Defying Discursive Atheism: The Ambiguity of Space and Materiality in Soviet Antireligious Museums

• In Event: Atheism and Secular Spirituality in the Soviet Union

Abstract

Soviet antireligious museums present a curious case study for understanding the top-down mechanisms of propagating an atheist Weltanschauung. This paper compares the histories of two antireligious museums as a point of departure for understanding how Soviet scholars studied and represented religion in the public sphere: the Central Antireligious Museum (TsAM) in Moscow and the State Museum of the History of Religion (GMIR) in Leningrad. By tracing the reception of antireligious museums in Soviet, Western European, Chinese, and Russian émigré accounts, the article argues that “atheist in content” had limited efficacy because of the power of “religious in form.” The fact that both GMIR and TsAM were housed in former cathedrals or monasteries and showcased authentic religious objects prevented these institutions from fully “eradicating vestigial religious elements” and instilling atheism in people’s minds. In this sense, “the space is the message”: the audience did not perceive the content in an amorphous vacuum but in specific forms, whose very spatiality evoked religious sentiments. Informed by insights from comparative museology, material culture studies, and art history, the paper sheds new light on the changing aims of museums as social institutions in the Soviet Union.

Author

• Liya Xie, Princeton U