Churches in Communist Dictatorships – After the Dictatorship

Preliminary program

Preliminary program PDF
Vorläufiges Tagungsprogramm KZG 6.-9.10.2026.pdf (248.2 KB)  vom 24.06.2026

Event Announcement

How did churches narrate their own history after 1989? How has that history been told and reckoned with in post-socialist societies? From 6 to 9 October 2026, scholars from across Eastern, South-Eastern, and Central Europe will gather in Halle (Saale) to discuss memory, historical reckoning, and the interpretation of the past.

More than three decades after the collapse of communist dictatorships in Central and Eastern Europe, the history of churches and religious communities under communist rule remains far from settled. It has been researched, commemorated, and documented — and yet it remains contested. For since 1990, the history of churches under dictatorship has been inseparable from the history of how that past has been interpreted after the dictatorship.

The international conference "Churches under Communist Dictatorship — After the Dictatorship. Historical Reckoning and Historiography" therefore does not focus primarily on the period before 1989/90. At its centre are the struggles over the politics of memory, the dynamics of coming to terms with the past, and the emergence of historiographical narratives since the 1990s: How did churches and religious communities narrate their own past — caught between persecution and accommodation, between opposition and collaboration? What interests, conflicts, and constructions of identity shaped these narratives? And what mutual influence existed between these narratives and the political landscape following the upheavals of 1989/90?

In 22 papers, scholars from 12 countries across Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe examine the diverse ways in which the recent history of churches has been remembered, constructed, politically framed, and interpreted. Particular attention is given to the years of transformation after 1989/90: to the hopes and disappointments of democratic transition, to the relationship between ecclesiastical reckoning and democratic institutions, to the role of public controversy in politics and society, and to the processes of re- and de-confessionalisation.

The conference addresses the varied confessional, national, and regional constellations across the region. It asks about commonalities and divergences in cultures of memory, about the consequences of majority and minority configurations, and about the often close entanglements of religion, nation, and language.