I was wondering if anyone had any links regarding the unsuccessful polytheistsic religion set up the Bolsheviks in their early rule? I read a short paragraph about it in a GCSE history reference book, but haven't heard anything else about it since, nor have I been able to find it.

I've never heard of it.

Say what ?

The only stuff i know is that they didn't particulary like the church and any forms of organised religion.
Maybe you are refering to the milions of atheist flyers spread by the communists. (that's what they did over here anyway) ... but that's waaay after Lenin.

Sounds decidedly fishy. I strongly doubt they did. Even in the early stages.

Marxism is atheist and of course the Soviet Union had organised atheism — which from a theological POV might perhaps be considered a form of religion?

Atheism certainly can be a sort of religion (look at Theravada Buddhism), but not, I think, the kind associated with the Soviet Union. Although you could argue that it had some elements in common with some religions. Perhaps the Chinese cult of Mao in the 1960s and 70s (and, in some quarters, even today) was more like a religion.

I haven't heard of the Bolsheviks trying to establish a polytheistic religion. Are you perhaps thinking of the attempts on the part of some Nazis, notably Himmler, to create a sort of Teutonic pagan religion to supplant Christianity?

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." -From Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right by Karl Marx, 1844.

And he goes on:

"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."

...and so on. I doubt there was ever any Bolshevik religion, polytheistic or otherwise.

Atheism certainly can be a sort of religion (look at Theravada Buddhism)


Well, what you can have is a religion (or belief system that pretty much amounts to a religion, whatever the definition of that is) which either does not require theism or directly precludes it. This could be considered an atheistic religion. Atheism in itself does not have the scope to be a religion, it only describes one particular aspect of one's worldview (much as "theism" can be used to describe everything from Orthodox Judaism through Ásatru).


I haven't heard of the Bolsheviks trying to establish a polytheistic religion. Are you perhaps thinking of the attempts on the part of some Nazis, notably Himmler, to create a sort of Teutonic pagan religion to supplant Christianity?

Never heard of any Bolshevik polytheism, either. The other regime I can think of that tried to supplant Christianity would be revolutionary France under Robespierre, but that was by introducing a rather abstract form of worship of "reason" or "the supreme being". Didn't work too well.

[Leifmk] Yes, you're right, I expressed myself inaccurately. Neither theism nor atheism is, in itself, a religion, but either can be one element among others of a religion. As can other alternatives, such as monism.

Stalin did, however, allow the Orthodox Church to regain a semi-official status during WWII, thought it was cracked down on after.

Well, Kim Jong Il has built an Orthodox church in Pyongyang, although something tells me it's not completely "orthodox" in every sense of the word.

I haven't heard of the Bolsheviks trying to establish a polytheistic religion. Are you perhaps thinking of the attempts on the part of some Nazis, notably Himmler, to create a sort of Teutonic pagan religion to supplant Christianity?

Similar, only it was the Bolsheviks. It was mentioned in a paragraph regarding the early Bolshevik rule, and accompanied by a picture of what looked like an associated festival. Its definitely not the Nazis I'm thinking of, this GCSE book was regarding Russia (Russia was the focal point of our GCSE course).

The fact that I can find no information about it on the internet makes me think that the book may have been wrong, I think I'll try and find a copy of it. I'll scan it in if I do (for everyone's scrutiny ;)).

Just because you can't find any info on the Internet doesn't mean that the book was wrong - I'd trust a book over the Internet (and definitely over Wikipedia) any day of the week.

Well, most books, anyway...

That's the first time hear about this.
Maybe they wanted to revive slavic polytheism to get rid of the influence of the church ?

If it was anything it must have been Satanism ;)

But seriously I've never heard anything like that in my life.... and I did study history a little.

I would say that if you have read it in a GCSE history book but can't find anything anywhere else, it's safe to assume it's inaccurate. Part of the fun of history.

Maybe they wanted to revive slavic polytheism to get rid of the influence of the church ?

