The Religiosity of Soviet youth in the Mirror of Domestic Social Studies of the 1920-1970s.

The relevance of the work is related to the heuristic significance of clarifying the religious values place in the life of Soviet society, as well as the need for a historiographical understanding of the process of relaying confessional traditions in the Soviet Union. The purpose of the research: a critical analysis of information on religiosity level of Soviet youth, published by Russian authors in the 1920–1970s. Objectives: to study the statistical data of domestic social scientists regarding the religiosity of Soviet youth in the 1920–1970s; to consider the factors that influenced such statistics; to assess the correspondence of the published statistics to the real picture of the younger generations of Soviet citizens attitude to confessional values. Methods. During the preparation of the paper the author relied on the traditional methodology of historical and sociological research: historical-statistical, comparative-historical methods, as well as the method of historical induction. Results. The paper examines the dynamics of changes in data on the religiosity of young USSR citizens obtained by Soviet social scientists during surveys of the 1920–1970s, examines the causes of a sharp drop in the declared level of religiosity of schoolchildren and students since the 1930s, compares published and unpublished information about the attitude of representatives of these social categories to confessional culture. Conclusions. The research shows that the level of youth religiosity demonstrated by Soviet social studies has decreased tenfold over the past five decades. It is concluded that the data on the relevant issues were published by voters, reflecting only the results of the polls acceptable from an ideological point of view. To obtain such results, social scientists were usually helped by the interviewees themselves, who sought to remain "conscious" citizens in the eyes of the observing authorities. At the same time, the outwardly demonstrated skepticism of religion by young people often hid doubts about the atheistic picture of the world or interest in confessional traditions as one of the foundations of culture.