Believing in Russia - Religious Policy after Communism

Believing in Russia - Religious Policy after Communism PDF Author: Geraldine Fagan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136213309
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book presents a comprehensive overview of religious policy in Russia since the end of the communist regime, exposing many of the ambiguities and uncertainties about the position of religion in Russian life. It reveals how religious freedom in Russia has, contrary to the widely held view, a long tradition, and how the leading religious institutions in Russia today, including especially the Russian Orthodox Church but also Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist establishments, owe a great deal of their special positions to the relationship they had with the former Soviet regime. It examines the resurgence of religious freedom in the years immediately after the end of the Soviet Union, showing how this was subsequently curtailed, but only partially, by the important law of 1997. It discusses the pursuit of privilege for the Russian Orthodox Church and other ‘traditional’ beliefs under presidents Putin and Medvedev, and assesses how far Russian Orthodox Christianity is related to Russian national culture, demonstrating the unresolved nature of the key question, ‘Is Russia to be an Orthodox country with religious minorities or a multi-confessional state?’ It concludes that Russian society’s continuing failure to reach a consensus on the role of religion in public life is destabilising the nation.

Believing in Russia - Religious Policy after Communism

Believing in Russia - Religious Policy after Communism PDF Author: Geraldine Fagan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136213309
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book presents a comprehensive overview of religious policy in Russia since the end of the communist regime, exposing many of the ambiguities and uncertainties about the position of religion in Russian life. It reveals how religious freedom in Russia has, contrary to the widely held view, a long tradition, and how the leading religious institutions in Russia today, including especially the Russian Orthodox Church but also Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist establishments, owe a great deal of their special positions to the relationship they had with the former Soviet regime. It examines the resurgence of religious freedom in the years immediately after the end of the Soviet Union, showing how this was subsequently curtailed, but only partially, by the important law of 1997. It discusses the pursuit of privilege for the Russian Orthodox Church and other ‘traditional’ beliefs under presidents Putin and Medvedev, and assesses how far Russian Orthodox Christianity is related to Russian national culture, demonstrating the unresolved nature of the key question, ‘Is Russia to be an Orthodox country with religious minorities or a multi-confessional state?’ It concludes that Russian society’s continuing failure to reach a consensus on the role of religion in public life is destabilising the nation.

Popular Religion in Russia

Popular Religion in Russia PDF Author: Stella Rock
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134369786
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book dispels the widely-held view that paganism survived in Russia alongside Orthodox Christianity, demonstrating that 'double belief', dvoeverie, is in fact an academic myth. Scholars, citing the medieval origins of the term, have often portrayed Russian Christianity as uniquely muddied by paganism, with 'double-believing' Christians consciously or unconsciously preserving pagan traditions even into the twentieth century. This volume shows how the concept of dvoeverie arose with nineteenth-century scholars obsessed with the Russian 'folk' and was perpetuated as a propaganda tool in the Soviet period, colouring our perception of both popular faith in Russian and medieval Russian culture for over a century. It surveys the wide variety of uses of the term from the eleventh to the seventeenth century, and contrasts them to its use in modern historiography, concluding that our modern interpretation of dvoeverie would not have been recognized by medieval clerics, and that 'double-belief' is a modern academic construct. Furthermore, it offers a brief foray into medieval Orthodoxy via the mind of the believer, through the language and literature of the period.

Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent

Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent PDF Author: John Garrard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691125732
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Get Book Here

Book Description
Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent is the first book to fully explore the expansive and ill-understood role that Russia's ancient Christian faith has played in the fall of Soviet Communism and in the rise of Russian nationalism today. John and Carol Garrard tell the story of how the Orthodox Church's moral weight helped defeat the 1991 coup against Gorbachev launched by Communist Party hardliners. The Soviet Union disintegrated, leaving Russians searching for a usable past. The Garrards reveal how Patriarch Aleksy II--a former KGB officer and the man behind the church's successful defeat of the coup--is reconstituting a new national idea in the church's own image. In the new Russia, the former KGB who run the country--Vladimir Putin among them--proclaim the cross, not the hammer and sickle. Meanwhile, a majority of Russians now embrace the Orthodox faith with unprecedented fervor. The Garrards trace how Aleksy orchestrated this transformation, positioning his church to inherit power once held by the Communist Party and to become the dominant ethos of the military and government. They show how the revived church under Aleksy prevented mass violence during the post-Soviet turmoil, and how Aleksy astutely linked the church with the army and melded Russian patriotism and faith. Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent argues that the West must come to grips with this complex and contradictory resurgence of the Orthodox faith, because it is the hidden force behind Russia's domestic and foreign policies today.

Old Believers in Modern Russia

Old Believers in Modern Russia PDF Author: Roy R. Robson
Publisher: Niu Slavic, East European, and
ISBN: 9780875809984
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The schism that split the Russian Orthodox Church in 1667 alienated thousands of devout men and women. These traditional worshippers, who came to be known as the Old Believers, practiced their faith as outsiders for more than two centuries. Denied the Russian Orthodox Church's sacraments, they in turn denied that its "new" ways could lead them to salvation. Always at odds with the established Russian Orthodox Church and the tsar, the Old Believers created a vibrant separate culture within the imperial Russian state. Old Believers in Modern Russia shows how Russia's most traditional religious group created a "culture of community" distinct from the dominant culture and society. This culture provided a lens through which the faithful could view, interpret, and interact with their world. Focusing especially on imperial Russia's twilight years, Robson explores how the Old Believers adapted to rapid change in the early twentieth century. Until recently, little has been known about Old Believer faith and culture. Most previous studies have relied upon information provided by outsiders, usually the state or the Russian Orthodox Church. Robson explores Old Believer experience from the inside in this first detailed study of the group in the late imperial period. He integrates historical methods with communication theory and symbolic anthropology to reveal the many facets of Old Believer life.

