Into the Cosmos by James T. Andrews & Asif A. Siddiqi

Author:James T. Andrews & Asif A. Siddiqi [Andrews, James T. & Siddiqi, Asif A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-08-17T00:44:48+00:00

Cosmic Enlightenment  179

Figure 7.1. Village planetarium lecture, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, in the early 1960s.

Source: Image courtesy of Kharkov Planetarium imeni Iu. A. Gagarina.

against the church.82 Positive measures, which grew in importance by

the late 1950s, entailed a campaign of mass enlightenment. In practice,

this meant a calling to arms of the “Knowledge” Society (Obshchestvo

“Znanie”), the primary Soviet institution charged with the development

of the new Communist citizen on the ground and, until 1964, the largest

institution involved in the theoretical development and practical applica-

tion of atheist education.83

Party cadres and intelligentsia enthusiasts were urged to form

local-level organizations (atheist clubs, Houses of Atheism, atheist de-

partments in educational institutions, and atheist sections in local party

organs, among others). These new institutions held atheist film screen-

ings, hosted debates, and question-and-answer sessions that brought

together believers and atheists, and staged atheist holidays to compete

with their religious equivalents, and—in what was the most frequently

employed form of atheist education—organized lectures by members of

the “Knowledge” Society.84 With the intensification of atheist propaganda

over the course of the 1950s, the “Knowledge” Society received a new

journal, titled Nauka i religiia (Science and religion), which after several years of discussion and preparation began publication in 1959. The jour-

180  Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock

nal was aimed at both the mass reader and the propaganda worker and

covered the history of religion, the party’s evolving position on religion

and atheism, and of course the popularization of scientific achievements

and the scientific-materialist worldview. It also explicitly addressed the

philosophical and religious issues raised by space exploration in period-

ic articles on the subject that fell under the rubric “Man: Master of Na-

ture.”85 The inside cover of the first issue proudly displayed the blueprint

for the monument to Soviet space exploration planned for construction

at Moscow’s Exhibition of National Economic Achievements (VDNKh).86

At the turn of the decade, the society was given the brand-new Moscow

House of Scientific Atheism as well as the administration of the Moscow

Planetarium, which became a critical site of atheistic activity—a cata-

lyst for linking cosmic enlightenment with antireligious thought (figure

7.1).87

A Planetarium for Believers and Bibles for Cosmonauts

In the post-Stalinist Soviet Union, the planetarium was widely con-

sidered to be one of the most effective spaces in which to conduct atheist

work, admired for its aesthetically pleasing and intellectually engaging

methodology that emphasized the experiential component of education.

The leadership’s faith in the atheist potential of the planetarium was

made evident by the state’s significant investment of resources into the

construction of planetariums, despite the fact that as late as 1959, even

the most central Soviet planetarium—the Moscow Planetarium—contin-

ued to operate at a loss.88 With the revival of the antireligious campaign

in the mid-1950s, the number of planetariums was expanded, as was the

scope of their atheist work. The thirteen planetariums that existed in the

USSR in the early 1950s were considered insufficient, and atheists called

for a planetarium in every major Soviet city.89 By 1973 the Soviet Union

had more than seventy planetariums, the majority of which were con-

structed over the course of the Khrushchev era.90

The state’s investment in the planetarium’s atheist function was like-

wise evident in the fact that in the spring of 1959 the Soviet Council of

Ministers transferred

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.