A holy place is never empty. The history of Soviet atheism. Smolkin in

When, after the revolution, the Bolsheviks began to build a new world, they expected that religion would soon die. The Soviet government used various tools- from education to propaganda and terror- to realize their vision of the world without religion. Despite the pressure on believers and a monopoly on ideology, the Communist Party could not overcome religion and create an atheistic society.

“The Holy Place does not exist” - the first study covering the history of Soviet atheism, starting from the 1917 revolution and ending with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Based on the extensive archival material, historian Victoria Smolkin (University of Wesley, USA) claims that in order to understand the Soviet experiment, it is necessary to understand Soviet atheism.

The author shows how atheism was rethought as an alternative cosmology with his set of beliefs, practices and spiritual obligations, tracing the connection of this phenomenon with religious life in the USSR, communist ideology and Soviet policy.