Secularization and persecution: Lessons from Russia, Ukraine, and beyond

Abstract

This chapter presents empirical and theoretical challenges to the theory that secularization begets toleration while society's movement away from secularity leads to intolerance. Contradicting that theory, Soviet secularization ended the era of imperial toleration, aborted nascent religious freedom, and entailed relentless religious persecution. Yet, after the demise of communism, Russia's desecularization brought about a combination of neo-imperial toleration with neo-Soviet repression. Meanwhile, Ukraine's desecularization has generated a pluralistic and tolerant regime of interfaith and church-state relations. I argue that the Soviet case epitomizes revolutionary secularizations that have affected much of the world outside of the North Atlantic region. Secularization theory has marginalized the revolutionary cases. It thus has obscured the revolutionary, violent, and persecuting modality of secularization in the West itself and elsewhere.