Schedule of Events

• Sherman Scholar Discussion
  Wednesday, Oct. 17, 3-5 p.m.
  Dobo Hall Room 132
• Emerging Scholar Presentation
  Thursday, Oct. 18, 7:30 p.m.
  Burney Center
• Sherman Emerging Discussion Friday, Oct.19, 10-11:30 a.m.
  Cameron Hall 133
  
  

Helpful Links

• Dr. Smolkin-Rothrock Weslyan University bio

2012 Sherman Emerging Scholar

Dr. Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock
Topic: A Sacred Space: The Spiritual Life of Soviet Atheism
Thursday, Oct. 18
7:30 p.m.
Burney Center

The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia unleashed a confrontation between scientific atheism and traditional religions. Yet even with its embrace of secularization, the Soviet Union never became an officially atheist state or a society of mass atheism. While the Communist Party waged several aggressive ideological campaigns, most notably during Stalin’s Cultural Revolution, it never managed to “overcome” religion. Indeed, as Dr. Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock argues, religion and believers continued to preoccupy the leadership until the Soviet Union’s collapse. For Communists, the propagation of scientific atheism was not simply about the destruction of churches and the persecution of clergy; it was also about the creation of a Soviet “sacred space,” filled with a distinct atheist cosmology. Communism, moreover, sought to create not just an enchanted public culture, a “political” religion, but also compelling private beliefs and rites that, by giving order and meaning to individual life, bound citizens to the state. Dr. Smolkin-Rothrock will tell the story of an unprecedented attempt to transform atheism into its opposite: a robust worldview with a coherent spiritual center.