The Image of Jesus in the Russian Revolutionary Movement

The Case of Russian Marxism

Bibliographic Data

ID9969495
AuthorsJay Bergman (corresponding author)
Year1990
Volume35
Issue2
Pages220-248
Publication date1990-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Review of Social History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-8590 • E-ISSN: 1469-512X
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020859000009883
OpenAlexW1994702730
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited37

This article explores how Russian revolutionaries, in particular the Russian Marxists, used the image of Jesus to explain their political choices and commitments. These revolutionaries were almost uniformly hostile to institutional Christianity. Yet a number of Russian Marxists, such as Anatolii Lunacharskii, considered Jesus a genuine precursor of socialism. In 1917 many Bolsheviks and Bolshevik sympathizers interpreted the October Revolution in Christian terms, principally as a spiritual resurrection and rebirth. And in 1924, following Lenin's death, some Bolsheviks analogized Lenin to Jesus, and claimed that both were revolutionary martyrs. Finally, the article argues that Russian revolutionaries invested the Russian lower classes with a Christlike virtue, making it easier for the revolutionaries, once in power, to justify everything they did as advancing the interests of these classes

Aesthetics · Christianity · Communism · Movement (music · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Russian revolution · Socialism · Sociology · Virtue · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious studies

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