The political geographies of religious sites in Moscow’s neighborhoods

Abstract

This paper addresses the spatial politics of Russia’s increased religiosity in Moscow. It analyzes the rights of minority Muslim communities within the context of increased political support for expressions of Russian Orthodoxy in Moscow’s public space. Moscow’s Russian Orthodox and Muslim religious leaders claim that their communities have a lack of religious infrastructure, with one church per 35,000 residents and one mosque per three million residents, respectively. The Russian Orthodox Church has been more successful than Muslim organizations at expanding their presence in Moscow’s neighborhoods. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, religious spaces are examined as sites of dissent as well as participatory, active citizenship at three different sites in Moscow. Protests over Russian Orthodox Church construction in one neighborhood are contrasted with the protests over mosque construction in two neighborhoods. This paper provides insights into how civil society and religious groups have increased their public presence in Moscow and shows the unequal access that different groups have to public space in that city.     

The Russian Orthodox Church and ‘Patriotic’ Support for the Stalinist Regime during the Great Patriotic War

Soviet wartime propaganda and contemporary Russian work on the activities of the Orthodox Church during the war promote the Church’s claim that it was motivated by patriotism, a point it used to claim legitimacy in the USSR and now in contemporary Russia. In contrast, this paper argues that the hierarchs and laity of the Patriarchal Church were not essentially motivated by patriotism or the desire to show loyalty to the Soviet regime in 1941, but instead acted to use the war to achieve three goals: first and most important, to become relevant in the everyday life of the Soviet people by promoting Christian beliefs and values; second, to earn legitimacy in the eyes of anti-clerics and non-believers by lending moral and practical support to the war effort; and finally, to obtain legal standing by showing its trustworthiness and loyalty through displays of Russian (not Soviet) patriotism consonant with its historic role, all the while without endorsing communist ideology. The hierarchs orchestrated a campaign from the top down throughout the clerical hierarchy, to achieve the aforementioned goals whilst from below the faithful, independently of the hierarchs, used their local displays of patriotism as leverage to reopen local churches and to force the regime to respect their right to worship. The grassroots response by believers and parish clerics in support of the Church and its wartime activities represents primarily an endorsement of the Church, Christianity, Russian patriotism, and only secondarily, if at all, loyalty to the Stalinist regime.     

伪满殖民政权的东正教政策

中国东北沦陷之后,日本殖民政权从强化统治和对抗苏联的需要出发,针对伪满境内的东正教会,制定了怀柔和高压并举的宗教政策。一方面安抚和拉拢东正教会,利用其煽动俄国侨民从事反共反苏活动;另一方面则严密监控东正教会,镇压神职人员和教徒的反日亲苏活动,并通过宣扬惟神之道、强迫教徒拜祭天照大神等方式,从思想上改造东正教,进而根除俄国侨民的民族意识。这些政策似曾一度取得成功,但却招致东正教会和教徒的普遍抵制,最终归于失败。     

Alternative identity,alternative religion? Neo‐paganism and the Aryan myth in contemporary Russia

