[http://exhibits.library.villanova.edu/russian-revolution]
View the extensive companion online exhibit created to support the physical Blood and Soul exhibit, on display at Villanova University’s Falvey Memorial Library through September 1, 2017. Featuring video from the Memorial Service, extensive and detailed audio exhibit tour and commentary by the curators, historical contextual information, related events and an extensive bibliography, this online display provides a continuing resource about the Russian Revolutions and resources to help understand their continuing impact on the world.
“The Russian Revolutions of 1917, unlike the state vs. church French Revolution or the later Christianity vs. a revived paganism in Hitler’s Germany, enacted on the grandest stage possible the emerging contest between those who denied and those who asserted the very existence of God. For the first time ever, under Lenin’s orchestration, Marx’s philosophical scientific atheism with its assertion that “religion is but the false sun revolving around man while he is not yet fully self-aware” was to be practically implemented, first by intimidation and then by raw terror. This exhibit instructionally portrays the secularization process by which the politically-motivated Bolsheviks sought to replace the prior monarchist, divine right, religiously-founded culture of Russia with the Marxist/Leninist utopian worldview possessing its own “salvation” incentives, cultural expressions (calendar of holidays, artwork, clothing styles, service decorations, etc.) and communist order.”
