Vatican II behind the Iron Curtain ed. by Piotr H. Kosicki (review)

This book consists of six articles about the impact of the Second Vatican Council of 1962–65 on the Roman Catholic Church in eastern Europe. It explores how the Ostpolitik of Pope John XXIII represented a reaching out to the Communist world and brought significant change to the position of individual churches in eastern Europe.

These studies represent a major step forward in scholarship about the role of the Vatican in twentieth-century Europe. The Vatican has been slow to open its archives to scholars, with the result that in 2017, these archives are open only as far as 1939. Those historians writing on later topics, such as Pius XII's reaction to the Holocaust or the role of the Vatican in the origins of the Cold War have been forced to find alternative sources to explain Vatican behavior. By making use of accessible east European archives and scholarship, the authors of these articles have now moved Vatican scholarship into the 1960s and 1970s, the period directly influenced by the Second Vatican Council during the reigns of John XXIII (1958–63) and Paul VI (1963–78).

In his introduction, editor Piotr Kosicki writes of the need to fill in the scholarly gaps between Stalin's persecution of the east European churches in the 1940s and 1950s and the election of the first Polish pope (John Paul II) in 1978. Gerald Fogarty provides an overview on the origins of Vatican Ostpolitik under John XXIII, noting that pope's outreach to Nikita Khrushchev which paid a dividend for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fogarty's essay is followed by four essays on individual Eastern European states: Hungary (Arpád von Klimó), Yugoslavia (Ivo Banac), Czechoslovakia (James Ramon Felak), and Poland (Piotr Kosicki).

In Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, the Catholic Church was under heavy-handed Communist repression by the early 1960s. Repression in Hungary followed the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian revolution; in Yugoslavia, Marshal Josip Tito wanted to control the separatist tendencies of Catholic Croatia, while Czechoslovakia was under continuing repression following the 1948 Communist takeover. As a result, these governments restricted the number of bishops allowed to attend Vatican II and bolstered their delegations with secret policemen. In the atmosphere of Vatican II, however, Hungary and Yugoslavia saw advantages to be gained by resolving their differences with the Vatican, which resulted in an agreement of the Holy See with Hungary in 1964 and a protocol with Yugoslavia in 1966. Both agreements reduced pressure on their respective Catholic churches. In the case of Czechoslovakia, Vatican II coincided with the rise of a liberal socialism in the 1960s, culminating in the brief Prague Spring of 1968, with related benefits for the Church.

Unlike the other countries, the situation in Poland was both more complex and more optimistic. The Polish Church had a fair degree of freedom under Communism until the Stalinist clampdown of the early 1950s. De-Stalinization in 1956 saw the rise of Wladysław Gomulka as prime minister, who granted privileges to the Church and worked closely with the primate, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski. The period between 1956 and the opening of Vatican II was also marked by the activism of the Catholic laity, many of whom advocated the coexistence of the Catholic Church with state socialism. Poland's large delegation of clergy and laity to Vatican II were particularly effective as they sought to resolve issues internal to Poland as well as improve the Polish relationship with the Vatican. Unfortunately, Gomulka's relationship with the Church began to sour during Vatican II, and he eventually destroyed the Catholic celebration of the Polish Millennium in 1966 by denying a visa to Pope Paul VI to visit Poland. One of the most articulate leaders of the Polish delegation at Vatican II was the Archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyła, who launched his transnational career at that event, culminating in his election as...