Keeping the Faith

Keeping the Faith PDF

Author: Jennifer Jean Wynot

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1603446400

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In Keeping the Faith, Jennifer Jean Wynot presents a clear and concise history of the trials and evolution of Russian Orthodox monasteries and convents and the important roles they have played in Russian culture, in both in the spiritual and political realms, from the abortive reforms of 1905 to the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. She shows how, throughout the Soviet period, Orthodox monks and nuns continued to provide spiritual strength to the people, in spite of severe persecution, and despite the ambivalent relationship the Russian state has had to the Russian church since the reign of Ivan the Terrible.Focusing her study on two provinces, Smolensk and Moscow, Wynot describes the Soviet oppression and the clandestine struggles of the monks and nuns to uphold the traditions of monasticism and Orthodoxy. Their success against heavy odds enabled them to provide a counterculture to the Soviet regime. Indeed, of all the pre-1917 institutions, the Orthodox Church proved the most resilient. Why and how it managed to persevere despite the enormous hostility against it is a topic that continues to fascinate both the general public and historians. Based on previously unavailable Russian archival sources as well as written memoirs and interviews with surviving monks and nuns, Wynot analyzes the monasteries? adaptation to the Bolshevik regime and she challenges standard Western assumptions that Communism effectively killed the Orthodox Church in Russia. She shows that in fact, the role of monks and nuns in Orthodox monasteries and convents is crucial, and they are largely responsible for the continuation of Orthodoxy in Russia following the Bolshevik revolution. Keeping the Faith offers a wealth of new information and a new perspective that will be of interest not only to students of Russian history and communism, but also to scholars interested in church-state relations.

The Heart of Russia

The Heart of Russia PDF

Author: Scott Mark Kenworthy

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-10-08

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 0199379416

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In the 1830s and 1840s, increasing numbers of Russians renounced the modernized, secularized, Westernized Russia created by Peter the Great in an effort to revive alternative lifestyles based on Orthodox spirituality and values. This effort found expression in a revival of monasticism that began in the era of Nicholas I and would last for the duration of the imperial period, brought to an end only by the cataclysm of revolution and repression of the new Bolshevik regime. Suppressed by the communists, Russian monasticism experienced another revival in the post-World War II era and again in the post-Soviet period, demonstrating that the impulse to renounce the contemporary world for the cloister is a central pattern of Russian religiosity. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of these monastic revivals, presenting a fundamentally new picture of religion in modern Russia. Scott Kenworthy's approach is that of a contextualized microhistory: an in-depth study of one monastic complex, framed within research on monasticism more broadly. The case study here is Russia's largest and most famous monastery, the Trinity-Sergius Lavra in Sergiev Posad, near Moscow. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church is again experiencing a revival, and monasticism is playing a central role in this resurgence. In the search to recover the past, Russian Orthodox are turning to the nineteenth century revival as a normative model. Numerous Russians are once again renouncing the contemporary world--in this case, both the socialist past and the post-socialist capitalist present--and opting for a mode of life that represents a return to past values. Monasteries are again foci of popular piety as well as of important publishing activities, and their spirituality is regarded as the purest expression of Orthodox ideals. This book provides an essential basis for understanding Orthodoxy in its historical context and its contemporary manifestations.

Monasticism in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Republics

Monasticism in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Republics PDF

Author: Ines Angeli Murzaku

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-08-27

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 1317391055

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This book looks at Eastern and Western monasticism’s continuous and intensive interactions with society in Eastern Europe, Russia and the Former Soviet Republics. It discusses the role monastics played in fostering national identities, as well as the potentiality of monasteries and religious orders to be vehicles of ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue within and beyond national boundaries. Using a country-specific analysis, the book highlights the monastic tradition and monastic establishments. It addresses gaps in the academic study of religion in Eastern European and Russian historiography and looks at the role of monasticism as a cultural and national identity forming determinant in the region.

Nihil Obstat

Nihil Obstat PDF

Author: Sabrina P. Ramet

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 9780822320708

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Politics, religion, and social change in the post-communist world of Eastern Europe and Russia.

The Oxford Handbook of Christian Monasticism

The Oxford Handbook of Christian Monasticism PDF

Author: Bernice M. Kaczynski

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 743

ISBN-13: 0199689733

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The Oxford Handbook of Christian Monasticism addresses, for the first time in one volume, multiple strands of Christian monastic practice. Forty-four essays consider historical and thematic aspects of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Protestant, and Anglican traditions, as well as contemporary 'new monasticism'.

Cultural Identity and Civil Society in Russia and Eastern Europe

Cultural Identity and Civil Society in Russia and Eastern Europe PDF

Author: David M. Borgmeyer

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-07-24

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1443864803

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This volume is dedicated to the memory of Charles E. Timberlake. The contributors include his former colleagues and students. The first section deals with “Liberalism and Civil Society in Russia and Eastern Europe.” Alla Barabtarlo discusses unfinished research conducted by Charles Timberlake on the liberal activist Ivan Petrunkevich. Evgeny Badredinov analyzes research on the Russian village conducted by an important liberal lawyer and sociologist, Maksim Kovalevskii. Andrew Wise examines commentary by Polish liberals and their exiled Russian colleagues published in the Warsaw press from 1920–1923. The second section deals with “Orthodoxy and Cultural Identity in Late Imperial Russia.” Robert Nichols explains the role in Russia’s monastic revival played by Gethsemane skete, a monastic cloister that was founded in 1844. Sally Stocksdale details the motivations of a self-cloistering Russian noblewoman (Praskovia Yazikova) of the nineteenth century. Jesse Murray explores the cultural and religious identities of residents in the Baikal region. David Borgmeyer focuses on the response to the works of Pablo Picasso by one art critic, Sergei Bulgakov. The third section deals with “Civil Society in the Post-Soviet Era.” Byron Scott demonstrates that press freedom has been a contentious issue in these societies. James McCartney analyzes the reforming of the educational system in independent Georgia.

The Russian Orthodox Church, 1917-1948

The Russian Orthodox Church, 1917-1948 PDF

Author: Daniela Kalkandjieva

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-11-20

Total Pages: 543

ISBN-13: 1317657756

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This book tells the remarkable story of the decline and revival of the Russian Orthodox Church in the first half of the twentieth century and the astonishing U-turn in the attitude of the Soviet Union’s leaders towards the church. In the years after 1917 the Bolsheviks’ anti-religious policies, the loss of the former western territories of the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union’s isolation from the rest of the world and the consequent separation of Russian emigrés from the church were disastrous for the church, which declined very significantly in the 1920s and 1930s. However, when Poland was partitioned in 1939 between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Stalin allowed the Patriarch of Moscow, Sergei, jurisdiction over orthodox congregations in the conquered territories and went on, later, to encourage the church to promote patriotic activities as part of the resistance to the Nazi invasion. He agreed a Concordat with the church in 1943, and continued to encourage the church, especially its claims to jurisdiction over émigré Russian orthodox churches, in the immediate postwar period. Based on extensive original research, the book puts forward a great deal of new information and overturns established thinking on many key points.