Anti-religious Department of the Irkutsk Museum

Abstract

After the Revolution in the first half of XX century there were fundamental changes in cultural and scientific life of Irkutsk. The article covers the main stages of museum's Antireligious Department which existed in 1930s and early 1940s as part of Irkutsk Museum. The goal of its creation was atheist propaganda. One approach employed by staff was to expose the fallacy of religious teaching through research into primitive cultures. In line with it anti-religious archaeological expeditions were organized to study region's antiquities and to replenish the museum collection, including the new department's exhibition. At that time, the museum’s collections also included icons and religious objects that were taken from closing churches as part of the campaign against religion. The unit was originally established in the former mansion of the merchant Feinberg. After the confiscation of the building of the Church of the Holy Cross from the community of believers, the Anti-religious Museum began working there. At the stage of preparation and in the first years of his work, the head of the Department was A.P. Okladnikov in the future famous Soviet archaeologist. After his departure from Irkutsk, the head of the Department was K.P. Korneev, and since 1936 his brother G.P. Korneev. The work of the Anti-religious Museum in that period was attended by the archaeologist V.I. Podgorbunsky, paleontologist and archaeologist I.V. Arembovsky, ethnographer G.V. Xenophontov. In the late 1930s, the activity of the Department was curtailed and resumed in 1940. Then the head became A.M. Steinberg. With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, when the active persecution of the church and believers ceased in the country, the Anti-religious Department was closed.