Special A world full of seekers: Christmas before and after the fall of communism
Exactly 20 years ago, Czechs and Slovaks were celebrating their first Christmas for four decades without a hint of official disapproval. While the communists tolerated the trappings of Christmas – with Christmas trees and traditional Czech Christmas carp in abundance – their tolerance of Christian traditions was never more than skin deep. In the 1950s, priests and members of religious orders were often locked up for their beliefs, and the brief reforms of the 1960s were followed by another wave of persecution, following the Soviet-led invasion of 1968. For this programme I’m going to be talking to two people, who remember only too well what it meant to be a practising Christian in communist Czechoslovakia. They are the Protestant pastor, former Dean of the Protestant Theological Faculty of Prague’s Charles University and former dissident, Jakub Trojan, and the British translator Gerry Turner, who has lived in Prague for many years and has had close links with the churches here since before the fall of communism.
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