“They are all here to see and touch”

Nearer, My God, to Thee

Trad nationalist a/effects

The Greek Orthodox Church has a crucial role in identifying “Greekness” in a quite exclusionary manner. Today the Church combats secularization by using a religious discourse, and Westernization by using a nationalist discourse, viewing itself as the guardian of Greek identity. Aligning itself with the right and extreme right wing’s policies, it has come into conflict with leftist governments from time to time—the dispute on the removal of the religion section in the identity cards being the most serious one, there has never been a hostile stance toward the Church from any Greek political party. Having said that, the adherents of the other faiths in Greece are still deprived of many of their rights and even though tolerant voices can be heard from clergymen from time to time, the Church of Greece does not differ considerably from other Orthodox Churches in its negative approach toward LGBTQ rights.

Paris—After the May 6 Greek elections, which saw the routing of the two major parties that have alternated power since the end of the military dictatorship, a Greek explained, “I voted against Pasok [the Socialist party], because they failed to provide a job to my daughter who holds an engineering degree.” In this country known since ancient Athens as “The Mother of Democracy,” the sacred concept of demokratia, or rule by the people, has been profaned. The following month, another set of elections failed to give Greece the working majority it desperately needed to form a coalition of the traditional center-right and left parties and relaunch its moribund economy, too long fed with European Union subsidies. Nor has it succeeded in restoring faith in a democratic process undermined by corruption—endemic at every level of society.The present economic and social crisis that has enveloped Greece is hardly the only evidence of the perversion of its democracy. Since regaining independence from the Turks 188 years ago and overthrowing the dictatorship of the colonels in 1974, Greece has been governed by a succession of family-run cliques selling positions and buying votes through jobs and other perks. Nepotism is widespread, and tax evasion has become a national sport in a country, which, since joining the EU in 1981, has lived on borrowed money. These are the underpinnings of Greece’s bloated bureaucracy: inflated payrolls in public corporations and the many holders of disability pensions who can walk or see as well as you and I—not to mention the avoidance wherever possible of any vestige of taxation. Ship owners and the Orthodox Church are by law exempt from paying taxes. How can democracy work when ordinary citizens refuse to pay government levies and the two wealthiest groups are exempt?So, instead of being cherished as a historical treasure and guarantee of freedom, the most basic tenets of democracy have been distorted in the very country that gave birth to, nurtured, and even crafted the words to express them. This concept, on which the Western world has based its institutions, remains as fragile as ever. Far from its birthplace in Greece, many have lost confidence in their institutions as last year’s Arab Spring has been followed by the electoral victory of religious fundamentalists in Egypt and Tunisia. Despite being cast in bronze or engraved on marble, Greece’s Lady has grown old. Through the centuries, new generations have developed different visions of this concept to fit specific times, circumstances, and locations. In making these adjustments, governments have all too often corrupted the very concept of democracy. Yet most modern leaders, except for the basest of autocrats, continue to pay at least lip service to it. Even North Korea.It should hardly seem strange that so many dictatorships have added to the official name of their countries the shining titles of “Democratic” or “Popular,” especially during the Communist era, from People’s Republics (like China or Hungary) to the German “Democratic” Republic (the Stasi-dominated police state of East Germany) or the infamous “Democratic” Kampuchea of the Khmer Rouge. These architects of the killing fields were themselves ousted by an undemocratic Vietnam in 1979, which established a new “People’s” Republic of Kampuchea. Vietnam, in turn, has chosen not to hide behind a hypocritical smoke screen and calls itself simply “Socialist.” The best—or the worst—example of this linguistic perversion is, of