ABSTRACT. As in all post‐Soviet states, the Russian intelligentsia has been preoccupied with the construction of a new national identity since the beginning of the 1990s. Although the place of Orthodox religion in Russia is well documented, the subject of neo‐paganism and its consequent assertion of an Aryan identity for Russians remains little known. Yet specialists observing the political and intellectual life of contemporary Russia have begun to notice that the development of references to ‘Slavic paganism’ and to Russia's ‘Aryan’ origin can be found in the public speeches of some politicians and intellectual figures. This article will attempt, in its first section, to depict the historical depth of these movements by examining the existence of neo‐pagan and/or Aryan referents in Soviet culture, and focusing on how these discourses developed in different spheres of post‐Soviet Russian society, such as those of religion, historiography, and politics.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 36, Number 1. February 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 1 Front cover ALTERNATIVE FACTS In response to discourses of alternative facts, denials of climate science and the undermining of science in the public sphere, on 22 April 2017, protestors marched for science in cities across the United States. In this image of the San Francisco march, a protestor holds a sign proclaiming ‘science is universal’. While some protestors' slogans assumed the objectivity of science and facts, others asserted the importance of diversity, equality and inclusion in science. Scholars of science and technology studies have long deconstructed claims of universality, but recently some have argued that the authority of science and facts must be reclaimed. Bruno Latour emphasizes that it is untenable to talk about scientific facts as though their rightness alone will be persuasive. Analyses of human rights and political violence disclose how narratives and propaganda shape not just individual attitudes but also the functioning of institutions. Contexts of gaslighting, repetition, distraction and undermining facts require different strategies for understanding how institutions and societies are perpetrating and perpetuating injustices. In this issue, Drexler's article develops a framework of multidimensional and intersectional justice for analyzing the layered, compounded, dynamic forms of power and inequality that contribute to particular injustices. Understanding justice as multidimensional and intersectional is part of a struggle from which new forms of knowledge and truth can emerge. Back cover ‘NEW SCHISM’ IN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY? A supplicatory prayer service (Moleben) to Saint Emperor Nikolay II in an Orthodox church in the Russian Federation. On the commemoration day of his death, believers line up to venerate large icons of the tsar installed in the church, as in many other churches of the ‘Russian world’. When kissing the holy icons and listening to the words of prayer, they participate in a theopolitical performance of belonging to a community of co-believers and compatriots, of people who share the same faith and the same nation, an enactment of the model ‘one state, one church’ prevalent in Eastern Orthodoxy. What happens, however, when state borders change, when new sovereign states emerge or become stronger? Is it possible for Orthodox Christians to practise their faith outside the national-territorial logic? Since the summer of 2018, Jeanne Kormina and Vlad Naumescu have been observing a rapidly developing cold war within Orthodox Christianity. This war between different claims for sovereignty and jurisdiction over ‘canonical territories’ has followed clear logics of religious nationalism and imperialism. In this conflict, the less privileged — ordinary believers and local religious communities — have suffered most. In this issue, Kormina and Naumescu analyze the recent ‘schism’ in Eastern Orthodoxy to show how religion and politics are strongly intertwined in disputes over territory and sovereignty. Drawing a parallel between the post-socialist revival of religion in Ukraine and the current mobilization on the ground, they show how the theopolitics of ‘communion’ and ‘canonical territory’ shape the fate of people, churches and states.     

“Local religion” in Corfu: sixteenth to nineteenth centuries

The article discusses the changing meanings of a powerful Corfiot symbol, St Spyridon, the patron saint of Corfu. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the saint – whose cult had been bolstered by the civil rather than the ecclesiastical authorities – was venerated by both the Greek and Latin inhabitants of Corfu, thus symbolizing a unity at least on the level of the civic religion. Following the 1716 siege of the town by the Ottomans, one can clearly see that the Venetian state and its representatives did not hesitate to lavish many honours on St Spyridon in thanks for his alleged intervention during the siege, which saved not only Corfu but the whole of Western Christianity. At the end of the century though, when the island fell to the allied Russian and Ottoman forces, the old equilibrium between the two religious groups began to become unsettled. A text written by the Orthodox theologian Athanassios Parios just a few years after the Russo-Ottoman victory attempts to rewrite the behaviour of the saint towards the Catholics and present him as the defender of the Orthodox Church and the enemy of any rapprochement between Greeks and Latins.     

A SANCTUARY IN POST-CONFLICT SPACE: THE BAPTIST CHURCH AS A 'MIDDLE OPTION' IN BANOVINA, CROATIA

One of the observable aspects of social change during the transition period in most post-socialist countries is the revival of religion. The resurgence of churches has accompanied national revival and in some countries it is also connected to a growing post-socialist nationalism. This article focuses on the development of different –'transnational'– religious options in an area of ethnic conflict by presenting a case study of the post-war growth of the Baptist Church in the Banovina region in Croatia, close to the Bosnian border. Research results are based on halfstructured interviews with church representatives and members.
The research shows that there has been a considerable post-war expansion of the Baptist Church in the Banovina region, and that it is mainly ethnic Serbs and people from mixed marriages who have joined the Church. Many of them have a background as communists. For them, neither the Catholic Church, which is regarded as a Croatian church, nor the Serbian Orthodox Church are viable religious options. Instead, there are three factors that make the 'Baptist option' attractive. First, it is grounded in the historical tradition of the Baptist Church in this region and on memories and myths activated in the war and post-war periods. Second, the Baptist Church has made a middle transnational option available in an ethnically mixed area. As such it attracts those who are searching for a niche of neutrality in an ethnically strongly divided region characterized by conflict. Third, the considerable humanitarian work and help of organizations related to the Baptist Church during and after the war not only added in the eyes of many people in need to its image elements of existential shelter, but also brought the Church out of the shadows and made it more 'visible'– thereby improving its former reputation as an obscure sect.     

