How Many Miles to Warsaw? Women’s Agency and Underground Catholicism in the Soviet Belarusian Countryside.

Bartash, Volha

doi:0137-4079

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Title: How Many Miles to Warsaw? Women’s Agency and Underground Catholicism in the Soviet Belarusian Countryside.

Abstract:

This article draws on oral history interviews and ethnographic fieldwork with Catholic women in the Belarusian countryside. Using a gender lens, it offers a fresh perspective on how rural women under Soviet rule organised themselves into an underground religious community in Little Warsaw. Through their religious practices – family rituals, secret gatherings and Marian devotions – these women showed resilience and agency despite state pressure and anti-religious propaganda. The study highlights the unique leadership role women played in the underground community. It argues that female religious solidarity flourished in the countryside as male religious authority weakened and as rural women were marginalised within Soviet structures. Ultimately, this article demonstrates how these women’s quiet but determined efforts sustained religious life during Soviet times and paved the way for the religious revival of the 1990s.

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