Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-19T01:41:07.999Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What Went Wrong? Church–State Relations in Socialist Yugoslavia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Klaus Buchenau
Klaus Buchenau*
Affiliation:
Freie Universitat Berlin, Osteuropa-Institut, Germany. [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Yugoslavia's socialism was always a special case when compared with other states in the eastern part of Europe, and so was its religious policy. In the 1960s, Yugoslavia adopted a rather liberal stance towards its religious communities. The state interfered less in the internal affairs of the churches than it did in most states in the Warsaw Pact. Even Croat Cardinal Franjo Kuharić, who was otherwise very critical towards Tito's Yugoslavia, had to admit in 1987,

The Pope freely appoints bishops, without the intervention of the government. The church is free in its inner administration: there is no numerus clausus, neither for priests nor for the order's candidates. The bishops appoint and transfer priests without hindrance, without government interference. Bishops, priests and believers are free to gather in church rooms and don't have to apply for special permits. The orders can exist and function, although within the frames of law. The freedom of motion in- and outside the country is not hampered, though it may happen that-in our conviction, without justification-priests' passports are taken away. The freedom of the religious press is also one of the positive facts.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , December 2005 , pp. 547 - 567
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Glas Koncila , 8 May 1987, p. 3.Google Scholar

2. See Pedro Ramet, “The Serbian Orthodox Church,”in Pedro Ramet, ed., Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twentieth Century (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1988), pp. 232–248.Google Scholar

3. Vjekoslav Perica, Balkan Idols, Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 101–106.Google Scholar

4. Croat historian Jure Krišto is one of those who make this point for the Catholic side (Jure Krišto, Katolička crkva u totalitarizmu 1945.–1990.: Razmatranja o Crkvi u Hrvatskoj pod komunizmom (Zagreb: Globus, 1997). Quite similar but from an equally exclusive Serbian national point of view writes the Serbian priest Savo Jović (Utamničena Crkva [Belgrade: Pravoslavna misionarska škola pri hramu Svetog Aleksandra Nevskog, 2002]).Google Scholar

5. See, for instance, Radmila Radić's meticulous monographs ( Verom protiv vere, Država i verske zajednice u Srbiji 1945–1953 [Belgrade: Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 1995]; Hilandar u državnoj politici kraljevine Srbije i Jugoslavije 1896–1970 [Belgrade: Službeni list, 1998]; Država i verske zajednice 1945–1970, Vols 1–2 [Belgrade: Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 2002]). Otherwise, the subject has generally been functioning as a playground for nationalist historians (see Dragoljub Živojinović, Vatikan, Katolička crkva i Jugoslovenska vlast 1941–1958 [Belgrade: Prosveta, 1994]; Srpska Pravoslavna Crkva i nova vlast, 1944–1950 [Srbinje, Republika Srpska: Hilandarski fond, 1998] and Veljko Djurić, Letopis Srpske Pravoslavne Crkve 1946–1958. godine, Vreme patrijarha Gavrila (1946–1950) i patrijarha Vikentija (1950–1958), Vols 1–3 [Knin (Croatia) and Belgrade: Zora, 2000–2002]).Google Scholar

6. About the role of the Catholic Church in Tudjman's national project see Maja Brkljačić, “Croatian Catholic Church Imagines the Nation, Glas Koncila and the Croatian National Question, 1985–1990,” Balkanologie, Vol. 5, Nos 1–2, 2001, pp. 7–19. About the socialist period in general see the work of Jure Krišto mentioned above, and the work of Miroslav Akmadža, Katolička crkva u Hrvatskoj i komunistički režim 1945.–1966 (Rijeka: Ottokar Keršovani, 2004). About the nationalisation of church property see Akmadža's other monograph, Oduzimanje imovine Katolickoj crkvi i crkveno-drzavni odnosi od 1945. do 1966. godine, Primjer Zagrebacke nadbiskupije (Zagreb: Tkalčić, 2003).Google Scholar

7. Vjekoslav Perica, himself a former state functionary involved in religious affairs in the 1980s, has successfully used his connections in order to access archival sources for the last two decades of socialist Yugoslavia.Google Scholar

8. To this group belong, among others, Jure Krišto in Croatia and Veljko Djurić in Serbia.Google Scholar

9. Zvezdan Folić, Vjerske zajednice u Crnoj Gori 1918–1953 (Podgorica, Montenegro: Istorijski institut Crne Gore, 2001).Google Scholar

