Violent Culture Wars: Religion and Revolution in Mexico, Russia and Spain in the Interwar Period

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between political revolution and antireligious violence in the interwar period through a comparison of Mexico, the Soviet Union and Spain. In all three cases antireligious violence was associated with revolution and the defeat of religion was seen either as a necessary condition for revolution or as an equally necessary result. All three revolutions were accompanied by violent ‘cultural revolutions’ targeting religion. The article engages in two levels of comparison. It explores similarities and dissimilarities among the events that took place in each of the three countries. At the same time, it juxtaposes the different explanatory models that have been offered of antireligious violence in each country, thereby initiating a dialogue between historiographical traditions that have developed in relative isolation from one another.

The Bones of Contention: The Secularization of Cemeteries and Funerals in the Spanish Second Republic

“…Yet recent comparative approaches have made pertinent parallels with Soviet Russia -which saw even greater violence -and Mexico. 86 Indeed the importance of religion in wider Europe during the 'European Civil War' has perhaps been underplayed or at least separated too often from the socio-political conflicts that divided Europe. 87 McMillan has argued for a re-evaluation of the importance of the 'intensification of existing links between religion and nationalism' during the First World War, including the construction of 'the idea of a holy war or ''crusade'' -a war for righteousness in a religious rather than a secular sense, meaning that one did God's work and took up arms against a diabolical enemy'.…”