ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses the extent to which policy adaptations in the religious sector have reflected broader systemic changes, and traces the adaptation of religious policy across four broad developmental phases. These phases are: system destruction; system building; system stabilization; and system decay. The chapter demonstrates that modulations in religious policy have coincided very closely with modulations in other policy spheres and examines five cases: the USSR, China, Yugoslavia, Cuba, and Poland. As Kenneth Jowitt notes, the turbulence created by transformation and mobilization processes in the system building phase impedes the regime's effort to command support and obedience at all levels of society and party. The system received a sharp jolt in June 1948 when the Soviet Union expelled communist Yugoslavia from the Cominform. The chapter is concerned with the processes of system change which effect the change in religious policy over time.
