Religious changes in post-communism: The issue of orthodoxy in the transitional societies of Serbia and Montenegro and Russia

Abstract

Considering this issue to be particularly significant as a research challenge for the sociologies of religion in the so-called post-socialist countries, the subject of this research has been to determine the character, status and direction of religious changes in predominantly orthodox territories of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) and Russia that became evident in the last decade of the twentieth century marked by turbulent socio-political changes in those countries. With the subject of the research being defined in that way, the main goal of the research has been to identify and examine basic tendencies in religious changes. Relying on the huge empirical material on the changes in question, an attempt has been made to precisely detect the scope of these changes in the various areas of religious, spiritual and social lives of people in the period of the so-called post-socialist transformation (transition). Therefore, the goal of the research has not been just to determine the scope and direction of changes of religiousness with people, but also to try to set the above mentioned religious changes into the proper social context, which is the starting point in their theoretical explanation.

Keywords

• religious changes
• (de)secularization
• Serbia and Montenegro
• Russia