Projects / Programmes
The engagement between Marxism and Christianity in Slovenia, 1931–1991
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 6.01.00 |
Humanities |
Historiography |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| H250 |
Humanities |
Contemporary history (since 1914) |
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 6.01 |
Humanities |
History and Archaeology |
Marxism, Socialism, Christianity, Political Theology, SFRY
Researchers (10)
Organisations (2)
Abstract
The project is concerned with the intellectual history of Christianity as the majority religion and Marxism as the principal secular narrative in Slovenia during the 20th century. Rather than the clash between their institutionalised variants, what interests us is the arc of ideological confrontation, rapprochement and, in some cases, even the merging of the two visions of social order. While this phenomenon has been known since the Second Vatican Council in Latin America and other parts of the capitalist world under the term Liberation Theology, in socialist Slovenia it came to form different lesser-known currents of political theology.
The critical intertwining of left-oriented Catholicism and Marxism under examination differed considerably from the Christian pro-regime movements of socialist eastern Europe. It was a result of pronounced ideological influences and circulations from the global south and western Europe, which took as its point of departure the post-revolutionary society that the Slovene Catholics helped establish with their participation in the Liberation Front during WWII. Our investigation follows this entwinement between left-oriented Catholicism and Marxism in Slovenia from the 1930s, when a group of Christian Socialists separated from the mainstream spirit of Christian integrism and drew increasingly closer to the ideological premises of Marxism, to the early 1990s, when socialism still appeared to some Catholics as the “sign of the times.”
With the aim of carrying out a complex analysis of the phenomenon described, we will conduct the research using a transnational approach that will include the methods of intellectual, political and diplomatic histories, the sociology of religion, theology and the anthropology of religion. The implementation of the interdisciplinary research will be enabled by a dynamic, age- and gender-mixed group of highly qualified historians, sociologists, theologians and philosophers. The projected findings will considerably surpass the current state of the art and launch a debate that will reach beyond the predominant political history of the Slovene and Yugoslav contexts.
By scrutinizing discourses on different levels, while considering the Vatican’s policy towards Communism, we are going to provide an answer as to why this attempt to establish an inclusive dialogue or even synthetize principles of Marxism and Christianity in Yugoslavia as a socialist state failed. In this sense, our plan is not to discuss this issue only from the perspective of philosophy and ideology, but rather to paint a broader picture of the nature of the Yugoslav self-management system and the Catholic milieu in this multi-religious country, thus also shedding light on the problem of its democratic deficiencies. The proposed research will produce a set of scientific outputs with the aim of launching an academic debate and engaging the public by achieving the following goals: 1) to contextualise and provide a novel epistemological insight into the intellectual achievements of left-oriented Slovene theology in the realm of global contemporary and current political theologies; 2) to offer a new perspective of the processes of intellectual transfer between Slovenia and various parts of Europe, the United States, South America and other regions of the world; 3) to compare visions and dilemmas of Slovene Christian Socialists with left-oriented Christian groups in Europe before, during and after WWII; 4) to provide a new angle on the problematic cooperation between Christians and Communists during WWII; 5) to explore the extent of the ideological and political impact of left-oriented Catholicism on the Yugoslav socialist self-management system and understand the significance of Yugoslavia for the Vatican’s “Ostpolitik”; 6) to provide insight into past and contemporary strands of political theological thinking in Slovenia and critically analyse the present so called “atheist turn” within this thought.
Significance for science
The proposed research deals with the dimensions of social relations associated with religious life in pre- and post-war Yugoslavia that remain invisible if the Catholic Church is only examined as a holder of political power/opposition (cf. R. Radić, Država i verske zajednice 1945–1970, 2002; M. Akmadža, Katolička Crkva u komunističkoj Hrvatskoj 1945.–1980, 2013). Focused on Slovenia, where the link between religion and ethno-nationalism was much weaker than in Croatia (V. Perica, Balkan Idols, 2002; F. Prcela, The Catholic Pledge in the Croatian Identity, in: Politicization of Religion, the Power of Symbolism, 2014), the study explores the aspects of Christianity related to civil society - i.e., the delicate issue of believers-Socialists in relation to the hegemonic discourse of the Socialist modernist project.
