Remains of the Past: The Catholic Church in the Communist Regimes of East Central Europe I

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Historiographies tend to focus more on breaks than on continuities. They place significance on years when eras end and new ones begin, as if the past is erased and new civilizations are birthed out of nothing. This panel discusses such a civilizational change in East Central Europe at the end of the Second World War, when, in only a few years, the past seemed to be left behind in favor of a new future. However, it will argue in favor of continuities, emphasizing how the memory of the recent past informed the present at the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s.
The prolongation of policies, inherited administrations, personnel, and hierarchies from one regime to another influenced how the religious policies of the new Soviet regimes in East Central Europe were implemented. It also shaped how both internal and foreign religious actors formulated their agendas to navigate the new political landscape. The past informed the present, and institutional memory was paramount in negotiating the new state-church relationship. This panel examines both state and religious actors, considering perspectives from both domestic and foreign contexts.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Przemysław Pazik, HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities (Hungary) / U of Warsaw (Poland)

Papers

• Shaping the Memory of the Role Played by the Catholic Church in Hungary during the Holocaust - András Tamás Fejérdy, ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities (Hungary)

• Saints and Comrades: Catholicism and Communist Nation-Building in Czechoslovakia - Agata Sustova Drelova, ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities (Hungary)

• Josip Juraj Strossmayer’s Legacy in Yugoslav State-Building Project(s) - Zeljko Oset, ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities (Hungary)

Discussant

• Viktoriia Serhiienko, German Historical Institute Warsaw (Poland)