10. Theresa Marie Ursic, Religious Freedom in Post-World War II Yugoslavia: The Case of Roman Catholic Nuns in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1945–1960 (Lanham, MD: International Scholars Publications, 2001).Google Scholar

11. Perica, Balkan Idols , p. 224.Google Scholar

12. See the complaints of the Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church in December 1948 (Djurić, Letopis, Vol. 3, p. 1048). The Croatian Catholic bishops complained in their pastoral letter in September 1945 that since the end of the war 243 priests had been sentenced to death, 169 confined in jails and camps, 89 had disappeared, while 19 priests, ten lay brothers and four nuns had been killed (Pastirsko pismo katoličkih biskupa Jugoslavije, izdano s općih biskupskih konferencija u Zagrebu, dne 20. rujna 1945 godine, Arhiv Jugoslavije, Savezna komisija za verska pitanja [henceforth AJ, SKVP] 144-1-3).Google Scholar

13. See Radić, Država i verske zajednice, Vol. 1, pp. 385–403.Google Scholar

14. Siniša Zrinščak, Sociologija religije: Hrvatsko iskustvo (Zagreb: Pravni fakultet, 1999), p. 57.Google Scholar

15. Izvršnom veću narodne republike, without an exact date, AJ, SKVP 144-31-323.Google Scholar

16. On the diaspora's role see Paul Hockenos, Homeland Calling, Exile Patriotism and the Balkan Wars (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press 2003).Google Scholar

17. Quite extensive on the phenomenon of “hidden religiosity” is the work of Croatian sociologist of religion Ivan Grubišić, “Politički sustav i gradjani-vjernici,” in Ivan Grubišić, ed., Religija i sloboda: Religijska situacija u Hrvatskoj 1945–1990 (Split, Croatia: Institut za primjenjena društvena istraživanja, 1993), pp. 83–106.Google Scholar

18. On the relationship between partisan myth and nationalist narratives see Ivo Žanić, Prevarena povijest (Durieux) (Zagreb, 1998); Ivan Čolović, Bordel ratnika: folklor, politika i rat (Zemun, Serbia: Biblioteka XX vek; Belgrade: Čigoja štampa, 2000).Google Scholar

19. On the sacralisation of Serbian nationalism see Klaus Buchenau, “Svetosavlje und Pravoslavlje. Nationales und Universales in der serbischen Orthodoxie,” in Martin Schulze-Wessel, ed., Nationalisierung der Religion und Sakralisierung der Nation (Leipzig: GWZO, forthcoming).Google Scholar

20. On the connection between Serbdom, Orthodoxy and communism in the thought of Zagreb's Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac (1898–1960) see Ivan Mužić, Pavelić i Stepinac (Split, Croatia: Logos, 1991), p. 93; the Serbian view of the historical role of Catholicism has been heavily influenced by conservative Russian thinkers and by the Serbian Orthodox clergymen Nikolaj Velimirović (1880–1956) and Justin Popović (1894–1979).Google Scholar

21. On the churches during World War II see Radić, Verom protiv vere , pp. 37–111.Google Scholar

22. The following parts were integrated into the Serbian Patriarchy: the Church of the Kingdom of Serbia, the practically autocephalous Church of Montenegro, the Metropoly of Karlowitz, which was the jurisdictional centre for the Orthodox in southern Hungary and Croatia-Slavonia, the Orthodox Church in Dalmatia and the Orthodox Church in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Already in 1918, the dioceses of Vardar Macedonia had been transferred from the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchy in Constantinople to the Metropoly of Belgrade.Google Scholar

23. The centralist tendency was noticeable in 1934 when Alojzije Stepinac was inaugurated as administrator of the Archbishopric of Zagreb (see Stella Alexander, The Triple Myth, A Life of Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 24; Mužić, Pavelić i Stepinac, p. 65.Google Scholar

24. About the Croatian fears during the rapprochement between Yugoslavia and the Vatican, see Agostino Casaroli, Mučeništvo strpljivosti, Sveta stolica i komunističke zemlje 1963–1989 . Kršcánska sadašnjost (Zagreb, 2001). The cautious attitude of the church in Croatia toward the Council is well exemplified by Zagreb's Archbishop Franjo Kuharić (in office 1970–1997). See, for example, his collected memorial sermons on the anniversary of Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac's death (Poruke sa Stepinčeva groba [Zagreb: Glas Koncila, 1990]). Serbian Orthodox Patriarch German (in office 1958–1990) expressed his reserve for ecumenism in informal talks with the staff of the Federal Commission for Religious Affairs rather than publicly (see AJ, SKVP 144-30-322, 144-60-486, 144-61-487, 144-68-525).Google Scholar

