ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces us to our fourth and final framework: Soviet (atheist) secularism. We begin by noting the heavy influence of French ideas on the Bolsheviks whose 1917 October Revolution destroyed the Czarist ancien regime and ushered in a new and violent form of atheistic secularism. Marx’s views on religion are discussed as is Lenin’s unusual reading of what it demanded. The USSR’s failed imposition of “scientific atheism” is reviewed as are the defects of this secular framework.
