Monday 13th November 2023

9h Registration, coffee (Faculty Club in Maison des Chercheurs – Campus Condorcet, 3 Cour des Humanités, ground floor)

9h30 Introduction by Eva Guigo-Patzelt (CéSor, EHESS/CNSR, Paris)

10h-11h45 Panel 1: Struggles in the interwar era
Chair: Pierre Antoine Fabre (CéSor, EHESS/CNRS, Paris)

Laura Pettinaroli (École française de Rome):
The International of proletarian freethinkers and the communist movement: uncompleted attractions (1925-1936)

Kostas Paloukis (International University of Greece, Thessaloniki):
Greek Communists against Religion and Church during the interwar period

David Nash (Oxford Brookes University):
The Blasphemy of Communist Godlessness – responses to Communist Atheism in Britain 1936-1938

12h-13h30 Lunch break

13h30-15h15 Panel 2: Enforcing atheism in Eastern Europe
Chair: Lois Lee (University of Kent)

Artan R. Hoxha (Academy of Albanian Studies, Tirana):
The Red and the Black: Atheism, Religion, and Modernity in Communist Albania

Johannes Gleixner (Collegium Carolinum, Munich):
Empirical origins of Soviet atheism: Engaging believers, managing expectations

Kristina Kovalskaya (École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris):
Soviet Research on Religion and Unbelief after Stalin: Modernise and Moralise with Atheism

15h15-15h45 Coffee break

15h45-17h30 Panel 3: Eastern European ambivalences in the late 1970s and 1980s
Chair: Todd Weir (University of Groningen)

Irina Morozova (University of Regensburg):
The duality of anti-religious social campaigns in Soviet Central Asia in the 1980s

Jan Tesař (Josef Gocar School Prague):
The Foundation, existence and demise of Czechoslovakian Museum of Religion

Petar Dragišić (Institute for Recent History of Serbia, Belgrade):
Serbia in the Eighties. Between Religiosity and Atheism

17h30-18h30 Keynote by Victoria Smolkin (Wesleyan University):
In the Shadow of Godlessness: Soviet Atheists and the Fate of Secularism in Interwar Europe

Tuesday 14th November 2023

9h30 Coffee

10h-11h45 Panel 4: Re-interpretations in varying cultural and religious contexts
Chair: Eva Guigo-Patzelt (CéSor, EHESS/CNRS, Paris)

Lucky Igohosa Ugbudian (Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike, Ebonyi):
Communist Perspectives on Atheism in the 20th Century Nigeria

Raghavan Nair Santhosh (Indian Institute of Technology Madras/University of Sussex) and Dayal Paleri (Indian Institute of Technology Madras):
“Godless” Communists in “God’s Own Country”? The Communist Party and Its Strategic Ambiguity towards Belief and Non-Belief in Kerala, South India

Sayed Hassan Akhlaq (George Washington University, Washington/Coppin State University, Baltimore):
“Muslim Communists”: Afghan Atheism in the 20th Century

12h-13h30 Lunch break

13h30-15h15 Panel 5: Atheism and Catholicism between condemnation and dialogue
Chair: Victoria Smolkin (Wesleyan University)

Marie Lucas (Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle) and Mikhail Velizhev (Université Grenoble Alpes):
“Is Marxism necessarily atheistic?” Gustav Wetter, the Holy See and the Condemnation of Communism

Gašper Mithans (Science and Research Centre Koper):
Atheization and individualization of non/religious worldviews: the Catholics in Socialist Yugoslavia

Heléna Tóth (Otto Friedrich University, Bamberg):
Combatting Indifference Together: The Shifting Premises of the Christian-Marxist Dialogue in the 1980s

15h30-16h15 Conclusions by Todd Weir (University of Groningen)