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To the surprise of many students of the Soviet Union, religion has shown itself to be a force still powerful in Soviet society. In contrast, the impact of religion in developed Western societies has declined. Dr. Dunn points out that the study of this antinomy can shed light on the entire concept of "modernization" in the U.S.S.R. The study of the
Christel Lane has written the first sociological study of religion in a communist and militantly atheist society. Christian Religion in the Soviet Union is the result of a detailed examination of Soviet sociological sources and the legally and illegally published reports of religious bodies or individuals, backed up by the observations of the author and of other Western visitors to the USSR. Dr. Lane attempts to assess the impact of the intellectual and material culture of Soviet society on Christian religion. She analyses the religious life in the contemporary Christian churches and sects, describing the scope of their membership and its social composition, the religious commitment of believers and their social and political orientations. Christian Religion in the Soviet Union will be central reading for students of religion in modern industrial society who are working within the disciplines of sociology, comparative religion or theology. It will also appeal to those studying Soviet society from a more general sociological perspective and to a wide readership interested in the contest between Christian religion and Marxist-Leninist ideology.
The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) faced various iterations of modernization throughout its history. This conflicted encounter continues in the ROC’s current resistance against—what it perceives as—Western modernity including liberal and secular values. This study examines the historical development of the ROC’s arguments against—and sometimes preferences for—modernization and analyzes which positions ended up influencing the official doctrine. The book’s systematic analysis of dogmatic treatises shows the ROC’s considerable ability of constructive engagement with various aspects of the modern world. Balancing between theological traditions of unity and plurality, the ROC’s today context of operating within an authoritarian state appears to tip the scale in favor of unity.
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.
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 Soviet government's attitude to religion in theory and practice is shown in this wide-ranging collection of annotated texts from the newly-opened archives. Included are documents from the KGB, the Central Committee, the Council for Religious Affairs and numerous other official bodies. For the first time in English we see the bureaucrats' own view of how religious believers should be controlled, following the story from the persecutions of the early Soviet years to the openness instituted by Mikhail Gorbachev.
Church-state relations have undergone a number of changes during the seven decades of the existence of the Soviet Union. In the 1920s the state was politically and financially weak and its edicts often ignored, but the 1930s saw the beginning of an era of systematic anti-religious persecution. There was some relaxation in the last decade of Stalin's rule, but under Khrushchev the pressure on the Church was again stepped up. In the Brezhev period this was moderated to a policy of slow strangulation of religion, and Gorbachev's leadership saw a thorough liberalization and re-legitimation of religion. This 1992 book brings together fifteen of the West's leading scholars of religion in the USSR. Bringing much hitherto unknown material to light, the authors discuss the policy apparatus, programmes of atheisation and socialisation, cults and sects, and the world of Christianity.
"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.