Europe

In 1989, as the highly centralized governments of Central and Eastern Europe began to crumble, the RVP convoked the Institutes of Philosophy of the Academies of Social Sciences to retrieve the foundational values in their cultures and apply them to national rebuilding as democratic societies. The drafts of the resulting volumes on social reconstruction were presented for critical debate with the other teams from the region, first at a meeting in Krakow in 1991, then at meetings in Stara Lezna and Smolenice, Slovakia in 1992 and 1994, and at annual meetings thereafter in each of the Central and Eastern European countries. Each team has since published a second volume on building democratic societies, a third volume on the theme rejoining Europe in a global context, and even a fourth volume on the current urgent crisis in Europe as a whole. Over 50 volumes have been published in this series. With the evolving challenges regional sets of research teams have been formed in Central and Eastern European countries as well as the Balkans, Russia, the Caucasus to work on issues important to the people and the region. Recently more than 10 books were resulted from the project "Faith in a Secular Age," especially in the Western European countries.