About the book

This dictionary is the fruit of many years’ work undertaken by a large group of scholars from the USSR and other socialist countries. It is designed for all those who are interested in or working on questions requiring a scientific approach to matters of religion. The dictionary has almost 2,500 entries and it includes a wide range of terms that serve to reflect the modern attainments of philosophy and natural science and also those of Marxist research into questions of religion.

Entries are arranged in alphabetical order, and certain words are picked out in italics to indicate that special entries are devoted to them elsewhere in the dictionary (e.g. in the entry entitled LAWS OF NATURE “natural science” is picked out in italics and later there is a separate entry devoted to it which examines the concept in more detail). Dates of the festivals celebrated in the Orthodox Church are given according to the Julian Calendar, while the date according to the Gregorian Calendar is given alongside in brackets.

The period of the rise and consolidation of capitalism in Europe and North America (17^th -19^th centuries) is referred to in this dictionary as the Modern Era, a term widely accepted in the present-day Soviet historical science.