The gory and grotesque art of Soviet antireligious propaganda

The gory and grotesque art of Soviet antireligious propaganda
▻http://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_gory_and_grotesque_art_of_soviet_antireligious_propaganda1

“The images below are from the Soviet anti-religious magazine, Bezbozhnik, which translates to “Atheist” or “The Godless.” It ran from 1922 to 1941, and its daily edition, “The Godless at the Workplace,” ran from 1923 to 1931. The scathing publication was founded by the League of Militant Atheists, an organization of the Soviet Communist Party members, members of its youth league, workers and veterans, so while it was in many ways a party project, it was not state-sponsored satire.

The Soviet Union adopted a formal position of state-atheism after the revolution but it wasn’t a clean break. The expropriation of church property and the murder or persecution of clergy was certainly the most obvious supplantation of power, but the USSR was a giant mass of land, most of it rural and much of it pious, so the cultural crusade against religion was an ongoing campaign for the hearts and minds of citizens who might resist a sudden massive secularization. The monstrous, violent art you see below depicted religion as the enemy of the worker and footman to capitalism. You’ll notice a wide array of religions depicted, as the USSR was very religiously diverse.”

Early Soviet antireligious propaganda
▻http://thecharnelhouse.org/2013/03/01/soviet-antireligious-propaganda

Image depicting a lynching in America with the mocking title, “God’s country”

Trotsky and the Red Army prepare to storm Heaven
▻http://thecharnelhouse.org/2015/01/02/bolshevik-antireligious-propaganda-part-ii-trotsky-and-the-red-army

Works of Karl Marx 1843
A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Introduction
▻http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm

“For Germany, the criticism of religion has been essentially completed, and the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.

The profane existence of error is compromised as soon as its heavenly oratio pro aris et focis [“speech for the altars and hearths,” i.e., for God and country] has been refuted. Man, who has found only the reflection of himself in the fantastic reality of heaven, where he sought a superman, will no longer feel disposed to find the mere appearance of himself, the non-man [Unmensch], where he seeks and must seek his true reality.”

#urss #propagande #religion #bolchevisme #Marx #athéisme