Marxism and Religion in Eastern Europe: Papers Presented at the Banff International Slavic Conference, September 4–7,1974

191 Pages·1975·12.751 MB·English

by  Richard T. De George (auth.), Richard T. De George, James P. Scanlan (eds.)

MARXISM AND RELIGION IN EASTERN EUROPE
SOVIETICA
PUBLICATIONS AND MONOGRAPHS
OF THE INSTITUTE OF EAST-EUROPEAN STUDIES AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF FRIBOURG/SWITZERLAND AND
THE CENTER FOR EAST EUROPE, RUSSIA AND ASIA
AT BOSTON COLLEGE AND THE SEMINAR
FOR POLITICAL THEORY AND PHILOSOPHY
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH
Founded by J. M. BOCHBNSKI (Fribourg)
Edited by T. J. BLAKELEY (Boston), GillDO KUNG (Fribourg)
and NIKOLAUS LoBKOWICZ (Munich)
Editorial Board
Karl G. Ballestrem (Munich) George L. Kline (Bryn Mawr)
Helmut Dahm (Cologne) T. R. Payne (Providence)
Richard T. De George (Kansas) Friedrich Rapp (Berlin)
Peter Ehlen (Munich) Andries Sarlemijn (Eindhoven)
Michael Gagern (Munich) James Scanlan (Columbus)
Felix P. Ingold (St. Gall) Edward Swiderski (Fribourg)
Bernard Jeu (Lille)
VOLUME 36
MARXISM AND RELIGION
IN EASTERN EUROPE
Papers Presented at the Banff International Slavic Conference,
September 4-7, 1974
Edited by
RICHARD T. DE GEORGE AND JAMES P. SCANLAN
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
DORDRECHT-HOLLAND / BOSTON-U.S.A.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
International Slavic Conference, 1st, Banff, Alta., 1974.
Marxism and religion in Eastern Europe.
(Sovietica ; v. 36)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Dialectical materialism -Congresses. 2. Philosophy
History-Europe, Eastern-Congresses. 3. Religion and state
Russia-Congresses. 4. Church and state in Poland-Congresses.
5. Catholics in Russia-Congresses. I. De George, Richard T.
ll. Scanlan, James Patrick, 1927- 1lI. Title. IV. Series.
BS09.8.163 1974 146'.3 75-33051
ISBN-J3: 978-94-010-1872-2 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-1870-8
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-1870-8
Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company,
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Copyright © 1976 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION VII
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS XV
PART I. MARXISM
RICHARD T. DE GEORGE / Communism and the New Marxists 3
z. A. JORDAN / Contemporary Problems of Dialectical Materialism 13
IV A N S VIT AK / Marxist Philosophy in Czechoslovakia:
The Lessons from Prague 45
MIHAILO MARKOVIC / Marxist Philosophy in Yugoslavia:
The Praxis Group 63
PART II. RELIGION
EDW ARD D. WYNOT, JR. / Reluctant Bedfellows: The Catholic
Church and the Polish State, 1918-1939 93
DENNIS J. DUNN / The Catholic Church and the Soviet Govern-
ment in Soviet Occupied East Europe, 1939-1940 107
VASYL MARKUS / The Suppressed Church: Ukrainian Catholics in
the Soviet Union 119
ALEXANDRE A. BENNIGSEN and S. ENDERS WIMBUSH / Muslim
Religious Dissent in the U.S.S.R. 133
BOHDAN R. BOCIURKIW / Religious Dissent in the U.S.S.R.:
Lithuanian Catholics 147
INDEX 177
INTRODUCTION
Since the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, two of the most significant but at
the same time least understood areas of that revolution's cultural impact
have been philosophy and religion. The impact has of course been massive,
not only in the Soviet Union but, after the second World War, in Soviet
dominated Eastern Europe as well. Yet the consequences of Communism
for philosophy and religion throughout the Soviet orbit are far from
having the simplicity suggested by the stereotypes of a single, monolithic
'Marxism' and a consistent, crushing assault on the Church and on re
ligious faith.
Unquestionably Marxism is the ruling philosophy throughout Eastern
Europe. In the Soviet Union, 'Marxism-Leninism' or 'dialectical ma
terialism' is the official and the only tolerated philosophy, and most of the
other countries of Eastern Europe follow the Soviet lead in philosophy as
in other fields. But in the latter countries Marxism was imposed only
after W orId War II, and its deVelopment has not always copied the Soviet
model. Original thinkers in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and
Hungary have thought their own way through the writings of Marx and
his followers, and have arrived at Marxist positions which are consider
ably at variance with the Soviet interpretations - and often with each
other. Moreover in recent years the Soviet philosophers themselves have
been unable to ignore the theoretical questions raised by the other East
European Marxists and by representatives of Marxism in the West. By
taking positions on these issues within the family of Marxism, the Soviets
have only underscored the modern transformation of 'monolithic'
Marxism into a surprisingly capacious range of theoretical possibilities.
