Totalitarian Communist Regime Research Articles

Condemned by Communists as the “Vatican’s spy”: the Biography of Catholic Priest Ștefan Tătaru

In Romania, the list of “enemies” of the Communist totalitarian regimes included church representatives, and those who had connections with the Vatican (thus belonging to the Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic Churches) held a special importance. Decree 358 of 1 December 1948 declared the official end of Greek Catholic “cult” activities, and many officials, clergy and simple believers drew the attention of the Communist authorities and the Securitate. Among them was the Greek Catholic priest Ștefan Tătaru. In 1950, he accepted the position of clandestine Greek Catholic vicar general in Bucharest for Oltenia, Muntenia, Moldova and Dobrudja. For this, on 30 January 1951, he was arrested and sentenced to hard labour for life for the “the crime of high treason”/ “high treason to the nation in favour of the Vatican”. He served his sentence in some of the toughest prisons in the Communist prison system and was released on 3 August 1964. After his release, he remained under the surveillance of the Securitate until the fall of the Communist regime.

ДО МЕТОДОЛОГІЇ ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ ГОЛОДОМОРУ 1932–1933 рр.: РЕМІНІСЦЕНЦІЇ УКРАЇНЦІВ НА ЛЮДИНОНЕНАВИСНИЦЬКУ ІДЕОЛОГІЮ КРЕМЛЯ

The article summarizes the facts, events, and crimes of the communist totalitarian regime during the Holodomor of 1932–1933 and the putin’s regime during the Russian-Ukrainian war, which remind Ukrainians of the kremlin’s misanthropic ideology. For the first time made an attempt to adapt the psychological definition of «reminiscence» (delayed reproduction, in fact – the reproduction of information after some time, which emerges with images and analogies from the past) for the purpose of preliminary analysis of the memories of eyewitnesses of the Holodomor-genocide of 1932–1933 and eyewitnesses of the Russian-Ukrainian war 2014–2023 for further systematic analysis. The manifestation of human memory is the nation’s historical memory of its past, which is sublimated into everyone’s memory of their family, parents, childhood, and the brain will force us to work through the traumatic events of the Holodomor-genocide of 1932–1933 and the 2022–2023 genocide. And although the natural process of memory is forgetting, the process of reminiscence is capable of helping to recreate what seemed to have been forgotten, became a vague memory, an echo of a terrible event. Nowadays, when collecting and unifying memories of the Russian-Ukrainian war, which has been going 10 years, it is worth listening carefully to the stories of Ukrainians, because family memories of the Holodomor-genocide of 1932–1933 of the Ukrainian nation come up quite often, which are correlated with the terrible events of today. The Russian Federation continues to trace the methods of the communist totalitarian regime. However, Ukrainians managed to preserve and pass on to new generations the negative experience of the communist occupation. The rashists realized that Ukrainians managed to get rid of the totalitarian past. Putin’s regime and its accomplices are deliberately mass-deporting children from Ukraine for «re-education» to the Russian Federation, committing the crime of genocide. The main motivation of the struggle of the civilian population and the armed forces is the struggle against the hated occupation regime. It has been confirmed that for 32 years after the revival of Ukraine’s independence, Ukrainians managed to get rid of their totalitarian past. Ukrainians defend their state motivated. Therefore, the war is not only for territories, but also for democratic values, self-identity, philosophy of being and existence of Ukrainians.

The Deputies of the Country Council, who Voted for the Union of Bessarabia with Romania, Represented by the Totalitarian Communist Regime

The article addresses the fate of the deputies of the first Bassarabian legislative body – Sfatul Țării (the Council of Country) and of the members of the Government of the Moldavian Democratic Republic, who contributed to the creation of the unified Romanian State by voting on the Declaration of Unification of Bessarabia with Romania on 27 March 1918. Bessarabia and Bessarabians were among the first to declare their desire and will to reunite the territory of the Romanian nation. They were also among the first to suffer from the political changes and the territorial seizures in the late 1940s. Some of them had to leave forever their native land in order to ensure the safety of their families, and those, who for various reasons have remained, were accused by the organs of the communist totalitarian regime and condemned to various humiliating punishments, imprisoned in the worst jails, communist camps. The duty of the modern generation is to honor and commemorate the actions of our ancestors.

