16 D’Holbach’s Legacy in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union
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Abstract
The chapter focuses on the available translations and peculiarities of reception of d’Holbach’s versatile legacy in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. In 18th-century Russia, d’Holbach’s treatises found keen readership among the educated Russian nobility despite the Système de la nature was banned by the Russian authorities for its atheist content. Due to the strict censorship, d’Holbach’s writings could not be published as books in Russia, but selected fragments from the Système de la nature, Système social, and La Politique naturelle occasionally appeared on pages of the Russian journals. The chapter tends to clarify, which translations of d’Holbach were performed in the Russian Empire as well as who constituted his readership. D’Holbach’s election as a membre externe of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the 11th of September 1780 is considered as well. The status of d’Holbach’s atheist books in Russia dramatically changed after the October Revolution of 1917: viewed by the Soviet scholars as one of the most coherent critics of religion, “personal enemy of God”, whose treatises were banned in the Orthodox Russian Empire, now served ideological needs of the newly established Soviet state.