Konstantin Antonov, Pavel Kostylev, Tatiana Folieva

"Scientific Atheism" as a Case for Discussion (Responses of the Volume's Authors to Reviews)

Konstantin Antonov- Head of Department of Philosophy of Religion and Religious Aspects of Culture, Faculty of Theology, St. Tikhon' Orthodox University (Moscow, Russia). konstanturg@yandex.ru

Pavel Kostylev - Senior Lecturer of Department of Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies, Faculty of Philosophy, M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia). relig@yandex.ru

Tatiana Folieva - Research Fellow, St. Tikhon's Orthodox University (Moscow, Russia). tatiana_folieva@yahoo.com

In their reactions to A. Kyrlezhev's and M. Shakhnovich's reviews, the authors of the volume under discussion provide further clarifications of key methodological issues. They stress that the volume pursued academic goals rather than engaging in a wider public debate. Speaking of the Soviet science of religion, they prefer the concept of "extreme science" instead of "pseudoscience" or "normal science in extreme conditions". The volume focused on creating a framework of understanding the phenomenon and did not claim to cover the variety of archival materials. The authors outline further ways of developing the historiography of religious studies in Russia, in connection with the broader intellectual history, as well as the extension of the sources.

Keywords: religious studies, scientific atheism, extreme science, intellectual history, institutionalization, periodization, source basis.

Antonov K., Kostylev P., Folieva T. "Scientific atheism" as a reason for discussion. Reaction of the authors of the monograph to published reviews / / State, religion, Church in Russia and abroad. 2015. N 1 (33). С. 207 - 217. Antonov, K., Kostylev, P. and Folieva, T. (2015) "'Scientific Atheism' as a Case for Discussion (Responses of the Volume's Authors to Reviews)", Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkov' v Rossii i za rubezhom 33 (1): 207 - 217.

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Konstantin Antonov: "A number of critical arguments about our work are related to a lack of understanding of the purpose and objectives of the book..."

First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all those who responded in one way or another to the appearance of our book and expressed their critical comments about our project as a whole or its various components. At the same time, I think it is important to clarify a number of key points, polemically focusing them in the context of the reflections of A. I. Kyrlezhev and M. M. Shakhnovich - as the most detailed analyses of our work.

It should be emphasized once again that the authors of the collection pursued precisely scientific goals. Reviewers and critics, however, pay attention mainly to its extra-scientific connotations. It is considered in the context of the" desovietization "of Russian humanities (A. I. Kyrlezhev), its "clericalization" (M. M. Shakhnovich), etc. This, of course, is very flattering for the authors and shows that they have paid attention to such aspects of the history of Russian religious studies that are of fundamental importance for the self-understanding and self-determination of the modern religious studies community. However, our general opinion is that the self-understanding of science should be carried out by scientific, not journalistic means.

Therefore, we should specifically mention the topic of "desovietization"that has arisen in connection with the interpretation of the goals and results of our work. Of course, we did not set ourselves such a goal. Rather, here we can talk about a problem that has already caused some controversy in the author's team. While some authors consider understanding the problematic and tragic aspects of "scientific atheism", consciously overcoming a number of features of thinking, ethos, and functioning of the organizational structure of the national science of religion inherited from the Soviet era, to be necessary, others rightly fear a sweeping denigration of the Soviet era as a whole, as well as a number of respected researchers who belonged to it and worked before the present tense, in particular. There is no direct contradiction between these intentions: respect for the past, especially when it becomes the subject of your research, and a critical (in the scientific sense of the word) attitude towards it are quite compatible. However, these attitudes predispose authors to place accents and give ratings in different ways, in different directions.-

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interpret the results of the study. At the same time, both sides tend to suspect the opponent that he is somehow returning to the established standard positions that were reflected in the "Preface" to the collection and overcoming of which was stated as one of the tasks of research 1. This shows how difficult it is to overcome such cliches.

Closely related to what has been said about "desovietization" is the characterization of "scientific atheism" as a pseudoscience (primarily in A. I. Kyrlezhev). In contrast, I would insist on the term "extreme science" - as more accurate. In the case of the science of religion of the Soviet era, to speak of "pseudoscientific", that is, of simulating scientific activity, seems an unjustified exaggeration. At the same time, in contrast to M. M. Shakhnovich, I do not believe that "extreme science" is the same as normal science, only subjected to persecution.