The Image of the City of Balti in Memory of the Victims of the Totalitarian-Communist Regime

The theme of the dialogue is devoted to the image of the city of Bălți, as it is revealed through the results of studying the “small histories” of those who personally knew the period of deportations and whose victims they were. The experience of researching the memory of the victims of the totalitarian-communist regime in the Moldavian SSR and the analysing of new sources of historical research – the oral history testimonies – made it possible to investigate some undervalued layers, but with the deep potential to penetrate into the human dimension of history and the histories of those who have lived in Soviet-administered Bălți. The memory carried by the families that passed through the Soviet occupation in the city of Bălți in 1940–1941 and 1944–1991, respectively, is part of the today city’s historical heritage. By erecting monuments, organizing commemorative actions or thematic events, the places of memory will keep alive the memory of the victims of the Soviet occupation regime and the connection between the generations of Bălți residents. At the same time, these actions will build a European culture of memory, integrated into the European cultural heritage.

Identifying deficits in Ukrainian law: Forensic psychiatry misuse in proceedings of administrative offenses

Ukraine is actively denouncing and abandoning its Soviet legacy, with the legal process of decommunization being at the forefront of this process.11Two bills from 2015 regulate the process of decommunization: ‘On denouncing the Communist and the National-Socialist (Nazi) totalitarian regimes in Ukraine and banning the propaganda of their symbols’ and ‘On access to archives of repressive bodies of the Communist totalitarian regime of 1917–1991’ However, despite Ukraine's ongoing judiciary reformation process amplified by the signing of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, Ukraine's legal system still contains inherited Soviet legal deficiencies that allow for human rights violations. Some of the most glaring deficiencies relate to the rules and regulations for assigning and conducting forensic psychiatric examinations in cases of administrative offenses.With an aim to aid Ukraine in eliminating present legal deficiencies that allow for violations of human rights, here we discuss current definitions, rules, and regulations concerning appointment and execution of forensic psychiatric examinations in cases of administrative law violations. We place particular emphasis in our discussion on the European Court for Human Rights case “Zaichenko v Ukraine, No 2”, and the reform bill that followed this case. This case is an ‘in vivo’ illustration of how Ukraine's legal deficiencies have created grounds for the violation of individual human rights.Our assessment of the current rules and regulations for assigning and conducting forensic psychiatric examinations in proceedings of administrative offenses reveals that the legal deficiencies persist. The proposed reform bill is thus a highly warranted initiative, which however has several issues in its formulations and fails to address a few of the worst existing deficiencies. Ukraine's legislators must do further work to put through reforms that will safeguard individuals from unjustified forensic psychiatric examinations.

The Czech Verb Tunelovat and Its Derivatives – a Symbol of Economic Crime Since the 1990s in Czechia

The change in social and political conditions in Czechoslovakia and then in inde-pendent Czechia after 1989 caused significant dynamics in the creation of new words and expressions or the expansion of the meaning of already existing words. A symbolic representative of the emergence of new words and meanings is the verb tunelovat and its derivatives (tunelování, tunelář, etc.), which began to be used to describe a certain way of realizing economic crime, through which privileged individuals from the time of the communist totalitarian regime become a privileged layer of society and in the new conditions of freedom thanks to their connections, financial security from the past and their entrepreneurial cynicism. The article presents a linguistic analysis of this expression and its derivatives from the point of view of lexical semantics, word for-mation and frequency of use. The analysis is based on both the relevant scientific lit-erature and data from the Czech National Corpus.

