This book presents the first large overview of late Soviet religiosity across several confessions and Soviet republics, from the 1960s to the 1980s. Based on a broad range of new sources on the daily life of religious communities, including material from regional archives and oral history, it shows that religion not only survived Soviet anti-religious repression, but also adapted to new conditions. Going beyond traditional views about a mere "returned of the repressed", the book shows how new forms of religiosity and religious socialisation emerged, as new generations born into atheist families turned to religion in search of new meaning, long before perestroika facilitated this process. In addition, the book examines anew religious activism and transnational networks between Soviet believers and Western organisations during the Cold War, explores the religious dimension of Soviet female activism, and shifts the focus away from the non-religious human rights movement and from religious institutions to ordinary believers.
This book presents the first large overview of late Soviet religiosity across several confessions and Soviet republics, from the 1960s to the 1980s.
List of Figures
List of Contributors
List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Change of Ritual Practice under Communism: the Case of the Russian Orthodox
Church in Soviet Ukraine in the late 1950s early 1970s - Natalia Shlikhta
The Erosion of Tradition. Life Cycle Rites among the Orthodox in the Prikame
Region (1950s-1980s) - Svetlana Riazanova
The Rybnitser Rebbe and Underground Jewish Religious Life in the Soviet town
of Rybnitsa (1960s 1970s) - Maria Kaspina
Funeral and Memorial Rites of Moscow Muslims in the 1960s-1980s - Islam
Zaripov and Marat Safarov
The Boundaries of Legality as an Approach to the Study of Soviet Religious
Policy: the Case of Evangelical Christians-Baptists - Johannes Dyck
Trying to leave the Religious Underground. Registration of Catholic
communities in late Soviet Kazakhstan - Jerzy Rohozinski
The Activism of Soviet Pentecostals in the 1960s 1980s - Vera Kliueva
Gender specificity of protest activism in unregistered groups of Evangelical
Christians-Baptists in the late Soviet Union - Nadezhda Beliakova
A Christian feminism in the USSR? A historical overview of the religious
womens club "Mariia" (1980-1982) - Anna Sidorevich
Startsy, samizdat and underground seminars: the religious life of young
Russian Orthodox converts in the 1970s-1980s - Barbara Martin
Anatolii Vaneev's circle as a phenomenon of informal church community in
Leningrad in the 1970s-1980s. - Anna Lepekina
Longing for Truth, Morality, and Enchantment: Late Soviet Spiritual Searches
and Journeys to Islam, 1970s-1980s - Eva Rogaar
The Entry of Indian Spiritual Movements into the Cultural Space of Soviet
Latvia in the 1970s-80s - Solveiga Krumina-Konkova
Astrological samizdat in the context of (post-)Soviet esoteric culture - Anna
Tessman
Index
Barbara Martin is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Basel, Switzerland
Nadezhda Beliakova is a a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Bielefeld, Germany
