Bolshevik Anti-Religious Policy as an Instrument of Ideological Influence on the Youth of National Minorities in the Volhynia-Zhytomyr Region (1925-1936)

Authors

• Galyna Starodubets, Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State UniversityFollow
• Oleksandra Stasiuk, Krypyakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of UkraineFollow

Author ORCID Identifier

Galyna Starodubets:https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2005-771X

Oleksandra Stasiuk: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2957-0432

Abstract

The relevance of the research problem lies in the need to expand scholarly knowledge about the role and place of national minorities (Poles, Germans, and Jews) in the processes of Sovietization of the Ukrainian countryside and in the establishment of the totalitarian regime in general during the first decades of Soviet rule in Ukraine. Drawing on extensive source material, the article examines the policy of the Bolshevik authorities toward the youth of the Polish, German, and Jewish national minorities in the Volyn–Zhytomyr region against the background of the Sovietization of the countryside in the mid-1920s to the early 1930s. It is noted that Soviet youth policy was implemented through an extensive network of party-state and public institutions, primarily the Leninist Communist Youth League of Ukraine, and was aimed at the unification of young people’s value orientations (political, national, and civic). Within this system, atheistic education was regarded as one of the authorities’ priority tasks, since the religious consciousness of national communities constituted one of the most important factors of their identity. The imposition of atheistic consciousness among the youth of national minorities proved to be an extremely difficult task for the authorities, as the abandonment of national religious traditions in the context of total Sovietization and repression was perceived by people as an existential threat. As a result, the everyday religious practices of national communities assumed more concealed forms, while their gradual displacement from people’s lives extended over many years.

Recommended Citation

Starodubets, Galyna and Stasiuk, Oleksandra (2026) "Bolshevik Anti-Religious Policy as an Instrument of Ideological Influence on the Youth of National Minorities in the Volhynia-Zhytomyr Region (1925-1936)," Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe: Vol. 46 : Iss. 4 , Article 14.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55221/2693-2229.2787
Available at: https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree/vol46/iss4/14