Soviet Atheism in the Context of Multiple Modernities

Abstract: the transformation of Russia after the October Revolution of 1917 implied the total rejection of religion and its replacement with ‘scientific’ atheism based on the conviction in human beings as the only constructive agents of the historical process. In the authors’ opinion, Soviet atheism generally corresponds to the mainstream of Enlightenment-type rationalism, which was one of the main factors of the transition towards modernity; and the universalism of Soviet atheism goes in the same way as universalist pretentions of secularization theory. In general, Soviet atheism may be viewed as the extreme variation of secularization, and its analysis helps to extend our understanding of complexity and multi-variety of modernity. In analyzing similarities and differences of Western secularization and Soviet atheism, the author tries to avoid both the idea of total ‘replacement’ of the religious by secular (and vice versa) in the Soviet period, and the concept of the ‘return’ to ‘genuine’ state of affairs in post-Soviet times. The author concludes that the nature of the post-atheistic religion in modern Russia, as well as the nature of the post-secular religiosity in general, clearly demonstrates the overlapping of religious and secular in modernity.

Keywords: ‘Scientific’ atheism, secularization, modernity, religious ‘revival’, universalism, rationalism, public and private space.