team of researchers who address this relationship from a number of national viewpoints and thematic perspectives, ranging from mysticism to social science, space exploration to the socialist lifecycle, and architectural heritage to pop culture.
Freethought and Atheism in Central and Eastern Europe
Author: Tomáš Bubík
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-02-26
Total Pages: 295
ISBN-13: 1000039838
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book provides the first comprehensive overview of atheism, secularity and non-religion in Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In contrast to scholarship that has focused on the ‘decline of religion’ and secularization theory, the book builds upon recent trends to focus on the ‘rise of non-religion’ itself. While the label of ‘post-communism’ might suggest a generalized perception of the region, this survey reveals that the precise developments in each country before, after and even during the communist era are surprisingly diverse. A multinational team of contributors provide interdisciplinary case studies covering Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. This approach utilises perspectives from social and intellectual history in combination with sociology of religion in order to cover the historical development of secularity and secular thought, complemented with sociological data. The study is framed by methodological and analytical chapters. Offering an important geographical perspective to the study of freethought, atheism, secularity and non-religion, this wide-ranging book will be of significant interest to scholars of twentieth-century social and intellectual history, sociology of religion and non-religion, cultural and religious studies, philosophy and theology.
Studying Religions with the Iron Curtain Closed and Opened
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2015-03-31
Total Pages: 338
ISBN-13: 9004292780
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Studying Religions with the Iron Curtain Closed and Open. The Academic Study of Religion in Eastern Europe offers an account of the research focused on the origins, development and the current situation of the Study of Religions in the 20th century in countries such as the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, and Russia. Special attention is devoted to the ideological influences determining the interpretation of religion, especially connected with the rise of Marxist-Leninist criticism of religion.
Religion and the Cold War
Author: Philip Emil Muehlenbeck
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Published: 2012
Total Pages: 338
ISBN-13: 0826518524
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The influence of faith in the conflicts that defined the Cold War
Religious Liberty in Eastern Europe and the USSR
Author: Paul Mojzes
Publisher:
Published: 1992
Total Pages: 504
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Working on both a country-by-country basis and in terms of common trends and developments transcending national boundaries and specific religious denominations, Mozjes provides a systematic study of the evolution of religious liberty in Eastern Europe and the USSR before, during, and after the period of communist repression.
Uncertain Hope
Author: British Council of Churches
Publisher:
Published: 1989
Total Pages: 74
ISBN-13:
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