Religious rites in the interpretation of Marxist religious studies in the Soviet Ukraine (the 1980’s)

Abstract

The Ukrainian works on scientific atheism of the 1980’s, devoted to religious rites, are
analyzed. Three groups of problems in the context of which religious rites are considered:
1) structure and functions of religion; 2) secularization, modernization of religion, and
evolution of religious consciousness; 3) historical types of rites. It is concluded that
the study of rites had practical character and narrowed down to the development and
substantiation of the Soviet rites. The last topic took Soviet scholars away from the
problematic of religious studies.
Keywords: rites, religious cult, scientific atheism, Soviet religious studies