Abstract

The 1949 edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia defines atheism as follows: “An authentically scientific theory of militant atheism is found in the ingenious studies of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. Marxist-Leninist atheism radically distinguishes itself from all previous forms of atheism and opens a new era in the struggle against religious beliefs. The proletarian atheism developed by Marx and Engels is an atheism coherent from beginning to end, and an aggressive one at that. While pre-Marxist, bourgeois atheism was based on a metaphysical materialism, the proletarian one is based on the granite foundations of historical and dialectical materialism — that powerful instrument of scientific knowledge and revolutionary transformation of reality….