"This splendid book skillfully reveals the changing nature of religion in the USSR, the limits of secularization under Communism, and the important place of spirituality in the twentieth century. Smolkin exposes the striking irony of how Soviet authorities found themselves trying to replicate the spiritual and emotional offerings of religion even as they sought to destroy it."--Paul W. Werth, author of The Tsar's Foreign Faiths: Toleration and the Fate of Religious Freedom in Imperial Russia
"This is a very important book, highly innovative and superbly researched. Smolkin has written nothing less than a history of the making--and subsequent unmaking--of Soviet atheism. A must-read."--Denis Kozlov, author of The Readers of "Novyi Mir": Coming to Terms with the Stalinist Past