course, the Kim dynasty of North Korea, which is both a “Democratic” and “People’s” Republic. Finally, there is Africa’s Democratic Republic of Congo (in contrast with its far smaller and no more democratic neighbor simply named Republic of Congo). The sad joke, of course, is that none of these “People’s” re-gimes are in the least democratic, and these “Democratic” republics are hardly run by the people.Yet, this has not stopped proud Western democracies with a glorious past of fighting to protect our freedoms from doing business with unsavory regimes, from Nazi Germany before World War II to the Soviet Union of Stalin and Brezhnev to today’s People’s Republic of China. Not only do we all trade in a globalized world, we seek to preserve at least a veneer of normal, even friendly relations among states with the aim of maintaining world peace. We mute our criticism of Communist China’s perpetual violations of human rights—from Chinese dissidents to Tibetan or Uighur nationalists—to protect a vast market for our products and our primary supplier of industrial goods, which we cannot live, or play, without.There have always been those—like France’s late China expert and President Charles de Gaulle’s information and justice minister, Alain Peyrefitte—who pretend that democracy does not fit with Chinese and Asian traditions. It is not in their genes. They prefer living under “benevolent” dictatorships. As if democratic and undemocratic genes differ from each other. As if countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are not living examples that democracy is as capable of flourishing in the East as it is in the West. Others pretend that economic development will nurture democracy. But on the Asian continent, or anywhere else, assembling computers under political supervision for foreign-owned factories is no shortcut to democracy.My own experience as foreign correspondent for the French daily Le Monde has helped me understand the universal value of democracy. Based in Bangkok in the 1970s, I witnessed the final years of the Vietnam War and its sorry sideshows in Cambodia and Laos. As an unwilling guest of the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh, where I had overstayed my welcome following the evacuation of most Western media by American helicopters a few days before the fall of Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, I had the good fortune of surviving. A number of my colleagues did not. Based in Beijing in the 1980s, I witnessed China’s opening after the bloody years of the Cultural Revolution, then the first crackdown on the democratic awakening of China’s youth, followed by the Tiananmen Square massacre in the spring of 1989.I also covered various coups, insurgencies, civil and international wars, and rigged elections across Asia, which convinced me of two realities. First, with respect to the fundamental rights of the people, there is basically no difference between dictatorships—whether from the left or the right—beyond the color of their flag, the uniforms of their leaders, the ideologies and the religions they pretend to uphold, or the resonance of their slogans. They all breed the same oppression and corruption.It also made me realize how much of a treasure democracy can be, that it must be protected at all cost and never taken for granted. When we see millions being denied their basic rights, we know how privileged we are. When we witness voters entering polling booths for their very first democratic election, their enthusiasm and expectations are overwhelming. Even if, as in Ukraine—where I was dispatched in 2004 as an observer by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to witness the first free elections in the country’s history—citizens voted back into power the former Soviet apparatus. At least this time they seized power through the ballot box, thanks to the bitter internecine rivalry between leaders of the Orange Revolution. Unfortunately, Ukraine’s new leader, Viktor Yanukovych, following the footsteps of his Russian neighbor Vladimir Putin, has used democracy to jail representatives of who democratic parties, including Ukraine’s iconic figure Yulia Tymoshenko. Still, where there are democratic processes, there is always hope.What a difference, though, between the festive and exhilarating atmosphere of the Arab Spring or the Orange Revolution and the sorry results of the last Ukrainian elections. Not to mention the massive abstention in our own privileged nations where people have