Plot to Kill God

The Plot to Kill God: Findings from the Soviet Experiment in Secularization by Paul Froese, 199 pages

When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1918, their Communist ideology predicted that with the destruction of the old political order religion would gradually but inevitably wither away - an especially plausible theory for Russians, for whom the Orthodox Church and the tsarist regime were virtually indistinguishable.  When this did not happen, the Soviet perspective on religion shifted from that of symptom to that of disease, resulting in a more active persecution.  Attempts to destroy religious belief ranged from the desecration of churches and mass murder of clergy to the integration of atheist propaganda with every subject in the school curriculum and the institution of atheist rituals to replace the traditional religious ceremonies solemnizing birth, marriage, and death.

Froese takes the results of this Soviet attempt to impose atheism on its population as an empirical test of various theories of secularization.  In his view, the Soviet experience invalidates theories which attribute religious belief to ignorance, indoctrination, political utility, social pressure, or mass enthusiasm.  According to Froese's economic model, although the Soviets were somewhat successful in diminishing the supply of religion from traditional institutions, they were utterly unable to eliminate the demand for religion.  This suggests that the Soviet regime never correctly understood the nature of that demand.

The Plot to Kill God is not a history of Soviet anti-religious policies, but an analysis of the results of those policies.  There are a number of typographical problems ("Protestants sects", "League of Militant Atheist", "ingenuity in alluding authorities"), but those mostly disappear after the first dozen pages.  There are also some suspect claims and sweeping generalizations ("secular alternatives to religious marriage ceremonies, for example, have always existed") somewhat sloppily thrown about without support.  Neither of these flaws affects Froese's argument, which is strong enough to deserve more thorough study.