Religion and Identity in Modern Russia

Religion and Identity in Modern Russia PDF Author: Juliet Johnson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351905147
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
Focusing on the roles of Russian Orthodoxy and Islam in constituting, challenging and changing national and ethnic identities in Russia, this study takes Tsarist and Soviet legacies into account, paying special attention to the evolution of the relationship between religious teachings and political institutions through the late 19th and 20th centuries. The volume explicitly discusses and compares the role of Russia's two major religions, Orthodoxy and Islam, in forging identity in the modern era and brings an innovative blend of sociological, historical, linguistic and geographic scholarship to the problem of post-Soviet Russian identity. This comprehensive volume is suitable for courses on post-Soviet politics, Russian studies, religion and political culture.

I Found God in Soviet Russia

I Found God in Soviet Russia PDF Author: John H. Noble
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1839741058
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book Here

Book Description
I Found God in Soviet Russia, first published in 1959, is a profoundly moving account of author John Noble's religious epiphany while confined in a brutal Soviet prison following World War II. The book also recounts Noble's harrowing survival of the massive Allied fire-bombing of Dresden, where he and his family took shelter in the cellar of their home (which was partially destroyed during the raid). Following World War II, Noble, along with his father, were arrested in East Germany and held in several prison camps in Germany including the infamous Nazi-era Buchenwald. Noble is eventually transferred to Vorkuta in far northern Russia where he works in a coal mine. Sustained by his faith and devotion to God, Noble recounts his experiences, stories of his captors and fellow inmates, and the deep faith shown by many of the other prisoners. Of special note is a chapter devoted to three nuns who, as punishment for refusing to work, were placed outdoors in sub-zero weather in only lightweight-clothing. Miraculously, the nuns came through the ordeal without frostbite and were thereafter excused from work details. Following an imprisonment of nearly 10 years, Noble was eventually released to the West, and would go on to lecture about his experiences for the remainder of his life. I Found God in Soviet Russia complements the author's other book entitled I Was a Slave in Russia, which details the day-to-day life in the Soviet gulag.

Russia ABCs

Russia ABCs PDF Author: Ann Berge
Publisher: Capstone
ISBN: 1404802843
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 33

Get Book Here

Book Description
Privyet! Welcome to Russia! Come along on this ABC adventure through the biggest country on Earth. Read about diamond-studded eggs, the deepest lake in the world, and other fascinating facts.

Republicanism in Russia

Republicanism in Russia PDF Author: Oleg Kharkhordin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067497672X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
If Marxism was the apparent loser in the Cold War, it cannot be said that liberalism was the winner, at least not in Russia. Oleg Kharkhordin is not surprised that institutions of liberal democracy failed to take root following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In Republicanism in Russia, he suggests that Russians can find a path to freedom by looking instead to the classical tradition of republican self-government and civic engagement already familiar from their history. Republicanism has had a steadfast presence in Russia, in spite of tsarist and communist hostility. Originating in the ancient world, especially with Cicero, it continued by way of Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and more recently Arendt. While it has not always been easy for Russians to read or write classical republican philosophy, much less implement it, republican ideas have long flowered in Russian literature and are part of a common understanding of freedom, dignity, and what constitutes a worthy life. Contemporary Russian republicanism can be seen in movements defending architectural and cultural heritage, municipal participatory budgeting experiments, and shared governance in academic institutions. Drawing on recent empirical research, Kharkhordin elaborates a theory of res publica different from the communal life inherited from the communist period, one that opens up the possibility for a genuine public life in Russia. By embracing the indigenous Russian reception of the classical republican tradition, Kharkhordin argues, today’s Russians can sever their country’s dependence on the residual mechanisms of the communist past and realize a new vision for freedom.

Thinking Orthodox in Modern Russia

Thinking Orthodox in Modern Russia PDF Author: Patrick Lally Michelson
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299298949
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection of essays on Russian religious thought focuses on the extent to which Russian culture and ideology has been informed by the nation's roots in Orthodox Christianity.

Russia

Russia PDF Author: Gregory Carleton
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067497848X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
No nation is a stranger to war, but for Russians war is a central part of who they are. Their “motherland” has been the battlefield where some of the largest armies have clashed, the most savage battles have been fought, the highest death tolls paid. Having prevailed over Mongol hordes and vanquished Napoleon and Hitler, many Russians believe no other nation has sacrificed so much for the world. In Russia: The Story of War Gregory Carleton explores how this belief has produced a myth of exceptionalism that pervades Russian culture and politics and has helped forge a national identity rooted in war. While outsiders view Russia as an aggressor, Russians themselves see a country surrounded by enemies, poised in a permanent defensive crouch as it fights one invader after another. Time and again, history has called upon Russia to play the savior—of Europe, of Christianity, of civilization itself—and its victories, especially over the Nazis in World War II, have come at immense cost. In this telling, even defeats lose their sting. Isolation becomes a virtuous destiny and the whole of its bloody history a point of pride. War is the unifying thread of Russia’s national epic, one that transcends its wrenching ideological transformations from the archconservative empire to the radical-totalitarian Soviet Union to the resurgent nationalism of the country today. As Putin’s Russia asserts itself in ever bolder ways, knowing how the story of its war-torn past shapes the present is essential to understanding its self-image and worldview.