Book description:
Published as part of the IPN Central Research Project: “Communist authorities towards churches and religious associations in Poland 1944-1989”.
Rzeszów IPN publishing series
The monograph presents the history of the Society for the Promotion of Secular Culture (and its further and closer progenitors: the Association of Free Thought in Poland, the Common Knowledge Society, the Secular School Society, the Association of Atheists and Freethinkers) in the broader context of socio-political conditions and cultural determinants. It contains analyses of the association’s ideological assumptions, programmes and the effects of their implementation. The research reported in the book shows the organisational momentum, the size of the resources involved and the forms of support for the association described from the Polish United Workers’ Party. They also provide a glimpse of the multiple connections of the Society for the Promotion of Secular Culture with centres of political power and the extent of its activists’ ideological commitment. In the proposed approach, ideology - treated as both an aid to understanding the reality surrounding human beings and an inspiration for actions to transform it - also becomes the key to explaining the phenomenon of the Society for the Promotion of Secular Culture.