Na frontě boje proti „náboženskému tmářství“. Práce církevních tajemníků národních výborů v Brně v letech 1948–1960
| Title in English | On the front of the battle against "religious obscurantism". The work of the church secretaries of the National Committees in Brno between 1950 and 1960 |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Citation | |
| Description | In the last decade or so, specialised magazines at home have been filled with debate on the essence of totalitarianism, in which a recurring conclusion can be observed: historical research at a regional level offers new perspectives up against a historical interpretative framework that has to date concentrated around the position of the centre. The study of regional history clarifies and modifies the image of the totalitarian state by revealing local specificities and destroying the image of the communist regime as a single, perfectly homogeneous organism. After all, domestic research has long focused mainly on political history, without any deeper reflection on the social structures in society. The embodied regime in historical work gave the impression of an omnipotent anonymous colossus in which a small powerful group dominated the large oppressed majority. Political decisions, and church policy, however, were made and implemented by specific people, not only in Prague, but at a local level too. In my paper I therefore present the important work carried out by church secretaries in Brno during the 1950s. The paper draws on a comparison of the fund at the Regional National Archive in the Moravian Provincial Archive, sources from the religious communities of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, and period church press. The paper does not aim to present the organisation of the church departments of the National Committees in Brno, but instead looks for answers to the questions of how, using the example of the concept of a peace movement (the term peace movement in the context of this paper does not refer to a specific institution, but to the flow of values and thoughts and to the activities that followed on from this, to attitudes - collective and individual - and the associated institutions), church secretaries implemented the church policy of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, what sort of response it enjoyed in the religious environment, to what extent church secretaries were themselves active in the formation and implementation of church policy. |
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