25. See Vjekoslav Butigan, “Politička religija u političkoj kulturi balkanskih naroda,” Teme Nos 1–2, 1997, pp. 93–197.Google Scholar

26. About the wartime and postwar victims among the Croat Catholic clergy, see Juraj Batelja, Crna knjiga o grozovitostima komunističke vladavine u Hrvatskoj (Zagreb: Postulatura bl. Alojzija Stepinca, 2000); about the victims among the Orthodox clergy see Velibor Džomić, Stradanje Srbske Crkve od komunista, Vols 1–2 (Cetinje, Montenegro: Svetigora, 2003).Google Scholar

27. See Predrag Marković, “Partija, Tito, inteligencija i jugoslovenski/nacionalni identitet,” in Svetlana Ljuboja, Pedrag Marković, Laslo Seketj, Mirjana Vasović, eds, Identitet: Srbi i/ili Jugosloveni (Belgrade: Institut za evropske studije, 2001), pp. 13–62.Google Scholar

28. Zabeleška o razgovoru predsednika Savezne komisije za verska pitanja Milutina Morače sa patrijarhom Germanom, 23 June 1966, AJ, SKVP 144-95-632; Casaroli, Mučeništvo strpljivosti , p. 341.Google Scholar

29. On Marxist propaganda at the seminary in Cetinje see Folić, Vjerske zajednice u Crnoj Gori 1918–1953, p. 64. About the influence of Marxisms on Orthodox school instructors see Dimšo Perić, “Prilog proučavanju pitanja veronauke u periodu od 1945. do 1992. godine,” Glasnik SPC, Vol. 74, No. 4, 1993, pp. 67–71.Google Scholar

30. Veljko Djurić, Golgota Srpske Pravoslavne Crkve 1941–1945 (Belgrade: author's edition, 1997), pp. 288–290; Peter Palmer, “The Communists and the Roman Catholic Church in Yugoslavia: 1941–1946,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Oxford, 2000, pp. 54, 63–66.Google Scholar

31. Compare the biography of the leading partisan-priest Milan Smiljanić (Boško Matić, Prota: Krst i petokraka prote Milana Smiljanića (Belgrade: Turistička štampa, 1985).Google Scholar

32. Plenum Saveza udruženja Pravoslavnog sveštenstva FNRJ održan 15.IX. 1949. (AJ, SKVP, 144-2-30).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33. Patriarch German, for instance, complained to the authorities in 1983 about attempts to lure Orthodox seminarists away from the seminaries into state-run schools: “One may not forget, gentlemen, that our church has served its people and that it still does so. It has been happy about its successes and it has endured all sufferings together with the people. Unfortunately, nobody keeps this in mind today. Nobody works for our unity” (cited after Milan D. Janković, Patrijarh German u životu i borbi za spomen-hram [Belgrade: Kalenić, 2001], p. 470).Google Scholar

34. Cited after Krišto, Katolička crkva u totalitarizmu , pp. 40–41.Google Scholar

35. Marković, “Partija, Tito, inteligencija,” p. 15.Google Scholar

36. See Živojinović, Srpska pravoslavna crkva i nova vlast , p. 109.Google Scholar

37. This contrast is shown most clearly in the pioneering work of sociologist of religion Esad Ćimić on Herzegovina: Socijalističko društvo i religija: Ispitivanje odnosa izmedju samoupravljanja i procesa prevladavanja religije (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1970). Among the rural population of Serbia, the Serbian Orthodox Church stood better than in Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina or Croatia. But even in Serbia the ties to the church as an institution were not comparable to the often very compact milieux of Croatian Catholicism (see Dragoljub Djordjević, “Neka otvorena pitanja sociološkog proučavanja pravoslavlja,” Gradina, 1986, Vol. 21, pp. 74–79).Google Scholar