THE IMAGE OF THE CITY UNDER OCCUPATION

The article is devoted to the perception of the image of their city by the population of the temporarily occupied territories of Southern Ukraine. Using the example of Berdyansk, the author proves that local residents have a traumatic understanding of their native city as foreign, betrayed and emptied. The researcher considers the image of the city as a set of individual assessments, impressions and experiences, arising in the form of sensations and memory of past experience, closely related to spatial localization, determined by socio-cultural and historical factors. In the course of informal analysis of the content of 15 Internet sources, which contain interviews with forced migrants and those who remain in Berdyansk, it was noted that the image of the city arises in the dimensions of "past-future – current social interactions" and "visual – social spaces" . It is shown that during the occupation, the urban space from the sphere of public activity turns into a risk zone, and ordinary affairs acquire unpredictable features. It is concluded that in order to destroy the social subjectivity of the urban community, the invaders carry out a policy of urbicide, which includes the occupation of physical space, violation of privacy, the creation of an artificial carnival discourse of urban life, economic isolation and visual tricolorization. It was established that under these conditions there is a return to the social practices of the times of the communist totalitarian regime in the political and socio-economic spheres. The author proves that in this way the Russian occupiers are trying to impose their vision of the past and future, to give additional legitimacy to their power against the background of growing popular resistance and expectations of the Ukrainian army.

His Pen Took Him where He Shouldn't be. Institutionalization of Censorship in Bulgaria in the 1950s

The article examines the beginning of censorship in Bulgaria in the early 1950s. The author proceeds from Arlen Blum's classification of the levels of control in the Soviet Union: the first level is self-censorship; the second level is editorial censorship; the third level is Glavlitov control – carrying out the practical work of censorship; the fourth level includes the criminal police – the NKVD, the KGB in the Soviet Union and (State Security in Bulgaria) and the fifth level, which makes final decisions, is ideological censorship, carried out by the party brass through decisions, decrees, etc. In Bulgaria, the beginning of "total censorship" was marked by the institutional building of totalitarian structures during the Sovietization of the country, when new institutions were organized with the assistance of Soviet envoys and normative rules and practices were introduced to control social and cultural life. The author does not examine the different levels defined by Arlene Blum, as they must be studied in their symbiosis, but, drawing on concrete examples from archival documents, shows how self-censorship was nurtured in Bulgaria in the early years of the totalitarian communist regime.

КРИМІНАЛІЗАЦІЯ ЗАПЕРЕЧЕННЯ ГОЛОДОМОРУ У КОНТЕКСТІ ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКОГО ДОСВІДУ ЗАБОРОНИ ЗАПЕРЕЧЕННЯ ГЕНОЦИДУ

The article highlights the problems and prospects of establishing of criminal lability for Holodomor denial in the context of the experience of criminalizing genocide denial, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in European countries. Significant part of western researchers considers that the prosecution of persons who deny genocide should take place primarily in those countries where the mass extermination of large human groups took place in the past and whose society has knowledge of the relevant historical context. Criminalization of denials of genocide in European countries took place in stages. During the 1990s, France, Germany and Belgium established criminal liability for denying the crimes of the Third Reich, including the Holocaust. At the beginning of the XXI century several countries in Eastern and Southern Europe introduced responsibility for the denial of crimes committed by Nazi and communist totalitarian regimes. The next stage of the criminalization of genocide denial began in 2015–2016, it consisted in the establishment of a general ban on denial of all cases of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, without excluding. Spain, Italy, Germany and others countries of Europe adopted laws of this plan. Currently, international law does not require punishment for genocide denial, but there are noticeable trends leading to the establishment of such a universal norm. Between 2003 and 2008, the European Court of Human Rights and the European Parliament issued a series of decisions that justified the right of democratic countries to restrict freedom of speech on issues related to the denial of the Holocaust and others crimes of the Nazi totalitarian regime of the Third Reich. Genocide denial is a violation of the right to respect for human dignity – not only victims of genocide, but also their descendants are considered victims in cases of this kind.

