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The Polish anti-religious campaign was initiated by the Communist government in the Polish People's Republic which, under the doctrine of Marxism, actively advocated for the disenfranchisement of religion and planned atheisation.[1][2] To this effect the regime conducted anti-religious propaganda and persecution of clergymen and monasteries.[2] As in most other Communist countries, religion was not outlawed as such (an exception being the People's Socialist Republic of Albania) and was permitted by the constitution, but the state attempted to achieve an atheistic society. The Catholic Church, as the religion of most Poles, was seen as a rival competing for the citizens' allegiance by the government, which attempted to suppress it.[3]
The Catholic Church in Poland provided strong resistance to the Communist regime and Poland itself had a long history of dissent to foreign rule.[4] The Polish nation rallied to the Church, as had occurred in neighbouring Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, which made it more difficult for the regime to impose its antireligious policies as it had in the USSR, where the populace did not hold mass solidarity with the Russian Orthodox Church. It became the strongest opponent of the regime throughout the rule of Communism in Poland, and provided a more successful resistance than had religious bodies in most other Communist states.[3]
The Catholic Church unequivocally condemned communist ideology.[5] This led to the antireligious activity in Poland being compelled to take a more cautious and conciliatory line than in other Communist countries, largely failing in their attempt to control or suppress the Polish Church.[4]
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- ^ Zdzislawa Walaszek. An Open Issue of Legitimacy: The State and the Church in Poland. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 483, Religion and the State: The Struggle for Legitimacy and Power (Jan., 1986), pp. 118-134
- ^ a b Mirek, Agata (2014). "Law as an Instrument of the Communist Authorities in the Fight against Orders in Poland". OL PAN. Teka Komisji Prawniczej: 64–72.
Planned atheisation afflicted all areas of activity of monastic communities [...] To victimise clergymen and consecrated people not only provisions of the criminal procedure were used, often violating not only the right for defence, but also basic human rights, allowing to use tortures in order to extort desired testimonies; also an entire system of legal norms, regulating the organisation and functioning of bodies of the judiciary, was used for victimising. Nuns also stood trials in communist courts, becoming victims of the fight of the atheist state against the Catholic Church. The majority of trials from the first decade of the Polish People's Republic in which nuns were in the dock had a political character. A mass propaganda campaign, saturated with hate, led in the press and on the radio, measured up against defendants, was their distinctive feature.
- ^ a b Frank Dinka. Sources of Conflict between Church and State in Poland. The Review of Politics, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Jul., 1966), pp. 332-349
- ^ a b Ediger, Ruth M. "History of an institution as a factor for predicting church institutional behavior: the cases of the Catholic Church in Poland, the Orthodox Church in Romania, and the Protestant churches in East Germany." East European Quarterly 39.3 (2005)
- ^ Clark, Joanna Rostropowicz. "The Church and the Communist Power." Sarmatian Review 30.2 (2010)