Discursive Atheism against Material Religion: Hermeneutic Ambiguity of Soviet Antireligious Museums

Soviet antireligious museums present a curious case study for understanding the complex interplay between ideology, materiality, and spatiality. This article surveys the history of antireligious museums between the early 1920s and late 1940s to understand the inherent tensions of representing religion in secular museum spaces. The fact that antireligious museums were consistently housed in former churches and showcased authentic religious objects rendered them hermeneutically and functionally ambiguous. By tracing diverse receptions of antireligious museums in Soviet, French, German, and Russian émigré accounts, I argue that Soviet antireligious museums are heterotopic spaces in which multiple hermeneutic possibilities coexisted despite curators’ varied tactics for controlling meaning-making within these spaces. The underlying challenge for Soviet museologists was to reconcile the tension between material religion and what I call “discursive atheism,” which refers to a wide range of practices aimed at inculcating atheism through text-saturated banners, posters, and captions. Informed by theoretical insights from the “spatial turn” and material religion studies, the article sheds new light on the complexity of spatial reappropriation and use of religious objects in secular spaces through the historical experience of the Soviet Union.