‘Spreading grace’ in post‐Soviet Russia (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The article addresses the revival of Russian Orthodoxy as a prominent domain in the lives of many Russians. The six authors are interested in the underlying question: What makes Russian Orthodoxy a relevent and modern source of morality and identity? The circumstances of this branch of Christianity significantly differ from what has been discussed in recent years as ‘the anthropology of Christianity’. The article proposes a thematic approach in order to connect the exploration of Russian Orthodoxy to the study of other denominations. A key‐area is the disctinctive articulation between continuity and change, which is crucial to the understanding of some branches of Protestantism as well.     

苏联最初十年农村青年的东正教信仰

东正教传入俄罗斯后,深深地影响了俄罗斯人,特别是俄罗斯农民。苏联最初十年,在苏联政府的反宗教无神论宣传下,俄罗斯农民的东正教信仰发生了变化,表明苏联政府无神论宣传在当时取得了一定的成功,是值得肯定的,同时也说明了社会主义意识形态的先进性得到了青年农民的承认。研究这一问题对如何引导青年接受先进的宗教文化意识,根除他们思想中的封建迷信,具有很大的现实意义。     

The Natsyas of the Grodno region of Belarus: A Field Study

Abstract. This research was conducted in 1993–4 in several peripheral kolkhoz villages in the north-west Belarus Grodno province, a religious (Catholic/Orthodox) and linguistic (Belarussian/RussiadPolish/Lithuanian)borderland. The members of the folk communities of this region conceive and categorise social reality differently than it is done by the members of a nationalised and urbanised society, according to religious, and not nation-state, criteria. People are divided by these criteria into natsyas, i.e. religious groups. There are two main natsyas: the Catholics (also called Poles) and the Orthodox (called Rus' or Belarussians). The distinctive criterion for several natsyus is the language of a prayer: the Catholics pray in Polish and/or Lithuanian, the Orthodox in Old Church Slavonic and Russian. The terms Catholic natsya and Polish natsya (and similarly Orthodox natsya or Rus' natsya) are synonymous. The language of everyday speech does not differentiate the natsyas; all the villagers speak Belarussian dialect or so called ‘plain language’. The natsya, a concept specific of traditional folk societies, should not be confused with a ‘nation’, a political term of the modem world. None the less, the kolkhoz peasants of the region under study are confronted with a concept of ‘nation’. It results in a turmoil in their worldview and in confusion about their identity; what we see in the Belarussian villages is a process of change. The borderland where the material was collected seems an excellent field for the study of the process of the emergence of nations.     

Missionary,Reformer, and Old Believer in Revolutionary Russia: Bishop Andrei (Ukhtomskii) (1872–1937)

This article examines the life and thought of Andrei (Ukhtomskii), a prominent Orthodox churchman in late imperial and early Soviet Russia. A proponent of ecclesiastical reform, Andrei believed that the Church was unable to instil piety because of an overly close relationship with the state. Basing his opinions on Slavophile philosophy, Andrei campaigned for the restoration of the Russian patriarchate and parish reform that would grant the laity increased autonomy. As a missionary among non‐Russian populations, he rejected linguistic Russification. After 1905, these beliefs led him to clash with the right and Rasputin. After the February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government appointed Andrei to a leading position in the Holy Synod. However, during the collapse of the Church's hierarchy in the 1920s, he grew weary of the prevalent inertia and in 1925 attempted to single‐handedly resolve the centuries‐old Old Believer schism. This was rejected by the Moscow Patriarchate, leading Andrei to create his own catacomb church. This article concludes that Andrei should be seen as a church politician undone by the contradictions inherent both in his own position and that of the Church.     

