Jeffrey Hardy, ‘Anti-Religious Improvisation: The Separation of Church and State in Bolshevik Prison Camps’

The Bolshevik regime that took power in 1917 aimed to construct a Marxist-Leninist version of socialism. The exigencies of civil war, the reality of being an unpopular workers’ party in a largely agrarian country and the uncertainties inherent in putting into praxis an untested ideology resulted in governing policies and practices that were often improvisational and contradictory in nature. This presentation explores the intersection of two such contradictions, concerning religion and imprisonment, by examining how Bolshevik penal authorities approached the practice of religion in places of confinement and how they treated incarcerated religious authorities.

Jeffrey S. Hardy is an associate professor of history at Brigham Young University.