Religious Identities in Central East Europe During the Age of Totalitarianisms

At the end of World War II, many of the societies in East Central Europe experienced a shift from right-wing fascism to left-wing communism. This volume analyses the way religious actors and communities experienced and responded to this ideological shift. The inter-disciplinary volume comprises 13 chapters, highlighting different case studies from Estonia to Croatia and from East Germany to Ukraine. The chapters show how each case provides a unique window into personal, social, and institutional constraints and pathways to deal with the changing political orientation while remaining true to one's religious convictions. The individual solutions ranged from a creative espousal of the new ideological situation and tacit complicity to more or less covert opposition.