Bringing together a wide range of sources and the author's intimate knowledge of St. Petersburg history, this study is a pleasure to read and can form an excellent bridge for specialists in twentieth-century cultural, urban, and religious history who wish to understand how Soviet Russia fits into transnational trends.
American Historical Review ... Read moreThis is a major contribution to the field; there is no similar work. It opens a new lens for us to understand the Soviet Union and also complements work on church history, historic preservation, and city planning. Kelly engages extensively with the literature in all of those fields and manages to pack an incredible amount of detail into a highly readable and engaging text.
Karl Qualls, author of From Ruins to Reconstruction: Urban Identity in Soviet Sevastopol after World War II This manuscript offers a richly detailed study of churches in St. Petersburg-Leningrad over some eight decades, with the focus on policy and its implementation with respect to Russian Orthodox Churches. The work draws on an impressive source base
oral history as well as an array of archival and printed sources, much of it local. The account offered here adds a valuable new perspective on the battle between partocrats and preservationists, with fascinating material on the resistance by clergy and lay believers such policies as the confiscation of church valuables and closing of parish churches.
Gregory Freeze, Brandeis University Kelly clearly outlines the balancing act that officials undertook between state atheism and religious freedom, including employing inaction that achieved secularist goals through lack of financial support for repair. The work effectively challenges the assumption that Soviet Russia was entirely hostile to religious belief and practice.
Publishers Weekly One of the major strengths of Kelly's book is in this chronological scope, which allows her to narrate an entire history of the Soviet project to eradicate religion and the contradictory process that stemmed from this effort.... Kelly's story is remarkably researched, packed full of insights, and highly readable. -Journal of Modern History Catriona Kelly, a recognized expert on St. Petersburg, has written an insightful and well-contextualized study of the diverse fortunes of the churches of this city during the Soviet period. Having scoured the archives and mastered the secondary sources, she has also provided a very rich bibliography as well as notes that reward reading. - Journal of Church and State The book illuminates a neglected aspect of the history of a city and its life, and of the religious communities that sought to survive under an uncongenial regime. - Slavonic and East European Review Having confiscated all the wealth of the church against which radicals raged for decades, the socialist regime begun by Lenin had to figure out what to do with buildings that had thereby become 'socialist churches.' This is the quandary that is splendidly explored in this groundbreaking study: what to do with all these liturgical structures. -Russian Review Show Less