Gordienko Nikolay (1929‒2011) – Soviet philosopher and specialist in religious studies.

After a secondary school in the town of Druzhkovka, Donetsk Region (Ukraine), in 1948, he entered the Philosophical Faculty of the Leningrad State University. He got qualification of teacher of Marxist-Leninist philosophy; he made Candidate thesis under the supervision of Prof. V.P. Tugarinov, and started to work as a school teacher in Leningrad (1953-1957). In 1957, he started to work at the Chair of Philosophy at the Leningrad Sanitarian Hygienic Medical Institute, as Assistant, than Senior Teacher. He worked at the ‘Virgin Lands’ (in 1958, he was awarded with a medal for the participation in that Soviet agricultural project).

Since 1967, he worked at the Leningrad State Teachers-Training Institute named after A.I. Herzen (now Russian State Teachers-Training University): at first, as Assistant Prof., and in 1971-1996, as Prof., Head of the Chair of Scientific Communism, Ethic and Esthetic (since 1990 – Chair of the History of Religion and Atheism; since 1996 ‒ Chair of Religious Studies). In 1996, he left the position of the Head of the Chair, worked as Prof, since 1997 he has been Prof Emeritus of the Russian State Teachers-Training University).

In 1956, he defended his Candidate thesis ‘Philosophical and Logical Views of A.I. Galich’ at the Leningrad State University.

In 1970, he defended Doctor thesis ‘Ideology of the Contemporary Orthodoxy. Critical Analysis of Modernists Tendencies in the Contemporary Orthodoxy’ at the Belorussian State University (Minsk).

His main professional interests were in the field of the history and the contemporary state of Orthodox Church.

He was the author of numerous manuals and popular educative booklets which were widely used in the atheistic propaganda. More than twenty years he headed the Research Methodical Council on Scientific Atheism at the Leningrad Branch of the Society ‘Znanie’ (Knowledge).