It should be noted, on the one hand, that" scientific atheism " had quite a working method and gave quite meaningful, verifiable results. At the same time, the claim of this method to a scientific monopoly, its rigid connection with the monopolistically dominant worldview, the acceptance of its use (at least declarative) as a criterion of political reliability of a scientist, as well as the lack of alternatives to approaches that have become a consequence of this combination, and the deformation of the scientific ethos-all this gives sufficient grounds to speak about the extreme nature of the rules of the scientific game At the same time, they were not something purely external for scientists, but were internalized by them in the process of socialization in the scientific community. In particular, these rules of the Soviet-era "discourse on religion" were the focus of my research.2
1. See: "Science of Religion", "scientific atheism", "Religious Studies": actual problems of scientific study of religion in Russia of the XX-beginning of the XXI century. Edited by K. M. Antonov, Moscow, PSTGU, 2014, pp. 9-15. - An example of such a disagreement is the polemic between P. N. Kostylev and K. M. Antonov on the portal religious-life.ru See: Kostylev P. N. On the criticism of the ethical approach to the history of Russian religious studies. Religious life; Antonov K. M. Ethical approach or analysis of ethos? In continuation of the discussion / / Religious life.

2. Underestimation of this fact leads to the fact that most of M. M. Shakhnovich's criticisms miss the target, and the examples given rather confirm the relevance of the problems posed than refute certain positions. Thus, the author tries to contrast Putintsev as a "whistleblower" with the "real scientist" Bonch-Bruevich. The problem is that Putintsev's "unmasking" is carried out in exact accordance with the well-known principle of " par-

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Such an approach opens up the possibility of avoiding both ethical assessments of certain authors and their activities, and subjectivism, which is inevitable when trying to divide members of the scientific community into "real researchers" and "ideologists-propagandists-popularizers-exposers" (it is assumed that the former were engaged in normal science, while the latter they were precisely "pseudoscientists", so there is no room for the concept of "extreme science"). The question arises: how did it happen that the latter often occupied such high positions in the scientific hierarchy? Does not this fact itself indicate that the rules of the game in the scientific community of those years were far from normal? And if we describe Soviet literature based only on the works of G. Markov and others. if it is not true, then to describe the peculiarities of the literary process in the USSR and the rules of the game inherent in the community of writers, bypassing the place of their creativity in this process, means to completely lose sight of the subject of your research.

A number of critical arguments against our work are connected with insufficient attention to the factual side of the case, from the point of view of the critics. These arguments seem to be based on a lack of understanding of the purpose and objectives of the book. It is assumed that we were supposed to write either a complete systematic history of Russian religious studies 3, or a collection of historical texts.-

the theory of social relations" and the methodology of class analysis, in respect of which Bonch-Bruevich was one of the founders. This example rather confirms the thesis that the ethos of scientific polemics at that time was problematic, in which it was not possible to draw a clear distinction between purely scientific and political arguments, between rhetoric and substantive discussion ("the pockmarked scientist"), between polemics and denunciation. The book deals with similar cases in the relationships of A. T. Lukachevsky, N. M. Matorin and P. F. Preobrazhensky, P. Fedoseyev and V. V. Sarabyanova street. The question that we are asking is the question of the conditions for the possibility of such a situation when qualified scientific and revealing texts, as well as the testimony of the person under investigation, could be signed with the same name, when elements of both could coexist within the same text. About such a triple role, for example, A. I. Klibanov, whose scientific qualification is beyond any doubt, see research based on archival materials: Popovsky M. A. Chapter XIII. Before leaving for eternity (1957-1977) / / M. A. Popovsky. Russian men tell me... Followers of Leo Tolstoy in the Soviet Union (1918-1977). London, 1983 [http://krotov.info/libr_min/16_p/op/ovsky_02.htm#13; accessed 16.02.2015]. The ethical problems of Soviet science as a whole are discussed in Popovsky's book "Controlled Science"on a large empirical basis.

