The peacemaking movement of the USSR in the late 1940s -early 1960s: christian denominations and the ethics of international humanistic dialogue

The article analyzes the activities of the Christian denominations of the USSR in the Soviet peacekeeping movement on the basis of various sources. The choice of Christian denominations is due to the fact that representatives of these denominations were the most prominent in the Soviet peacemaking movement in the late 1940s and early 1960s. The article consists of two sections. The first section covers the main organizational issues. The authors showed that initially the main participants of the peace dialogue from the religious organizations of the USSR were representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, but gradually representatives of other Christian denominations were introduced into it. Peacekeeping activities took place at various internal (sessions of the Soviet Committee for the Protection of Peace, special religious events) and external venues (Prague and European conferences, meetings of the World Council of Churches, etc.). Alongside with the organizational component, the authors analyzed the language and images used in speeches and sermons. The second section of the article is devoted to the formation of a humanistic dialogue within the framework of the peace movement. The authors came to the conclusion that the humanistic program was focused primarily on two issues - anti-nuclear discourse and general compassion for humanity, actualized by the memory of the Second World War. The anti-nuclear rhetoric of the Christian peacemakers of the USSR was based on two main provisions - the depravity of the use of weapons of mass destruction from the point of view of Christian ideals, as well as the danger of such weapons for socially vulnerable segments. It’s remarkable that the least in the Christian narrative were the topics related to the impact of atomic weapons on human health. The memory of the horrors of the past war has become another of the main issues in the official speeches and statements of the Christian peacemakers of the USSR. The authors repeatedly emphasize in the course of the article that the entire humanistic dialogue on the Soviet side was instigated by the official authorities. The dialogue was aimed at forming a positive image of the USSR and was an element of the strategic security of the Soviet Union in the conditions of the economic and military superiority of the Western world. In addition, the increased international dialogue took place against the background of repressions against religious organizations of the USSR. Despite this, peacemaking discourse has become a permanent element in public sermons and in publications of Soviet religious leaders, has been actively broadcast to the masses of believers, has become a channel for shaping the global bioethical agenda. Thus, the peacemaking slogans that postulate human life as the highest value became an important context for the formation of bioethical norms in the broad sense of the word.

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