Download or read book Godless Communists written by William B. Husband and published by . This book was released on 2002-09 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Godless Communists" offers a fresh interpretation of early Soviet efforts to create an atheistic, scientific society. Husband shows that religion, contrary to Bolshevik assertions, was not merely an expression of gullibility and ignorance but a firmly entrenched system for ordering family and community relationships. The Bolsheviks' efforts to abolish the Church failed because they underestimated how tightly religious beliefs were woven into the fabric of the Russians' daily lives. Exploring the confrontation between secularism and the lower classes' traditional beliefs, "Godless Communists" illustrates how developments between 1917 and 1932 shaped the attitudes toward religion and atheism that endure in Russia today.
Download or read book Godless Utopia written by Roland Elliott Brown and published by Fuel Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the early Soviet atheist magazines Godless and Godless atthe Machine, and postwar posters by Communist Party publishers, the authorpresents an unsettling tour of atheist ideology in the USSR.
Download or read book Raised under Stalin written by Seth F. Bernstein and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Raised under Stalin, Seth Bernstein shows how Stalin’s regime provided young people with opportunities as members of the Young Communist League or Komsomol even as it surrounded them with violence, shaping socialist youth culture and socialism more broadly through the threat and experience of war. Informed by declassified materials from post-Soviet archives, as well as films, memoirs, and diaries by and about youth, Raised under Stalin explains the divided status of youth for the Bolsheviks: they were the "new people" who would someday build communism, the potential soldiers who would defend the USSR, and the hooligans who might undermine it from within. Bernstein explains how, although Soviet revolutionary youth culture began as the preserve of proletarian activists, the Komsomol transformed under Stalin to become a mass organization of moral education; youth became the targets of state repression even as Stalin’s regime offered them the opportunity to participate in political culture. Raised under Stalin follows Stalinist youth into their ultimate test, World War II. Even as the war against Germany decimated the ranks of Young Communists, Bernstein finds evidence that it cemented Stalinist youth culture as a core part of socialism.
Download or read book Storming the Heavens written by Daniel Peris and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A member of the first generation of scholars allowed access to formerly closed Soviet archives, Daniel Peris offers a new perspective on the Bolshevik regime's antireligious policy from 1917 until 1941. He focuses on the activities of the League of the Militant Godless, the organization founded by the regime in 1925 to spearhead its efforts to promote atheism and he presents the League's propaganda, activities, and personnel at both the central and the provincial levels. On the basis of his research in archives in rural Pskov and industrial Iaroslavl', as well as in the central party and state archives in Moscow, Peris emphasizes the transformation of the ideological agenda formulated in Moscow as it moved to its intended audience. Storming the Heavens places the League within the broader context of a Bolshevik political culture that often acted at cross purposes to undermine the regime's stated goals. The League's lack of success, argues Peris, reflects the bureaucratic orientation of Bolshevik political culture, particularly in how it pursued the radical social vision of 1917. His book provides a framework for undertanding secularization in revolutionary contexts as well as contributing to the on-going reassessments of the Bolshevik era.
Download or read book A Sacred Space Is Never Empty written by Victoria Smolkin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off. Soviet power used a variety of tools--from education to propaganda to terror—to turn its vision of a Communist world without religion into reality. Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion and creating an atheist society. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty presents the first history of Soviet atheism from the 1917 revolution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Drawing on a wealth of archival material and in-depth interviews with those who were on the front lines of Communist ideological campaigns, Victoria Smolkin argues that to understand the Soviet experiment, we must make sense of Soviet atheism. Smolkin shows how atheism was reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of positive beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments. Through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the "sacred spaces" of Soviet life was not enough. Then, in the final years of the Soviet experiment, Mikhail Gorbachev—in a stunning and unexpected reversal—abandoned atheism and reintroduced religion into Soviet public life. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.
