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Godless Utopia

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The iconography of atheism: Soviets against God!

"We've finished the earthly tsars and we're coming for the heavenly ones!" Thus spoke the Soviet Union's first atheist propagandists as they declared war on "the opium of the people" across the USSR. Soviet atheism is the great lost subject of the 20th century. Pope Pius XI led a "crusade of prayer" against it; George Orwell satirized it in Animal Farm; the Nazis called it a Jewish plot; Franklin D. Roosevelt pressured Stalin to abandon it: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn blamed it for Russia's catastrophes; and Ronald Reagan put it at the core of his "Evil Empire" speech. And yet, because the Soviet Union promoted atheism almost entirely for domestic consumption, decades' worth of arcane and astonishing anti-religious imagery remains unknown in the West.

Drawing on the early Soviet atheist magazines Godless and Godless at the Machine, and postwar posters by Communist Party publishers, author Roland Elliott Brown presents an unsettling tour of atheist ideology in the USSR. Here are uncanny, imaginative and downright blasphemous visions from the very guts of the Soviet atheist apparatus: sinister priests rub shoulders with cross-bearing colonial torturers, greedy mullahs, a cyclopean Jehovah and a crypto-fascist Jesus; Russian cosmonauts mock God from space while vigilant border guards nab American Bible smugglers. Godless Utopia is the occult grimoire of a lost socialist anti-theology.


Drawing on the early Soviet atheist magazines Godless and Godless atthe Machine, and postwar posters by Communist Party publishers, the authorpresents an unsettling tour of atheist ideology in the USSR.
Blasphemous shock and awe were a major part of the Bolshevik aesthetic, as seen in the covers of Godless magazine.--Rolland Elliot Brown "Spectator UK"
Godless Utopia: Soviet Anti-Religious Propaganda' collects the most striking examples of the form.--Cory Doctorow "Boing Boing"
In the Soviet Union, atheism became government policy, enforced by the state and encouraged by anti-religious posters and magazines. These have been collected in Roland Elliott Brown's [Godless Utopia].--Cory Doctorow "Guardian"
Roland Elliott Brown explains how Lenin set the groundwork to overthrow the Soviet Union's religious institutions -- and how a raft of brightly coloured propaganda posters became the leader's weapon of choice.--Emily Gosling "Calvert Journal"
Since the Soviet Union's promotion of atheism was almost entirely targeted at those living within it, the posters, editorial illustrations, and other propaganda associated with it are largely unknown to Western designers.--Emily Gosling "AIGA"
Students of Russian history will welcome the publication of "Godless Utopia" this month, but so too will art historians, religious scholars, as well as observers of Russia's cultural history and indeed anyone who has embarked on the quixotic search for the elusive Russian soul.--Jennifer Eremeeva "Moscow Times"

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Product Details

  • Fuel Brand
  • Oct 8, 2019 Pub Date:
  • 0995745579 ISBN-10:
  • 9780995745575 ISBN-13:
  • 192 Pages
  • 8.1 in * 6.6 in * 0.9 in Dimensions:
  • 1 lb Weight: