When, after the revolution, the Bolsheviks began to build a new world, they expected that religion would soon die out. The Soviet government used a variety of tools—from education to propaganda to terror—to bring to life its vision of a world without religion. Despite pressure on believers and a monopoly on ideology, the Communist Party was never able to overcome religion and create an atheistic society. A Holy Place Is Never Empty is the first study to cover the history of Soviet atheism, from the 1917 revolution to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Drawing on extensive archival material, historian Victoria Smolkin (Wesleyan University, USA) argues that to understand the Soviet experiment it is necessary to understand Soviet atheism. The author shows how atheism was reinterpreted as an alternative cosmology with its own set of beliefs, practices and spiritual commitments, tracing the connection of this phenomenon with religious life in the USSR, communist ideology and Soviet politics.