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" 'A Sacred Space Is Never Empty': "
Smolkin-Rothrock, Victoria
Slezkine, Yuri
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Latin Dissertation
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English
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897438
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TL39q3d8tq
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| Main Entry
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Ojulu, Sigin
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| Title & Author
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'A Sacred Space Is Never Empty':\ Smolkin-Rothrock, VictoriaSlezkine, Yuri
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2010
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2010
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| Abstract
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This dissertation is a study of Soviet atheist education and socialist life-cycle rituals in the postwar period. The narrative follows two distinct, yet overlapping, life-cycles: that of Marxist-Leninist scientific atheism, as it attempted to transform religiosity and fill the space that had been occupied by religion with a distinctly Soviet spiritual content, and that of Soviet citizens, whose lives were ordered and made meaningful by Soviet beliefs and rituals. By analyzing the efforts of the Soviet Party-State to fulfill the administrative, psychological, and philosophical functions inherited from religious institutions, I examine the resurgence of interest in atheism and rituals and analyze why, despite its totalizing ideological agenda, the Soviet Union did not introduce socialist rites on a mass scale until the Khrushchev era. I argue that ideologists became ever more aware of the contradictions that revealed themselves when they attempted to transform ideological beliefs and rituals into everyday convictions and practices. As a result, renewed attention to the spiritual lives of the revolution's "human material" became central to interpretations of Marxism-Leninism, as well as to the fate of the Soviet political experiment. On a broader scale, my work investigates the significance and functions of private rituals in modern society, and evaluates the state's ability to direct this aspect of individual and social life.
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Smolkin-Rothrock, Victoria
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UC Berkeley
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