As for religion, the simple image of 'Godless Communism' may seem
amply grounded in Marx's notorious view that religion is both false (a
set of self-projective dreams) and socially and humanly damaging ('the
opiate of the people') - a view that one might expect to require the literal
extirpation of the Church in a Communist regime. And indeed religion,
both ecclesiastical and non-ecclesiastical, has been the target of continual
VIII INTRODUCTION
attack in Communist-dominated Eastern Europe. The fact that religion
is still under attack, however, shows also that it still exists - that the
Communist societies of Eastern Europe have not yet been rendered God
less. Examination of the causes and circumstances of the survival of re
ligion in different countries and regions presents a complex picture of the
limitations to State power which can be posed by the inertial force of pre
Communist institutions, by the intricacies of European and world politics,
and above all by the power of ethnic nationalism. In a multiplicity of
forms, religion has endured in Eastern Europe as the only, however
grudgingly, tolerated set of alternative institutions and ideas in a Marxist
society.
If the stereotypes of Marxism-Leninism and irreligion in Communist
Eastern Europe have always been misleading, they have never been more
so than in the present day, when alternative forms of Marxist philosophy
have become not only thoroughly recognized but in some countries po
litically active, and when the continuing vitality of religion has been dis
played dramatically in the Soviet Union in the form of a broad and vocal
dissent movement. It was to illuminate and analyze some of the more
significant features of this multifaceted cultural situation in Eastern Europe
that the papers included in this volume were prepared for the International
Slavic Conference held in Banff, Alberta, Canada on September 4-7,1974.
The Conference, sponsored jointly by the American Association for
the Advancement of Slavic Studies, the British National Association for
Soviet and Eastern European Studies, the British Universities Association
of Slavists, and the Canadian Association of Slavists, brought together
scholars from many countries for a cooperative survey of current work
in Slavic studies in all the major academic disciplines. The first four papers
below were presented at a session entitled 'Contemporary Marxism',
chaired by James P. Scanlan. The remaining five papers are drawn from
the three sessions at the conference devoted to religion: 'Church-State
Relations in Eastern Europe, 1918-1945', chaired by Vasyl Markus; 'The
Catholic Communities of the Soviet Union', chaired by Bohdan R. Bo
ciurkiw; and 'Religious Dissent: Bridge to the Intellectuals?' chaired by
William C. Fletcher. Together these nine papers are presented here not
as exhausting or even as systematically surveying the present status of
philosophy and religion in Eastern Europe, but as investigating in some
depth a few symptomatic and informative aspects of the subject.
INTRODUCTION IX
1. MARXISM
The paper by Richard T. De George begins the volume with an overview
of the contemporary status of Marxist theory concerning the nature of
Communist society. De George finds three basic approaches among
Marxist theorists, distinguishable geographically as well as philosophical
ly. The first, which enjoys an ideological monopoly in the U.S.S.R., is
that of the 'scientific' Marxist-Leninists who are concerned with discover
ing the social laws of the development of socialism into Communism, and
who emphasize the necessity of building a suitable economic base for
Communism. The second approach is that of the 'open' or creative
Marxists of Eastern Europe outside the U.S.S.R., who are attempting to
provide the theoretical basis for achieving a humanistic type of society,
and who therefore reject the Soviet model. The third approach predom
inates not in Eastern Europe but in the West: it is that of the critical
Marxists, including some members of the New Left and the Frankfurt
School. Critical Marxism concentrates primarily on the critique of capi
talism as it has developed in the West; it makes freedom the chief in
gredient of the desired future society, which it does little to characterize
further. Each of the three positions, De George argues, continues an as
pect of Marx's work. But under the strain of practice what was unified in
Marx's doctrine of Communism has been fragmented, and none of the
three contemporary versions enjoys the apparent coherence and synoptic
attractiveness of the original.
z. A. Jordan's paper focuses on two widely debated controversies about
Marx which have played major roles in the contemporary development
of Marxism and particularly in the disputes between Soviet and East
European Marxists. One concerns the relation of 'dialectical materialism,
to Marxian philosophy - more specifically, to the views of Marx himself
as opposed to those of his friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels. The
second controversy, which Jordan selects for detailed analysis, has to do
with the continuity or discontinuity of Marx's thought from the early to
the mature stages of his career. A key factor in the revitalization of
Marxist theory in recent years, and a significant impetus to deviation
from Soviet orthodoxy, has been the discovery of Marx's humanistic
philosophy of alienation as expressed in early unpublished writings such
as the Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts of1 844 and seemingly echoed in
x INTRODUCTION
certain later writings as well, such as the recently translated Grundrisse
der Kritik der Politischen Okonomie of 1857-58. Jordan argues, against
such recent interpreters as Robert C. Tucker and David McLellan, that
Marx in his later work abandoned his early philosophy of alienation,
though not the moral concern which underlies it and which today is often
confused with it.
