Abstract
At the beginning of its rule, the Communist dictatorship stated its goal of educating a "new man" and declared that it would carry out a "struggle for the soul of the child," which was to be freed from the religious beliefs of earlier generations. Party leaders involved in similar efforts did not start in a green field, so to speak, and were able to continue the anti-clerical traditions from the era of the interwar republic. However, the conflict after 1948 was much more intense, particularly on two levels: first, outside school, where the state primarily sought to limit the space in which children encountered religion, and second, in the school itself, where schoolchildren were supposed to become acquainted with the negative consequences of religion, and, above all, they should stop at-tending religious classes. Nevertheless, the church was not just a passive player in these processes, but, with its limited resources, it tried to com-pete with the state for children's attention.A more radical approach on the part of the state is evident in the case of children's out-of-school activities. As early as in 1948, the church's ability to communicate with children through the written word was re-duced, organizing public events was made more complicated, and vari-ous religious hobby activities were abolished. A priest or a layman commissioned by the church was only admitted to events organized by the state. The clergy were also supposed to take part in socialist educa-tion, but this changed during the 1950s and their access to children's daily out-of-school activities was considerably curtailed. In parallel with this, the state also organized various events aimed at distracting chil-dren from religious topics. This does not mean, however, that the church stopped communicating altogether with children outside school, but it always depended on the specific environment and how the individual priest was able to find his bearings in the situations that arose.
In the 1950s, a child was most often able to undergo religious sociali-zation in the school environment through the teaching of religion. This was where the second level of the "struggle for the soul of the child" took place. The Communist Party, whether in a planned way or com-pelled by circumstances, opted for a somewhat more cautious strategy. First, it took over the control and organization of teaching and made it a formally integral part of the socialist school, and then it tried to limit religious education as much as possible through various tools. A major turning point came about in the 1952-1953 school year, when religion ceased to be a compulsory, classified subject, which led to a marked de-crease in the number of children who were registered. Schoolchildren who did not stop attending the classes were then thrown into a situation where they were enrolled in religious education classes, but the way the teaching was organized gave them all sorts of opportunities not to par-ticipate or at least not to do so actively. Religious socialization, especial-ly for these pupils, did not have to be a mere object of external interests, but children could theoretically co-determine their own upbringing.
The image of a believing child, and a person in general, changed after World War II. In 1948, Communist Party officials still let it be heard that Catholics participating in their vision of the future were following Christ's teachings. However, the concept of a Christian building so-cialism vanished over the years. This was done slowly, and efforts were made to refrain from angering the believing population too greatly, as this could potentially jeopardize the legitimacy of Communist rule. However, the image of a child who believed in God did not become something that was a priori negative. The child was not responsible for his or her faith. This was a responsibility borne by the parents, but from the position of communist experts even they did not ultimately bear full responsibility, as their decisions were based on their class position. School and out-of-school education then had to regulate the religious influence of parents on their children.
Probably the most intense conflict situations were experienced in families where a parent was both a practising Catholic and a convinced communist. According to the church, the parents had a duty to raise a child in accordance with "God and general morality." According to the Communist Party experts, God did not exist and teaching religion to children had a negative effect on them. This does not mean that when it was time to make a decision about their offspring's religious instruc-tion, such a parent would necessarily experience an internal conflict, but the spiritual and moral development of the child presented him or her with the necessity of making a choice. The teaching of religion had a formative impact on the child's relationship to the denomination. Thus, the "helpless" child about whom the decision was made could be-come an agent of the parent's conscience.
It has already been mentioned that, according to Marxist educators, religious education replicated negative patterns of reasoning which were detrimental to socialism, while according to Catholics, it helped children form an optimal relationship with the world on the basis of Christian teaching. Some parents registered their offspring for religious education repeatedly, and it can be assumed that some of them attached some value to its teaching. The church and the state agreed only that morality is a desirable value that an individual should acquire as a child.
According to Marxist experts, morality is materially based, according to Catholics it is metaphysically based. From the Marxist position, reli-gious doctrine introduced in the process of acquiring morality is detri-mental, while from the Catholic position religious doctrine makes mo-rality possible. Some parents took religious education as moral educa-tion, but this did not coincide with the position of the teachers, whose primary task was to lead the child to salvation. No matter how people talked about religion, its connection with childhood with a positive con-notation did not represent something unique in the period under re-view. It was not something beyond the possibility of utterance. Religious education was, at least for some, part of the idea of a "proper" childhood, and the state did not create any functional alternative in the period un-der review that would be able to replace its generally shared moral as-pect.
However, normative judgments about what childhood should be like do not stand entirely alone and do not in themselves illustrate the situa-tion and demands that schoolchildren encountered on a daily basis. Ac-cording to sociologist Miloš Havelka, it can be argued that "religiousness is, on the one hand, what is considered subjectively understood as reli-giousness, and, on the other hand, what is objectively perceived and recognized as religious." On the basis of this definition, we can ad-vance the hypothesis that in post-war Czechoslovak society, part of the population gradually redefined what constitutes religion, moving from a certain metaphysical constant to a moral imperative. A statement such as "a pupil needs religion" is then placed in a completely different light, which can have potentially fundamental implications in relation to childhood per se.
Although the state and the church produced an immeasurable num-ber of statements about childhood, they were not given meaning on their own. The meaning and the everyday consequences that resulted from it were created only in the world of thought and the practice of the actors themselves. But what does this mean in relation to children and religion? That the vision according to whose intentions the life of schoolchildren was to be ideally shaped was not uniform. The actors could fill it with their own content in various circumstances, of course within certain boundaries. Ultimately, however, the idea of a "proper childhood" can vary from source to source, just as one person differs from another.