3. This can include accusations of an excessively narrow understanding of "religious studies", claims to the bibliographic works of Vorontsova and Koltsov, and references to the exclusive attention paid to the Soviet period (in fact, before the revolution).-

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bibliographic and archival research essays. From my point of view, the time for writing such a systematic work has not yet come, and the main problem of the historiography of Russian religious studies (and here I must disagree with T. A. Folieva) is methodology, and not the search and finding of new facts. The very construction of a cognitive attitude to the subject is here a complexity that needs reflection. The discovery of new facts ( including archival data) is certainly always desirable in any science. But the fact is that it is impossible to find all the facts at once; the scientist's attention always picks out some of them, and different approaches draw his attention to different facts, isolate facts from the initial mass of raw material in different ways, and give the selected facts different cognitive value. Approaches based on unreflected cliches are more harmful than useful for science. The facts found need to be interpreted correctly, and this is not something that is taken for granted.4
So, the search for an adequate research methodology seems to be the primary task in studying the history of Russian science of religion. As a result of these methodological poss-

large sections are devoted to revolutionary science in Antonov's articles "From pre-revolutionary science of Religion to Soviet Religious Studies..." and on the concept of Schmidt, in Kostylev's article on religious studies at Moscow State University, in Safronov's article on the study of"sects").

4. Let us again give an example from the reflections of M. M. Shakhnovich. Interpreting a quote from Ginzburg's diary, the author shows us "how an intellectual who did not share all the values of the Soviet system tried to find a place in society without compromising his principles" (pp. 189-190). This raises a purely methodological question: is it possible, based on the experience of such exceptional personalities as L. Ya. Ginzburg, to try to give a general description of the" discourse on religion " of the Soviet era? What about the mass of ordinary candidates and doctors of sciences who, without having the same degree of reflexivity and expression of the personal principle that Ginzburg possessed, were guided much more by "searching for a place" than by "principles", especially since they did not experience any conflict between principles and place? But were they really all "ideologues and propagandists"? Isn't the price that the author pays for saving Soviet science great by throwing away most of the scientific product it produces? However, the same quote can be understood quite differently: the authorities, including the scientific ones, were not interested in the very fact of applying sociological methods, but demanded the use of completely specific methods, considering them to be the only scientific and, at the same time, politically trustworthy - and therefore those who applied them received everything, and those who applied them received everything. others - nothing. In other words, the thesis about the extreme nature of Soviet-era science is confirmed rather than refuted by this quote, if we analyze it not from the point of view of the struggle for the survival of an individual, but from the point of view of general rules in force in the community.

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In this book, some new approaches and hypotheses were proposed and tested on specific cases. Unfortunately, the authors of the critical responses did not attempt to falsify these hypotheses. As a rule, the very legitimacy or expediency of their nomination was questioned, and some hidden intentions were seen behind them.5 This, on the one hand, shows that the book "touches" the reader, but, on the other hand, it leads away from discussing the problems that the authors wanted to draw attention to.

Let's hope that a meaningful discussion of these problems will still take place, and our knowledge of the history of Russian religious studies will benefit from this.

Pavel Kostylev: "The value of our work lies in a holistic statement about the history of Russian religious studies..."

1. Criticizing the completeness of sources is the best way to paralyze any scientific research, reducing it to potentially endless historiographical research. The value of our work lies, in my opinion, not in a thorough study of the "fullness of sources" (which in the case of Soviet religious studies, perhaps, will not be possible for a long time) and not in a historiographical inventory of sources or an annotated bibliography of Russian religious studies, but in a holistic and meaningful statement about the history of Russian religious studies, based on, but a fairly representative list of sources. A source study would eliminate the very possibility of making a meaningful statement about history, putting history in a modern context. That is why the collective monograph under discussion has provoked and will continue to provoke criticism of various kinds.

5. For example, M. M. Shakhnovich speaks of "clericalization" as a hidden goal of the project. This, from her point of view, is evidenced by my regret at the failure of a substantive discussion of O. V. Schmidt's concept in our science, as well as the words about the "ecclesiastical significance" of our work. If the respected author drew attention to the fact that my main concern here is the unconscious receptions of the Soviet model in the church environment (and they are precisely the main vehicle of clericalization in our time), her suspicions would be dispelled. Fortunately, the review of A. I. Kyrlezhev presents the opposite assessment of this aspect of the work, which is much more consistent with our intentions.

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2. M. M. Shakhnovich writes about the tendency of the authors " ... to separate the science of religion into a special ghetto, to separate it from those sciences with which it is connected both historically and essentially, namely, from history, philology and anthropology." Indeed, it is impossible to write its history without separating religious studies proper from other sciences that are also interested in the scientific study of religion from their particular subject positions. But any further discussion of this problem will turn into a battle of opinions and supporting quotes: "religious studies is a holistic science"; "no, religious studies is a complex science", etc. So I believe that there is no mistake in singling out religious studies as a separate field of knowledge: this is one of the existing positions on the issue under consideration

3. And since no one writes about an interesting case - the institutionalization of religious studies at St. Petersburg University in the first half of the 20th century (I mean, first of all, the Faculty of the History of Religion at Petrograd University), I will be happy to dedicate one of my next works to it.

