The Co-Existing of Religious and Secular Systems: An Ethnographical Study of the Kalvária v Topoľčanoch and Religious Community in Topoľčany, Slovakia

During the communist era in Slovakia from 1948 to 1989, religion was forced into the private sphere and then re-entered into the public sphere when the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) collapsed in 1989. This research aims to answer how the communist state and religious community interacted during communism and how a democratic state and religious community interacted post-communism. This paper focuses on how people preserved their religion, how secularization was rejected, and how religion re-entered the public sphere after communism ended. To answer these questions, I conducted oral interviews, primarily with the townspeople of Topoľčany, Slovakia, and this includes some of my relatives, who were political refugees during the Cold War who later immigrated to the United States. Additionally, archives, parish records, and historic maps were analyzed to enrich these oral accounts. My data shows there are various sub-groups of the religious community that co-existed during communism. These sub-groups are: the openly religious, dissent religious, crypto-religious, and mixed-households. I argue that those who worshipped openly were discriminated against and not given the same privileges as those who joined the KSČ; however, some who belonged to the KSČ were secretly worshipping – often through Babičky [grandmothers] – to maintain their social status which came with the condition of not being openly religious. Slovakia has been deeply religious since the Moravian period of the 8th century, and though KSČ attempted to erase religion by removing it out of the public sphere, people found ways to keep religion alive even if in private.