Download or read book Comic Books and the Cold War 1946 1962 written by Chris York and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional wisdom holds that comic books of the post-World War II era are poorly drawn and poorly written publications, notable only for the furor they raised. Contributors to this thoughtful collection, however, demonstrate that these comics constitute complex cultural documents that create a dialogue between mainstream values and alternative beliefs that question or complicate the grand narratives of the era. Close analysis of individual titles, including EC comics, Superman, romance comics, and other, more obscure works, reveals the ways Cold War culture--from atomic anxieties and the nuclear family to communist hysteria and social inequalities--manifests itself in the comic books of the era. By illuminating the complexities of mid-century graphic novels, this study demonstrates that postwar popular culture was far from monolithic in its representation of American values and beliefs.
Download or read book Is This Tomorrow written by and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in the midst of the cold war, Is This Tomorrow is a classic example of red scare propaganda. The story envisions a scenario in which the Soviet Union orders American communists to overthrow the US Government. Charles Schulz contributed to the artwork throughout the issue. Reprinted here for the first time in 70 years.
Download or read book A Specter Haunting Europe written by Paul Hanebrink and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2018-11-05 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Masterful...An indispensable warning for our own time.” —Samuel Moyn “Magisterial...Covers this dark history with insight and skill...A major intervention into our understanding of 20th-century Europe and the lessons we ought to take away from its history.” —The Nation For much of the last century, Europe was haunted by a threat of its own imagining: Judeo-Bolshevism. The belief that Communism was a Jewish plot to destroy the nations of Europe took hold during the Russian Revolution and quickly spread. During World War II, fears of a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy were fanned by the fascists and sparked a genocide. But the myth did not die with the end of Nazi Germany. A Specter Haunting Europe shows that this paranoid fantasy persists today in the toxic politics of revitalized right-wing nationalism. “It is both salutary and depressing to be reminded of how enduring the trope of an exploitative global Jewish conspiracy against pure, humble, and selfless nationalists really is...A century after the end of the first world war, we have, it seems, learned very little.” —Mark Mazower, Financial Times “From the start, the fantasy held that an alien element—the Jews—aimed to subvert the cultural values and national identities of Western societies...The writers, politicians, and shills whose poisonous ideas he exhumes have many contemporary admirers.” —Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs
Download or read book The Spiritual Industrial Complex written by Jonathan P. Herzog and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2011-08-05 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his farewell address, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the nation of the perils of the military-industrial complex. But as Jonathan Herzog shows in this insightful history, Eisenhower had spent his presidency contributing to another, lesser known, Cold War collaboration: the spiritual-industrial complex.This fascinating volume shows that American leaders in the early Cold War years considered the conflict to be profoundly religious; they saw Communism not only as godless but also as a sinister form of religion. Fighting faith with faith, they deliberately used religious beliefs and institutions as part of the plan to defeat the Soviet enemy. Herzog offers an illuminating account of the resultant spiritual-industrial complex, chronicling the rhetoric, the programs, and the policies that became its hallmarks. He shows that well-known actions like the addition of the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance were a small part of a much larger and relatively unexplored program that promoted religion nationwide. Herzog shows how these efforts played out in areas of American life both predictable and unexpected--from pulpits and presidential appeals to national faith drives, military training barracks, public school classrooms, and Hollywood epics. Millions of Americans were bombarded with the message that the religious could not be Communists, just a short step from the all-too-common conclusion that the irreligious could not be true Americans.Though the spiritual-industrial complex declined in the 1960s, its statutes, monuments, and sentiments live on as bulwarks against secularism and as reminders that the nation rests upon the groundwork of religious faith. They continue to serve as valuable allies for those defending the place of religion in American life.
Download or read book The FBI and Religion written by Sylvester A. Johnson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Federal Bureau of Investigation has had a long and tortuous relationship with religion over almost the entirety of its existence. As early as 1917, the Bureau began to target religious communities and groups it believed were hotbeds of anti-American politics. Whether these religious communities were pacifist groups that opposed American wars, or religious groups that advocated for white supremacy or direct conflict with the FBI, the Bureau has infiltrated and surveilled religious communities that run the gamut of American religious life. The FBI and Religion recounts this fraught and fascinating history, focusing on key moments in the Bureau’s history. Starting from the beginnings of the FBI before World War I, moving through the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War, up to 9/11 and today, this book tackles questions essential to understanding not only the history of law enforcement and religion, but also the future of religious liberty in America.