38. Neka aktuelna pitanja za rješavanje u odnosu na vjerske zajednice u NR Hrvatskoj, 29 March 1959, AJ, SKVP 144-40-335. The taxing practices did not depend directly on the confession, but on the republic where the taxpaying priest lived. In fact the reality was much tougher in Croatia than in Serbia, because the regime felt more threatened by the Catholic clergy, who were an overwhelming majority of clergy in Croatia but a tiny minority in Serbia.Google Scholar

39. In 1953, Yugoslavia counted 11,786 clerics, a number that includes both male and female members of the religious orders. Up to that time in total 1,403 clerics had been sentenced to imprisonment. In 1954, there were still 158 clerics in prison, out of which 124 were Catholics (1.7% of the Catholic clergy), 32 Orthodox (1.25% of the Orthodox clergy) and two Protestant priests. The contrast looks much sharper if irregularities are included, such as unauthorised alms collection, religious instruction of children without their parents' written permission, performance of religious rituals outside the church walls, tax fraud, etc. Before repression faded in 1960, every year about 25% of the Catholic priests were sentenced to fines or imprisonment. For the Serbian priests there are comparable data from 1957: 300 priests (about 13%) persecuted for irregularities and another eight (0.34%) for criminal acts (calculated after figures given by Radmila Radić, Država i verske zajednice, Vol. 2, pp. 26–29, 442–443). According to data gathered by the Federal Commission of Religious Affairs for 1963–1964, 231 clerics were punished for irregularities. Among the punished were 174 Catholic and 21 Orthodox priests. In the same period, 12 clerics were brought to court and sentenced—among them ten Catholic and two Orthodox priests. Repression was concentrated in Slovenia and Croatia, followed by Bosnia-Herzegovina. In Serbia, punishment was comparatively weak. The Muslim clergy were punished seldom, with the exception of in Macedonia. See Pregled kažnjenih sveštenika, AJ, SKVP 144-77-564.Google Scholar

40. See Stella Alexander, Church and State in Yugoslavia since 1945 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 226–248.Google Scholar

41. See, for example, a strictly secret instruction in the files of the Federal Commission for Religious Affairs, 21 November 1960 (AJ, SKVP 144-60-486). Other currents in the party saw the Second Vatican Council as an attempt to build up an anti-communist front under Vatican leadership (see II Vatikanski koncil i njegov uticaj na odnose katoličke crkve sa državnom; naši zadaci i mere u vezi toga, 28 February 1963, AJ, SKVP 144-61-487). A third, liberal fraction which gained influence at the end of the 1960 in Croatia saw the Council as a genuine offer of peace (Zapisnik sa sjednice komisije za vjerska pitanja Izvršnog vijeća Savora SR Hrvatske, 19 May 1966, AJ, SKVP 144-95-632).Google Scholar

42. Informacija o uredjenju groba A. Stepinca, 24 October 1961, AJ, SKVP 144-54-444. See also the letter of the Yugoslav envoy Vjekoslav Crvlje to the leadership of the Socialist Republic of Croatia dated 9 October 1969 (AJ, SKVP 144-120-704).Google Scholar

43. Klaus Buchenau, Orthodoxie und Katholizismus in Jugoslawien 1945–1991: Ein serbischkroatischer Vergleich (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004), pp. 223–252.Google Scholar

44. The contradiction between official loyalty and unofficial frustration is best illustrated by Patriarch German's public statements and his interventions behind the scene. In the 1980s he told a Serbian journalist that he had always been against the communists, and that he had even been forced to understand that between the Serbian Orthodox Church and the communist leadership there “can never be any trust or correct cooperation. They saw us as nothing but a tool to consolidate their power to the maximum and to dismember the church” ( Ja i komunisti [Belgrade: Novosti, 1990], p. 28).Google Scholar

45. Razgovor sa patrijarhom Germanom, 17 October 1963, AJ, SKVP 144-68-525; Slanje posmatrača pravoslavne crkve na II Vatikanski koncil, 18.11.1963, AJ, SKVP 144-67-524; Crkveno vjerska aktivnost pravoslavne crkve i drugih vjerskih zajednica, 13 March 1967, AJ, SKVP 144-105-658.Google Scholar

46. Conversation on 23 September 1965 (AJ, SKVP 144-86-600).Google Scholar

47. Letter of the Yugoslav embassy in Rome to its government, 14 January 1963 (AJ, SKVP 144-66-523).Google Scholar

48. Živko Kustić, chief editor of Yugoslavia's major Catholic periodical, Glas Koncila , stated in 1980 that the greatest danger for “real” ecumenism was politically motivated pseudoecumenism (Glas Koncila, No. 434, 1980, p. 3).Google Scholar

