When the new edition hit the bookstores late last year, 100,000 copies were snapped up in a matter of days. The smash seller? A revised and expanded version of the Atheist's Pocket Dictionary, first issued in 1973 and put out by a state-run political publishing house called Politizdat. The 280-page paperback, though "designed for propagandists, lecturers and organizers of atheistic work," has some of the appeal of forbidden fruit; few books are ever published in the U.S.S.R. that deal with religion, even in a backhanded way.
Definitions in the Atheist's Dictionary are written to...
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