God-Building and Authoritarianism: A Discussion of Bolshevism and Religion

The thesis that Socialism and Communism have some traits in common with religion has often been argued for. Within the current of so-called “left Bolshevism”, here we analyze the well-known positions of A.V. Lunacharsky on religion, which he developed in close connection with Gorky’s God-building, and A.A. Bogdanov’s critique of religion and religious language as a form of authoritarian ideology. Their opposite views on religion were formulated within the same context, where revolution, for both of them, had to invest not only the political structures, but also the ways of thinking and feeling, of making sense of life and death. While for Lunacharsky the faith in the collective and the drive toward happiness for all should be expressed in a religious form, according to Bogdanov Socialism has to be a “scientific” conception of the world. After 1917 both the thinkers reasserted the importance respectively of feelings and passions, and of the new proletarian science.