Abstract
In 1964 a Soviet propaganda pamphlet, ‘Communism and Religion’, evaluated the impact of the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, on religious beliefs: ‘The mysterious heavens that used to mystify the imagination of every believer have now been conquered by an ordinary young woman Communist who grew up in the society where atheism has become a mass phenomenon!’1
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Notes
I. Ermakov, Kommunizm i religiya (Moscow, 1964), p. 82. 2 She was contrasted with Jerrie Cobb, the American woman pilot who was training to become an astronaut around the same time as Tereshkova. The Soviet press scoffed at Cobb’s piety as presented in the American book A Woman in Space: ‘One of the photographs in the book portrays the woman pilot at prayer. She kneels before the crucifix. The Bible lies on the table in front of her. Jerrie prays for good luck.’ Tereshkova, when shown the photograph, apparently said: ‘Jerrie and I have different wings, that’s all.’ Although never explicitly atheistic, Tereshkova, who had an exemplary biography as a proletarian girl, never deviated from the party line on religion. She had a civil wedding blessed by Khrushchev rather than by a priest, and she did not baptise her daughter, as many women did at that time. M. G. Pismannik, Otnoshenie religii k zhenshchine (Moscow, 1964), p. 24. 3 A number of Soviet sociological studies discussed the gender aspects of popular devotion and religious structure. See I. P. Timchenko, Zhenshchina, religiya, ateizm (Kiev, 1981); N. P. Krasnikov (ed.), Voprosy preodoleniya religioznykh perezhitkov v SSSR (Moscow, 1966); J. Anderson, ‘Out of the Kitchen, out of the Temple: Religion, Atheism and Women in the Soviet Union’, in C. Ramet (ed.), Religious Policy in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, 1993). 4 T. Chumachenko, Gosudarstvo, pravoslavnaya tserkov’, veruyushchie (Moscow, 1999), p. 78. 5 Ibid., p. 79. 6 Compare this with Chumachenko’s argument about the Church being a ‘bearer of national traditions’. Chumachenko, op. cit., p. 123. 7 Stalin continued the persecution of dissenting groups within the Russian Orthodox Church, such as the IPKh (istinno-pravoslavnye khristiane) who did not recognise the legitimacy of the Russian patriarch cooperating with the state. 8 Chumachenko, op. cit., pp. 24–6. 9 Ibid., p. 29. 10 According to M. Shkvarovskii, Russkaya Pravoslavnaya Tserkov’ pri Staline i Khrushcheve (Moscow, 1999), p. 357, at least one-third of all infants born in the RSFSR were baptised in the 1950s. On the growth of religious sentiment in post-war Russia, see E. Zubkova, Russia after War: Hope, Illusions and Disappointments, 1945–57 (Armonk, 1998).
Shkvarovskii, op. cit., p. 357.
C. Lane, Christian Religion in the Soviet Union (London, 1978), pp. 140–1 and Appendix A.
Ibid., p. 149.
On female devotion in nineteenth-century Russia, see B. Meehan Waters, Holy Women of Russia (New York, 1996).
V. B. Zhiromskaya, I. N. Kiselev and Yu. A. Polyakov, Polveka pod grifom ‘sekretno’. Vsesoyuznaya perepis’ naseleniya 1937g. (Moscow, 1996), p. 104.
Teplyakov, cited in Anderson, op. cit., p. 208. Our data do not support Anderson’s argument that more women were found in Orthodox than Baptist congregations.
Again, our data do not support Anderson’s argument that a higher proportion of women were found in Orthodox congregations than non-Orthodox groups.
See B. Engel, Between the Fields and the City: Work, Women and Family in Russia, 1861–1914 (Cambridge, 1994).
I. Korovushkina Paert, ‘Memory and Survival in Stalin’s Russia: Old Believers in the Urals during the 1930-S0s , in P. Thompson and D. Bertraux (eds), On Living through Soviet Russia (Routledge, forthcoming).
A. Kefeli, ‘The Role of Tatar and Kriashen Women in the Transmission of Islamic Knowledge, 1800–70’, in R. Geraci and M. Khodarkovsky (eds), Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia (Ithaca, NJ, 2001), pp. 250–73.
