Canonizing Soviet Pasts in Contemporary Russia: The Case of Saint Matrona of Moscow

Kormina, Jeanne

doi:10.1002/9781118605936.ch22

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 7 publications

(5 reference statements)

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“…Moreover, she argues that, because since 2015 the state has started to develop its own interpretation of the repressive past (she mentions the adoption of the Concept of the State Policy of perpetuating the Memory of the Victims of Political Repressions), the ROC wants to become its main partner in the development of this narrative. That is why Christensen agrees with other scholars that a "Soviet turn" (Kormina 2013) and "patriotic turn" (Rousselet 2015) are visible in the ROC's approach to the past. She presumes that this will have an impact on the way that the new martyrdom narrative develops.…”

supporting

confidence: 64%

Karin Hyldal Christensen. The Making of the New Martyrs of Russia: Soviet Repression in Orthodox Memory. London: Routledge, 2017

Bogumił¹

2018

Laboratorium

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supporting

confidence: 64%

Karin Hyldal Christensen. The Making of the New Martyrs of Russia: Soviet Repression in Orthodox Memory. London: Routledge, 2017

Bogumił¹

2018

Laboratorium

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“…Delooz 1983;Gellner 1969: 74;Maniura 2009). Jeanne Kormina's (2013) ethnography offers an excellent example of the politics of recognition and sainthood. In post-Soviet Russia, the Orthodox Church canonized the martyrs of communism-the thousand or more clergymen who lost their lives under the Soviet regime.…”

Section: Politics Of Saints and Nationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rather, such tenets work in tandem with popular conceptions, at times in close proximity, at other times from a greater distance. The pressure of popular perceptions is often deliberately considered by clerical leaders and used to promote the cause of the official institutions (Kormina 2013;Tweed 1997 Here we would like to call attention to the etymology of the word 'orthodoxy' . In most renditions, the primary signifier has been 'doxa' , which has been taken to mean 'opinion' .…”

Section: Doxa and Praxismentioning

confidence: 99%

The 'Orthodoxy' of Orthodoxy: On Moral Imperfection, Correctness, and Deferral in Religious Worlds

Bandak¹,

Boylston²

2014

Religion and Society

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This article uses ethnographic studies of Orthodox Christianities as a way to investigate the concept of 'orthodoxy' as it applies to religious worlds. Orthodoxy, we argue, is to be found neither in opposition to popular religion nor solely in institutional churches, but in a set of encompassing relations among clergy and lay people that amounts to a religious world and a shared tradition. These relations are characterized by correctness and deferral-formal modes of relating to authority that are open-ended and non-definitive and so create room for certain kinds of pluralism, heterodoxy, and dissent within an overarching structure of faith and obedience. Attention to the aesthetics of orthodox practice shows how these relations are conditioned in multi-sensory, often non-linguistic ways. Consideration of the national and territorial aspects of Orthodoxy shows how these religious worlds of faith and deferral are also political worlds. n This article asks what it means to be 'orthodox' from the perspective of an ethnographic view of Orthodox Christianities. We hold that attention to orthodoxy offers a vital perspective on the relationship between religious actors and their institutions that may be missed in accounts of piety or fundamentalism and that sheds light on the continuing influence of liturgical religion and its discourses of truth and authority. A focus on the 'ortho' of orthodoxy-rightness or correctness-gives a clue as to how Orthodox Christianities construct encompassing, authoritative religious worlds in the face of moral imperfection. We investigate how deferral to authority results not in rigid verbal or textual articulations of the true, but in a notion of correctness that is carried in the living and ongoing traditions of the Church, where tradition includes oral, scriptural, aesthetic, liturgical, and other aspects taken together. Correctness thus understood cannot be encompassed by linguistic propositions but leaves open theological and ideological possibilities and modes of engagement with the sacred. We draw on ethnographic studies of (capital-O) Orthodox Christianities-and other institutionally oriented forms of Christianity-to develop Religion and Society: Advances in Research 5 (2014): 25-46 © Berghahn Books

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“…This process of transcendence was accompanied by re‐centring of saintly figures linked to martial masculinity within the ROC's practice – from the great martyr St George and Alexander Nevskii, to the eighteenth‐century naval commander Fyodor Ushakov, who was canonized in 2001. The church's promotion of warrior‐saints provided a counterweight to other popular trends in post‐Soviet Orthodoxy, including the rapid rise of female saint cults like Matrona of Moscow and Xenia of St Petersburg (Kormina 2013; Shtyrkov 2011), as well as women's growing authority in Orthodox education for the laity (Ładykowska & Tocheva 2013). Evgenii's vision of masculinity illustrates how combining military patriotism with patriarchal values can articulate a model of ‘the good life’ that encompasses both Orthodox religiosity and self‐realization through professional achievement.…”

Section: The Making Of a New Orthodox Manmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Real Orthodox men’: religious masculinities and the new Russian culture of military patriotism

Fomina

2023

Royal Anthropological Inst

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Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, radical nationalist and quasi‐fascist movements defining themselves in opposition to the Russian government dominated the country's paramilitary scene. This trend was almost completely reversed in the 2010s, with the relative decline of grassroots Slavic ethno‐nationalism and the emergence of a statist military‐patriotic culture centred on ‘traditional values’ and Orthodox faith. Drawing on field research with members of a Moscow‐based military‐patriotic club, this article shows how Orthodoxy emerged as an attractive ideological framework to give meaning to individual and communal practices of moral and physical self‐cultivation among patriotically oriented young middle‐class men. I argue that rather than a process of militarization of a religious public, the establishment of the Orthodox military‐patriotic milieu in the late 2000s is better understood as the Orthodoxization of the Russian paramilitary sphere, driven by young militaristically minded men's search for a sense of purpose and belonging. This post‐Soviet Orthodox paramilitary scene that combines militant masculinities with promotion of law abidance and civic values effectively works to curtail more extreme forms of ethno‐nationalism and thus invites us to rethink conventional wisdom on the relationship between religion, militarism, and violent radicalization.

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Canonizing Soviet Pasts in Contemporary Russia: The Case of Saint Matrona of Moscow

Cited by 7 publications

References 7 publications

Karin Hyldal Christensen. The Making of the New Martyrs of Russia: Soviet Repression in Orthodox Memory. London: Routledge, 2017

Karin Hyldal Christensen. The Making of the New Martyrs of Russia: Soviet Repression in Orthodox Memory. London: Routledge, 2017

The 'Orthodoxy' of Orthodoxy: On Moral Imperfection, Correctness, and Deferral in Religious Worlds

‘Real Orthodox men’: religious masculinities and the new Russian culture of military patriotism

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