Abstract
The upsurge of popular resistance, defiance, and collective self-assertion which swept the communists out of power in Central and Southeastern Europe between 1989 and 1990 had its roots in the 1970s (just think of Charter 77) and the early 1980s. One may even trace the ultimate collapse of the communist organizational monopoly in the region back to its initial establishment in the latter half of the 1940s. Never accepted as legitimate by the local population, in spite of its genuine achievements in terms of assuring a measure of economic equality and partial, if qualified, progress in promoting gender equality, communism was doomed by its intolerance of free thought, free speech, free travel, and political competition, as well as by its recourse to violence and incarceration in dealing with perceived threats (as in the murder of Fr. Jerzy Popiełszko by agents of the Polish secret police in 1984). Where free thought is concerned, freedom of religion was, as is well known, a central demand and the limitations on its exercise constituted only one of a number of fractures which ultimately brought the communist organizational monopoly to an end.
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Notes
The Slovenian case has been illustrative of these tendencies. See Sandra Bašić Hrvatin and Brankica Petković, You Call This a Media Market? The Role of the State in the Media Sector in Slovenia (Ljubljana: Peace Institute, 2008).
Peter Gross, Entangled Evolutions: Media and Democratization in Eastern Europe (Baltimore & Washington D.C.: The Johns Hopkins University Press & The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002).
For the Serbian example, see Milan Vukomanovic, “The Serbian Orthodox Church as a Political Actor in the Aftermath of October 5, 2000”, Politics and Religion, 1, no. 2 (August 2008): 239, 243–247
Liviu Andreescu, “The Construction of Orthodox Churches in Post-Communist Romania”, in Europe-Asia Studies, 59, no. 3 (May 2007), 453–454
Sabrina P. Ramet, “Thy Will be Done: The Catholic Church and Politics in Poland since 1989”, in Religion in an Expanding Europe, ed. Timothy A. Byrnes and Peter J. Katzenstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006): 122–124.
For further discussion, see Sabrina P. Ramet, Nihil Obstat: Religion, Politics, and Social Currents in East-Central Europe and Russia (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998)
John Anderson, Religious Liberty in Transitional Societies: The Politics of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, Church, State, and Democracy in Expanding Europe (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 6, 188.
Stephen Schwartz, “ ‘Enverists’ and ‘Titoists’—Communism and Islam in Albania and Kosovo, 1941–99: From the Partisan Movement of the Second World War to the Kosova Liberation War”, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 25, no. 1 (March 2009): 49.
See Malgorzata Zawila, “Religiosity and Morality: Attitudes Toward Euthanasia and Abortion as a Manifestation of Religiosity and Morality Relations in Contemporary Poland”, in Religion and Patterns of Social Transformation, ed. Dinka Marinović Jerolimov, Sriniša Zrinščak, and Irena Borowik (Zagreb: Institute for Social Research, 2004): 141–150.
Novi list (Rijeka), 5 June 2011, at http://www.novilist.hr/Vijesti/Hrvatska/Zupan-Trazimo-da-se-revidiraju-zakoni-i-u-Hrvatskoj-zabrani-abortus[acces-sed on 8 January 2013]. Regarding the Catholic Church and abortion in Croatia, see also Siniša Zrinščak, “Church and State in New Social Circumstances: The Croatian Story”, in Church-State Relations in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Irena Borowik (Cracow: Zaklad Wydawniczy Nomos, 1999): 131–132.
See Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007): 171–180
Mihnea Ion Năstase, “Gay and Lesbian Rights”, in Romania Since 1989: Politics, Economics, and Society, ed. Henry F. Carey (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004): 322–323.
Regarding attitudes to homosexuality in Serbia, see Stefano Bianchini, “The EU in the Values and Expectations of Serbia: Challenges, Opportunities, and Confrontations”, in Civic and Uncivic Values: Serbia in the Post-Miloševič era, ed. Ola Listhaug, Sabrina P. Ramet, and Dragana Dulić (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2011), pp. 84, 86.
Andreescu, “The Construction of Orthodox Churches”, pp. 457, 459; Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, “Politics, National Symbols and the Romanian Orthodox Cathedral”, in Europe-Asia Studies, 58, no. 7 (November 2006): 1127.
See the discussion of this in Sabrina P. Ramet, The Liberal Project and the Transformation of Democracy: The Case of East Central Europe (College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 2007): 82–83.
Lucian Turcescu and Lavinia Stan, “Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania”, in Quo Vadis Eastern Europe? Religion, State and Society after Communism, ed. I. A. Murzaku (Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2009): 221–235
Sabrina P. Ramet, “Church and State in Romania before and after 1989”, in Romania since 1989, ed. Carey: 284; Lucian Turcescu and Lavinia Stan, “The Romanian Orthodox Church and Democratisation: Twenty Year Later”, in International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 10 (May–August 2010): 144, 150–151.
Quoted in Sabrina P. Ramet, “The Politics of the Serbian Orthodox Church”, in Serbia since 1989: Politics and Society under Milosevic and after, ed. Sabrina P. Ramet and Vjeran Pavlakovic (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2005), 273
Christopher Deliso, The Coming Balkan Caliphate: The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Security International, 2007), 153, 155, 157.
See Zan Strabac, “Social Distance and Ethnic Hierarchies in Croatia”, in The Aftermath of War: Experiences and Social Attitudes in the Western Balkans, ed. Kristen Ringdal and Albert Simkus (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2012), p. 159
See Zorica Kuburić and Milan Vukomanović, “Religious Education: The Case of Serbia”, in Sociologija, vol. XLVII (2005), no. 3, pp. 229–255.
Pedro Ramet, “The Interplay of Religious Policy and Nationalities Policy in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe”, in Religion and Nationalism in Soviet and East European Politics, Revised and expanded edition, ed. Pedro Ramet (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1989): 7, emphasis added.
Benedict De Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, in The Chief Works of Benedict De Spinoza, trans. from Latin by R. H. M. Elwes, 1, 2nd ed., revised (London: George Bell and Sons, 1889; reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, 2011), Chapter 18: 240–241.
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Ramet, S.P. (2014). Religious Organizations in Post-Communist Central and Southeastern Europe: An Introduction. In: Ramet, S.P. (eds) Religion and Politics in Post-Socialist Central and Southeastern Europe. Palgrave Studies in Religion, Politics, and Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137330727_1
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