Interest in studying religious beliefs in the context of evolution of certain social conditions was reflected in the first Soviet collective work in the field of religious studies, published in 1926 under the supervision of Academician V. V. Struve: ‘Religion and Society: Collection of articles on the study of the social foundations of religious phenomena of the Ancient World’. The collection contains the following articles: V. V. Struve ‘The Social Problem in the Funeral Cult of Ancient Egypt’ and ‘The Dialogue of Master and Slave on the Meaning of Life from a New Babylonian Monument’; M. E. Matie ‘Religion of the Egyptian Poor People’; I. G. Frank-Kamenetsky ‘Prophet Jeremiah and the Struggle of Parties in Judea’; B. L. Bogaevsky ‘Ritual Gesture and the Society of the Ancient World’; B. L. Kazansky ‘Household Basics of Sacrifice in Ancient Greece’; I. M. Trotsky (Tronsky) ‘Religion of Greek Shepherd’; A. V. Boldyrev ‘Religion of Ancient Greek Navigators’; Ya. M. Borovsky ‘Overcoming the Religious Element in the Ancient Greek Law’.

In that collective work, as in the most of the later studies published in the U.S.S.R. in the mid-twenties and thirties, the prevailing view was that religion in any society depended on the interests of certain social groups and classes; and it was connected with their political and ideological struggle. Studying each religion assumed its consideration in the context of the concrete historical conditions that gave rise to it and in connection with studying the society in which it functioned. However, it was believed that religion also possessed certain independence in its evolution, since economic grounds did not directly determine its changes; on the contrary, it could influence at the changes in the economic basis.