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[ATHEISM FOR SOVIET BULGARIANS] Za ada i raya. Blagochestivi razmishleniya za ada i raya, zlite duhove i angelite, greshnitsite i pravednitsite i za pŭtishtata kŭm spasenieto [i.e. On Hell and Heaven. Pious Reflections on Hell and Heaven, Evil Spirits and Angels, Sinners and the Righteous, and on the Path to Salvation]

Skvortsov-Stepanov, I.

Item #2781

Kyiv: Dăržavno izdatelstvo na nacionalnite malcinstva v USSR, 1938. 168 pp.: ill. 20x14 cm. In original illustrated cardboards. Rubbed and bumped, otherwise very good and clean copy.

One of 850 copies. In Bulgarian.

Written by a prominent Bolshevik, this edition of the popular atheist book also serves as an example of early Soviet publishing in minority languages. The State Publishing House of the National Minorities of the Ukrainian SSR operated from 1926 to 1941 and issued literature in German, Polish, Yiddish, Czech, and Bulgarian. Bulgarian communities concentrated in southern Ukraine (in present-day Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, and Mykolaiv regions, as well as the Azov Sea area) received textbooks, fiction, and anti-religious literature published in their mother tongue.

This book “Pious Reflections” was first published in Russian in 1920. Its author, Ivan Skvortsov (pseudonym Stepanov; 1870–1928) was a prominent Bolshevik and gained fame for the translation of “Das Kapital” by Karl Marx, undertaken together with V. Bazarov and A. Bogdanov in 1907–1909. Lenin later considered this version to be the finest translation available, and as a result, it became the standard version in the USSR. After the 1917 revolution, Skvortsov edited several major Bolshevik newspapers and served as director of the Lenin Institute under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov was an ardent atheist, a leading figure of the League of Militant Atheists, and one of the main drivers of the atheist propaganda campaign, together with Yemelyan Yaroslavsky. His polemic with M. Pokrovsky, who argued that religion was rooted in the fear of death, was significant for the history of scientific atheism in the USSR. Skvortsov-Stepanov employed original tactics in his anti-religious propaganda: for instance, he would speak as if he were an ordinary believer, posing the question: “If the Church teaches that all authority comes from God, then why did it oppose Soviet power?”

After his death in 1928, he was cremated at the First Moscow Crematorium (opened a year earlier), and his brain was transferred to the Brain Institute.

In “Pious Reflections”, Skvortsov-Stepanov sets out to expose the harmful religious beliefs that lingered among much of the population. Writing in a popular style and drawing on the "lives of the saints" (which he presents as fictional) the author lays bare the class foundations of religion and its role in class-based exploitation.

Not found in Worldcat.

Price: $650.00

Status: On Hold