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A Sacred Space is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism

Tue, October 30th, 2018
4:30 pm
- 5:30 pm

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About the Talk
The Bolsheviks imagined Communism as a world without religion. The Soviet experiment was the first attempt to turn this vision into reality. Following the 1917 revolution, the Soviet leadership used a variety of tools — from education to propaganda and terror — to eradicate religion. Yet through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the “sacred spaces” of Soviet life was not enough. Victoria Smolkin, Associate Professor of History and Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at Wesleyan University, and author of A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism(Princeton, 2018), will consider Soviet atheism and its importance for understanding religious life, the Soviet experiment, and Russian politics.
About Victoria
Victoria Smolkin is Associate Professor of History at Wesleyan University. A scholar of Communism, the Cold War, as well as atheism and religion in Russia and the former Soviet Union, history professor Smolkin’s expertise also covers religious politics and secularism, the Soviet space program, and East European and Eurasian studies. Smolkin recently published her first book A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism (May 2018, Princeton University Press). The book presents the first history of Soviet atheism from the 1917 revolution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.

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