Lane, op. cit., p. 163. About 70 per cent of all Baptist membership had blood ties.
On the role of the family in maintaining Old Believer faith see I. Korovushkina Paert, ‘Popular Religion and Local Identity during the Stalin Revolution: Old Believers in the Urals (1928–41)’, in D. Raleigh (ed.), Provincial Landscapes: the Local Dimensions of Soviet Power (Pittsburgh, 2001).
Ibid., 1. 20. N. N. Sokolova, Pod krovom vsevyshniago (Novosibirsk, 1998), p. 290.
Riigiarhiiv, f. R 1961, n.1, s. 115, 1. 4.
Partei Arkhiiv, f. 1, n. 163, s. 12, 1. 10. On klikushi and the phenomenon of klikushestvo see C. Worobec, Possessed: Women, Witches and Demons in Imperial Russia (Illinois, 2001).
See the discussion of the ascetic concept of manliness in I. Korovushkina Paert, ‘Gender and Salvation: the Old Believers in Imperial Russia’ in L. Edmondson (ed.), Gender in Russian History and Culture, 1880–1990 (Basingstoke, 2001).
Pravda, 18 October 1962. See also D. A. Lowrie and W. C. Fletcher, ‘Khrushchev’s Religious Policy, 1959–64’, in R. H. Marshall (ed.), Aspects of Religion in the Soviet Union, 1917–67 (Chicago, 1971), pp. 133–4.
D. Peris, Storming the Heavens: the Soviet League of the Militant Godless (Ithaca, 1998).
For more on this, see Lowrie and Fletcher, op. cit., pp. 135–43.
Riigiarhiiv, R–1989, n.2, s. 23, 1. 7, Chumachenko, op. cit., p. 201.
Chumachenko, op. cit., p. 203.
Ibid., p. 204.
Riigiarhiiv, f. R–1961, n. 1, s. 131, 1. 22.
Ibid., 1. 6. For example, in 1962 and 1963 the convent had received several foreign delegations, including those from the Protestant churches in France, Church of Brethren from the USA, the delegation of the Constantinople Patriarchy, Malabar Church in India and the representatives of the SouthEast Asian Christian Conference from Indonesia. The convent invited the guests to participate in church services, treated them with dinners and rang all the bells to greet them.
Ibid., 1. 13.
Ibid., 1. 24.
A. Romanov, ‘Bez vesti propavshie’, Nauka i religiya, no. 5, 1963, pp. 60–4.
Compare with the rhetoric of rationalising domesticity, S. E. Reid, ‘Cold War in the Kitchen: Gender and the De-Stalinization of Consumer Taste in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev’, Slavic Review, vol. 61, no. 2, 2002, pp. 242–9.
A number of films produced in the 1960s were inspired by Tuchi nad Borskom (Mosfilm, 1960), dir. Vasilii Ordynskii; Greshnitsa (Mosfilm, 1962), dir. F. Filippov; Tsvetok na kamne (Dovzhenko, 1962), dir. S. Paradjanov; Obmanutye (Riga, 1961), dirs A. Neretniek, M. Rudzitis; Armageddon (Moldova-film, 1962), dir. M. Izrailev.
Kh.-M. Khashaev, Perezhitki shariata i vrednykh adatov (Makhachkala, 1963), p. 14. On earlier communist unveiling campaigns in Soviet Central Asia, see D. T. Northrop, ‘Hujum: Unveiling Campaigns and Local Responses in Uzbekistan, 1927’, in Raleigh, op. cit., pp. 125–45.
G. Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat: Muslim Women and Revolutionary Struggle in Soviet Central Asia, 1919–29 (Princeton, 1974).
Interview with Ul’yana Glukhova (the names are changed) (14 July 1998) Elovo, Perm’ oblast’.
On Christian dissident literature see M. Meerson-Aksenov and B. Shragin (eds), The Political, Social and Religious Thought of Russian Samizdat: an Anthology (Belmont, Mass., 1977).
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Paert, I. (2004). Demystifying the Heavens: Women, Religion and Khrushchev’s Anti-religious Campaign, 1954–64. In: Ilič, M., Reid, S.E., Attwood, L. (eds) Women in the Khrushchev Era. Studies in Russian and East European History and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523432_11
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