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 ukryj opis