always lived in a democratic system and so often take it for granted. Rarely does participation rise above 50 percent, not only in the United States but also in Europe for many elections or referendums. France’s 2012 legislative elections, which gave an absolute majority in the National Assembly to Socialist president François Hollande, witnessed a record abstention rate of 44.6 percent.Too many potential voters take democracy for granted, treating it like a habit that has hung around for ages. They don’t seem to realize the rationale behind it. It has become little more than choosing to drive on the right or left side of the road. They often fail to vote, considering it useless or a waste of time, and democracy doesn’t necessarily fare any better in the more than 20 countries where voting is compulsory—like Belgium, for one. This country has recently gone through the longest period in history without a government, between June 13, 2010 and December 6, 2011. Only when you have witnessed the birth of democracy somewhere can you understand what it really means to those who have seized the opportunity, how much effort is needed, how many sacrifices—often bloody—are necessary to win this basic right. In many nations, so many citizens and intellectuals share such blasé attitudes as “politicians all look the same,” “they are all corrupt,” and “there is no difference between left and right.”When you fail to use a privilege won by your forebears, when you let it decay as a useless tool, it runs the risk of becoming obsolete. Politicians around the world carry a negative image, often for good reasons. Yet, if their image is so bad, we should hardly expect bright, honest, dedicated, welltrained, and idealistic youths to stand for election and risk being tainted by an image that could derail a promising career in academics, business, or international institutions.For better or worse, politics and politicians, like the media and journalists, reflect their societies. This may help explain why disgruntled voters sometimes turn to nonpoliticians as leaders—actors like Ronald Reagan, Italian humorist Beppe Grillo and his Five Stars movement after Silvio Berlusconi, or the French clown Coluche in the 1980s; singers like new Haitian president Michel Martelly; or businessmen like American Mitt Romney.In the end, the responsibility is ours. We must take elections seriously. They are a duty toward our country, not merely a right among many others, and an example for those deprived of this freedom. We owe it to them. We have to go beyond “consuming” democracy as if it were a product available on the shelves. We must become personally involved in the democratic process if we want it to thrive. Otherwise we will have only ourselves to blame for its failure.This has been all too apparent during the last few years through the rise of populist, often right-wing parties and charismatic figures in Europe—from Finland to Hungary, where prime minister Viktor Orb‡n, once a promising young leader who fought against the dying communist regime, now rules with an iron fist. Equally visible, and for many quite frightening, is the rise of Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam Party for Freedom in the Netherlands. Even in France, the far right National Front candidate, Marine Le Pen, received 18 percent of the vote in the last presidential election. And then there’s Greece, with its new extremist parties born out of crisis—the far left and the openly pro-Nazi.Disenchanted by the economic, social, and moral crisis, fearing unemployment and, for the first time in generations, that their children might be condemned to a future less promising than their own, an increasing number of voters are seeking comfort in the siren songs of those who make bold, unrealistic, and sometimes nasty promises they know they can never fulfill. Populists play on entrenched anxieties based on prejudices directed at strangers in their midst, religious fundamentalism, and social and economic transformations beyond the capacity of their nations. Talking of withdrawal from the Euro or the EU, closing borders to competing products from abroad, expelling foreigners, or treating those who were not born in their adopted land as second class citizens are all tendencies that must be resisted by those who truly believe in democracy.Finally, it’s vital to point out that democracy is still alive, if not always in good health. Its seeds grow, blossoming in many colors before being replaced by new