ОПІР ГЕНОЦИДНІЙ ПОЛІТИЦІ КОМУНІСТИЧНОГО ТОТАЛІТАРНОГО РЕЖИМУ В 1932-1933 РР. ЗА ДОКУМЕНТАМИ ФОНДІВ НАЦІОНАЛЬНОГО МУЗЕЮ ГОЛОДОМОРУ-ГЕНОЦИДУ

The turn of the 1920s and 1930s, and above all, the period of the Holodomor genocide, was, for the Ukrainian nation, at times, perhaps the most difficult experience in its history. Stalin and his entourage's efforts to establish the communist system through radical social and economic transformations and permanent state terror (perpetrated by the Stalinist repressive machine) directly threatened the traditional way of life of Ukrainian farmers owners. The foundations of their centuries-old existence were undermined, putting millions of hard-working, wealthy owners on the verge of survival. There were these processes both in Soviet Ukraine and in the compact resettlement areas of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians in other regions of the USSR. In response, the Ukrainian peasantry tried to resist communist domination by all means, actively participating in protest actions that had different forms of manifestation and specificity (often turning into an openly armed insurgent struggle). The presented study, based on the materials of archival and investigative cases transferred to the funds of the National Museum of the Holodomor-genocide from the Sectoral State Archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, highlights the individual, most common types and methods of Ukrainians' resistance to the genocidal policies of the communist totalitarian regime in 1932–1933. On the examples of tragic life stories of specific individuals, the figures of the specified archival and investigative documents, their reactions to the communist experiments implemented by the regime, behavioural survival strategies, etc., are considered. Attention is focused on highlighting the aspirations of the accused, their vision and their assessment of the rapid social and economic changes at the local level. Simultaneously, it shows the results of the activity of the then-Soviet punitive and repressive system, particularly the judicial system, based on interrogation protocols, relevant resolutions and sentences.

Revival of psychology in former Czechoslovakia and the contemporary Czech Republic after the fall of Totalitarian communist regimes.

After the general societal and political change in November 1989 in Czechoslovakia, the subject "History of Psychology" became the stable component of curriculum of studying psychology at the Department of Psychology of Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. The author of this paper has taught "History of Psychology" in Czech since 1998 for more than 20 years all students of psychology and he is teaching this subject the students of ERASMUS+ program from whole Europe, studying at Charles University in Prague, now. Indivisible part of the curriculum is represented by the history of Czechoslovak and Czech psychology. In References, the most important publications in the field of history of Czechoslovak and Czech psychology are presented.

ASPECTS OF HISTORICAL ROMANIAN DRAMATURGY DURING THE COMMUNIST TOTALITARIAN REGIME

An insight that can greatly help us in our understanding of Romanian history during the era of the Communist totalitarian regime, is without a doubt provided by the historical dramaturgy of the period. During those years, a large number of historical plays were written and directed. It is for this very reason that historical theatre cannot be ignored by any historian interested in how the social representation of the past was constructed in the context of the four decades in which Romania was held in the grip of Communist ideology. There is an obvious parallel between the evolution of Romanian literature during the period in question (including dramaturgy) and Romanian historiography. In the latter field, changes that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s have been highlighted over the last two decades by Lucian Boia1. An analysis of literary criticism and writings reveals similar characteristics and developments in that field. Moreover, the literary genre of historical theatre can be closely linked to the rise of nationalism within the political discourse of the Communist regime, so it should not come as any surprise that the number of historical themes had been growing steadily since the mid-1960s. In a manner similar to other cultural policies of the time, the ideological twists and turns of Romanian Communism can be found in the evolution of historical theatre. Indeed, the closest comparison that can be made is with the historical cinematography of the time, which was better known and more popular than the dramaturgy of the era, through its themes, subjects and artistic approaches. However, while the historical movies of the era are still available today and indeed are frequently broadcast on Romanian TV, the historical plays of the time are available to the modern researcher only in specialized books in which they had been collected before 1989, in the volumes of literary criticism from the Communist period, or in the collective memory of witnesses. Nevertheless, a study of the impact of theatre under the conditions of communist totalitarianism is essential in order to be able to properly understand the effects of the regime’s propaganda, its evolution in terms of ideological orientation, and how it contributed to the crystallization of social representations of the past. This research study is merely a first step. The themes of the historical plays written and produced during the Communist regime are closely correlated with its historiographical writings. Ideas such as the antiquity of the Romanian nation, its persistency, the permanent nature of the defence of its statehood, and the aspiration toward unity are all now emerging. One theme highlighted during the 1970s is that of ‘heroism’, also present in the propaganda of the time. This theme channels us towards a better understanding of the role and attributes of the leader, thus becoming one of the main themes of Romanian historical dramaturgy within a very short time. While a long line of voivodes and heroes appeared on the stage, and via this medium through history, they became in fact the moving parts of a bigger mechanism that would ultimately become the personality cult of Nicolae Ceaușescu.

