Between Martyrdom and Collaboration: A Book Review Article

Abstract

Religion and Atheism in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe, edited by Bohdan R. Bociurkiw and John W. Strong,1 is a very important work containing essays which on the whole are of unusually high academic quality. The volume, conceived at an international symposium at Carleton University, Ottawa, in 1971, explores from the perspective of several disciplines the post-World War II religious situation in Eastern Europe. There are four parts to the volume: two articles on communism and religion from the Christian and Marxist points of view, seven articles on religion in the U.S.S.R., two transnational surveys of Catholicism and Judaism, and nine essays covering some aspect of religion in each of the Eastern European countries other than the U.S.S.R. The work is truly outstanding in its field and is an indis pensable resource for the complex issues examined. It is impos sible to do full justice to the impressive scholarship and insights disclosed. The limitations of the volume are imposed primarily by the vastness of the problems encountered, the dynamic changes occurring, and the difficulties involved in attempting to transcend one's own ideological context and ascertaining the facts within another system. Sir John Lawrence states in the introduction that a critical gap in the evidence leads some outside observers to imagine a sharper polarisation between 'col laborating' state Churches and 'underground' Churches than really exists (p. xi). The European secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, Dr. Paul Hansen, in his 1976 annual report addresses himself forcefully to the Western missionary organiza tions that convey the impression that the true Christian life is