That was the plan IIR. Religion is the opium of the people, so they wanted to control the opium.

I would say that if you have read it in a GCSE history book but can't find anything anywhere else, it's safe to assume it's inaccurate. Part of the fun of history.

Or it was just monumentally unsucessful, and as such historically insignificant (other than as a curiosity). I should be able to get a copy of the book tommorow.

do you have your A2 history tomorrow tru?

what modules you doing?

I was wondering if anyone had any links regarding the unsuccessful polytheistsic religion set up the Bolsheviks in their early rule? I read a short paragraph about it in a GCSE history reference book, but haven't heard anything else about it since, nor have I been able to find it.

What you may be referring to is Marxism-Leninism, which was purely a political ideology, but one with many religious overtones in the sense that it revised history to conform to its notions of historical destiny. M-L believed that economic systems underlay all of history and that history could be divided into different eras. These eras include slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, in that order. M-L believed that capitalism would be violently overthrown and replaced by an intermediate step of a "dictatorship of the workers", in which a leading party would lead to the establishment of a final socialist state in which the organs of government would cease to exist. (This last step is somewhat in contrast to what Marx suggested. He believed communism would come about spontaneously, without the need of any party to lead it.)

Marxism-Leninism was only religious in the sense that it had all sorts of unfounded and inflexible notions of history and economics. Like many religions, it saw competing schools of thought as tantamount to blasphemy, and so disregarded them. M-L included atheism as parts of its philosophy, but only in the sense that it viewed religion as a means of control over people by earlier regimes, which they must break from in order to establish socialism.

I suspect your textbook was written by a quasi-religious organization. Religious bias in school textbooks is widespread. There have been studies that investigated it. Suffice it to say that there are only a handful of companies worldwide that print English language textbooks. Many of these companies print textbooks that are either obviously out of date in their information or have glaring biases, often religious. These are of many subjects, including history and science.

What you may be referring to is Marxism-Leninism, which was purely a political ideology, but one with many religious overtones in the sense that it revised history to conform to its notions of historical destiny. M-L believed that economic systems underlay all of history and that history could be divided into different eras. These eras include slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, in that order. M-L believed that capitalism would be violently overthrown and replaced by an intermediate step of a "dictatorship of the workers", in which a leading party would lead to the establishment of a final socialist state in which the organs of government would cease to exist. (This last step is somewhat in contrast to what Marx suggested. He believed communism would come about spontaneously, without the need of any party to lead it.)

Marxism-Leninism was only religious in the sense that it had all sorts of unfounded and inflexible notions of history and economics. Like many religions, it saw competing schools of thought as tantamount to blasphemy, and so disregarded them. M-L included atheism as parts of its philosophy, but only in the sense that it viewed religion as a means of control over people by earlier regimes, which they must break from in order to establish socialism.

I suspect your textbook was written by a quasi-religious organization. Religious bias in school textbooks is widespread. There have been studies that investigated it. Suffice it to say that there are only a handful of companies worldwide that print English language textbooks. Many of these companies print textbooks that are either obviously out of date in their information or have glaring biases, often religious. These are of many subjects, including history and science.

I don't think so, as the text was accompanied by a picture of what appeared to be a polytheist festival. :crazyeye: Marxism-Leninism was one of the underlying concepts inherant in the course, this was definitely different.

do you have your A2 history tomorrow tru?

what modules you doing?

Nah, I dropped history after GCSE. I wanted to concentrate on sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Maths, Furthur Maths). I almost continued with history (at the expense of chemistry) but the modern history course available didn't really interest me, plus too much writing :mischief:.

ah right ok, yer its pretty boring-the same things i was doing at GCSE pretty much just a bit more in depth, the British History module of it is fairly interesting though.

Or it was just monumentally unsucessful, and as such historically insignificant (other than as a curiosity). I should be able to get a copy of the book tommorow.

I disagree completely with this. I feel it would have been in many books regardless. History today is written by the curious, while the overarching themes are still written by the victorious.

