Between Chaos, Repression and Uncertainty: Minority Religion Groups and the Process of Building Socialism in Czechoslovakia
Abstract
It is well known fact, that communist regimes were often very hostile towards religious communities. Most of the research on this topic is based around struggle between state and traditional, well established churches.
But how state socialism perceived smaller, often brand-new religious movements or alternative spiritualities? Especially in the time, when the leading atheistic paradigm claimed, that religion should be withering away? Those are some of the questions that I am interested in my current dissertation project. The starting point is the concept of a "religious sect", which in the time concerned very loosely referred to various new religious movements.
The objective is to explore the phenomenon from the point of view of the state in three layers - expert discourse, normative discourse and social practices. Expert discourse refers to how, where, and under what conditions, the issue of religious sects was defined in terms of "truth" and "objective knowledge".
This part is mainly concerned with the government researches, state police papers and scientific atheism. The analysis of normative discourse is carried out by monitoring state regulations, legal status and conditions of legal existence or non-existence of so-called religious sects.
Social practices will focus primarily on acts directed at "sects" and their members by state officials, trials, repression and negotiations. After the Communist party of Czechoslovakia took power in 1948, various religious organizations found themselves in hostile state of unpredictability and they were forced to negotiate their own legal existence.
Nevertheless, the state officials lacked guidance, information about various religious objects and necessary knowledge. This turbulent situation created a demand for classification, information, and clarification of the legal status of new religious movements.
In the conference I would like to address this turbulent situation in Czechoslovakia circa 1948-1956 with the aim of interpreting the processes of creating and distributing certain knowledge in a modernizing state. Conceptually the project is based on modernization theory and on the concept of history of knowledge.
Methodologically the research draws inspiration from discourse analysis described by Richard Biernacki.