Download or read book The Spanish Civil War the Soviet Union and Communism written by Stanley G. Payne and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this compelling book Stanley G. Payne offers the first comprehensive narrative of Soviet and Communist intervention in the revolution and civil war in Spain. He documents in unprecedented detail Soviet strategies, Comintern activities, and the role of the Communist party in Spain from the early 1930s to the end of the civil war in 1939. Drawing on a very broad range of Soviet and Spanish primary sources, including many only recently available, Payne changes our understanding of Soviet and Communist intentions in Spain, of Stalin’s decision to intervene in the Spanish war, of the widely accepted characterization of the conflict as the struggle of fascism against democracy, and of the claim that Spain’s war constituted the opening round of World War II. The author arrives at a new view of the Spanish Civil War and concludes not only that the Democratic Republic had many undemocratic components but also that the position of the Communist party was by no means counterrevolutionary.
Download or read book Values and Identities in Europe written by Michael J. Breen and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-01-20 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contrary to what is suggested in media and popular discourses, Europe is neither a monolithic entity nor simply a collection of nation states. It is, rather, a union of millions of individuals who differ from one another in a variety of ways while also sharing many characteristics associated with their ethnic, social, political, economic, religious or national characteristics. This book explores differences and similarities that exist in attitudes, beliefs and opinions on a range of issues across Europe. Drawing on the extensive data of the European Social Survey, it presents insightful analyses of social attitudes, organised around the themes of religious identity, political identity, family identity and social identity, together with a section on methodological issues. A collection of rigorously analysed studies on national, comparative and pan-European levels, Values and Identities in Europe offers insight into the heart and soul of Europe at a time of unprecedented change. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in social attitudes, social change in Europe, demographics and survey methods.
Download or read book Hearings written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs and published by . This book was released on 1957 with total page 1700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Atheists in American Politics written by Richard J. Meagher and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2018-02-05 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today atheists, it seems, are everywhere. Nonbelievers write best-selling books and proudly defend their views in public; they have even hired a lobbyist. But, as political scientist Richard J. Meagher shows, atheist political activism is not a new phenomenon. From the "Freethought" movement of the late 1800s, to postwar "rationalists" and "humanists," to today's proud atheists, nonbelievers have called for change within a resistant political culture. While atheist organizing typically has been a relatively lonely and sad affair, advances in technology and new political opportunities have helped atheists to finally gain at least some measure of legitimacy in American politics. In Atheists in American Politics, one of the first works to take atheism seriously as a social movement, Meagher highlights key moments within the political history of atheism and freethought, and examines how the changing circumstances that surround the movement help explain political mobilization. In doing so, this book also highlights the ways that social movements in general gain momentum, and how a number of interlocking factors are often necessary to enable a movement to "take off" in American politics.
Download or read book The Religious Rhetoric of U S Presidential Candidates written by Arnaud Vincent and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-21 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on corpus linguistic methods of analysis, this book critically examines the "rhetorical God gap" in American political discourse between the Democratic and Republican parties. The volume investigates the claims (which have often not been substantiated by quantitative data in the literature and have tended to focus on particular genres of political discourse) that there is a correlation between a higher degree of religiosity in Republican political discourse and voting preferences for the party and that Democratic politicians should engage in similar discourse toward "closing" the gap. The book adopts a keyword approach, using such techniques as collocation analyses, concordance reading, and Bible-specific N-gram identification, toward the study of a corpus of general campaign speeches over a 50-year period, and links findings from this data with social and cultural contextual factors to provide a more informed understanding of rhetorical patterns in religiously laden political language. The volume showcases the value of corpus linguistic methods in interrogating claims around political language and their broader applicability in linguistic research, making this key reading for students and scholars in corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis, American politics, and religious studies.
Download or read book Building a World of Free Peoples written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs and published by . This book was released on 1957 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Building a World of Free Peoples written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs. Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements and published by . This book was released on 1957 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considers Soviet and U.S. economic and foreign aid policies and their role in creating Communist- and non-Communist-bloc alliances.