I did find this little article thing: HERE (http://www.loyno.edu/history/journal/1987-8/byrnes.htm).
This discusses the Bolsheviks and religion a bit.

I suspect your textbook was written by a quasi-religious organization.

Why on earth would a claim that some Bolsheviks tried to encourage a form of pagan religion be evidence that the book was written by a quasi-religious organisation? British schools tend not to have this sort of problem, although in some quarters this has changed in recent years. In fact British schools are kind of the opposite to American ones - where American schools are supposed to be secular but religion keeps infiltrating in because so many Americans are Christians, British (state) schools are supposed to offer Christian-based worship, but few do, because so few Britons are Christians...

I don't think so, as the text was accompanied by a picture of what appeared to be a polytheist festival. :crazyeye: Marxism-Leninism was one of the underlying concepts inherant in the course, this was definitely different.

Then the book is either grossly in error, or you are.

Why on earth would a claim that some Bolsheviks tried to encourage a form of pagan religion be evidence that the book was written by a quasi-religious organisation? British schools tend not to have this sort of problem, although in some quarters this has changed in recent years. In fact British schools are kind of the opposite to American ones - where American schools are supposed to be secular but religion keeps infiltrating in because so many Americans are Christians, British (state) schools are supposed to offer Christian-based worship, but few do, because so few Britons are Christians...

Religious organizations like to paint themselves as being constantly under attack, and will often bend the facts to conform to this notion. Religious people like to claim that every idea is a religion of its own, even communism's atheism. Some people even claim that evolution is a religion. I wouldn't be surprised if this notion somehow crept into that textbook. It may not even be a recent writing, but may have been left over from an edition of years ago that never got edited out. It's the only way I can imagine that someone can think up something so outlandish.

The article I read about this was from a news magazine (Newsweek, I think) from years ago. I don't remember exactly when. In it, the article claimed that errors like this are pervasive, in part because of religious bias (which is actually intended more to please the audience than the writer), but also because textbooks tend to be poorly proofread. The same crappy edition will be reprinted over and over again. Supposedly, even the Encyclopedia Britannica was originally compiled by a religious organization (although I'd like to think it has been edited enough over recent years to remove this).

Religious organizations like to paint themselves as being constantly under attack, and will often bend the facts to conform to this notion.

This is true. But I don't see how making the Bolsheviks out to be pagans would be "better", from their point of view, than making them out to be atheists. Since there's no doubt that the Bolsheviks were thoroughly anti-Christian anyway, one would have thought that in this case any insidiously biased religious bods responsible for the book would be happier with the facts as they are. Because a rewriting of history such as you suggest would make the Bolsheviks more favourable to religion than they really were. So I'd suspect that either this is a genuine error, or it's actually true and not very well known.

Still, as I say, I think British textbooks would generally be far freer from such problems than American ones, if only because there is far less demand for "pro-religion" writing here. I don't believe I've ever seen any errors apparently relating to religious bias in textbooks. But it is true that, in general, errors in secondary literature get repeated over and over again without people bothering to check the facts or the primary sources. Ironically, this happens most - as far as I can tell - in books on religion.

It's also worth pointing out that the mere fact that a book is compiled by a religious organisation doesn't necessarily invalidate it. For example, the most recent edition of the New Catholic Encyclopaedia is one of the best and most reliable reference books I've ever encountered (Catholic scholarship tends to be much more disinterested than Protestant scholarship, for some reason). Unfortunately, it takes up an entire shelf...

It was the book that was wrong. The picture in question was actually of the Nazi pagan religion Plotinus mentioned (I asked one of the history teachers) that had somehow been labelled as an equivelent (and non-existant) Bolshevik organisation and been placed in a book about the rise of the UUSR :crazyeye:. Luckily it was only in there as an aside, or i could have lost me marks in the exam...

Aha! I thought that was the most probable thing - obviously just an error, although a pretty incompetent one, rather than some kind of deliberate distortion.

A shame - it would have been very interesting...