"Varieties of Religious Experience" in the Context of "Scientific Atheism": the Reception of W. James's Ideas in the Soviet Humanities

In the article the main points of Soviet reception of the idea of religious experience of famous American philosopher and psychologist W. James are under discussion. In pre-war (1920-1930s) time an attention payed to James was too small. At post-war period the discussion becomes more intensive and divides into three channels: history of philosophy, "scientific atheism", psychology. The research makes it possible to put in question discontinuity between pre-revolutionary and Soviet discourses about religion, growth of comparative autonomy of the humanities in the Soviet Union in 1970-1980s and its limits, role of standard patterns of polemic arguments, rhetoric figures, ideological cliches and (and mainly) the ethos of science in those original (not)meeting of soviet religious studies specialists, historians of philosophy and psychologists with the concept of "varieties of religious experience".