Between Repression, Chaos and Uncertainty: Religious Minorities in Early Communist Czechoslovakia

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Crackdown on religious institutions characterised the onset of the postwar communist dictatorships in East Central Europe. The literature commonly assumes that the new religious policies were influenced by the Soviet Union. However, the adoption of the Soviet blueprint was not straightforward and manifested differently across various regions. This article analyses the implementation process by examining the treatment of nonlegalised religious minorities in early Cold War Czechoslovakia. It argues that beyond adopting the legal framework, the strategy was not seriously informed by the Soviet realities. Through an analysis of the state's attitude towards Jehovah's Witnesses, the Pentecostal movement and the Seventh-day Adventist Church, this study concludes that the Czechoslovak Communist Party did not have any clear plan of action. The relationship with the religious organisations developed organically. It was heavily influenced by confessional distinctions among denominations and ad hoc local decisions, highlighting a deeply decentralised approach to creating religious policies.