I don't know whether this will be of interest to anyone but I thought it was worth sharing as a part of history people may not otherwise be aware of. Detailed English Languages sources on this are essentially all but non-existent, so I have quoted the most relevant part of a source to share. As this is text and a few pictures, I've put it in the resources sub-forum and you can make of it what you will. I don't have a point of discussion with this. Its just nice to share knowledge with people occasionally.
Museums in the USSR were state owned and run, and like everything else in Soviet society, underwent a "revolutionary" upheaval as every aspect of society (including it's history) was politicised to serve the goals of the state. Museums were therefore required to be consistent with the policies and positions of official Marxist-Leninist ideology. Museums of Atheism were one of the ways which the Soviet government hope to educate/indoctrinate people in to rejecting religious belief in favour of Marxism-Leninist Atheist as what they regarded as a "scientific" ideology.
There is more information available if you are interested from the source of the extract linked here: Present Pasts
I've included a few images of various museums and exhibits with links to their sources, so its a little more interesting. Enjoy.
The anti-religion museums
While all museums played their part, a whole new category of museum came into being to serve the [Anti-religious] struggle. In the first twenty years of so of the Soviet regime, hundreds of ‘Museums of Atheism’ were established across the Soviet Union, in public buildings, factories, or in former churches, synagogues and mosques, many of them set up by the Militant League [aka. League of Militant Godless]. The famous English archaeologist O.G.S. Crawford in 1932 described just such an ‘anti-religion room’ in a Leningrad House of Culture – a building it shared with a theatre, a crèche, a club for foreign workers, a Civil Defence room and a library.
Vilnius Museum of Atheism, in Lithuania established by the Soviets in a nationalized St. Casimir church (Source)
Maria Eliseevna Kaulen (2001) has examined this development, and described the struggle between those promoting the preservation of historic churches and their contents through ‘museumification’, and those who suspected their motives. This struggle was already evident in February 1919 in the first all-Russia museums conference2 .
Thus two streams came together to form the Soviet anti-religion museums: churches turned into museums by preservationists, and the anti-religion exhibitions of the militant atheists. The former were scarcely more than unused churches, while many of the latter were no paine: anti-religion museums in the soviet union 65 doubt crude and amateurish. By 1929 there were thirty anti-religion museums in the country, the great majority of them former churches (Kaulen 2001, 135). However, in November that year was founded the first such museum of any size and quality. Moscow’s Strastnoi (Passion) Monastery, from whose bell tower the police had in 1905 fired on the demonstrators in the square below, became the Central Anti-Religious Museum. Four years later the French writer René Martel reported that its displays were based on the idea that all religions were similar superstitions, which they demonstrated by juxtaposing ‘idols, fetishes, Christian images and objects of witchcraft’ (Martel 1933, 156), a perhaps rather simplistic analysis of the displays, but a recognition that the new museum was taking a much more sophisticated approach to its mission.
Exhibition view at Museum of Atheism, Leningrad, the former St. Isaac Cathedral, date unknown. (Source)
In 1932 the Leningrad Academy of Sciences invited the ethnologist ‘Tan’ Bogoraz to set up in the great Kazan Cathedral there a Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism. This was a big step forward, not least because of the magnificence and fame of the building, and the collections of the existing State Antireligious Museum in St Isaac’s Cathedral were soon transferred to the new museum. It put anti-religious museums on a completely new level. It must have been partly because of the realization of just how embarrassingly crude many of the earlier ones were, as well as of Stalin’s wartime rapprochement with the Russian Orthodox Church, that in 1941 all but a handful of antireligious museums were either closed or changed into ordinary historical museums (Struve, 1967, 279).
The Moscow museum’s Strastnoi Monastery building had been demolished in 1936 - whether the museum moved elsewhere is not clear, for the museum itself seems to have closed only in 1947, when its director Bonch-Bruevich was poached by the Kazanski Leningrad museum. Under his leadership the latter greatly expanded its activities, not least because Bonch-Bruevich brought with him the entire collections of the Moscow museum. ‘Restoration work began to repair the damage done by German artillery and aircraft during the second World War and a manuscript division was added to the museum’s library. BonchBruevich initiated a publication series, stimulated research and educational work on the subject of atheism, and secured additional facilities for the use of the museum. [He] thwarted repeated attempts to have the Museum closed in his last years “when scientific-atheistic propaganda was neglected”’ (Elliott 1983, 124).
As we shall see from descriptions by visitors, the emphases of the anti-religion museum displays developed over the years. However, three themes ran through them all: exposing the tricks and crimes of the clergy, opposing science to the superstition of religion, and showing how the growth of religion reflected the underlying economic base. We shall see too, that for all they were ‘talking museums’, using a wide variety of media to tell their stories, they remained true to their calling as museums, collecting, caring for and presenting original objects. The anti-religion museums were always distinct from the mere graphic exhibitions so frequently organised by the Militant League.
Exhibition view at Museum of Atheism, Leningrad, the former St. Isaac Cathedral, date unknown. (Source)
Museums in the USSR were state owned and run, and like everything else in Soviet society, underwent a "revolutionary" upheaval as every aspect of society (including it's history) was politicised to serve the goals of the state. Museums were therefore required to be consistent with the policies and positions of official Marxist-Leninist ideology. Museums of Atheism were one of the ways which the Soviet government hope to educate/indoctrinate people in to rejecting religious belief in favour of Marxism-Leninist Atheist as what they regarded as a "scientific" ideology.
