Christian Democracy Across the Iron Curtain Piotr H

Christian Democracy Across the Iron Curtain Piotr H. Kosicki · Sławomir Łukasiewicz Editors Christian Democracy Across the Iron Curtain Europe Redefned Editors Piotr H. Kosicki Sławomir Łukasiewicz Department of History Institute of European Studies University of Maryland John Paul II Catholic University of College Park, MD, USA Lublin Lublin, Poland This publication has been made possible, in part, by the support of the Konrad- Adenauer-Stiftung, Poland Offce. ISBN 978-3-319-64086-0 ISBN 978-3-319-64087-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64087-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017948684 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations. Cover illustration: © hanohikirf/Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland EDITORS’ PREFACE In a 2015 lecture at the Catholic University of Lublin, in Poland, Wolfram Kaiser—perhaps Europe’s most incisive historian of Catholic politics—declared, “the history of Christian Democracy in twentieth- century Europe as a research feld is currently in a profound crisis.” Having neglected “research on the transfer of ideas and practices”— Kaiser argued—mainstream scholarship on this infuential political fam- ily is producing work of increasingly marginal impact. On the other hand, Kaiser suggested that the very audience that he was addressing—a mix of scholars and practitioners from across Western and East-Central Europe—had the opportunity to defne a promising new direction for the study of modern European politics. Poland, which played host to the conference, has, after all, consistently been the most Catholic of the former Iron Curtain countries. In Kaiser’s words: “because Polish research on Christian Democracy has been somewhat disconnected from the friendly circles which have researched and propagated what I have called ‘pure’ Christian democracy, it may well be easier to develop and insert innovative ideas and approaches into changing networks and research themes.” We, the editors of this book, organized that conference. We heard in Wolfram Kaiser’s sobering assessment—which, in revised form, appears as the introduction to this book—a call to gather scholars from across the entire continent in order to defne a genuinely European research agenda. v vi EDITORS’ PREFACE The purpose of the May 2015 gathering in Lublin was to establish the state of the art of scholarship on Christian Democracy in twentieth- century Europe. Having heard over thirty presentations, we chose to invite eighteen authors to contribute to a multi-author volume propos- ing a transnational, East-to-West understanding of Christian Democracy’s many roles in the creation of a united Europe. We tasked these authors with providing a fresh perspective based on their latest research. Christian Democracy Across the Iron Curtain: Europe Redefned pre- sents the results of that work. We have organized this book around three thematic axes: the horizon lines of Christian Democracy as a political force in twentieth-century Europe; the successes and failures of Christian Democracy throughout the Cold War in permeating and penetrating back and forth across the Iron Curtain; and the specifc consequences of how Christian Democracy in East-Central Europe (and especially in Poland) has interacted with European Christian Democracy writ large. The volume we offer here to the reader is the fruit of our collective labors. In the aftermath of World War II, the success of (Western) European integration assured the ascendancy of a new favor of political economy— at once neoliberal and welfarist—predicated on the incorporation of a peaceful Federal Republic of Germany into a transnational system of security guarantees. As historians from Tony Judt to Alan Milward have argued, this was a moment of revolutionary rupture in the continent’s history. Sixty years later, this order is in danger of collapsing under pressure from a whole host of threats: from the looming prospect of “Brexit”, to an unprecedented migration crisis, to the rise of a populist, xenopho- bic extreme right across the continent. In this context, it is essential for scholars to re-examine the roots of European integration in order to understand where things went wrong and, if possible, how to fx them. Christian Democracy Across the Iron Curtain does precisely this, through the lens of one transnational political force. Though its ori- gins lay in late-nineteenth-century Catholic social thought and activ- ism, Christian Democracy came into its own in the aftermath of World War II as the lone political force of the right that, rather than collaborate with fascism, distinguished itself by unrepentant resistance to the Third Reich and its allies. With the Vatican’s enthusiastic support, Christian Democrats then played a central role in laying the foundations of a united Europe in the 1940s and 1950s. EDITORS’ PREFACE vii This, at least, is the story as traditionally told. Virtually absent from this account, however, is what political scientist Jacques Rupnik has called the “other Europe”: the East-Central European nations trapped behind the Iron Curtain for four decades, until the annus mirabilis of 1989. East of the Rhine, too, Christian Democrats had once had an important voice—until the ascendancy of Communist regimes either halted, or coopted, their participation in national politics. Yet even then, both at home and in exile, the Christian Democratic dissidents of East- Central Europe played a crucial role in advancing a non-Communist politics of social justice throughout the Cold War. They also helped to launch transnational networks to lobby for this agenda across Europe— and beyond the continent’s borders, as well. East-Central European Christian Democrats benefted especially from American support, establishing themselves as Cold Warriors delicately balancing their own religious commitments with a subjective understanding of “national interest” on the one hand, and American geopoli- tics on the other. Poles, in particular, played a central role in establishing transnational Christian Democratic networks both within Europe, and between Europe and Latin America. And yet, since the Communist collapse in 1989, Christian Democracy in Poland has arguably fared worse than while the Soviet Bloc still existed. In fact, the whole of East-Central Europe has, since the fall of the Iron Curtain, witnessed an ongoing tug of war between an integral nationalism with roots predating World War II and a technocratic neo- liberalism inspired by the American model. One of the most important results of this contest has been the sidelining of social justice as a ral- lying cry, with the result that Social and Christian Democratic move- ments alike have largely failed as political forces in East-Central Europe. While the former remains tainted by its roots in the Communist anciens régimes, the latter lacks the kind of strong backing from the Catholic Church that Western European Christian Democracy, for example, received following World War II from Pope Pius XII. There are many scholarly studies—especially in the French, German and Italian languages—of the Christian Democratic politics of postwar Western Europe, but there is not yet a single volume in any language that examines the links between transnational Christian Democracy and the nations of East-Central Europe. Moreover, existing histories of Christian Democracy have tended to focus either on ideology (e.g. the work of Philippe Chenaux) or party politics (e.g. the works of Michael viii EDITORS’ PREFACE Gehler and Wolfram Kaiser). Most of the studies produced in French and Italian have emerged from within the Christian Democratic fold: these studies make no pretense of objectivity, instead taking as one of the prin- cipal tasks of their scholarship the dissemination of a glorious legend of Christian Democracy. While building on the foundations laid by previous generations of scholars, we insist that understanding the trajectory of “Europe” in the second half of the twentieth century requires looking beyond the continent’s western half. Our volume is distinctive in two respects: its spatial geography,

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