This book offers a valuable overview and exploration of religiously-oriented groups active in Slovakia and East Germany under Communism. David Doellinger looks at how Catholics in Slovakia and Protestants in East Germany challenged state power by creating and using “free spaces” (12) available within the larger authoritarian context. In the case of Slovakia, he focuses largely on the “secret church,” i.e., the underground Catholic network, and in that of the German Democratic Party (GDR), mostly on peace-related initiatives, particularly in Leipzig. Doellinger bases his study on a wide range of sources, from official state and church records to samizdat publications and interviews. He examines the entire postwar period from the late 1940s through to, and beyond, the transformations of 1989–1990, but the bulk of his analysis concentrates on the 1980s. It is thus a welcome addition to the literature on the later phase of state socialism in Central Europe.

Taken as a comparative study, however, the book leaves the reader wanting more. At the most basic level, Doellinger never fully articulates his justification for choosing these particular cases. The differences between the two are, of course, significant, starting with the dominant religions in each country: Slovak Catholics looked more to Rome, whereas East German Protestants often maintained links to their brethren in West Germany. But Doellinger does not fully explore this dynamic and its effects. East Germany was also, of course, a smaller state in the larger German nation, whereas Slovakia made up a national group in a larger multinational state. This state of affairs surely affected the dynamics Doellinger studies, but he does not effectively address it. More generally, he does not adequately take into account the larger historical and cultural factors that shaped the Cold War decades in each case. Doellinger does invoke repeatedly the Polish case, but fully including it as a third example would have allowed for deeper insights into the relationship between religion and politics in the Soviet bloc.

Missed opportunities to elaborate the comparison between the GDR and Slovakia begin in the first chapter, where Doellinger describes the wartime and immediate postwar experiences of the two churches, noting that the Protestant Church's (perceived and real) resistance to Nazism earned it a measure of autonomy from the East German Communists. In Slovakia, by contrast, the Catholic Church's close links with Monsignor Jozef Tiso's collaborationist regime during the war provided justification for Communist repression in the postwar period. Doellinger notes and describes these very different foundational moments in the second half of the 1940s, but does not analyze them further for insights into how this affected the ensuing relationship among the churches, the states, and the religious public.

In a potentially interesting comparative argument, Doellinger claims that the East German Socialist Unity Party (SED) was more successful than its (Czecho-)Slovak counterpart in its attempts to secularize society, but he fails to provide convincing evidence and analysis to back up this statement. Instead, he offers figures for “confessional membership” (7–8) for the GDR from throughout the Cold War period, but only very rough figures of “religiosity” (6) for Slovakia from 1988. These numbers suggest that, by the end of the 1980s, somewhat less than a majority of East Germans—and somewhat more than a majority of Slovaks—considered themselves to be religious. It is hard, though, to make sense of these figures relative to each other since Doellinger does not provide the reader with a baseline of comparison from the 1930s–1940s (or some other baseline) for both. Yet, at one point, the author curiously seems to suggest that the two cases are roughly similar when he talks about the same number of pews being filled in each country in the 1970s.

Throughout the book, Doellinger frequently employs the word secularization without offering his understanding of the term. This is an oversight given the vast literature on the subject, including case studies related to communism (e.g., Sonja Luehrmann, Secularism Soviet Style: Teaching Atheism and Religion in a Volga Republic [2011]). A clearer investigation of the notion of “political” would likewise have been helpful. What does the author make of individuals signing petitions in Slovakia or taking part in demonstrations in Germany—if these individuals did not themselves consider their activities to be political as such? And if the Slovak secret church “remained focused on the spiritual development [of their parishioners]… rather than mobilizing politically against the state” (47), can it be argued that its activities were indeed political?

Overall, the book's main strength lies in its detailed account of religious-based activism in these two specific cases. The author does not, however, sufficiently explore the deeper processes at play or adequately delve into the context underlying developments in each country.