'Godless Communists': Atheism and Society in Soviet Russia, 1917-1932 by William B. s> Husband (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 757 been assured that there was intention to use them on active service. This broken promise was a measure of the Germans' determination to use the battalion to their own advantage. Even the timing of the battalion'seventual returnto Finlandwas dictatedby Germanpolicy. Lackmandescribesin detail the conflicts within the battalion, for example between its mainly Swedishspeakingleaders and their Finnish-speakingmen. The non-volunteerswere a particularlydiscontented element and the Russian Revolution exacerbated tensions. The battalion even formed a soldiers' council and in addition the working-classJagers formeda council of theirown. The apparently peaceful attainment of Finland's independence was a disappointment to many of the Jagers who had hoped to fight for that goal. The deterioratingsituation in Finland at the end of I9I 7 caused differences between the majoritywho objected to the fraternizationof Finnish socialists with revolutionaryRussian soldiersand the working-classJagers who did not want to fight against their own people. Nearly a quarter of the battalion refused to serve the Finnish government and thus returned to Finland only after the War of I9I8 (a term Lackman prefers to Civil War or War of Independence). He providesa thorough account of the fate of theJagers who did not fightin the war, some of whomjoined the FinnishCommunist Party. This is a long book which would have benefited from sub-editing to eliminate some repetition. The proof reading is poor. The chronology is not withouterrors;forexample, in I933 Mannerheimwas appointedfieldmarshal not marshalof Finland. Lackman'sconclusionshave upset those who cling to the formerofficialview of theJagers. And yet a more credible account of the movement and its members emerges than from previous studies. The Jagers appear as argumentativeand sometimes disobedient men of flesh and blood, drinking,womanizing, selling their equipment, even deserting. As members of the White Army in I9I8 some took terrible and unlawful revenge on Russiansand theirperceivedsympathizers.Lackmanrangeswidely into many relevant issues, including the comparison of theJagers with other 'liberation' movements and with the Finnish communists in the Soviet Union, the lawfulnessof the Finnish authoritieswho tried to combat the movement, the leniency of the Russians'treatmentof those arrestedand the role of theJagers in independent Finland.This provocativebook is a majorachievement. London J. E. 0. SCREEN Husband,WilliamB. 'Godless Communists'. Atheism andSociety in Soviet Russia, I9I 7-I932. Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb, IL, 2000. XVii+ 241 pp. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. ?3o.50. THEhistoryof the Bolsheviks'imposition of atheismand of citizens'responses to it is a many-sided and complex affair,and here William Husband sets out to tackle head-on that very complexity. He upsets common assumptions according to which the earlyphases of the Bolshevikassaulton religionrested upon a very high level of agreement among the leaders;the sense of common purpose among them was far less than I myself had originally supposed. 'In reality, there would never be a unified Bolshevik position on religion and 758 SEER, 8o, 4, 2002 atheism, even among the leadership', asserts Husband (p. 37), and 'in this sphere the party reacted to events as much as it shaped them' (p. 38). Using an admirably broad range of sources and specific examples, he examines factors which either eroded the Soviet authorities'control of religious life at national and local levels or else frequently forced them into a pragmatic reconsideration of their strategic approach. A particular mistake of the authorities,Husband holds, was to assignresponsibilityforanti-religiouswork to so many differentbodies within government and society (p. 38 etal.), thus sacrificingcohesion and, at the same time, putting in question the very raison d'etreof the League of the MilitantGodless, led by EmelianYaroslavsky. In Husband's book the accent is less on the massive scale of martyrdom sufferedby clergyand laity, a point which distinguisheshis account from that of Dimitry Pospielovsky, than on closely examining the middle ground occupied by those countless people without a firm commitment to religious belief or atheism.He considersthe risks,pressuresand limitsof theirsituation, asalsothe unintendedbenefitsthatcame to themthroughsome miscalculation or lack of foresightby the authorities.Husband cites cases of parish councils managing deftlyto use officiallanguage and theirknowledgeof regulationsto secure favourable responses to their petitions (pp. 146-47). 'Working the system' naturallycame to be one of the favoured means of survival,and this became a prominenttheme in humourof the whole Soviet...