The impossible object: Relics,property, and the secular in post‐Soviet Russia (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The article analyzes a recent court case concerning the relics of two 14th‐century Russian Orthodox saints, during which the Russian state ruled to confiscate the relics from the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church. I examine the church's attempts to fight back, paying particular attention to how the conflicting parties have differently framed the disputed objects' materiality. In doing so, I link the ongoing debates over whether dead bodies can be considered property and who owns the bodies of saints, to the current battles in Russia over the boundaries between the sacred and the secular. The relics affair, I suggest, ultimately points to the issue of how politics itself is constituted through the battles to define these boundaries, who claims the power to draw these lines, and why issues dealing with dead bodies possess a certain affective charge that causes political action. I argue that the case of the Suzdal relics makes visible certain aporias in both secular law and religious discourse, which ultimately make this case impossible for the state to resolve in its favour through conventional judicial means without overruling the law. In this process, the object of dispute itself disappears from the discursive space, becoming buried in a sort of ‘black box’, the interior contents of which are ultimately unnameable and uncategorizable.     

The uses of Greek Orthodoxy in the early poetry of Yannis Ritsos

Abstract

The influence of Greek Orthodoxy on Ritsos' poetry, previously neglected because of the poet's political commitments, is examined. Against the backdrop of the poet's Orthodox upbringing and his early conversion to communism, Ritsos' uses of Orthodoxy in certain poems written before 1948 are considered. The diversity is demonstrated during this period of Ritsos' conception and treatment of the tensions and oppositions between Orthodoxy and Marxism. The ideological influence of Varnalis on the earliest collection, Tρακτ?ρ, can be contrasted with the more nuanced use of Orthodox material in Eπιταφιο? and the sympathetic depiction of childhood religion in Mια πυγολαμπιδα φωτιζ?ι τη νυχτα. Only in the particular conditions of wartime Greece does Ritsos manage a bridge between Orthodoxy and Marxism: H Kυρα Aμπ?λιων synthesizes Ritsos' liberation message with images rooted in popular religion.     

Religious Conversion in Early Post-Ottoman Bulgaria: A Case Study of Ruse

Under Ottoman rule, conversion to Islam took place in the Balkans in various forms often described as forced, voluntary or “conversion for convenience.” Islamic law, however, strictly forbade apostasy for Muslims, who risked the death penalty. Although the Ottoman reform of 1844 banned the execution of apostates from Islam and that of 1856 declared freedom of religion, Muslim conversion was carried out discreetly. In 1878, the establishment of the Bulgarian nation-state paved the way for potential conversion from Islam to Christianity. This study examines the conversion of Muslims, Catholics, and to a lesser extent, Jews, to Bulgarian Orthodoxy and Protestantism in the city of Ruse. It shows that apostasy was a result of a complex interplay of loyalties, political dynamics, and self-interests rather than purely religious principles. Specifically, it argues that Muslims and, to a lesser extent, Jews, perceived conversion as a way of developing a Bulgarian identity, whereas Catholic conversion to Orthodoxy was mostly marriage-based and did not necessarily entail an intention to achieve a Bulgarian national identity. Moreover, the way that the Bulgarian Church processed the petitions shows a continuity from the practices that the Ottomans used when Christians and Jews converted to Islam during the Tanzimat Era.     

俄国在耶路撒冷财产的起源、变迁及影响

俄国于公元11世纪遣使进入圣地耶路撒冷,1847年向耶路撒冷派驻宗教使团,此后不断强化在该地的宗教存在,购置地产,建设房产,建立起东正教徒在耶路撒冷的活动基地。俄国虽然以宗教形式进入中东,但其真实的目的和意图都是政治性的,反映出其称霸世界的野心。俄国在耶路撒冷的宗教存在和财产存在是其未来插手中东事务的一个政治支点。它这种以宗教为先导、扩大区域政治影响力的方式,值得充分注意。     

The Archbishop of York and Anglo–American RelationsDuring the Second World War and Early Cold War, 1942–1955