The insistence of “resistance narrative” - “leitmotif” in the investigations into relations between the Socialist state and the Church prior to 1989, according to A. Pasieka (Conflict and Coexistence of Church and State Authorities in (Post)Communist Poland, in: Atheist Secularism and its Discontents, 2015) - blurs a gamut of intellectual reflections by Christian and Marxist thinkers, who were often alien from their “parent” institutions. Our aim is to proceed, to some extent, from the points cautiously broached by Yugoslav religious studies in the 1970s and 1980s (P. Patterson, The Shepherds’ Calling, the Engineers’ Project, and the Scientists’ Problem; in: Science, Religion and Communism in Cold War Europe, 2016), with the vantage of temporal distance and availability of new sources now allowing the potential of a comprehensive in-depth research perspective.
As our project deals with an intersection of Marxist and Christian trajectories in European and global frameworks, we wish to look into the most influential contexts of contemporary political theology and evaluate their roles in the construction and research into Yugoslav leftist theological thought (see P. Scott, W. Cavanaugh [eds.], The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, 2007). In this respect we will substantially supplement the existing studies that treat the aspects of these transfers and circulations selectively (e.g. P. Kovačič Peršin, Personalizem in odmevi na Slovenskem, 1998), while an analysis of the reception of other currents, as has previously been done for western European environments (see A. Abascal-Jaen, Zur Rezeption der Befreiungstheologie in Spanien, Frankreich un den Niederlanden; in: Befreiungstheologie: Kritischer Rückblick und Perspektiven für die Zukunft, 1997) will make our contribution one of the first of this kind to deal with former socialist states. This is also important in the context of a more precise definition of the specific meaning of Yugoslavia in the Vatican’s “Ostpolitik” (A. Melloni, M. Guasco [eds.], Un diplomatico vaticano fra dopoguerra e dialogo. Mons. Mario Cagna (1911–1986), 2003).
Significance for the country
The proposed research deals with the dimensions of social relations associated with religious life in pre- and post-war Yugoslavia that remain invisible if the Catholic Church is only examined as a holder of political power/opposition (cf. R. Radić, Država i verske zajednice 1945–1970, 2002; M. Akmadža, Katolička Crkva u komunističkoj Hrvatskoj 1945.–1980, 2013). Focused on Slovenia, where the link between religion and ethno-nationalism was much weaker than in Croatia (V. Perica, Balkan Idols, 2002; F. Prcela, The Catholic Pledge in the Croatian Identity, in: Politicization of Religion, the Power of Symbolism, 2014), the study explores the aspects of Christianity related to civil society - i.e., the delicate issue of believers-Socialists in relation to the hegemonic discourse of the Socialist modernist project.
The insistence of “resistance narrative” - “leitmotif” in the investigations into relations between the Socialist state and the Church prior to 1989, according to A. Pasieka (Conflict and Coexistence of Church and State Authorities in (Post)Communist Poland, in: Atheist Secularism and its Discontents, 2015) - blurs a gamut of intellectual reflections by Christian and Marxist thinkers, who were often alien from their “parent” institutions. Our aim is to proceed, to some extent, from the points cautiously broached by Yugoslav religious studies in the 1970s and 1980s (P. Patterson, The Shepherds’ Calling, the Engineers’ Project, and the Scientists’ Problem; in: Science, Religion and Communism in Cold War Europe, 2016), with the vantage of temporal distance and availability of new sources now allowing the potential of a comprehensive in-depth research perspective.
As our project deals with an intersection of Marxist and Christian trajectories in European and global frameworks, we wish to look into the most influential contexts of contemporary political theology and evaluate their roles in the construction and research into Yugoslav leftist theological thought (see P. Scott, W. Cavanaugh [eds.], The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, 2007). In this respect we will substantially supplement the existing studies that treat the aspects of these transfers and circulations selectively (e.g. P. Kovačič Peršin, Personalizem in odmevi na Slovenskem, 1998), while an analysis of the reception of other currents, as has previously been done for western European environments (see A. Abascal-Jaen, Zur Rezeption der Befreiungstheologie in Spanien, Frankreich un den Niederlanden; in: Befreiungstheologie: Kritischer Rückblick und Perspektiven für die Zukunft, 1997) will make our contribution one of the first of this kind to deal with former socialist states. This is also important in the context of a more precise definition of the specific meaning of Yugoslavia in the Vatican’s “Ostpolitik” (A. Melloni, M. Guasco [eds.], Un diplomatico vaticano fra dopoguerra e dialogo. Mons. Mario Cagna (1911–1986), 2003).
Most important scientific results
Interim report
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
