The concept of “scientific atheism”: The history of its construction and introduction into philosophy and political practice (1954–1964)

Abstract

The main purpose of the article is to reveal the socio-historical context of the emergence of the concept of “scientific atheism”, designed to solve ideological and political problems in the USSR in 1954–1964. The article shows how the concept of “scientific atheism” turns into a conceptual category, is filled with new content, forms an appropriate discourse and becomes a tool that produces socially significant meanings used in the practice of ideological production during the period of building socialism in the USSR. The author demonstrates how the understanding of atheism that existed in previous Marxist literature as a philosophical criticism of religion, based on the natural sciences and philosophical materialism and connected with the study of the historical forms of religion and its modern features, was rejected. Such an understanding of atheism did not satisfy the current political demand associated with the new tasks of communist construction. The article shows that a special role in the construction of the ideological component of the concept of “scientific atheism” in the early 1960s was played by I. D. Pantskhava, head of the Department of History and Theory of Atheism at Moscow State University, and also the secretary of the Central Committee L. F. Ilyichev, who headed the Ideological Commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which, in the wake of a new anti-religious campaign, initiated the development of practical recommendations in the field of atheistic upbringing of the population, among which the need to form the theoretical content of scientific atheism as an independent philosophical discipline aimed at solving urgent political problems stood out. The article introduces previously unknown archival materials into academic circulation, shedding light on the 1964 discussion about the features of Marxist atheism and the subject of “scientific atheism”.