This article addresses the relationship which developed during the Second World War and first decade of Cold War between the Foreign Office and one of Britain's leading Anglican clerics, Cyril Forster Garbett, archbishop of York 1942–55, widely respected as a liberal and the "conscience of the nation." It offers a model case study of relations between church and state by drawing upon state papers as well as upon ecclesiastical ones. It illustrates how religion was a crucial propaganda tool, advocating the defence of Western civilization and Christianity against first the paganism of Nazi Germany and then the atheism of Soviet Russia. Garbett's evolution from a domestic cleric concerned with social deprivation to an ecclesiastic statesman and Cold Warrior, reveals the significance of the religious component in Anglo–American relations. The presentation of the alliance as a crusade bonded together the two nations despite the differing political outlooks of their respective peoples.     

From Revolution to Dissolution: The Quai d'Orsay,the Banque Russo-Asiatique,and the Chinese Eastern Railway, 1917–1926

This article explores the use made of Christianity during the Second World War and the dilemmas created for the Allies by Stalin's religious record. It is particularly concerned with the way in which Christianity appeared for a while to become a bridge between East and West, with the explicit promise of continued post-war co-operation. However, in the immediate aftermath of the war, Anglo-American policies in particular switched from using Christianity to rehabilitate the adverse image of the Soviet regime to what had been the inter-war policy of using religion to demonise it. Inter-war demonisation held up the Soviet Union as a model not to be emulated. Post-war demonisation pointed to the Soviet Union as an expansionist threat bent on world domination. The article examines Stalin's responses, and Allied perceptions of those responses, to the changes in Western religious policy and propaganda from the Second World War to the emergence of the cold war. The article seeks to show how both sides used religion for political purposes, but that in the final analysis Western reluctance to relinquish what was perhaps its most emotive means of indicting and containing Communism meant that Christianity, instead of becoming a bridge, became a divisive factor that contributed to both the onset of the cold war and public acceptance of it.     

The Eastern Sámi: A short account of their history and identity

During the last decade there has been a growing interest in the history and culture of the Eastern Sami, but information on this subject is insufficient. In this article the author starts from the quite problematical question about the use of the term Eastern Sámi, and presents further data about the main historical milestones for the Eastern Sami from olden times up to the end of the 20^th century. Among other things, the author considers changes which happened in the structure of Eastern Sami social life, the cultural and linguistic environment and its influence on the Eastern Sami culture and languages, influence of the state borders and state policies, and the relationship between the Sami and the Orthodox Church. Based on this historical background, the author elucidates the issue of Eastern Sami identity and their sense of affinity. Is there still a future for their culture, language and identity? The author, who grew up on Sami land in Russia, has for more than a decade been studying the Eastern Sami culture, folklore and religion. In this presentation, the inner point of view, native Sami terms and place‐names are especially emphasized.     

Russian Peasant Beliefs and Practices Concerning Death and the Supernatural Collected in Novosokol'niki Region,Pskov Province,Russia, 1995. Part II: Death in Natural Circumstances

This article, based on fieldwork but drawing on other contemporary and historical material, examines some aspects of the present state of mortuary ritual and associated beliefs among a mixed population of official Russian Orthodox and the religious group known as Old Believers, about whose funerary practices little has been written. The ritual emerges as a complex balance of Christian and pagan elements, a clinging to archaic tradition combined with modern pragmatism and accommodation to changing socio-economic conditions.     

The Queen's preferred chant and Greece's nineteenth century Orthodox‐Christian national problem

When in 1875 Queen Olga of Greece insisted a multi‐part chant be introduced in the Athens Cathedral, a widespread debate about the influence of Western European culture upon Greek‐Orthodox tradition was initiated in Athens. With a significant part of this debate originating in mid‐century Vienna, and Russian musical influences affecting the form of the otherwise ancient Byzantine chant, the issue of polyphony acquired cultural‐historical dimensions intimately connected to historical continuity and the Orthodox‐Christian musical tradition. The debate transformed rapidly from a musicological enquiry into a matter of national identity, and an otherwise innocent aesthetic choice showcased the musical dimensions of Greek national claims at continuity. This article examines the historical contingencies that fuelled this debate, showcases the importance of patronage for musical transference and highlights the potency of Greek national Orthodoxy as a carrier of historical continuity for the ethnic group, here seen through music.