Christian Democracy Across the Iron Curtain

This book is the first scholarly exploration of how Christian Democracy kept Cold War Europe's eastern and western halves connected after the creation of the Iron Curtain in the late 1940s. Christian Democrats led the transnational effort to rebuild the continent's western half after World War II, but this is only one small part of the story of how the Christian Democratic political family transformed Europe and defied the nascent Cold War's bipolar division of the world. The first section uses case studies from the origins of European integration to reimagine Christian Democracy's long-term significance for a united Europe. The second shifts the focus to East-Central Europeans, some exiled to Western Europe, some to the USA, others remaining in the Soviet Bloc as dissidents. The transnational activism they pursued helped to ensure that, Iron Curtain or no, the boundary between Europe's west and east remained permeable, that the Cold War would not last and that Soviet attempts to divide the continent permanently would fail. The book's final section features the testimony of three key protagonists. This book appeals to a wide range of audiences: undergraduate and graduate students, established scholars, policymakers (in Europe and the Americas) and potentially also general readerships interested in the Cold War or in the future of Europe.

Piotr H. Kosicki is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Maryland, USA.   Slawomir Lukasiewicz is Director of the Institute of European Studies at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland, and a staff historian at the Institute of National Remembrance. 

PART ONE: CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY REFRAMED.- 1. Introduction: From Siege Mentality to Mainstreaming? Researching Twentieth-Century Christian Democracy; Wolfram Kaiser.- 2. Catholic and Christian Democratic views on Europe before and after World War II: Continuities and Discontinuities; Patrick Pasture.- 3. Alcide De Gasperi and Konrad Adenauer: A New Approach; Tiziana Di Maio.- 4. Not only De Gasperi: Italian Christian Democrats' Commitment to Europe; Antonio Varsori.- 5. Sainthood vs. Nationhood: The Beatification Causes of Schuman and De Gasperi; Wieslaw Bar.- 6. A Truly "European" Christian Democracy? The European People's Party; Beata Kosowska-Gastol.- PART TWO: CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY ACROSS THE IRON CURTAIN.- 7. The Elimination of Christian Democracy in Poland after World War II; Jaroslaw Rabinski.- 8. Christian Democrats across the Iron Curtain; Pawel Zietara.- 9. Christian Democracy's Global Cold War; Piotr H. Kosicki.- 10. The Polish Section of the Belgian Christian Trade Union ACV/CSC; Idesbald Goddeeris.- 11. The Social Virtues of Christian Democracy, European and Polish: The Case of Jan Kulakowski; Leszek Jesien.- 12. Christian Democracy off the Bookshelf: The Case of Jerzy Kulczycki; Malgorzata Choma-Jusinska.- 13. Christian Democracy beyond Christian Democracy: The Case of Stanislaw Grocholski; Slawomir Lukasiewicz.- 14. Explaining the Absence of Christian Democracy in Contemporary Poland; Aleks Szczerbiak and Tim Bale.- PART THREE: CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY ACROSS THE COLD WAR CAESURA.- 15. The Christian Democratic Union of Central Europe; Stanislaw Gebhardt.- 16. Christian Democracy in Slovakia; Ján Carnogurský.- 17. The Prospects of Christian Democracy in Contemporary Europe: Experiences from Germany; Georg Milbradt.