The Dissident Library: Religious Life in the Late Soviet Union

In the next session of The Dissident Library, we will continue the conversation begun in the previous seminar on Jewish underground culture as (Non-)Dissidence.

Dissident movements in the fields of religious life and human rights in the USSR can be compared in terms of their common protest practices (open letters, letters to the authorities, demonstrations, etc.). Beyond this focus on practices, however, the concept of dissidence, when applied to religious life in the USSR, promises further insights. In an atheist state like the Soviet Union, does religion automatically equate with dissent? And what are the specificities of religious samizdat and religious rights activism?

To discuss these questions we have invited the editors of Religious Life in the Late Soviet Union From Survival to Revival (1960s–1980s), Nadezhda Belyakova (Bielefeld University) and Barbara Martin (independent scholar, Switzerland), as well as some of the book’s authors: Anna Sidorevich (Sciences Po Paris), Natalia Shlikhta (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy), Vera Klueva (Tyumen’, Russian Academy of Sciences), and Maria Kaspina (independent scholar, Israel) . This edited volume, recently published by Routledge, offers a broad perspective on religious life in the late Soviet era across different religious denominations, geographic and social settings. Our conversation will focus on the specifics of religious samizdat and tamizdat, of religious activism and participation in the human rights movement, and the geography of religious resistance and revival in the USSR.

• Barbara Martin, Nadezhda Beliakova (eds.): Religious Life in the Late Soviet Union. From Survival to Revival (1960s–1980s). London: Routledge 2023

Languages of the discussion: Russian with simultaneous translation into English.

To join the seminar please register here.

The event is part of The Dissident Library, a series of online seminars discussing scientific publications on the Soviet dissident movement directed and organized by Olga Rosenblum.