flowers. They crossbreed and sometimes degenerate only to start a new life in more hospitable soil. They adapt to new environments. Sometimes new strains appear suddenly, while others disappear. Around fundamental principles—rule of law, human rights, freedom of speech, equality and justice, free and fair elections—democracy can bloom differently, adjusting to local conditions. But it cannot curtail freedoms for spurious reasons like the Chinese regime’s pathetic excuse that the Communist Party has a so-called historically paramount role. Neither is it acceptable for any aspiring democracy to assert that the first true freedoms are the right to eat and be sheltered, but at the cost of all liberty. That China and other countries with one party systems hold formal elections does not mean they are democratic. Far from it.All the massive changes that have occurred in the world during the last decades have been presenting new challenges to our traditional, classical image of democracy inherited from ancient Greece. Questions have been raised about its usefulness to cope with these challenges in its traditional form. Different schools of thought have been debating whether the democracy of today should stick to its fundamentals, be more liberally oriented in a globalized world, or more concerned with immediate economic and social issues. The word “liberalism” may have quite different meanings in the United States and in Europe, where there remains a broad consensus that the state should provide a basic level of social protection for the less privileged. Public health care and universal state pensions are far from the taboos among Europe’s democrats that they are among American conservatives. This basic level is understood differently in the United Kingdom, where it means the bare minimum, or in the more caring France and Scandinavian countries, where it may represent cradle-to-grave social safety nets. Additionally, the financial maelstrom, which started a few years ago on Wall Street and is now shattering the EU banking system, bringing Greece to its knees, threatening Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and perhaps soon Italy or even France, has led to considerable soul-searching.As states, and by extension their taxpayers, have doled out billions to save their own banks from going under, governments have been thinking about increasing controls on banking operations, speculation, and a host of technical gimmicks few understand, including politicians and even sometimes bankers themselves. There has always been, within the French right, a very strong interventionist stream, all but anathema to their conservative counterparts across the Atlantic. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s economic policies regularly shifted from ultra-liberalism to state interventionism.So, yes, democracy is alive and kicking and probably more needed now than ever. But our deep involvement is all that can keep it working and serving today’s world, as effectively as it did at its birth in Athens 2,500 years ago. Alas, there is no Pericles, Gandhi, Churchill, Roosevelt, or de Gaulle around to show the way and uphold principles. Moreover, few politicians of today would dare claim to walk in their shoes. Short termism has fled the field of economics for politics where daily opinion polls have replaced quarterly income statements. And the anger of voters toward their leadership’s inability to cope with the crisis has increased political instability among democracies. No European government has been returned to power since the crisis started in Wall Street. Distressed by broken promises and the inability to cope with unemployment, outsourcing, and slashing of the welfare state, citizens freely switch their allegiances.Democracy has to adjust to this new and unforeseen situation and show it can be the solution in dire times as effectively as it has been during prosperous ones. That it is not an empty word in a world where income disparities have shot up to all-time highs and social-minded employers, who feel the need to share a small part of their wealth with their workforce, have been replaced by the greed of faceless and remote boards. Otherwise, why should people bother? Why should they stick to moderation when they feel excluded and are facing renewed extremism and obscene greed? Democracy is at a watershed and depends on us to thrive again. And, for that, we all must take matters into our own hands, not wait for others to do the job for us.