Communist Totalitarian Regime and the Status quo of the Catholic Church in the Context of Post-War Reality of Poland (1945−1956)

The fundamental purpose of this article is to present the specificity of the totalitarian communist regime to the status quo of the Catholic Church functioning in the Polish People's Republic in the early post-war period (1945−1956). Therefore, the analysis of the discussed issues allows one to expose the nature of the Stalinist system of repression described as the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” taking into account the tough and challenging situation of the Catholic Church, forced not only to fight for her survival but above all to preserve the Christian identity of the Polish nation. The reinterpretation of the Stalinist totalitarian system from the perspective of Christian personalistic praxeology discloses its unprecedentedly criminal nature. Moreover, the presentation of the fundamental assumptions of the totally anti-human and anti-Christian paradigm that characterizes the “dictatorship of the proletariat” makes it possible to interpret Stalinism in terms of not only defining but also legitimizing and even authenticating one of the most terrifying and degenerate forms of totalitarian systems of the 20th century. However, this is of crucial importance, specifically today when many emerging ideological trends often downplay the criminal nature of Stalinism and even treat the “totalitarian model” — particularly communism — as a “specific historical phenomenon” attempting to resolve many complex and multifarious socio-political, cultural and economic issues.

The Unknown Labour Camp in Slivnitsa (August – September 1989)

The labour camp in the military unit in the town of Slivnitsa as a place of state repression in the campaign for forced name change has not been the subject of special scientific research. In early 1985, hundreds of Turks from North-Eastern Bulgaria were summoned to the military checkpoints and as "mobilized" were sent to the unit, part of which was turned into a special labour camp. In Slivnitsa and other labour camps, the mobilized were subjected to heavy physical labour and psychological harassment. In the archive of the State Security documents are kept with some of the statistics on this form of violent dealing with the most active Turks – potential opponents of the forced name change and organizers of mass protests in North - Eastern Bulgaria. The repression in the labour camp in Slivnitsa from August-September 1989, happened during a period of the hardest field work for the tobacco producers. As "reserve troops" some of the most prominent Pomaks in Southern Bulgaria, including also some Turks from the Pazardzhik and Gotzedelchevski villages, were isolated. Subjected to humiliation, harassment and ideological manipulation, more than 100 people in a month were held halfhungry and forced to engage in heavy physical labour. This state violence scared the population and interrupted all possibilities for general opposition against the communist regime. This study aims to present this form of mass repression, carried out secretly and thoroughly concealed by the communist totalitarian regime in Bulgaria and plunged into oblivion. It is based on archival documents, memories, unknown to science notes and a list of the names of those brought in in 1989 in the labour camp in Slivnitsa.

