A Case Study in Soviet Political Religion: Modernism, The USSR in Construction, and Stalin’s Russia Matthew Feldman* University of Northampton Abstract The following article provides a case study in political religion theory via exploration of a neglected Soviet journal, the USSR in Construction [SSSR na Stroike]. This journal, which appeared between January 1930 and June 1941, was ultimately published in five languages, and represented an important, propagandistic face to the non-communist world. Despite the entrench- ment of Socialist Realism at the time, this avant-garde publication continued to be published monthly by Stalin’s regime – until the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany. Contribu- tors may be seen as propagandists, strangely enough, in an etymological sense: propagators of a faith – in this case a ‘political theology’ – on behalf of a Stalinist utopia that they believed was currently ‘under construction’. Meditating on the infinite may be a religious activity, so may writing a cheque, eating corpses, copulating, listening to a thumping sermon on hell fire, examining one’s conscience, painting a picture, growing a beard, licking leprous sores, tying the body into knots – a dogged faith in human rationality – there is no human activity which cannot assume religious significance. - from Kenneth Burridge, New Heaven, New Earth (cited in Toscano 2010, p. 203) I. Before approaching the USSR in Construction, a short explanation is needed of what is meant here by ‘political religions’, also referred to as ‘political faith’ or ‘secular faith’. 1 It has sometimes been remarked that putting two such terms together is, quite simply, oxy- moronic. Yet the modest contribution of Compass: Political Religions and the short-lived journal Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, in addition to a spate of books and articles, have helped to put this concept firmly back on the intellectual map. 2 As one of its most perceptive critics today, Emilio Gentile, has noted, the intellectual heritage of political religions can be traced back to contemporaneous eye-witnesses of European totalitarian movements, including luminaries like Bertrand Russell, Raymond Aron, Uriel Tal and Eric Voegelin (see Gentile 2006, ch. 1). But one need not have been an intellec- tual visionary like them to have seen these movements of the revolutionary left and right at the time as something rather different to rational politics, western secularisation, prod- ucts modern decadence, and so on. Waldemar Gurian, for example, alongside Hannah Arendt sometimes considered the earliest scholar to have systematically analysed twentieth century totalitarianism, had this to say about the religious ‘ideocraty’ – or ‘dictatorship of a worldview’ 3 – intrinsic to such movements: The totalitarian movements that have arisen since World War I are fundamentally religious movements. They aim not at changes of political and social institutions, but at the reshaping of Religion Compass 5/11 (2011): 685–697, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00320.x ª 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd