The article examines the theoretical development of Czech sociology of religion during the period of communist rule, which widely affected the social sciences in general and research on religion in particular. The author divides the period into three different stages. First, from the very end of the 1940s to the beginning of the 1960s sociology as a whole was abolished as a 'bourgeois pseudo-science', and any discourse on religion was possible only in purely negativistic, anti-religious terms. However, some scholars (most notably A. Kolman, E. Kadlecová and I. Sviták) established less ideological attitudes and called for deeper sociological analyses of religion at the end of the 1950s and the start of the 1960s. Their 'revisionism' eventually won out in the 1960s, in the second stage, when Czech sociology of religion achieved international acceptance and Kadlecová became (for a short time) the author of the state's new religious policy. Although these scholars (V. Gardavský and M. Machovec) accepted a wider definition of religiosity and debated with Christian scholars, they remained Marxists. They were convinced religion is doomed to extinction. The last stage began after the violent termination of the Prague Spring in 1968 and lasted throughout the era of the so-called normalisation in the 1970-80s. Progressive scholars were removed from their posts. The official sociology of religion changed its name to 'scientific atheism', but the outcomes of its work were far from any standard of excellence, both in the theoretical and empirical fields. Research from the era of official neo-Stalinism was very poor in quality, but during that time very important unofficial scientific contributions did emerge, written by banned sociologists (E. Kadlecová, J. Šiklová), social theologians (B. Komárková), and Czechs in exile. Unfortunately, since 1989 the reception of these works has been narrow. With the abolition of official Marxist scientific atheism there is an opportunity for the spread of truly modern sociological approaches to religion - if only there were enough students.
The article deals with some key arguments in Pavel Machonin's book Czech Society and Sociological Knowledge, but does not review the whole book. Critical comments focus on four themes. Machonin's conception of sociology as a discipline and a tradition does not do full justice to the inherent pluralism of the sociological imagination. It is useful to link sociological debates to the ideological contest between socialism (more particularly Marxism) and liberalism, but this problematic is more complex than Machonin's analyses tend to suggest; that applies, in particular, to the interpretations of freedom and equality as fundamental modern values. Machonin's attempt to reconstruct modernization theory is open to some criticisms, especially with regard to the debate on „multiple modernities." Finally, the concept of state socialism does not help to grasp the complex patterns of modernity that developed under Communist rule.
This article focuses on Czech pre-Marxist sociological journals - Sociologická revue (established in 1930, published until 1940, and again in 1946-49) and Sociální problémy (established 1931, published 1931-1938/39 and 1947/48) - and compares how they functioned with the work of the contemporary Sociologický Časopis/Czech Sociological Review (analysed volumes 32 (1996) to 41 (2005)). Although the internal situation of the branch and its public evaluation were rather different during each of the two periods, the author believes that looking back at the well-established earlier period of Czech sociology can provide some comparative data for a better understanding of the current situation and its imperfections. First, the author quantitatively analyses the 'genre' composition of the old and new journals and concludes that in the earlier publications reviews and scientific polemics were more strongly represented, whilst the papers - especially those in Sociologická revue - were less likely to be connected with any empirical research. Conversely, the old sociologists were highly involved in the public sphere, which included student education and active participation in policy making. Nowadays, Czech sociologists tend to be wrapped up in themselves; they produce better theoretical and empirical papers, but the number produced per person has decreased, and their reception is probably weaker. In the article the author also analyses the means of recruitment of the journals' editorial boards, relations within the Czech sociological community itself and its relations abroad, and other issues of the sociology of Czech sociology, past and present.