Ion Bria*

REVIEWS 351 Moody, Ivan and Medić, Ivana (eds). Orthodoxy, Music, Politics and Art in Russia and Eastern Europe. Centre for Russian Music, Goldsmiths, University of London and Institute of Musicology, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, London and Belgrade, 2020. 263 pp. Illustrations. Music examples. Tables. Notes. Bibliographies. Available at http://dais. sanu.ac.rs/bitstream/id/42626/Orthdoxy, Music, Politics and Art.pdf. The relationship between the Orthodox Church and politics in Russia and Eastern Europe has often been tense and contradictory. Much the same might be said of the intersection between nationalism and Marxist-Leninist doctrine during the Soviet era, when a need to appeal to nationalism in its various guises often broke the surface of public discourse, problematizing a seemingly inherent connection between Orthodoxy and national identity that highlighted some uncomfortable contradictions vis-à-vis the official atheism of the state. This volume, edited by Ivan Moody and Ivana Medić, presents a collection of thirteen papers by an international roster of scholars that begin to scrutinize the highly complex relationship between Orthodoxy, culture and politics in Eastern Europe and Russia. The outcome of a conference held at Goldsmiths, University of London in March 2013, this publication is dedicated to the memory of Alexander Ivashkin (1948–2014), and contains a number of chapters by his colleagues and former students at Goldsmith’s Centre for Russian Music. The volume is admirable in scope, covering a diverse range of contexts and topics from Achilleas G. Chaldaeakes’s exploration of eighteenth-century ecclesiastical policy in the sacred music of Patriarch Athanasios V (c.1655–60–after 1721) which opens the volume (and includes some beautiful facsimile reproductions of Byzantine manuscripts) to Tara Wilson’s closing chapter on the influence of Russian Orthodoxy on the ‘post-post-modern’ aesthetics of the redoubtable Vladimir Martynov (b.1946). Beside the range of topics covered, a major strength of the volume is the consideration of figures from Russian, Latvian, Serbian and Bulgarian traditions that remain somewhat underappreciated in Western scholarship such as Sergei Vasilenko, Stepan Smolenskii, Nikolai Korndorf, Vladimir and Juri Glagolev, Andrejs Selickis, Stevan Mokranjac, his nephew Vasilije Mokranjac, Ljubica Marić, Vasil Kazandzhiev and Konstantin Iliev, to name just a few, whose activities are contextualized alongside more familiar names including Sergei Prokof´ev, Sergei Eizenshtein, Sofiia Gubaidulina, Galina Ustvol´skaia and Al´fred Shnitke. The volume’s origin as a record of conference proceedings is sometimes apparent, with some chapters offering a broad survey-format introduction to a particular topic and others adopting a more analytical approach to specific composers or repertoires. This is addressed to an extent in the Foreword with the acknowledgment that ‘the book comprises shorter essays, as well as longer, SEER, 99, 2, APRIL 2021 352 thoroughly researched studies’ that seek to explore the topic ‘unhindered by specific ideological considerations or disciplinary straightjackets’ (p. 13). Such an approach often allows for a degree of discursive freedom throughout the volume, and many chapters complement one another in a number of illuminating ways: Medić’s survey of Serbian piano repertoire inspired by the Orthodox church works particularly well alongside Predrag Đoković’s overview of Serbian sacred music during the Communist era in this regard, while Moody’s central chapter functions as an effective locus to the volume in its consideration of the ways in which Orthodoxy can be understood to mediate a dialogue between politics, socialism and modernity in the art music of twentieth-century Russia, Bulgaria and Serbia. However, it does sometimes feel as though the publication lacks cohesion, and there are some areas that would benefit from a greater sense of continuity. Sofiia Gubaidulina, for example, is described as a ‘believer among atheists’ (p. 210) which, though used as a means of emphasizing her unique position as ‘a woman among men […] and a Tatar-Russian daughter among Muscovite Russians’ (p. 210), seems to be slightly at odds with the characterization of late-Soviet intellectual culture in other chapters, where religious (or at least spiritual) belief and the composing of religious music are presented as being fairly widespread amongst Gubaidulina’s contemporaries, despite Nikita Khrushchev’s reinvigoration of antireligious propaganda during the late 1950s and early 1960s — consider, for example, Moody’s...

At first sight, the nations of Eastern Europe are hardly a coherent group of political systems. Their languages are Slavonic, Romance and Finno-Ugrian. Their religions are Orthodox Christian, Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Muslim. Their historical experience falls partly within the mainstream of European civilisation, and partly outside it. And their relations with each other have hardly been harmonious: even today, national boundaries are under challenge, and there are substantial minorities beyond national boundaries — like the Hungarians in Romania, or the Poles in Lithuania — that are a constant source of tension. After the communist era, the very designation of the ‘lands in between’ has become controversial. The region can hardly be called ‘Slavic’, if the Hungarians and others are to be included. But should be known as Eastern Europe, with its connotations of Soviet control, or Central Europe, or East-Central Europe? Is there a distinct and separate ‘Balkan’ identity, embracing Greece as well as the post-communist states of the area? Indeed, can any single term adequately encompass such a variety of cultures and political experiences?