Tatiana Folieva: "First we need to reconstruct Soviet religious studies and only then subject it to analysis and evaluation..."

Unlike my colleagues, I am a historian by basic education and view this discussion differently from my co-authors, as well as critics and reviewers of our collective work. My colleagues are trying to reflect on Soviet religious studies, whereas, in my opinion, at this stage this is too hasty a step: first, Soviet religious studies must be reconstructed, recreated, and only then subjected to analysis and evaluation. At the same time, such a reconstruction should be placed not only in the history of the social sciences and humanities, but also in the history of Soviet society as a whole, including a simple chronicle of events, biographies of people, and the evolution of institutions. For example, we use periodization of the development of science (1920 - 1930, 1950 - 1960, 1970 - 1980 However, it is connected to a greater extent with the logic of the development of other sciences and with the inner feeling of the researcher, and is in no way justified historically in accordance with the progressive movement of religious studies. Having solved the issue of periodization, it will be easier to understand the evolution of scientists ' views, the specifics of the development of their scientific interests, and many other problems.

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At the present stage, reflection leads to the projection of one's own feelings and moods on the subject of study, so that the researcher acts not as an "understanding subject", but as a "judge" or, at best, as a "sympathizer". At the same time, Soviet scientists turn out to be the heroes of a sentimental novel: they are either villains (in K. M. Antonov, Soviet religious scholars are accomplices of the destroying Soviet system), or exceptionally positive heroes (in M. M. Shakhnovich, scientists are martyrs trying to protect religion). But before giving out horns and crowns of thorns, it is worth remembering that the black-and-white concept of personality is characteristic of classicist literature, and in reality a person "lives a different life in three or four planes" 6. A Soviet scientist, especially one who held a significant position in the system, was a normal person in the sense that he, his activities and thoughts corresponded to the norms prevailing in Soviet society. Otherwise, in the 1920s and 1930s, he would have been shot, and in the 1960s and 1980s, he would have been forcibly treated in a psychiatric hospital. Another question is whether this compliance with the norms was natural to him: "did he breathe under water" or was he himself a powerful (and destructive) cog of the Soviet mechanism. Could he not be "part of the system" if he held a high position in it? Is deception of something /someone bad an excuse for an individual's behavior? We talk about the "humanity" of Soviet scientists, but we perceive it exclusively as a kind of" humanity", and it should be considered as a complexity, as the strength and weakness of each individual scientist. But again, the concept of "being a good person/and thinking about the beauty of nails" should be justified and associated with a variety of interpretations and approaches in relation to a specific subject of research.

I would also like to draw attention to the thesis that was made about "intellectual history". I (again, as a historian) do not see the history of science in the conventional sense. I would divide it into three aspects: (1) "product history" is precisely classical historiography, when we analyze what scientists "produced"; (2) intellectual history is the history of scientists as creators of ideas; it includes not so much the product as the "production process"itself

6. Blok M. Apologiya istorii, ili Craft istorika [Apology of History, or the Craft of a Historian]. Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1973, p. 83.

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in all its diversity; (3) the "history of consumption" is how the "product" of scientists, their ideas were perceived by various segments of society.

The misunderstanding that is evident in our discussion is connected, I think, with a multi-level understanding of the history of science. For the authors of our monograph, this study was a "product history": an analysis of published literature. M. M. Shakhnovich in his review suggests that we consider the "history of intellectuals", attracting additional sources. That is why it seems that we are talking about the same thing, but in different languages. That is why the question arises about the sources of research. For me and my co-authors, a source is an article or book; for Shakhnovich (following P. A. Druzhinin), it is a collection of archival data. These positions refer us to another problem that is fundamental to historical research: no source can be absolutized and no one can "accept historical evidence unconditionally"; "the historian knows that witnesses can be wrong or lie"7. If we assume that the anti-religious rhetoric of the relevant publications is associated with censorship, with the understanding that without it, a scientific work will not be published, then why should we lose sight of the fact that the source stored in the archive could have been written with the idea that letters are perplexed and records are read? Unfortunately, greater freedom and freedom in comparison with official sources do not make archival data more reliable and truthful.

