Religion and the Church in Social Transformation: A Sociologico-Historical Analysis of the Religious Context in Serbo-Montenegrin and Russian (Post)Communist Societies
Author(s) Mirko Blagojević Publisher Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade „Filip Višnjić“, Belgrade Published 2005 ISBN 86-82417-09-X Pages 415 Edition Fronesis
The book Religion and the Church in Social Transformation: A Sociologico-Historical Analysis of the Religious Context in Serbo-Montenegrin and Russian (Post)Communist Societies analyzes the nature, state, and tendencies of religious changes in the predominantly Orthodox territories within Yugoslavia and Russia during the period of transition. The text also takes a brief look at the historical aspect and systemic struggle against religion in communist times. Finding the parallels and differences between the Yugoslav and Russian cases, the author presents two central hypotheses: that secularization is a reversible phenomenon, and that movements of religious renewal begun in the 1980s in most former communist societies were essentially nationalist, and only incidentally confessional. The main argument is that what was being revitalized was not religion as such, but religiosity as a political and nationalist phenomenon.