The 1929 congress of the Godless

Abstract

AMONG THE MANY social campaigns launched in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, the effort to counter the pervasive influence of religion was among the most visible. Examining how the Bolsheviks sought to introduce atheism into Holy Russia sheds light not only on Bolshevik strategies for planned secularisation, but also on the evolving Soviet political culture. Both of these subjects can be approached through analysis of the stenographic report of the June 1929 Congress of the League of the Godless (Soyuz bezbozhnikov), the quasi-governmental organisation charged with eradicating religion.1 This document serves as a window through which we observe the repeated clashes of two distinct and opposed camps promoting conflicting views on how the anti-religious campaign ought to be run. More importantly, the stenographic report highlights the shared assumptions and rhetorical conventions of the coalescing political culture in which the congress occurred and which qualitatively altered the character of the anti-religious debate. This article first reviews the 12 years of anti-religious history prior to the congress. It then examines the divisions at the congress along ideological and institutional lines. The third section discusses those elements of the emerging political culture evident in the debate; finally, the conflicts in the anti-religious camp are linked to the broader political and social transformation engulfing Soviet society on the cusp of Stalin's revolution.