Religion and the Russian Revolution: Conflicts, Encounters, and Transformations

On the eve of World War I, the Russian Empire was among the most diverse in the world, and religious identity was the single most important factor for determining a subject's relation to the imperial state. The revolutions of 1917 overturned the Empire's religious world. The Provisional Government sought to disentangle the state from its long-standing ties to the Orthodox Church; minority religious groups looked forward to greater freedom of practice; and, with the Communist Revolution of October 1917, Bolshevik anti-religious activists looked to bring about the death of God and the birth of the New Soviet Person. Drawing on archives, periodicals, ego-documents, visual imagery, and other key sources, Religion and the Russian Revolution examines not only how diverse religious groups and individual actors were affected by revolutionary politics, but also the critical role religious discourses and practices played in shaping revolutionary imagery and action. The chapters dive into the rich and varied landscape of personal and collective religious experiences before, during, and after the 1917 Revolutions. In so doing, the contributions gathered in this volume document perceptions of violence, everyday religious practices, visual imaginaries, and new definitions of "religion" and "the sacred" across Russia. By rethinking the religious implications and consequences of this radical era, Religion and the Russian Revolution forcefully illustrates that the Revolutions of 1917 cannot be fully understood without exploring the ways in which the sacred and the revolutionary overlapped and informed each other.