Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Atheism
- The Cambridge History of Atheism
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Preliminaries
- Part II Atheisms in History
- Part III Reformation, Renaissance, Enlightenment
- Part IV Classical Modernity: Philosophical and Scientific Currents
- Part V Classical Modernity: Social and Political Currents
- 23 The French Revolution
- 24 Freethinkers, Atheists, and Anticlericals: Spanish American Struggles for Independence
- 25 Marx and Marxisms
- 26 Nineteenth-Century Russia
- 27 Secularism and Humanism
- 28 Bertrand Russell
- 29 Robert Ingersoll
- 30 Early Women’s Movement
- 31 Early African American Secularism
- Part VI Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: Intellectual and Artistic Currents
- Part VII Lived Atheism in the Twentieth- and Twenty-First Centuries: Case-Studies
- Part VIII Emerging Atheisms in the Twenty-First Century
- Part IX Conclusion
- Index
- References
26 - Nineteenth-Century Russia
from Part V - Classical Modernity: Social and Political Currents
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 September 2021
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Atheism
- The Cambridge History of Atheism
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Preliminaries
- Part II Atheisms in History
- Part III Reformation, Renaissance, Enlightenment
- Part IV Classical Modernity: Philosophical and Scientific Currents
- Part V Classical Modernity: Social and Political Currents
- 23 The French Revolution
- 24 Freethinkers, Atheists, and Anticlericals: Spanish American Struggles for Independence
- 25 Marx and Marxisms
- 26 Nineteenth-Century Russia
- 27 Secularism and Humanism
- 28 Bertrand Russell
- 29 Robert Ingersoll
- 30 Early Women’s Movement
- 31 Early African American Secularism
- Part VI Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: Intellectual and Artistic Currents
- Part VII Lived Atheism in the Twentieth- and Twenty-First Centuries: Case-Studies
- Part VIII Emerging Atheisms in the Twenty-First Century
- Part IX Conclusion
- Index
- References
Summary
In this chapter, atheism is treated as the acceptance of the proposition that God does not exist. In Imperial Russia, where piety remained a powerful social and political norm well into the nineteenth century, individuals who accepted this proposition were forced to contend with three entangled problems. One was the relationship between piety and morality: the possibility of articulating secular norms of good and evil and of behaving according to such norms in the absence of faith in God and the afterlife. Denying God’s existence hence entailed asserting one’s capacity to set oneself rules. A second recurring theme was the denial of God’s status as a providential being, creator of the natural world, whose will structures human destinies. In Russia, the assertion that God does not exist was also an assertion of the power of the individual to shape his or her own fate, or to cast aside the concept of fate altogether.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Atheism , pp. 482 - 499Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021
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Suggestions for Further Reading
Dostoevsky, F. 2000. Demons, trans. R. Pevear and L. Volokhonsky. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Frede, V. 2011. Doubt, Atheism, and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Intelligentsia. Madison, WI: Wisconsin University Press.Google Scholar
Paperno, I. 1988. Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism: A Study in the Semiotics of Behavior. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Read, C. 1979. Religion, Revolution and the Russian Intelligentsia, 1900–1912: The Vekhi Debate and its Intellectual Background. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Vucinich, A. 1988. Darwin in Russian Thought. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar