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"There is no God!" Church and Religion in Soviet Posters
November 25, 2015 - June 24, 2016
Exhibition Management: Konstanze Runge and Andrey Trofimov
"The struggle against religion is the struggle for socialism!" was a motto of the Soviet Union's religious policy. From 1918 to the 1970s, Soviet graphic artists and poets created numerous posters on behalf of state propaganda that addressed the ideological struggle against various religious organizations and religions. The exhibition provided a hitherto rarely shown insight into the anti-religious propaganda of the Soviet Union on the basis of 40 color posters from the collection of the St. Petersburg State Museum of the History of Religions.
This exhibition, together with the presentation of the accompanying catalog, was a manifestation of our cooperation with the State Museum of the History of Religions in St. Petersburg, which had been in place for three years. After an exhibition of our museum was displayed in St. Petersburg in 2014, we now had the opportunity, with this loan from St. Petersburg, to show an insight into an otherwise rarely exhibited chapter of religious criticism and anti-religious propaganda of the Soviet era.
Another special feature of this exhibition was that we were able to show the posters in the rooms of our neighboring departments European Ethnology/Cultural Studies and Cultural and Social Anthropology, thus also giving expression to the interdisciplinary ties between the departments.
From November 25, 2015 to June 24, 2016, the exhibition "'There is no God!' Church and Religion in Soviet Posters" was on display at Deutschhausstraße 3.
A catalog has also been published for the exhibition, which can be purchased for €10 (students €7.50) in the Religious Studies Collection.
During the "International Museum Day" on May 22 and the "Night of Art" on June 24, 2016, there was a program accompanying the exhibition.
