Religion as a state's tool: comparing Russian and Hungarian experience

The paper analyses comparatively religious governance in two of the post-communist countries - Russia and Hungary. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the role of religion in both formerly Communist countries grew considerably. The reign of atheistic communist ideology had to be replaced and filled in with an alternative framework for social order. After initially promoting liberal (secular) ideas, governments gradually turned to assigning a more important role to religion. Governments rediscovered religion and the role it may play in politics. As religion made a comeback into the lives of many, with time governments rediscovered it and made it into a real tool in their domestic and foreign politics. This paper presents and analyses this government-assigned role of religion: how governments treat different religious communities in Hungary (with some reference to other countries of Central Europe) and Russia. The article explores the reorganised post-Communist State-Church relations and compares the communication mechanisms between the relevant state institutions and religious groups. The paper explains the different treatment of certain religious communities based on their size, attitude to government policies, historic and social embeddedness. The research relies on discourse analysis of speech acts by politicians and the content analysis of relevant legal documents in the respective countries.