This book offers an analysis of the wide range of attitudes that communist movements and regimes adopted towards atheism during the 20th century. Despite the well-known violent fight of the Bolsheviks against believers, for example, and religious persecution in communist regimes at different times, being a communist did not always go hand in hand with being an atheist oneself or with the will to actively spread atheism. The reasons for the changing links between communism and atheism, ranging from militant atheists to communists presenting themselves as defenders of the authentic religion, deserved precise, in-depth investigation. The book’s case studies on Greece, Albania, Italy, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Slovenia, Afghanistan, and Vietnam and its common focus on the causes of atheism will be of interest to scholars of these areas but also of atheism and secularism, religion, and politics.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons-Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.