IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB001201408

The Ticket to the Soviet Soul: Science, Religion, and the Spiritual Crisis of Late Soviet Atheism (2014)

Smolkin-Rothrock, Victoria (Author)

Russian Review
Volume: 73
Pages: 171--197

DOI: 10.1111/russ.10726

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Atheism; agnosticism; irreligion Science and government Science and religion Public policy Communism 20th century, late Soviet Union

This article examines the confrontation of Soviet scientific atheism with religion as it played out on the pages and in the editorial rooms of the country's primary atheist periodical, Nauka i religiia (Science and Religion). It follows a story that begins in the 1960s, when the journal tried to change its title to Mir cheloveka (The World of Man) to reorient itself from the battle against religion towards the battle for Soviet (and therefore atheist) spiritual life. I argue that while the Khrushchev era is the point of origin for much of late Soviet policy on religion and atheism, it is only with the Brezhnev era that we see understandings of religion move beyond ideological stereotypes. New conceptions of religion, however, forced atheists to consider Communist ideology in unexpected (and often troubling) ways, and led to revealing discussions the Soviet state's role in providing spiritual fullness. The story of Nauka i religiia is a microcosm of Soviet ideology in that it reveals the boundaries and contradictions of the material and the spiritual in the Soviet project.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001201408/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Chapter Topçu, Sezin; (2013)
Chernobyl Empowerment? Exporting “Participatory Governance” to Contaminated Territories (/isis/citation/CBB001420176/)

Chapter Josephson, Paul; Ranyuk, Yury; Tsekhmistro, Ivan; Hall, Karl; (2010)
Science and the Periphery under Stalin: Physics in Ukraine (/isis/citation/CBB001032746/)

Chapter James T. Andrews; (2016)
Inculcating Materialist Minds: Scientific Propaganda and Anti-Religion in the USSR During the Cold War (/isis/citation/CBB394122030/)

Chapter Igor J. Polianski; (2016)
The Antireligious Museum: Soviet Heterotopia between Transcending and Remembering Religious Heritage (/isis/citation/CBB856218181/)

Book Ash, Mitchell G.; (2010)
Psychoanalyse in totalitären und autoritären Regimes (/isis/citation/CBB001023462/)

Article Donina, Irina Nikolaevna; (2008)
“Autobiographies of the Godless” as a Source on Mass Social Psychology in the Late 1920s and the Early 1930s (From Materials in the Manuscript Department of the State Museum of the History of Religion) (/isis/citation/CBB001030529/)

Book Froese, Paul; (2008)
The Plot to Kill God: Findings from the Soviet Experiment in Secularization (/isis/citation/CBB000850363/)

Book Carson, Cathryn; Hollinger, David A.; (2005)
Reappraising Oppenheimer: Centennial Studies and Reflections (/isis/citation/CBB000651435/)

Article Seneta, Eugene; (2004)
Mathematics, Religion, and Marxism in the Soviet Union in the 1930s (/isis/citation/CBB000470921/)

Chapter Stephen A. Smith; (2016)
Introduction (/isis/citation/CBB066229806/)

Article Siegelbaum, Lewis H.; (2009)
On the Side: Car Culture in the USSR, 1960s--1980s (/isis/citation/CBB000950530/)

Article Reid, Susan E.; (2005)
The Khruschev Kitchen: Domesticating the Scientific-Technological Revolution (/isis/citation/CBB000670615/)

Article Lou, Caiyun; Zhang, Li; (2008)
Regulations of Supervising Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1964 and the Principle of Combining Theory with Practice (/isis/citation/CBB000933529/)

Article Serhii Zhabin; (2020)
Making Forecasting Dynamic: The Soviet project OGAS (/isis/citation/CBB096145384/)

Article Caron-Leulliez, Marianne; (2006)
L'Accouchement Sans Douleur. Un enjeu politique en France pendant la guerre froide (/isis/citation/CBB000930217/)

Article Gerovitch, Slava; (2007)
“New Soviet Man” Inside Machine: Human Engineering, Spacecraft Design, and the Construction of Communism (/isis/citation/CBB000772405/)

Book Xun Zhou; (2020)
The People's Health: Health Intervention and Delivery in Mao's China, 1949-1983 (/isis/citation/CBB298591413/)

Chapter Zsuzsánna Magdó; (2016)
Romanian Spirituality in Ceauşescu’s ‘Golden Epoch’: Social Scientists Reconsider Atheism, Religion, and Ritual Culture (/isis/citation/CBB532210297/)

Article Batty, Philip; (2014)
The Tywerrenge as an Artefact of Rule: The (Post) Colonial Life of a Secret/Sacred Aboriginal Object (/isis/citation/CBB001201590/)

Chapter Kojewnikow, Alexei; (2011)
Die Mobilmachung der sowjetischen Wissenschaft (/isis/citation/CBB001211832/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}