Between October 20-23, the Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies held its 57th annual convention in Washington DC. This year’s lectures, panels, roundtable discussions and book presentations were touching upon various aspects of the main theme of the event, “Memory”. Five members of the ERC “Negotiating Sovereignty” research group presented their findings at two panels entitled “Remains of the past: the Catholic Church in the communist regimes of East Central Europe”.
Principal investigator András Fejérdy presented a paper that analyzes the debates in Hungary around 1945-1947 on the memory of the Holocaust, as well as the sharp accusations on the recent positions and actions of the Catholic Church. Based on sources from ecclesiastical archives, the presentation revealed the endeavor of the Church to present a more accurate picture of its recent past. Agáta Šústová Drelová investigated the ways Czechoslovak Communist Nationalist ideologues treated and used Catholicism by arbitrarily and distortedly juxtaposing “people’s Catholicism” and “reactionary political clericalism”. Željko Oset’s paper identifies the (reshaped) memory and cult of Josip Juraj Strossmayer, the late bishop of Đakovo (1815–1905) as a tool of Yugoslav nation building before 1940 and after 1945. Przemysław Pazik reflected on the 1950-1956 memory politics regarding the recent movement of pro-Communist “priests patriots”. In her presentation, Anca Şincan examined activities of the Apostolic Nunzio in Bucharest, Gerald Patrick O’Hara. At a time of outmost state oppression, O’Hara worked to consolidate church-state relations.
While staying in Washington DC our colleagues also conducted research in the archives of the Catholic University of America and at the Library of Congress.
Pictures by Željko Oset and Anca Şincan