Religious Policies and Freedom of Conscience in the interwar and socialist Yugoslavia: The Contexts of Change
Religious Policies and Freedom of Conscience in the interwar and socialist Yugoslavia: The Contexts of Change
Partners
Institute for Balkan Studies SASA
Science and Research Center Koper
Project Coordinators
Dr Aleksandra Đurić Milovanović,Senior Research Associate, Institute for Balkan Studies SASA
Dr Nadja Furlan Štante, Full Professor and a Principal Research Associate, Science and Research Center Koper
Researchers
Dr Milosav Đoković, research associate, Institute for Balkan Studies SASA
Dunja Radojević, research assistant, Institute for Balkan Studies SASA
Marko Galić, junior research assistant, Institute for Balkan Studies SASA
Dr Jadranka Đorđević Crnobrnja, senior research fellow, Institute for Ethnography SASA
Dr Gašper Mithans, senior research associate, Science and Research Center Koper
Dr Jure Ramšek, research associate, Science and Research Center Koper
Dr Mateja Režek, senior research associate, Science and Research Center Koper
Oscar Opasi, PhD student, Science and Research Center Koper
About the project
The project focuses on religious policies – particularly their implementation – in interwar and socialist Yugsolavia, which has been of the most religiously diverse European countries experiencing several political systems and thus fostering different understandings of religious practices, cohabitation, and religion-state relations. The main project aim is to examine how the non-religiosity and ‘scientific atheism’ as the official stances of the ruling party were mediated through all the spheres of public life, especially through school education. Furthermore, isolated attempts at scrutinising issues such as freedom of religion and freedom from religion, both of which were included in the contested programme of the ruling Communist Party of Yugoslavia, will be presented. The imbalances in power relations resulting from the state disrespecting religious equality of traditional religions will be analysed within four case studies: 1) the minority context of the Serbian Orthodox community in the majority Catholic society in the Slovenian part of the Yugoslav kingdom; 2) the challenges of religious minorities in majority Orthodox society in Serbia and the state policy towards religious minorities; 3) the analysis of the instruments of atheization of school education in the socialist era based on school curricula and public polemics in Slovenia and Serbia; 4) shortcomings of the Yugoslav socialist religious policy by presenting dominant and alternative discourses during the late-socialist period in Slovenia and Serbia. The exploration of the relationship between religious dynamism and interreligious encounter will enable us to assess the ‘plurality’ of Yugoslav religious policies, and their proclaimed ‘distinctiveness’ in the ‘post-communist’ Eastern European frame.
Project aims
This research project aims at bringing together Serbian and Slovenian scholars working on history and anthropology of religious and/or ethnic communities during the 20th century. The proposed project has several objectives: a) to contribute to the historical knowledge on religious communities and state policies during interwar and socialist Yugoslavia, thus introducing comparative perspective into a broader context of regional and Eastern European policies towards religions; b) to branch out into new interdisciplinary areas of the study of religious communities in Serbia and Slovenia; c) to collaborate with colleagues from Slovenia/Serbia on the subject that was of high relevance of 20th century and today; d) to publish a special issue of the academic journal with contributions of the project members; e) to organise a joint workshop attended by the team members as well as external experts on state-religion relations from Serbia and Slovenia.
Funding and duration
Project is co-financed by the Ministry of Science, technological development and innovation of the Republic of Serbia and the Ministry of High Education, Science and Innovation of the Republic of Slovenia within scientific bilateral cooperation between the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Slovenia, from 1st of July 2023 until 30th of June 2025.