49. Ankica Marinović Bobinac, “Analiza radova hrvatskih autora o poslijekoncilskom dijalogu izmedju katolika i nevjerujućih,” in Prilozi izučavanju nereligioznosti i ateizma (Zagreb: Institut za društvena istraživanja, 1993), Vol. 2, pp. 137–173; Zlatko Frid, Kontestacija u katoličkoj crkvi (Zagreb: Institut za društvena istraživanja, 1976)Google Scholar

50. In its most compact form this ideology is presented in the church's monograph Trinaest stoljeća kršćanstva u Hrvata/NEK 1984 (Zagreb: Središnji odbor za pripravu nacionalnog enharistijskog kongresa, 1986), which was published on the occasion of a jubilee celebrating Croatia's Christianisation 1,300 years ago.Google Scholar

51. See the rather positive commentaries in the Yugoslav press, as given in Trinaest stoljeća kršćanstva u Hrvata , pp. 260–262; about the unofficial mood in the party see Perica, Balkan Idols, pp. 67–68, 72.Google Scholar

52. Frid, Kontestacija u Katolićkoj crkvi .Google Scholar

53. Crkveno vjerska aktivnost pravoslavne crkve i drugih vjerskih zajednica, 13.3.1967, AJ, SKVP 144-105-658.Google Scholar

54. Ćimić, Socijalističko društvo i religija, op. cit .; Dragoljub Djordjević, Beg od crkve (Knjaževac, Serbia: Nota, 1984); Zabeleška o razgovoru prote Milana D. Smiljanića sa episkopom dalmatinskim Stefanom, 4 September 1964, AJ, SKVP 144-76-563; Buchenau, Orthodoxie und Katholizismus, pp. 372–375.Google Scholar

55. Vgl. Klaus Buchenau, “Vom traumatischen Gedächtnis zur politischen Aktion: Die Serbische Orthodoxe Kirche und der Kosovokonflikt,” in Werner Rammert, Gunther Knauthe, Klaus Buchenau and Florian Altenhöner, eds, Kollektive Identitäten und kulturelle Innovationen: Historische, soziologische und ethnologische Studien (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2001), pp. 127–154.Google Scholar

56. In 1960, Serbian theologian Justin Popović called the communist religious policy “the greatest massacre of Serbian souls since the Serbian people stepped into history” (Justin Popović, Istina o Srpskoj Pravoslavnoj Crkvi u komunističkoj Jugoslaviji [Belgrade: Manastir Ćelije, 1990], p. 25).Google Scholar

57. About the decentralisation of the religious policy in the 1970s, see Stella Alexander, “Yugoslavia: New Legislation on the Legal Status of Religious Communities,” Religion in Communist Lands, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1980, pp. 119–124. In general, communist–Christian alliances had occurred before the 1980s. When the Macedonian Orthodox Church declared itself autocephalous from the Patriarchy of Belgrade in 1967, this step was strongly supported by the political leadership in Skopje. In a similar vein, the Serbian Orthodox resistance to this was assisted by Serbian communists. While this alliance was broken by Tito and Edvard Kardelj personally, there was no such central authority left at the beginning of the 1980s. The Kosovo riots of 1981 immediately brought about solidarity between the political leadership in Serbia and the Patriarchy (see the published talks between Patriarch German and government officials in Janković, Patrijarh Srpski German, pp. 463–476). In Croatia, there were plans to win over the Catholic Church for a national power sharing against Milosevic's Serbia, but they failed in 1988. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church proved generous towards communists turned nationalists, as is shown in the church's position towards the “national bolshevist” heritage of Franjo Tudjman's HDZ. See Perica, Balkan Idols, pp. 138–139 and the coverage of the 1990 election campaign in the church journal Glas Koncila.Google Scholar

58. Religious peacemaking in the 1990s is closely connected to the names of Zagreb's Orthodox priest Jovan Nikolić, his Catholic colleague Luka Vincetić and the Bosnian Franciscan Marko Oršolić. All three had been members of the priests' associations.Google Scholar

59. Ja i komunisti , pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

60. Živko Kustić, interview with the author, 21 April 2000.Google Scholar