During the last 30 years Romania has experienced a revival of church attendance, and a significant increase in the number of houses of worship, having the highest rate of construction in Europe. The paper provides theoretical arguments that support the idea that the increase in church attendance has roots in the fast growth in the number of houses of worship, which provide easier access to religious services, and help the development of parish communities, which are highly relevant for Eastern Orthodoxy. This growth is the outcome of the privileged position of the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC), which received funding from the central government and in-kind support from local authorities to extend the ROC's infrastructure, in exchange for active support in the political arena granted by the ROC to the party in power. Different from other religious organizations in Romania or other Orthodox churches in post-communist societies, the ROC is a powerful organization, and played its cards to get privileges from the political power during the communist and post-communist eras, which made the ROC more visible and attractive to the Romanian public. The research uses a composition of pooled datasets derived from 18 national and international surveys in Romania, covering a time span of 27 years, from 1991 to 2018, and employs multilevel logistic regression. The hypothesis regarding the relationship between the growth in church attendance and the increasing number of houses of worship is supported by the empirical data. Data have shown that growth in the number of houses of worship may fuel religious revivals, even if the offer is homogenous, and comes from nearly only one religious provider.

For over 50 years the presence of Russian people has been significant in Australia and the Russian Orthodox Church has been established in 24 centers in all states and territories. The richness of the musical heritage of the Russian Orthodox Church is well known; it has a tradition extending over many centuries and one which embraces an enormous repertoire of various styles of chant together with a vast repertoire of polyphonic music, much of it by famous composers. At this point in time there has been virtually no documentation of the history and practice of Russian Orthodox liturgical music in Australia. There are three histories of the Russian church in Australia (Protopopov 1997, 1998, 1999) but the topic of music is not addressed. This is also true of Galina Zakrjevsky's history of St Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral (1998). Studies of Russian immigration to this country include the dissertation by Maria Frolova (1996) and the book by Elena Govor (1997). While liturgical music is not a concern of these writers, their studies nevertheless provide useful background material for an investigation into Russian Orthodox Liturgical music as practised in this country. There are of course numerous studies of Russian church music, notably by Gardner (1980) and Morosan (1991). Their focus is understandably Russian and these books are essential for any understanding of the Australian experience of such liturgical music. This study thus seeks to document the practice of Russian Orthodox liturgical music in Australia from 1926 to 1999.;The central research questions are: What is and has been the makeup of Russian Orthodox church choirs in Australia? What is the repertoire of these choirs? What training is available for choristers? To what extent have Australian choirs been able to maintain the traditions of Russian Orthodox liturgical music? What changes have taken place in performance traditions during the time of settlement? In order to achieve these aims there has been a heavy reliance on surveys by means of a questionnaire and interviews with choirmasters, choristers and clergy in five states. Extensive use has been made of archival sources and church magazines such as Word of the Church and Australiada: A Russian Chronicle. Material for a background study of Russian Orthodox music has been drawn from Secondary sources such as Gardner, Morosan, Brill, and Rasumovsky and for a background history of Russian Orthodox church in history of the Russian Orthodox church in Australia from 'A short history of the first Russian Orthodox parish in Sydney' by Soovoroff. For the discussion in Part 2: The Australian Scene special consideration has been given to four choirs: SS Peter & Paul's Cathedral (Sydney), St Nicholas Cathedral (Brisbane), St Nicholas Church (Adelaide), Holy Dormition Church (Dandenong), Holy Virgin Protection Cathedral (Melbourne), the reason being that these represent the different levels of choral standards in this country. Thus these embrace one choir of a large cathedral church, one of a moderately sized cathedral church, one of a very small cathedral church and one of a tiny parish church. The approach adopted involves an examination of the makeup of these selected choirs throughout the time frame of the study. This is followed by an analysis ofthe their repertoire, based on repertoire lists supplied by choir directors.;Due to the paucity of source material and fading memories of informants, it has often been impossible to identify key persons by their name: only the surname and initial can be given.

