Religious Reestablishment in Post-Communist Polities

Abstract

After the collapse of the atheistic Soviet Union and Communist party-dominated countries in Central and Eastern Europe, many analysts predicted that as new governments ushered in laws guaranteeing religious freedom, a new religious pluralism would result. Public opinion surveys conducted during the first years of postsocialism confirmed that throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet successor states, there was a resurgence in belief in God and life after death, as well as reports of increased levels of church attendance, particularly among the younger generations. Two decades after the collapse, however, post-communist countries have not become bastions of religious diversity or practice, and religious relations mirror those of a century past, when traditional ethnic churches dominated the landscape. How can we explain what appears to be religious reestablishment across the postcommunist countries? What developments have contributed to stalled progress in the realm of religious freedom? When the communist parties that controlled the Eastern bloc countries fell along with the Soviet Union and new “democratic” movements embarked on the mission of writing new constitutions and establishing representative institutions, many countries adopted legislation that significantly liberalized the field of religious freedom. Initially, this liberalization allowed for traditional