Ivan Svitak, himself a prominent Czech philosopher and a participant
in the events he describes, presents the story of the origin and political
failure of attempts to democratize post-war Czechoslovakia on the basis
of an 'open' or non-Stalinist Marxism. His paper traces and analyzes the
career of Stalinist Marxism in Czechoslovakia in three stages from 1945
to the present. The first stage, which lasted until 1948, was marked by the
parallel development of Communist and social democratic variants of
Marxist theory. After 1948 the latter version was suppressed and the en
suing twenty years saw the increasingly dogmatic development of Soviet
inspired, Stalinist Marxism and its successive conflicts with the domestic
Marxist tradition, with various forms of 'revisionism', and finally with
the reformist campaign for 'socialism with a human face'. The debacle of
1968 and the Soviet occupation which ushered in the third phase, though
in one sense a disaster, in another gave promise for the future. For Svitak
argues that 'open Marxism' was an 'illusion of the epoch', unrealistic
because it failed to take account of existing power relationships and in
stitutional realities in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe. And if the Soviet
tanks destroyed that illusion they also forever discredited Stalinist Marx
ism, so that the whole episode has produced a 'reform of consciousness'
in Czechoslovakia which is prerequisite to any future political success.
A seemingly more fruitful experiment in humanistic Marxism in a dif
ferent national setting is described in the paper by Mihailo Markovic, a
prominent member of the group of Yugoslav philosophers who established
the widely read journal of liberal Marxist opinion, Praxis. Markovic
traces the formation and development of the Praxis group after World
War II, explaining how and why the group turned from 'Marxism
Leninism' to the writings of Marx himself in a search for answers to
specific problems facing Yugoslavia, and analyzing the social and political
conditions that allowed the group to survive and to become until very
recently the dominant force in Yugoslav philosophy despite increasing
pressure from the government. Special attention is given to the group's
INTRODUCTION XI
apparently successful emergence in 1974 from a particularly virulent cam
paign against it conducted by hard-line Marxist-Leninist elements in
Serbia. The tragic irony is that in the few short months since Markovic's
paper was written, the tide has turned dramatically and perhaps irrevers
ibly against the Praxis group. Markovic and seven of his colleagues were
dismissed from the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Belgrade in
January, 1975, and at this writing similar purges appear to be under way
at the Universities of Ljubljana and Zagreb. The journal Praxis has lost its
government subsidy and has ceased publication. Actually MarkoviC's
paper develops hypothetically some of the implications of such events for
the future of Marxism in Eastern Europe. "If the Praxis group perishes,"
he writes, "that would mean simply that the intrinsic conflicts between
revolutionary Marxism and the ruling bureaucracy is so deep and anta
gonistic that a peaceful resolution is not possible, even under the most
favorable conditions." In any event, the humanistic Marxist theories out
lined in the last section of MarkoviC's paper may soon be without vocal
support in Yugoslavia - and hence without significant open support any
where in Eastern Europe.
2. RELIGION
Unlike philosophy, religion as a cultural phenomenon in pre-Communist
Eastern Europe was supported by a vast institutional structure - the
Church - which enlisted mass loyalties and consequently has weighed
heavily on subsequent developments. Edward D. Wynot, Jr., shows the
bearing of such historical considerations on understanding Church-state
relations in Poland after the establishment of Communist rule at the end
of the second World War. In the period between the two wars, Wynot
argues, the relations of the Catholic Church and the Polish state under
Pilsudski and others were never precisely determined. The result was that
the government could redefine the situation to fit the needs of the moment;
but at the same time the Church was left free from any binding commit
ments and instead stressed an uneasy but mutually beneficial co-existence
with the regime. Wynot sees the attitudes and practices developed in the
interwar years as exerting a major influence on Church-state relations in
Poland after 1945. Instead of fighting a regime which stood for many
things to which it was fundamentally hostile, for pragmatic reasons the
Church supported the Polish Communists - who could, after all, provide