Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

ities with nine million persons studying, with most of these universities including a faculty on scientific atheism. Alone in Belorussia there are eighty schools devoted exclusively to the education of atheist lec- turers. Poor Quality of Atheist Program These statistics notwithstanding, reports about poorly attended. lec- tures and their poor quality appear regularly in the Soviet press. In one not untypical story reported by Sovetskaia Rossia a resourceful lecturer was exposed to criticism. Earning his living through honorariums from lectures, he was booked to hold three lectures on the same evening in different loca- tions. He succeeded in signing the register at each place, staying long enough to collect his fee and moving on to the next one, with no one the wiser since no one showed up for the lectures anyway. The persistent problem with all this atheist propaganda was that al- though they claimed to teach “scientific atheism,” it was not very scien- tific.'5 The Academy of Sciences had already established a sector for atheism within the institute of philosophy in 1959. As a result, numerous scientific studies were undertaken, notably sociological studies on religiosity by A. I. Klibanov and others but also by party workers so that the results varied in quality.!6 Following the decision of. the Central Committee in January 1964, an institute of scientific atheism was established in the Academy of Social Sciences and became responsible for the coordination of all scientific atheist work. Since’ then, noticeable improvement in research and publications can be observed and there is also some broadening of the scope of research, although ideological restrictions still place restraints on the quality. A major conference in 1974 demonstrated the improved quality of the research and also demonstrated some increase in an interdisciplinary approach.!7 The continuing problem with atheist propaganda has been the sim- plistic definition of religion as “anti-scientific world-view, spiritual product of a mixed-up world.’’!8 It may be true that the churches of the Middle Ages and the Russian Orthodox Church of the nineteenth century were ob- scurantist and intolerant, but it is unfair to describe the present church that way. As long as Soviet scholars continue to claim that the professed interest 302 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II of the modern church in such questions as war and peace, in international affairs, and in specific questions about their country’s future are merely speculative attempts to appeal to the young people, their own claims to scholarship will not be taken seriously.!® So far, the Soviet Union has not produced a significant atheist philosopher, the worship of Lenin notwith- standing. A primary emphasis of Soviet atheism in recent years has been the so- called “individual work with believers.” This represents