Scientific atheism in the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in post-Stalin era: between research and propaganda
Upon the history of the Institute of Philosophy
Keywords:
scientific atheism, study of religion, Academy of sciences of UkrSSR, ideology, MarxismAbstract
In this paper I examine the ideological commitment of the Soviet discipline, named “scientific atheism”. The key problem is not the relation between the scientific atheism and Marxist philosophy or communist ideology per se, but its relation to the ideology of local Communist organizations. Analyzing archive documents, I indicate which institutes of the Academy of Sciences of Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic were engaged in studying religion. However, I pay special attention to three departments of scientific atheism, which functioned within the Institute of Philosophy and the Institute of Social Sciences. Particularly, I demonstrate that the department of scientific atheism in Ivano-Frankivsk was founded for party-ideology objectives, not research ones. The analysis of scholar and research activity of Kyiv department of scientific atheism confirms the thesis that timeserving research topics and biased studies dominated over academic and scientific ones. Therefore, scientific atheism research was initiated, since it matched the communist party’s ideology and was evaluated in the perspective of implementation in practical life: atheistic education, propaganda and ounterpropaganda.
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