Article ID: CBB001201408

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

unapi

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/

Similar Citations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Article Diana Kurkovsky West; (2020)
Cybernetics for the Command Economy: Foregrounding Entropy in Late Soviet Planning (/isis/citation/CBB931819752/)

Authors & Contributors
Zsuzsánna Magdó
Smith, Stephen A.
Serhii Zhabin
West, Diana Kurkovsky
Zhou, Xun
Zhang, Li
Concepts
Communism
Science and religion
Science and government
Atheism; agnosticism; irreligion
Science and politics
Technology
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
20th century, early
Places
Soviet Union
Ukraine
Russia
China
Eastern Europe
People's Republic of China
Institutions
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Comments

Be the first to comment!

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

Log in or register to comment