From Scientific Atheism to Religious Studies
Bulletin for The Study of Religion, Apr 12, 2023
The Association affords readers of the Bulletin a chance to learn about issues and currents in th... more The Association affords readers of the Bulletin a chance to learn about issues and currents in the guilds wherein we do our work. Oleg Kyselov is a Senior Researcher at the H. S. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He was a 2021–2022 Fulbright Visting Scholar at the University of Alabama, where he currently serves as an Instructor in the Department of Religious Studies. Prof. Kyselov is member of the Workshop for the Academic Study of Religions and the Ukrainian Association of Researchers of Religion, and in this essay, traces the intellectual and political contours of the academic study of religion in Ukraine.
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In this paper, I examine the ideological commitment of the Soviet discipline, named “scientific atheism.” The key problem is not the relation between 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 the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic were engaged in studying religion. However, I pay special attention to three departments of scientific atheism, which function within the Institute of Philosophy and the Institute of Social Sciences. Mainly, I demonstrate that the department of scientific atheism in Ivano-Frankivsk was founded for party-ideology objectives, not research ones. The analysis of scholars and research activity of the Kyiv Department of scientific atheism confirms the thesis that time-serving research topics and biased studies dominate academic and scientific ones. Therefore, scientific atheism research was initiated since it matched the communist party’s ideology and was evaluated from the perspective of implementation in practical life: atheistic education, propaganda, and counterpropaganda.
Keywords: scientific atheism, the study of religion, Academy of Sciences of UkrSSR, ideology, Marxism.
атеизмом, но и с неверием. Идеология секуляризма, ассоциируемая с советской политикой, находится на маргинесе. В тоже самое время в Украине, с одной стороны, законодательно закреплены отдельные принципы светскости, а с другой – религия используется властями
во внутренней и внешней политике, что не в полной мере соответствует идее светскости.
Ключевые слова: атеизм, секуляризм, светскость, десекуляризация, Украина
Abstract: The article explores the status of atheism and secularism in Ukraine after the collapse of the USSR. The prosses of religious revival, observed in the 1990s, has brought to the huge decrease of number of Ukrainians, identifying themselves as atheists or non-believers. The ideology of secularism is associated with the Soviet policy and thus marginalized. At the same time, on one hand, Ukraine has legal status of a secular state, but on the other religion is used by authorities in internal and external policy, which contradicts to the idea of secularity.
Key words: atheism, secularism, secularity, desecularization, Ukraine
The article deals with the activity of the department of scientific atheism based on archive materials and interviews with former employees. The author concludes that the department had two types of activity: 1) research, which, in spite of the limited methodology and hostile reception of religion, we can call religious studies; 2) cooperation with the Communist Party organizations in the field of antireligious propaganda and atheistic education. Due to the specifics of its problematic the Department of scientific atheism was only nominally integrated into the Institute of Philosophy.
In this paper, I examine the ideological commitment of the Soviet discipline, named “scientific atheism.” The key problem is not the relation between 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 the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic were engaged in studying religion. However, I pay special attention to three departments of scientific atheism, which function within the Institute of Philosophy and the Institute of Social Sciences. Mainly, I demonstrate that the department of scientific atheism in Ivano-Frankivsk was founded for party-ideology objectives, not research ones. The analysis of scholars and research activity of the Kyiv Department of scientific atheism confirms the thesis that time-serving research topics and biased studies dominate academic and scientific ones. Therefore, scientific atheism research was initiated since it matched the communist party’s ideology and was evaluated from the perspective of implementation in practical life: atheistic education, propaganda, and counterpropaganda.
Keywords: scientific atheism, the study of religion, Academy of Sciences of UkrSSR, ideology, Marxism.
атеизмом, но и с неверием. Идеология секуляризма, ассоциируемая с советской политикой, находится на маргинесе. В тоже самое время в Украине, с одной стороны, законодательно закреплены отдельные принципы светскости, а с другой – религия используется властями
во внутренней и внешней политике, что не в полной мере соответствует идее светскости.
Ключевые слова: атеизм, секуляризм, светскость, десекуляризация, Украина
Abstract: The article explores the status of atheism and secularism in Ukraine after the collapse of the USSR. The prosses of religious revival, observed in the 1990s, has brought to the huge decrease of number of Ukrainians, identifying themselves as atheists or non-believers. The ideology of secularism is associated with the Soviet policy and thus marginalized. At the same time, on one hand, Ukraine has legal status of a secular state, but on the other religion is used by authorities in internal and external policy, which contradicts to the idea of secularity.
Key words: atheism, secularism, secularity, desecularization, Ukraine
The article deals with the activity of the department of scientific atheism based on archive materials and interviews with former employees. The author concludes that the department had two types of activity: 1) research, which, in spite of the limited methodology and hostile reception of religion, we can call religious studies; 2) cooperation with the Communist Party organizations in the field of antireligious propaganda and atheistic education. Due to the specifics of its problematic the Department of scientific atheism was only nominally integrated into the Institute of Philosophy.
The concept of Jewish historian Yosef Yerushalmi, which had set out in his book “Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory”, is considered in this article. According to Yerushalmi’s concept Judaism didn’t promote development of Jewish historical science, but was a warehouse of collective memory about significant events, fixed in the Bible. Yerushalmi believed that historiography didn’t support collective memory, but contrary infirm it. The article also observe of the critique of Yerushalmi position.
Keywords: collective memory, history, religion, Judaism, Jewish people.
Рецензия была напечатана в журнале Религиоведеческие исследования. - 2017. - № 2 (16). - С. 167-169.
Ця книга є проектом Центру дослідження верховенства права і релігії Національного юридичного університету імені Ярослава Мудрого у співдружності з Харківським юридичним кіноклубом. Автори торкаються різних парадигм і аспектів взаємодії правового, політичного і релігійного як у матеріальному, так і символічному світах. Політична релігія, релігійна свобода, толерантність до іншого, роль права у прощенні, право і кохання, (не)майбутнє права і релігії, релятивізація правового і політичного порядку, міфологія права, право, релігія і науково-технічний прогрес – невичерпний перелік питань, що розглядаються у контексті кіномистецтва.