The subject of the publication is the study of the features of the value system, professional ethics, and the public position of representatives of the Ukrainian atheistic intelligentsia of the second half of the 1980s. The relevance of the topic is determined by the significant influence of social processes of the late 1980s – early 1990s on the formation of modern relations between society and religious organizations in Ukraine. The methodology is based on historical and system analysis, structural and typological methods. The novelty of the research is determined both by the insufficient coverage of the problem in historiography and by the practical significance of the results obtained in analyzing the current socio-political situation in a neighboring state. The conclusions about the perception of scientific atheism by its Ukrainian apologists as a universal “spiritual value”, which seemed to be the only possible social support for morality in the conditions of the development of science, are substantiated. Of particular importance was the pathos of protecting the people from ideological and spiritual enslavement, from attempts to undermine the cultural and social foundations obtained by the hard work of the people. Scientific atheism was given a deep humanistic content. In the context of unprecedented social transformations among the Ukrainian atheistic intelligentsia, the idea of its special responsibility for the fate of the country, the idea of its unique “messianic role” is being formed.
Key words: Ukrainian SSR, ethos, scientific atheism, religion, values, Christianity, perestroika
DOI: 10.22250/20728662_2023_2_147
About the author
 |
Ruslan A. Savchuk – Ph.D. (Theology), Scientific Reviewer; Publishing Council of the Russian Orthodox Church; |