’...the opium of the people’? Religiosity in socialist new towns

Abstract

Abstract. The paper scrutinizes religiosity in two Hungarian socialist new towns, Dunaújváros and Kazincbarcika, during and after socialism. Based on the results of the research, two main arguments might be outlined. First, it was revealed that religiosity played an important role in the daily lives of the residents of both new towns during the state socialist period. Second, in contrast to our initial assumption of a remarkable religious revival after 1989, only a slightly increasing (and then, rather stagnating) religiosity was observed in both case study towns. Therefore, our research results might contribute to the deconstruction of the over-simplified common view of ‘atheism under socialism’ vs. ‘a religious revival in the post-socialist era’.