ABSTRACT
The place of atheism within communist ideology and State-Church relations in communist-ruled countries have long occupied researchers. Recent scholarship, for instance on the dialogue between Marxists and Christians, has highlighted porosities between two groups often seen as opponents. As shown by manifold examples worldwide in the last century, and despite oft-repeated claims, communism did not go automatically hand in hand with atheism, neither for individual communists nor for communist-ruled societies. The reasons why communists thought it important or not to adopt atheism for themselves and to spread it, and how they thought this could be done, deserved further investigation. This raises the question of commonalities and differences with other, non-communist contexts. As this introduction argues, the international dimension was an inherent characteristic of communist reflections on atheism, therefore inviting scholars to explore transnational influences and engage in comparison. It then offers an overview of hypotheses for possible factors strengthening or weakening a trend towards atheism among communists, based on the following chapters and ongoing research. These hypotheses can be grouped into four main categories. A final section looks at the methodological difficulties involved in identifying atheists in recent history.
