12 PIOTR H. KOSICKI
his 1937 encyclical Divini redemptoris the “pernicious” influence
of “bolshevistic, atheistic Communism” and another entirely for
his successor, Pius XII, to watch the Red Army bring communism
to Central and Eastern Europe in 1944–45.
It was against the backdrop of the Soviet advance across Eu-
rope that Pius XII issued his first public statements in support of
democracy. These represented a distinct turn away from the pon-
tiff ’s perceived wartime sympathy for the Axis powers. His new
emphasis on “true democracy” struck a blow against Communists’
appropriation of the term; for Pius XII, “true democracy” could
never be reconciled with Soviet-style “people’s democracy.”31
Only in Poland did the ecclesiastical hierarchy attempt to
meet the new regime halfway.32 Elsewhere, Communists encoun-
tered dogged defiance; teetering on the verge of sedition, post-
war public statements by the primates of Hungary, Yugoslavia,
and Czechoslovakia condemned the new governments, calling
for Catholics’ civil disobedience.33 Already in 1945, the regimes in
power across Central and Eastern Europe began unilaterally ab-
rogating standing concordats: Poland in 1945, Romania in 1948,
Czechoslovakia in 1950, Yugoslavia in 1952. The concordats that
Pius XI had concluded with Latvia and Lithuania were rendered
irrelevant by the fact of those states’ incorporation into the USSR.
Nonetheless, Communist regimes did not begin with frontal
assaults on the Catholic Church, instead pursuing attempts at ac-
commodation and cooptation. This strategy envisioned two pos-
sible outcomes. Bishops could choose “to give national interests
Revolution, see Paul Misner, Social Catholicism in Europe: From the Onset of Industrial-
ization to the First World War (New York: Crossroad, 1991).
- Pius XII, “1944 Christmas Message,” in Christmas Messages, ed. Vincent A.
Yzermans (St. Meinrad, Ind.: Grail Publications, 1956), 85–86. - Luxmoore and Babiuch, Vatican and the Red Flag, 40–41, 60–63.
- In Yugoslavia, for example, Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac went so far as to
promote Italian claims to the city of Trieste and the territory of Venezia Giulia at
the expense of Yugoslav sovereignty; Kent, Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII, 163.