Victoria Smolkin > Quotes

“In many ways, then, the history of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior is an allegory for the fate of religion and atheism under Soviet Communism. The Bolsheviks saw the destruction of the symbols of the old world as a powerful statement about their vision for the future. But while their destruction of religious spaces, symbols, and traditions clearly transmitted the antireligious message, it did little to strengthen the people’s bond to Soviet Communism. The fact that the cathedral had been destroyed ostensibly to make room for the Palace of Soviets, but that the palace never materialized, underscored the empty space that had been left behind. That the space remained empty for decades, only to be filled by a swimming pool—a space of modern leisure, but hardly a monument to the utopia promised by the revolution—speaks to Soviet atheism’s struggle to fill the empty space it had created with its own meaning.”
― Victoria Smolkin, A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism

“The sanctioned return of religion to public life bolstered the moral authority of the state, but it undermined the Soviet Communist Party, which found itself increasingly marginal to the emerging ideological and political landscape.53 Soviet Communism’s break with atheism in favor of universal values and ideological pluralism signaled the end of the party’s monopoly on truth, ideological coherence, and thus moral authority and political legitimacy. The Soviet Communist Party gave up the faith and became simply a political party, no longer seeking to make windows into the human soul.”
― Victoria Smolkin, A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism