This book provides a sweeping and comprehensive analysis of the history of religion in the Soviet Union, tracing its fortunes through the chaos of the 1920s, and the anti-religious persecution of Stalinism, to the slow strangulation of Brezhnev, and the liberalization under Gorbachev. Bringing together fifteen of the West's leading scholars on this subject, the book examines the policy apparatus, atheist education, cults and sects, and recent changes in legislation and policy, presenting hitherto unknown material for the first time.