Deficitnaja literatura. O massovoj chudožestevnnoj antireligioznoj knige [10-08-1937] - [D061]

Concise description of the directive:

There is a lack of anti-religious literature in our country. Lately, priests of all kinds have reared their heads again. We must contrast their activity with mass political and cultural work, much of which must belong to anti-religious literature. The publishing of this literature is handled by the State Publishing House of Anti-Religious Literature (GAIZ), which also publishes the magazine “Bezbozhnik” (Godless), the official organ of the Central Council of Militant Atheists. This magazine is too boring, it does not publish interesting stories or entertaining cases. The print runs of mass-produced anti-religious books have gone down; it is a drop in the ocean compared to the hundreds of thousands of copies required. Even the anti-religious fiction that was entrusted to Goslitizdat and Sovetskiy pisatel in 1932 was not published enough. In 1937, Goslitizdat published only a few anti-religious books suitable for a prepared reader; for unprepared readers, nothing was published. Religious people meanwhile take advantage of the lack of good anti-religious literature by organising literary evenings attended by young people or basing their sermons on the examples of classical literature (Tolstoy, Merimé).