Book Talk. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism by Victoria Smolkin

Join the Harriman Institute and the Institute for the Study of Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL) for a talk with author Victoria Smolkin about her book A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism (Princeton University Press, 2018).

When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off. Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion. Instead, atheism was reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of positive beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments. Through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the “sacred spaces” of Soviet life was not enough and eventually—in a stunning and unexpected reversal—Mikhail Gorbachev abandoned atheism and reintroduced religion into public life as the Soviet experiment was nearing its end. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.

Victoria Smolkin is Associate Professor of History and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at Wesleyan University. A scholar of Communism, the Cold War, and Russia and the former Soviet Union, her work focuses on religion, atheism, secularism, and ideology. She has appeared on programs for the BBC and the National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition. Her work has been supported by the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C., the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University, and the Social Science Research Council, among others. Smolkin’s recent book, A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism (Princeton University Press, 2018; paperback 2019), explores the meaning of atheism for Soviet religious life, ideology, and politics, and was a finalist for the Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize for the most important contribution to Russian, Eurasian, and East European studies in any discipline of the humanities or social sciences. A Russian translation is forthcoming. She is currently at work on a project titled The Crusade Against Godlessness: Religion, Communism, and the Cold War Order.