Surprisingly, my work, that of my colleagues and other authors, does not use popular and propagandistic sources of work, such as something from the series "To help the lecturer of the Znanie Society". This layer is disdainfully rejected by researchers, although the very fact of the existence of such publications, their rhetoric and the information contained in them is special information that raises many questions. For example, why did subtle and deep researchers "slide" to this kind of publication? Why did some of them publish such works, while others refrained? Why is there a dissonance between what they wrote in private letters and what they wrote in these pamphlets? Is there no disparaging attitude towards the "ordinary reader"? And is this kind of "scientific creativity"

7. Blok M. Apologiya istorii [Apology of History], pp. 46, 51.

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(within the framework of double standards: one for "us" - intellectuals, and the other for everyone else) normal in all senses of the word? Here we are faced with a problem that is always "tactfully" avoided, namely, the question of the target audience of such scientific works. Were the scientific texts of those times really in demand at least by someone-the state, officials, lecturers or ordinary people, or were scientists boiled in their own juice? What is the "history of the consumer" in this case and how did it influence the development of Soviet science of religion?

Unfortunately, the answers to these questions are not only not found, at least in the first approximation, but are not put in modern research. But if we claim to recreate Soviet religious studies, we will have to answer these questions, otherwise the picture will be incomplete.

To sum up this brief reflection, I would like to thank all the participants in this interesting discussion. There is no doubt that our collective monograph is a success, as evidenced by the exchange of opinions that it provoked. I would like to note that this is just the beginning of working with the Soviet religious studies heritage. We still have to write the history of Russian science of religion in the period from the 1920s to the 1990s, recreate the logic of its development, work out the sources and answer the most difficult and acute questions.

Bibliography/References

"Science of Religion", "scientific atheism", "Religious studies": actual problems of scientific study of religion in Russia of the XX-beginning of the XXI century. Edited by K. M. Antonov, Moscow, PSTGU, 2014.

Antonov K. M. Ethical approach or ethos analysis? In continuation of the discussion / / Religious life [http://religious-life.ru/2015/03/eticheskiy-podhod-ili-analiz-etosa/, accessed from 16.03.2015].

Blok M. Apologiya istorii, ili Craft istorika [Apology of History, or the Craft of a Historian]. Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1973.

Kostylev P. N. On the criticism of the ethical approach to the history of Russian religious studies. In the order of discussion / / Religious life [http://religious-life. ru/2015/02/kostyilev-o-kritike-etiheskogo-podhoda-k-istorii-otechestvennogo-religiovedeniy a/, accessed from 06.03.2015].

Popovsky M. A. Russkie muzhiki narodyvayut [Russian men tell stories]... Followers of Leo Tolstoy in the Soviet Union (1918-1977). London: OPI LTD, 1983.

Antonov, K. (ed.) (2014) "Nauka о religii", "nauchnyi ateizm", "religiouedenie": aktual'nye problemy nauchnogo izucheniia religii v Rossii XX - nachala XXI

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veka ["Science of Religion", "Scientific Atheism", "Religious Studies": Actual Problems of the Academic Study of Religion in Russia in XX - the beginning of XXI Century]. Moscow: PSTGU.

Antonov, K. (2015) "Eticheskii podkhod ili analiz etosa? V prodolzhenie diskussii" [Ethical approach or analysis of ethos? In continuation of the discussion], Religious Life [http://religious-life.ru/2015/03/eticheskiy-podhod-ili-analiz-etosa/, accessed on 16.03.2015].

Bloch, M. (1973) Apologiia istorii, ili Remeslo istorika [The Historian's Craft]. Moscow: Nauka.

Kostylev, P. (2015) "O kritike eticheskogo podkhoda к istorii otechestvennogo religiovedeniia. V poriadke diskussii" [On Critics of Ethical Approach to the History of Russian Religious Studies. In the Modus of Discusson], Religious Life [http://religious-life. ru/2015/02/kostyilev-o-kritike-eticheskogo-podhoda-k-istorii-otechestvennogo-religiovedeniy a/, accessed on 06.03.2015].

Popovskii, M. (1983) Russkie muzhiki rasskazyuaiut... Posledouateli L.N. Tolstogo v Sovetskom Soiuze (1918 - 1977) [Russian Muzhiki Tailing... L.Tolstoi followers in Soviet Union (1918 - 1977)]. London: OPI LTD.

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