From: tmm@po.CWRU.Edu (Todd M. Michney)
Subject: Re: Who am I?
Reply-To: tmm@po.CWRU.Edu (Todd M. Michney)
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 92 20:47:59 GMT


>This is at least what happened in Yugoslavia between 1929 and 1980.  People
>were taught and expected to refer only to Yugoslavs, not Serbs, Croats,
>Slovenes, etc.  Of course, 50 years of such effort does not balance the 
>preceding ~1200 years of national and ethnic history and culture as has
>been being demonstrated daily for more than a year now in ex-Yugoslavia.
>I hope that Bohemians, Moravians, Slovaks, and Silesians (and also those
>ethnicities I unwittingly left out) will not travel down the road travelled
>by the ex-Yugoslav ethnic groups.  Are there religious differences between
                                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>these groups in Czechoslovakia as there were in ex-Yugoslavia?
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>-Nick Jovanovic

I do not believe that religious differences will lead to a Yugoslavia-like
situation in the former C^SFR.  In fact, I think that religious difference in
Yugoslavia would not be near as much of a problem if the ethnic geography of
the country were not so thoroughly mixed -- Roman Catholics, Orthodox 
Catholics, and Moslems live right next door to each other in some areas, which
makes impossible the goal of an ethnically homogeneous territory (NOT to imply
that the territories should be homogenous, but it appears that precisely this
is the goal of not only Serbia, but Croatia as well).  Former C^SFR's regions
are comparatively homogeneous in comparison.

However, ethnic-religious ties cannot even be said to exist, but in fact,
religious difference has played an enormous role in the history of the country
as well as in the history of Slovak and Czech immigrants (actually I will only
be speaking for the Slovaks).

Religion in the area of what became Czecho-Slovakia had always been officially
Roman Catholic, as the whole region was within the Austro-Hungarian Empire; 
certainly Czechs and Slovaks may have had different experiences of that faith
under their respective Austrian and Hungarian overlords.  Before the estab-
lishment of a Communist regime in Czechoslovakia (1948), people were still
overwhelmingly officially Roman Catholic, and I believe that remains the case.

However, Czechs and Slovaks developed different attitudes toward religion
based on their experiences in the late medieval and early modern era.  This
thesis formed the core of pre-Communist scholarship in Czechoslovakia, as far
as I could tell.

The Czechs produced Jan Hus, a proto-Protestant who was burned at the stake in
1415.  Defeat in the resultant Hussite Wars, as well as in the Thirty Years'
War (1618-48), which was also started by Czech Protestants protesting against
Austrian authority, SUPPOSEDLY endowed the Czechs with a disillusionment with
religion and modernist vision.  SUPPOSEDLY the Slovaks, under tight Hungarian
hegemony, retained a traditionalist outlook.

This is not to say that the Reformation (Lutheranism, particularly) did not
make an impact on Slovaks -- if I remember correctly, most Czechs and Slovaks
had drifted over to Protestantism during the 16th century.  Both were harshly
re-Catholicized in the Counter-Reformation during and after the Thirty Years'
War.

Yet to this day, Slovaks are divided about 15% Lutheran to 80% Roman Catholic.
Lutheran Slovaks seem to be traditionally more Czech-oriented, as they used
a bible translated by a Czech theologian, and appropriated some of the Hussite
symbols.

Anyhow, Slovaks have always been stereotyped as fervent Catholics (often true,
but negligent of the Lutheran minority), and Czechs as apathetic Catholics.

I would note that although religious-ethnic warfare is therefore nearly
impossible in former C^SFR, Lutheran Slovaks were extremely wary (for good
reason!) of the Roman Catholic streak in the short-lived fascist Slovak 
Republic propped up by Hitler, and especially of the president Roman Catholic
priest Jozef Tiso.  Slovak Americans, who had had a measure of solidarity 
before the Second World War, found themselves split along religious lines.


-- 
Todd Michney (tmm) | "Largo al factotum, della citta.  Presto a bottega
 che l'alba e gia.  Ah, che bel vivere, che bel piacere per un barbiere
 di qualita!"
            Figaro, No. 2 Cavatina, _Il barbiere di Siviglia_
Newsgroups: soc.culture.czecho-slovak