The position of the Uniate, or Eastern-rite Catholic, Church was among the issues which enjoyed a brief period of public discussion during the Prague Spring of 1968 in Czechoslovakia. The lifting of censorship under Dubcek was the only occasion when the Uniate question was raised in any East European country since the inauguration of the communist regimes. Suppressed since 1950, the existence of the Czechoslovak~ Uniate Church was renewed in 1968, and weathered the Soviet invasion to become perhaps the most remarkable surviving fruit of the suppressed democratic movement. In 1948 there was just one Uniate diocese, that of Presov in Slovakia. There were, however, 305,000 adherents massed in this one area, in contrast to the scattered and small Orthodox Church, numbering only 35,000 divided into three dioceses. On 28 April 1950 the union with Rome was abolished and all the Uniates of Czechoslovakia were declared Orthodox. With the outlawing of the Uniate Church, persecution of those who remained faithful to it began, but many continued to attend Latin-rite churches or to hold Uniate meetings in secret. After eighteen years of silence, in 1968 Slovak Uniates began to petition for the re-establishment of their Church. A number of former Uniate priests signed a six-point request for the restoration of privileges and complete freedom of belief. A flood of letters from believers and a debate on the issue in the press led to an official admission of the State's guilt. The government permitted an open gathering of Uniate representatives to reconstitute their Church. 135 priests and 66 laymen met on 10 April at Kosice, and, in the prevailing mood in Czechoslovakia, were able to go ahead rapidly with their programme. Public opinion in the affected areas was on their side, and even some members of the Orthodox Church recognized the justice of their claims. The government intervened with the decision that each parish should hold an election to decide whether to remain Orthodox or to return to the Uniate Church. It was Gustav Husak, later the Party leader in Czechoslovakia, who approved this measure. There was to be a joint commission of State administrators and representatives of both the Orthodox and the Uniate Churches, whose duty would be to supervise the parish elections within six months. For

At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, due to the initiative of Russian government and Orthodox Church, several grand churches were built in Vilnius. The development and restoration of Catholic sacral objects were practically restricted until the end of Russian rule in 1915, but at the beginning of the 20th century, this restriction was slightly defused. The Catholic community of Vilnius seized this opportunity and began an action of sav-ing sacral objects. The churches of St. Ann and St. Michel and the interior of St. Peter and Paul’s church were restored. The development of new churches in Vilnius was enabled after revolution-ary events in 1905–1907 when tsarist authorities were forced to make some abatements for the people of the enslaved country. A small Catholic church in the actual Gerosios Vilties street and the church of St. Kasimir in Naujoji Vilnia were built, the construction of Blessed Virgin Mary church was started in Žvėrynas and a modern church of Holy Heart of Jesus was not completed. Article in Lithuanian

One of the essential elements of Orthodox sacred architecture is elements of the temple's equipment. Some, related to interior design, are utilitarian, while others have a sacral feature, constituting objects of worship. Icons play a significant role in the equipment of Orthodox churches. Their location in the church is associated with elaborate schemes and rules. Those in the iconostasis separate the nave from the presbyterium. Each of them, depicting biblical scenes or figures of God and saints, has its specific place. There also are icons in the central nave, on frescoes, and on polychromes. This article focuses on showing icons outside the iconostasis. They designate new places of worship in the central nave of the Orthodox churches. These are locally revered icons associated with a specific temple or town. Among them, the most common are images of the Virgin Mary. On the example of the extensive parish network of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church in Bialystok in Podlaskie Voivodeship, the author attempts to show the diversity of iconographic images as well as will try to find elements connecting various types of icons of the Virgin Mary present in Orthodox churches in Bialystok. The author decided to concentrate on those iconographic representations that apart from architectural and artistic value carry a sacral charge, i.g. subjects of a unique cult in local communities. The aim of this article is to present the icons of the Mother of God from Orthodox churches in Bialystok which are locally venerated and to try to systematize the elements of this cult manifested in services, individual worship and inspirations and references.

