Faith – Trust – Secrecy

Religion through the lenses of the secret police

The exhibition runs: February 28 — April 05, 2020

Location:  Galeria Centralis / Blinken Open Society Archives

Opening ceremony: February 28, 2020, 6:00 P.M.

Opening remarks by

• István Rév, historian
• James Kapaló, project leader

This exhibition is about the ways in which Communist totalitarian states through secret police operations “captured” religion in images, graphics, texts, and folders in order to control and eliminate those they deemed untrustworthy.

Faith and trust are two of the central foundations of the religious community but secrecy also represents a common feature of religions throughout history. The secret police, as their name suggests, depended on secrecy practices, whether real or simply performed, and as part of their undercover operations they sought to gain the trust of the communities they wished to infiltrate. Researchers of religion, both during Communism and today, also require the trust of the communities that they research and they practice their own forms of secrecy to protect the identity of research participants.

Here we present the complex interactions of the secret police with religious groups and those seeking to research them. Faith and trust, whether sustained or broken, and secrecy are interwoven in the images, narratives, and testimonies on display.

This exhibition forms part of a larger project funded by the European Research Council that explores the creativity of religious groups under totalitarian rule through the holdings of the secret police archives in four countries: Hungary, Romania, Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova.

You can explore these materials in greater detail by visiting the Hidden Galleries Digital Archive