ПЕРШИЙ У КРИМУ ПАМ’ЯТНИЙ ЗНАК ЖЕРТВАМ ГОЛОДОМОРУ: ВІД ІДЕЇ ДО МІСЦЯ ПАМ'ЯТІ У СІМФЕРОПОЛІ

The article highlights the history of the first memorial sign in Crimea to the victims of the Holodomor, which was installed in the form of an Orthodox cross in 2000 on the facade of the Cathedral of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Princes Volodymyr and Olga in Simferopol. The idea of its establishment belongs to the secretary of the Crimean Diocese of the UOC of the Kyiv Patriarchate Pavlо Kushch, who in 2000 was ordained a bishop under the name of Kliment. The nearly three-meter memorial sign in the form of a pedestal and a stele, on which an Orthodox cross entwined with vines and stones are carved, was made and presented to the bishop by Crimean Tatar sculptor and national movement activist Ilmi Ametov. The memorial cross has become a place of remembrance where, since 2000, members of the public have gathered every year to commemorate both the victims of the Holodomor and the people repressed and deported by the totalitarian communist regime. Before the occupation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, representatives of the Crimean Tatar people regularly participated in these events along with activists of the Ukrainian community of Crimea. In an abbreviated version, the ceremony honoring the victims of the genocide of the Ukrainian nation at the memorial in Simferopol continues to be held in the temporarily occupied Crimea, but its existence is threatened. As part of the general policy of discrimination against the Ukrainian community of Crimea, the Crimean Diocese of the UOC of the Kyiv Patriarchate, which since 2018 has become part of the autocephalous Ortodox Church of Ukraine is subject to systematic pressure. In particular, the occupiers have already taken part of the temples from it. In 2019, the illegitimate occupation "court" decided to vacate the premises of the OCU, where a memorial cross to the victims of the Holodomor was installed. As of 2022, the church continues to hold it, but if the church building is seized, the memorial will probably be dismantled, because Russia has declared itself the successor of the USSR and does not recognize the Holodomor as genocide of the Ukrainian nation.

Peculiarities of using phraseological units in V. Shkliar’s historical novel “Troshcha”

The paper studies the phrasemics in the works of V. Shkliar, a renowned contemporary author, represented in his historical novel “Troshcha”, featuring the national liberation struggle of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army against the communist totalitarian regime in Western Ukraine in the postwar period. The novel contains important culture-oriented information and is an important source of studying phraseological units in respect of their structural and semantic, as well as functional and semantic role in the work of fiction as figurative and expressive-evaluative components of the author’s individual style. The selection of phraseologisms is contingent to the conceptual message of the novel, the specificities of its plot and composition, the imagery of the novel, its narrative structure and author’s original linguistic world image. Phraseological units perform a significant role in the stylization of the historical epoch. Having employed set expressions, typical exclusively of the period of the national liberation struggle of Ukrainian Insurgent Army, in their nominative function, the author has painted an artistic historical image of reality. Some of the phrasemes, implemented in specific contexts, have acquired negative or positive evaluative connotation. V. Shkliar resorts to Soviet clichés, narratives – expressive markers of the totalitarian period, which by shifting their intense pompous evaluation into a negative one occasionally create ironic and satirical effect. By depicting the images of insurgents, villagers from Western Ukraine, the author has delineated the most essential features of the Ukrainian national character, historical conditions of its formation. While depicting the personalities of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army warriors, V. Shkliar employs the phraseological units representing their disposition, features of character, intellectual abilities, moral and psychological, emotional state, etc. The author also makes use of the dialectal phraseological units of Halychyna in order to convey the original live speech of the characters, reproduce the local flavor. The author uses phraseological units both in their usual and transformed form. By acquiring additional semantic shades, these phrasemes carry out a new contextual meaning, and make the author’s speech more expressive. The author has fixed his own life observations, ideas concerning freedom, betrayal, happiness in maxims, aphorisms which can enrich the phraseological inventory of the national language.

The Fates of the Group Subjected to Terror in the Totalitarian Regime

Abstract The 20th century was marked by multiple anthropogenic historical traumas, constructed by totalitarian regimes, in the context of which certain groups became targets of the death drive. These traumas show similarities, related to the general specificity of the trauma, whether individual or collective, but they also feature significant differences, which are the result of social, political and cultural factors. In this article, I will refer to the fate of the people deported from the Moldovan SSR during the Stalinist regime, analysed from a psychoanalytical perspective, based on oral history testimonies. The results and reflections presented in the article are part of a research dedicated to the deportations from the Moldavian SSR, carried out within the “Recovery and historical exploration of the memory of the victims of the totalitarian communist regime in the Moldavian SSR during the years 1940-1941, 1944-1953” State Programme. As an anthropogenic collective trauma, the deportations brought communication with the Other to the forefront of reflection. In particular, we will refer to the specificity of the relationship of the deported persons with the community, with the State, with state institutions, in the process of mourning and mentalizing the trauma.

