Bubík T., Remmel A., Václavík D. (eds.) Freethought and Atheism in Central and Eastern Europe: The Development of Secularity and Nonreligion

New York: Routledge, 2020. — 347 p.This book provides the first comprehensive overview of atheism, secularity and non-religion in Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In contrast to scholarship that has focused on the ‘decline of religion’ and secularization theory, the book builds upon recent trends to focus on the ‘rise of non-religion’ itself. While the label of ‘post-communism’ might suggest a generalized perception of the region, this survey reveals that the precise developments in each country before, after and even during the communist era are surprisingly diverse.
A multinational team of contributors provide interdisciplinary case studies covering Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. This approach utilises perspectives from social and intellectual history in combination with sociology of religion in order to cover the historical development of secularity and secular thought, complemented with sociological data. The study is framed by methodological and analytical chapters.
Offering an important geographical perspective to the study of freethought, atheism, secularity and non-religion, this wide-ranging book will be of significant interest to scholars of twentieth-century social and intellectual history, sociology of religion and non-religion, cultural and religious studies, philosophy and theology.Half Title
SeriesCopyrightList of contributors
Studying freethought and atheism in Central and Eastern Europe: an introduction
Bulgaria: freethought and atheism in the shadow of ethnophyletism
Anticlericalism, nonreligiosity and atheism in Croatia
Freethinkers and atheists in the Czech Lands in the 20th century
Atheism and Freethought in Estonian culture
Freethought, atheism and anticlericalism in 20th-century Hungary
The trajectories of atheism and secularization in Latvia: from the German Enlightenment to contemporary secularity
The social history of irreligion in Lithuania (from the 19th century to the present): between marginalization, monopoly and disregard?
Secularist social movements in Poland: history, institutionalization, repertoire of actions
Romania: between freethought, atheism and religion
Atheism’s peaks and valleys in Russia
Slovakia as a country without atheism but with a history of atheization
Atheism in the context of the secularization and desecularization of Ukraine in the 20th century
Nonreligion in the CEE region: some remarks