Transforming the Religious Field: Czechoslovak Jehovah's Witnesses between Socialism and Post-socialism*

Abstract

After the 1989 revolutions, minority faiths in Central and Eastern Europe entered a purportedly liberal era, yet many continued to navigate institutions still structured by socialist-era categories. Drawing on Bourdieu's concept of the religious field, this article examines how the Czechoslovak state treated Jehovah's Witnesses during this regime transformation. In the early 1990s, the new authorities reserved state subsidies, religious education and privileged access to schools, prisons and the military for already recognised “historical” churches, leaving other communities at the margins. Archival records, legislative debates, ministerial files and contemporary press coverage reveal that the state retained a supervisory role and entrenched an unequal legal environment. The analysis shows how path-dependent hierarchies continued to constrain minority faiths despite formal guarantees of freedom, complicating linear narratives of post-socialist liberalisation and enriching debates on church–state relations.