They Were “Heroes”. Conceptual and Narrative Analysis of the Figure of a Free Teacher in a Totalitarian Society

Despite the context of contemporary post-heroic indifference, our intention is to re-analyze the concept of heroism, not in the modernist (totalizing and iconic), or in the post-modernist (de-heroizing and ironic) way, but in the optics of hermeneutic re-reading of the specific teachers’ stories from the Stalinist years of the totalitarian regime. In the contribution we bring a conceptual identification of features of the ethical-characterial understanding of “hero without a halo”, by which we want to break the simplistic dichotomy between heroic and everyday – we introduce a third concept – “a hero of everyday life”. We point out how the mythical-idealistic idea of heroism perverted to a collective ideology and how the reality of the communist totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia demanded heroes – heroes of everyday life. The aim of the research is to find the occurrence of the identifying features of the “everyday hero” in particular stories of three teachers from the times of socialist Czechoslovakia, with the help of narrative analysis.

Fortes in Fide—The Role of Faith in the Heroic Struggle against Communism

Repression and persecution by the totalitarian communist regimes have significantly affected the fates of Christian churches and believers in the countries of the “Eastern Bloc”. Many members of the clergy and laypersons were incarcerated, tortured and persecuted, several bishops suffered exemplary punishment in the propaganda-driven show trials and a few of them were later beatified or canonized across the world (by the Catholic Church). Focusing on the literature originating in Slovakia, this meta-report aimed to summarize the key authors’ essential works and to examine the question as to whether—and to what extent—faith was a contributing factor in the collapse of the communist regime. What was the role of the churches and believers in the struggle against communism? How and to what extent believers were involved in the resistance movements and the political and economic transformation of their countries that were set in motion by the collapse of those regimes? Based on an analysis of hundreds of books and articles on the subject, essential ideas were extracted, categorized and presented. The works of the persecuted authors were the subject of a detailed qualitative content analysis. Thus, four overarching dimensions (philosophical, intimate, personal and social/political) and fourteen categories related to the experience of faith were identified.

Lithuania's Demarcation of Information from Poland's Solidarity Movement in 1980-1981

The aim of the article: Despite the fact that everything we know in Polish history about the emergence of Solidarity [Polish: Solidarność], Polish trade unions, in 1980-1981, and the conflict with the communist totalitarian regime is described in sources as ‘the Polish Crisis’, the question remains open about the contemporaneous deepening communication crisis of the communist government in Lithuania, whose history had long – until the middle of the 20th century – been very closely linked to the development of Poland. From 1951 to 1989, Lithuania was separated from Poland by a double barbed-wire Soviet border barrier without any border crossing points. Nevertheless, the author proposes delving into what type of information control measures the Soviet regime used in influencing the Lithuanian people by undermining their interest in the workers’ strikes and the expanding trade union movement in Poland 40 years ago, trying to set Lithuanians against Polish society, and also how the media in the West helped renew the dialogue between Lithuanian and Polish diaspora organisations. Research methods: The author performed a content analysis of KGB documents in the Lithuanian Special Archives and examined the content of the Lithuanian SSR mass media and the mass media of the Lithuanian diaspora in the United States. Results and conclusions: The Soviet concept of security that was implemented by the repressive structure of the KGB was largely associated with the restriction of information, censorship and self-censorship of the population. However, it was also associated with the recruitment of Lithuanian citizens into ongoing cooperation with the secret service to collect data about Polish people who were ‘disloyal’ to the regime and transfer information to the security service of communist Poland, so the content of these reports must be disclosed. Cognitive value: Thus, the article provides the broader context, in which the content of the propaganda press is only one element of the system that controlled the public space.