COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT AND RELIGIOUS HOSTILITY IN VOJVODINA AFTER THE WORLD WAR II

Abstract

Belief that modernization inevitably leads to decreasing of religiosity because it successfully confronted denominational phenomena like „superstition” and „reactionary” is utterly questionable. This mislead was spotted by authorities in Soviet Union and other communist countries, even though they have never admitted that. Namely, communist government in Yugoslavia considered that with their constant compromising, intimidating and deprivation of material means the church hierarchy will easily be subjected to their political control. However, it became a symbol of resistant and some sort of asylum for all of those who did not want to accept new political system. With time in society and in individual's conscious religion became marginalized, but on the other hand all the confessional identities through out the communist rule remained untouched. Thanks to the power of confessional identities in Yugoslavia the confrontation between religions and in the name of religion could appear even with lack of religious convictions. The confrontations like this in the territory of Vojvodina in the first years after the World War II and during the fiercest communist terror the author has detected and described in this paper.