There is more information available if you are interested from the source of the extract linked here: Present Pasts
I've included a few images of various museums and exhibits with links to their sources, so its a little more interesting. Enjoy.
The anti-religion museums
While all museums played their part, a whole new category of museum came into being to serve the [Anti-religious] struggle. In the first twenty years of so of the Soviet regime, hundreds of ‘Museums of Atheism’ were established across the Soviet Union, in public buildings, factories, or in former churches, synagogues and mosques, many of them set up by the Militant League [aka. League of Militant Godless]. The famous English archaeologist O.G.S. Crawford in 1932 described just such an ‘anti-religion room’ in a Leningrad House of Culture – a building it shared with a theatre, a crèche, a club for foreign workers, a Civil Defence room and a library.
The anti-religious room is arranged as a museum. Objects and documents (or facsimiles) are exhibited to show the characteristic features of the Russian church before the Revolution, and of existing religious organisations in capitalist countries. The attitude of the Church to war is indicated by a number of photographs showing its close association with the army... “Otherworldliness” is offset by statistics of church profits and the incomes of church dignitaries, and of such profit-making societies as the Salvation Army. The Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury here share the honours of publicity. The late Czar appears in a passive role - as the exploited rather than the exploiter... The museum technique is here applied to the primitive rites and customs of modern Europe. The method is strictly objective, consisting of a display of facts. It is an example of practical Marxian anthropology, which attracts no attention when it is applied to some remote community in the heart of Africa or Australia (Crawford 1933, 22).
Vilnius Museum of Atheism, in Lithuania established by the Soviets in a nationalized St. Casimir church (Source)
Maria Eliseevna Kaulen (2001) has examined this development, and described the struggle between those promoting the preservation of historic churches and their contents through ‘museumification’, and those who suspected their motives. This struggle was already evident in February 1919 in the first all-Russia museums conference2 .
Thus two streams came together to form the Soviet anti-religion museums: churches turned into museums by preservationists, and the anti-religion exhibitions of the militant atheists. The former were scarcely more than unused churches, while many of the latter were no paine: anti-religion museums in the soviet union 65 doubt crude and amateurish. By 1929 there were thirty anti-religion museums in the country, the great majority of them former churches (Kaulen 2001, 135). However, in November that year was founded the first such museum of any size and quality. Moscow’s Strastnoi (Passion) Monastery, from whose bell tower the police had in 1905 fired on the demonstrators in the square below, became the Central Anti-Religious Museum. Four years later the French writer René Martel reported that its displays were based on the idea that all religions were similar superstitions, which they demonstrated by juxtaposing ‘idols, fetishes, Christian images and objects of witchcraft’ (Martel 1933, 156), a perhaps rather simplistic analysis of the displays, but a recognition that the new museum was taking a much more sophisticated approach to its mission.
Exhibition view at Museum of Atheism, Leningrad, the former St. Isaac Cathedral, date unknown. (Source)
In 1932 the Leningrad Academy of Sciences invited the ethnologist ‘Tan’ Bogoraz to set up in the great Kazan Cathedral there a Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism. This was a big step forward, not least because of the magnificence and fame of the building, and the collections of the existing State Antireligious Museum in St Isaac’s Cathedral were soon transferred to the new museum. It put anti-religious museums on a completely new level. It must have been partly because of the realization of just how embarrassingly crude many of the earlier ones were, as well as of Stalin’s wartime rapprochement with the Russian Orthodox Church, that in 1941 all but a handful of antireligious museums were either closed or changed into ordinary historical museums (Struve, 1967, 279).
The Moscow museum’s Strastnoi Monastery building had been demolished in 1936 - whether the museum moved elsewhere is not clear, for the museum itself seems to have closed only in 1947, when its director Bonch-Bruevich was poached by the Kazanski Leningrad museum. Under his leadership the latter greatly expanded its activities, not least because Bonch-Bruevich brought with him the entire collections of the Moscow museum. ‘Restoration work began to repair the damage done by German artillery and aircraft during the second World War and a manuscript division was added to the museum’s library. BonchBruevich initiated a publication series, stimulated research and educational work on the subject of atheism, and secured additional facilities for the use of the museum. [He] thwarted repeated attempts to have the Museum closed in his last years “when scientific-atheistic propaganda was neglected”’ (Elliott 1983, 124).
As we shall see from descriptions by visitors, the emphases of the anti-religion museum displays developed over the years. However, three themes ran through them all: exposing the tricks and crimes of the clergy, opposing science to the superstition of religion, and showing how the growth of religion reflected the underlying economic base. We shall see too, that for all they were ‘talking museums’, using a wide variety of media to tell their stories, they remained true to their calling as museums, collecting, caring for and presenting original objects. The anti-religion museums were always distinct from the mere graphic exhibitions so frequently organised by the Militant League.
Exhibition view at Museum of Atheism, Leningrad, the former St. Isaac Cathedral, date unknown. (Source)
