For citation:
Khristenko D. N. Religion and Soviet Society in the Works of American Observers of the 1930s. Izvestiya of Saratov University. History. International Relations, 2019, vol. 19, iss. 4, pp. 439-445. DOI: 10.18500/1819-4907-2019-19-4-439-445
Religion and Soviet Society in the Works of American Observers of the 1930s
The article is devoted to the analysis of American observers’ views on the status of religion in the Soviet society in the 1930s. There were two different groups among them: engineers and workers who came to participate in the industrialization of the USSR, and professional journalists from the United States. Perceiving the socio-political processes that took place in our counrty often in different ways, the American observers agreed on one position. From their point of view, the decline of the role and significance of religion in Soviet society was not the result of repression by the state, but the result of the mass disillusionment of the population in the church, that was related to the deep internal social transformation of Soviet society. As a result, the article draws the conclusion about carrying out large-scale cultural revolution in the USSR in the 1930s, which radically changed the position of religion in the Soviet Union.
- Littlepage J., Bess D. In Search of Soviet Gold. New York, 1938. P. 18.
- Zugger C. L. The Forgotten : Catholics of Soviet Empire from Lenin through Stalin. New York, 2001. P. 243—244, 248, 250.
- Tzouliadis T. The Forsaken : An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia. New York, 2008. P. 43.
- Scott J. Behind the Urals : An American Worker in Russia’s City of Steel. Massachusets : The Riverside Press, 1942. P. 86, 235.
- Weeks R. T. Across the Revolutionary Divide : Russia and the USSR 1861–1945. New York, 2011. P. 170.
- An American Engineer in Stalin’s Russia. The Memoirs of Zara Witkin, 1932–1934. Edited with an Introduction by Michael Gelb University. Berkeley, 1991. P. 69.
- Walters P. A survey of Soviet Religious Policy // Religious Policy in the Soviet Union / ed. by S. P. Ramet. Cambridge, 2005. P. 14.
- Davies S. Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia. Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934–1941. Cambridge, 1997. P. 75.
- Hirsch A. Industrialized Russia. New York, 1934. P. 218—220, 222, 225.
- Rukeyser W. A. Working for the Soviets : An American Engineer in Russia. New York, 1932. P. 278.
- Chamberlin W. H. Russia’s Iron Age. New York, 1934. P. 319, 322, 325.
- Fischer L. Soviet Journey. New York, 1935. P. 305.
- Hindus M. Great Offensive. New York, 1933. P. 167–175.
- Duranty W. Duranty Reports Russia. New York, 1934. P. 379–380.
- Fitzpatrick S. Stalin’s Peasants : Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization. Oxford, 1996. P. 205.
- Lyons E. Assignment in Utopia. New York, 1937. P. 244.
- Page M. Soviet Main Street. Leningrad, Moscow : Cooperative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR, 1933. P. 104—105.
- Губкин О. Русская Православная Церковь под игом богоборческой власти в период с 1917 по 1941 годы. СПб. : Санкт-Петербургская православная духовная академия, 2006.
- Поспеловский Д. В. Русская православная церковь в ХХ веке. М., 1995.
- Фирсов С. Л. Власть и огонь : Церковь и советское государство в 1918 – начало 1940-х гг. : очерки истории. М. : Изд-во ПСТГУ, 2014.
- Худобородов А. Л., Яшина М. А. Репрессивная политика советского государства в отношении Русской православной церкви (1920–1930-е гг.) // ВестникЮУрГУ. 2011. № 30. С. 61–65.