Religious Resistance to Communist Authority from De-Stalinization to Glasnost and Perestroika

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel will observe how different religious communities in both the Soviet satellites of East Germany and Poland as well as the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic from the early 1960s to the late 1980s. In particular attention will be paid to how religious institutions were able to able to win the occasion concession from the regime, such as the experience of conscientious objectors in the East German military, Polish priests who assisted the Solidarity movement, and Lithuanian clergy and laity who were involved in the revival of the Lithuanian nationalist movement in the 1970s. We will also discuss the how this inevitably led to responses, some harsher than others, by the Communist authorities from the aftermath of the Stalinist era to the precipice of Gorbachev's reforms

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Robert F. Goeckel, SUNY Geneseo

Papers

• The Catholic Church and Lithuanian Nationalism in the Eyes of the KGB during the 1960s and 1970s - Sean Philip Brennan, U of Scranton

• The Memory Politics of a Poisoned Past: The Impact of the Murder of Fr. Franciszek Blachnicki on Popular Memory - Timothy David Curp, Ohio U

• Constructing Peace: Conscientious Objectors and the Boundaries of State Power in in East Germany in the 1960s - David Doellinger, Western Oregon U

Discussant

• James Ramon Felak, U of Washington