Invisibility of Soviet atheism: the work of A.A. Tarkovsky (Andrey Rublev, 1966)

This article analyzes some religious aspects of A. Tarkovsky’s work, in particular, those presented in the film “The Passion for Andrei” (Andrei Rublev, 1966), as a unique phenomenon of Soviet culture during the era of “scientific atheism.” Under the conditions of the dominance of this ideological program, Tarkovsky’s cinematography is explored as a form of visualization of the sacred and invisible. An interdisciplinary approach is applied based on the concepts of Bronislaw Malinowski on the presence of magic, religion and science in the life of any individual and society, as well as Niklas Luhmann on the phenomenon of “invisibility”, showing the mechanism of “reverse invisibility” in the work of the great director, who, bypassing ideological prohibitions and not entering into direct confrontation with them, turned to universal existential issues of personal existence. Through the analysis of key episodes of the film, appealing to the categories of Russian religious philosophy (conciliarity, hesychasm, apophatism, etc.), he made the sacred visible in the conditions of “atheistic reality.” Thus, Tarkovsky’s artistic practice appears not as criticism of religion or propaganda of atheism, but as a complex act of aesthetic and spiritual overcoming of ideological limitations, affirming eternal values.