El caso de las iglesias ortodoxas y orientales en España resulta paradigmático para comprender la incidencia de los movimientos migratorios y las diásporas transnacionales sobre las particularidades nacionales de los distintos patriarcados presentes, que en la esfera pública se interrelacionan en mayor o menor grado en un contexto marcado por el pluralismo religioso, la aconfesionalidad del Estado y la libertad religiosa consagrada como derecho fundamental. El objetivo general del artículo es, a partir del convulso panorama internacional generado por conflictos como el ruso-ucraniano, analizar la interacción actual de estas iglesias y sus principales dinámicas al hilo de los flujos migratorios transnacionales, tales como el aumento de los números de fieles y de templos y los cambios en las estructuras eclesiásticas de representación e interlocución pública. Para ello, el abordaje metodológico del trabajo atenderá a distintos casos representados por iglesias nacionales, como la rumana y la rusa; “autóctonas”, casos de la Iglesia Ortodoxa Española y de la Iglesia Ortodoxa Hispánica; y pan-ortodoxas, como la griega; además de un conjunto de iglesias “recién llegadas” que, por el momento, cuentan con un menor volumen y grado de implantación.

The paper examines creation and application history of cave space in catacomb movement of the Russian Orthodox Church on the territory of the Don and the Volga Region in 1920-1940s. Development of cave digging on these territories was promoted by the fact of their frontier position, allowing searching for a hiding place for the ideas, differing from the mainstream society. The caves use as shelters and places of worship in the Don Region is exemplified by the territory of Voronezh Region, where in the revolution period caves were dug in the chalk mass near the village of Karayashnik, and traditionally honored by the people loci of sacred space were used like caves in Divnogorye and on Shatrishche Mount. Caves near the village of Karayashnik were used as a place of worship by a conservative part of peasants being supporters of both the Patriarchal Church and the Fedorovtsy sect. Caves in Divnogorye were used by Joanites sect, caves on Shatrishche Mount were used by so-called True Orthodox Church. In addition to the chalk caves in the Don Region people used underground of houses as secret places of worship. Examples of such undergrounds are hidden caves in the villages of Troitskoe and Novopokrovka, equipped by one of communities of so-called True Orthodox Christians. The paper considers caves use in the Volga Region through the example of the territory of the Republic of Tatarstan, where communities of the True Orthodox Church acted, creating cult undergrounds under houses in the town of Bugulma and villages of Akkireevo, Zabugorovka, Crym-Saray Naumovka and Novoe Ilmovo. Together with territories of personal farmsteads, caves were created outside villages, usually in a forest zone. For example, near the village of Novosheshminsk there was an underground monastery, near villages of Volchya Sloboda and Elantovo there were underground temples. Activities of the underground religious communities referred to in the paper were ceased due to state punitive measures.

Każda wojna niesie ze sobą straty nie tylko na płaszczyźnie ekonomicznej, ale także społecznej. Agresja Rosji na Ukrainę, która rozpoczęła się 24 lutego 2022 r., uświadomiła to po raz kolejny. Kraj, który miał za sobą już wiele start jakich doświadczał w czasach historycznych tym razem także znalazł się w ogniu walki. Konflikt militarny doprowadził do znacznej migracji ludności ukraińskiej. Zniszczeniu w wyniku bombardowań i ostrzału prowadzonego przez rosyjską armię, uległo wiele budynków o różnym przeznaczeniu – nie tylko tych zaliczanych do infrastruktury wojskowej, czy podległej administracji państwowej, szkoły, szpitale, budynki mieszkalne, przedsiębiorstwa ale także miejsca kultu – cerkwie. Chociaż wojna wciąż trwa, jednak na wyzwalanych terytoriach jest już realizowana stopniowa odbudowa oraz opracowywane są programy rewitalizacji. Wiele pomysłów związanych z odbudową jest zapożyczonych z doświadczeń Polski i jej odbudowy po zniszczeniach II wojny światowej. Artykuł ma na celu m.in. zwrócenie uwagi światowej opinii publicznej na rozgrywający się na Ukrainie dramat wojenny oraz pokazanie zniszczeń z pierwszej fazy wojny dokumentowanych przez Serhija Belinskiego, wojskowego fotografa z 28 Brygady Rycerzy Zimowego Pochodu (Siły Zbrojne Ukrainy).