Authors

Barbara Martin¹;  ¹ University of Basel, Switzerland

Discussion

As a result of Stalin-era and Khrushchev-era political and anti-religious repression, the process of intergenerational transmission of faith was interrupted in many religious families, who refrained from giving their children a religious education.  Based on oral history interviews with Russian Orthodox believers who were religiously active in the late Soviet era, this paper examines their family background, their family’s history of political or anti-religious repression and how it influenced the transmission of faith or lack thereof in the family. 

Three models can be identified: 
 1) Interruption of tradition: in families with a Russian Orthodox tradition but a low level of practice, repression or the fear thereof led to an interruption of the line of transmission, keeping contact with religion to a minimum (baptism) with elderly family members often having a religious practice. Some of the children later returned to faith as adults. 
 2) Religious resistance: in very religious families, the transmission of faith to the following generations continued despite anti-religious repression. 
 3) “Fathers and Sons”: families in which the parents’ generation had turned away from the faith of their parents (often Jews) out of ideological or career considerations. Some of their children, however, underwent the same process and turned away from their parents’ atheism.