Religion in the Soviet Union

Religion in the Soviet Union PDF

Author: Walter Kolarz

Publisher:

Published: 1961

Total Pages: 566

ISBN-13:

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Comprehensive survey of the situation of various religious groups in the U.S.S.R., including Christian, Moslem, Buddhist, Jewish, with contemporary developments under the Khrushchev regime.

The Russian Orthodox Church, 1917-1948

The Russian Orthodox Church, 1917-1948 PDF

Author: Daniela Kalkandzhieva

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781138788480

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This book tells the remarkable story of the decline and revival of the Russian Orthodox Church under the Soviet Union in the first half of the twentieth century. Following 1917, the Bolsheviks' anti-religious policies led to a significant decline in the church in the 20s and 30s. However, in 1939, Stalin gave the Patriarch of Moscow jurisdiction over orthodox congregations in Poland and later encouraged the church to promote patriotic activities in resistance to the Nazis. He agreed a Concordat with the church in 1943 and continued to encourage the church in the immediate postwar period. Based on extensive original research, this book puts forward a great deal of new information and overturns established thinking on many key points.

A Sacred Space Is Never Empty

A Sacred Space Is Never Empty PDF

Author: Victoria Smolkin

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-10-29

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0691197237

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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.

The Russian Orthodox Church, 1917-1948

The Russian Orthodox Church, 1917-1948 PDF

Author: Daniela Kalkandjieva

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-11-20

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 1317657764

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This book tells the remarkable story of the decline and revival of the Russian Orthodox Church in the first half of the twentieth century and the astonishing U-turn in the attitude of the Soviet Union’s leaders towards the church. In the years after 1917 the Bolsheviks’ anti-religious policies, the loss of the former western territories of the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union’s isolation from the rest of the world and the consequent separation of Russian emigrés from the church were disastrous for the church, which declined very significantly in the 1920s and 1930s. However, when Poland was partitioned in 1939 between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Stalin allowed the Patriarch of Moscow, Sergei, jurisdiction over orthodox congregations in the conquered territories and went on, later, to encourage the church to promote patriotic activities as part of the resistance to the Nazi invasion. He agreed a Concordat with the church in 1943, and continued to encourage the church, especially its claims to jurisdiction over émigré Russian orthodox churches, in the immediate postwar period. Based on extensive original research, the book puts forward a great deal of new information and overturns established thinking on many key points.

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