The prospects and benefits of building new cities on virgin land, made without the hindrances created by the traditions and prejudices of the past1, were repeatedly noted by the leaders of the Soviet state. When creating new cities, their key feature and main advantage, according to the ideologists of the cultural revolution, was the absence of historical memory, the past in any of its manifestations, including religious ones. This feature was supposed to contribute to a more active formation of a new way of life and a new type of person on the territory of the city - the Soviet person. Construction of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works and the city of Magnitogorsk began as part of industrialization in 1929 in the steppes of the Southern Urals. Already in 1932, the city-forming enterprise created a complete production cycle for the production of metal. N. Milyutin, describing Magnitogorsk, noted that this is "the first purely Soviet city in the USSR, where we are not connected with the past, where we demonstrate to the whole world the will of the proletariat to a new social life." 2 The construction process of Magnitogorsk was held under the slogan of radical breaking of the old way of life. At the same time, in the new city, as it seemed, there was no need to rebuild existing orders and "break" traditions, it seemed that they could be created. This article attempts to examine the life of the population of the new industrial center through the prism of religion- Howard E. 1. Cities of the future. St. Petersburg, 1911. p. 3. Milyutin N. 2. The struggle for new life and Soviet urbanism//The city of the socialism and the socialist reconstruction of the life. M., 1930. P. 116. page 158There are a number of important problems, namely, to determine what role religion played in the life of Magnitogorsk residents, to identify whether citizens performed traditional religious rites, and finally, whether the authorities managed to eradicate religious consciousness in Magnit ... Read more