ABSTRACT
The seven decades of Soviet atheism (1917–1987), whether one calls it ‘mass atheism’, ‘scientific atheism’, or ‘state atheism’, was unquestionably a new phenomenon in world history. Mass heterodox movements and heresies were known before, but these developments did not change the core of a religious perception of the world; they did not suspend the belief in God, the Holy Scriptures, or the possibility of the soul’s salvation. The German Anabaptists are a case in point (Bowman 1995; Durnbaugh 2003; Meier 2008). In the past there have been periods of libertine thought, but these touched only the intellectual tip of the social iceberg without altering the religious mood of the masses. The French Enlightenment is a relevant example here (Chartier 1991; Gomez 2003; Bronner 2004).
