God is Now on Our Side: The Religious Revival on Unoccupied Soviet Territory during World War II

Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 1, Number 1, Winter 2000 (New Series), pp. 97-118 (Article) Together with the Orthodox renaissance on German-occupied territory, the religious revival in unoccupied Soviet Russia during World War II – epitomized by the late-night meeting of Stalin and the Orthodox Church’s leaders on September 4, 1943 – represented a stunning repudiation of the nearly quartercentury effort to eradicate organized religion from the Soviet landscape. While the events on German-occupied areas have received substantial scholarly attention, the recent opening of Soviet archives has raised the curtain on the domestic revival.