Russian Orthodox Christianity Research Articles

The Beast Computer of Brussels: An American Invention That Conquered the World

Abstract In 1972, the American Pentecostal preacher David Wilkerson produced a fifty-minute film, The Rapture, depicting “the return of Jesus Christ.” Subtly alluding to the apocalyptic “mark of the beast” (Revelation 13:16–18), the film featured a gigantic computer called “the Beast.” Located in Brussels, the Beast controlled global commerce by tracking every human on earth with numbers “invisibly ‘laser’ tatooed on the forehead or the back of the hand.” Within months of the film’s release, American Evangelical Protestant networks were reporting the existence of the beast computer as an actual fact and spread the story worldwide. By the 1980s, Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians, skeptical of the European Community, eagerly integrated the beast computer into their own eschatologies. The legend demonstrates the dynamism of the American evangelical imagination, which created this flexible symbol of globalization and technology, as well as the power of the global networks that disseminated it.

Влияние изменения вектора государственно-конфессиональной политики СССР на положение религиозных общин в Туве в конце 1940-х – начале 1950-х гг.

Introduction. The government’s turn toward relative liberalization of religious life and somewhat moderated positions on religious freedom witnessed since 1943 were replaced by a new trend in the late 1940s. The new vector implied an increased state control over activities of religious communities, and would introduce a variety of deterrent mechanisms aimed at reducing religiosity, limiting possibilities for official registration, increasing taxation of clergy, intensifying atheistic propaganda, etc. Goals. The article attempts an insight into the situation resulting from the Soviet religious policy of the late 1940s / early 1950s ― and faced by Tuva’s religious communities. Materials and methods. The study focuses on documents housed at the State Archive of Russia. The employed research methods include the retrospective, comparative historical, and chronological ones. Results. Since the late 1940s, religious communities of Tuva came under strict control and limitations. The paper reveals the actual Soviet post-war religious policy in Tuvan Autonomous Oblast was specifically characterized by that only Russian Orthodox Christians would enjoy somewhat relatively official status and activities, while other faiths and their groups remained as illegal regardless of the central government’s proclaimed agenda and changing sentiments. Local authorities and the Commissioner of the Soviet Council for Religious Cults in the region would turn to various excuses to avoid any legal registration of such communities. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the intensified restrictive measures (heavy taxation) finally undermined the once intensive activities of Buddhists. Furthermore, Evangelical Baptist Christians failed to reopen their prayer house in Kyzyl, while Old Believers of Belokrinitskaya Hierarchy never resolved the issue of a prayer building in Medvedevka (Kaa-Khemsky District).

A new theory of medieval Rus’ terminology for Muslim Tatars: Batunskii’s Russia and Islam

Research Objectives: To examine Mark Batunskii’s theory, articulated in Volume 1 of his history of Russia and Islam, that by calling the Tatars “Pechenegs” and “Polovtsy” the Rus’/Russian sources “Islamized” both the Tatars and their Kyivan predecessors. Research Materials: This article is based upon narrative sources, including chronicles, tales, epics, and saints’ lives, which refer to the Tatars from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Novelty of the Research: No specialists have engaged Batunskii’s theory by analyzing the terminology applied to the Tatars, either Muslim or not, in the medieval sources. Nor has anyone compared the Rus’ application of other terms also applied to Muslims such as “pagan,” “Ishmaelite,” “Hagarene” and “Saracen” to their appearance in Western European sources. Results: Extensive examination of the sources reveals that Rus’/Russian sources carefully identified who was a Muslim (besermen) and who was not. The Pechenegs, Polovtsy and Tatars who invaded Rus’ in the thirteenth century were not. Only sources from the late fourteenth century and later associated Tatars, now Muslims, with Pechenegs and Polovtsy not as adherents of Islam but as nomads who were not Orthodox Christians. This historicist identification had the effect of minimizing Tatar adherence to Islam. Fifteenth and sixteenth-century sources do put more emphasis on the Islamic identity of the Tatars, probably because of the increasing weight placed upon Russian Orthodox Christianity as the hallmark of Muscovy.

Russian Orthodox Imaginaries and Their Family Resemblance to Populism

Abstract This article sets out to demonstrate how some Russian Orthodox imaginaries bear a family resemblance to populism. These imaginaries have a distinctive ideological anchor. The influential religious figures who convey them lay claim to a legacy of political thought that can be traced back to a specific form of narodnichestvo, which is Slavophile and associated with aspirations for monarchy. This investigation of populism among Russian Orthodox Christians is structured in three parts. The article begins with a presentation of an ideological repertoire that emphasizes the centrality of the idea of “the people.” Drawing on interviews and material collected over several years in different regions of Russia, particularly Yekaterinburg, the article then looks at the rebellion of Christians who feel marginalized or consider that the Russian Orthodox Church does not have enough influence in Russia. Finally, it explores how “the people” has become central to religious practice itself.

『이반 데니소비치의 하루』

The main character of the novel, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, an ordinary farmer in the Soviet Union, was conscripted during the World WarⅡ and sentenced to 10 years in Gulag for treason while serving in the army. He has spent 8 years in a Soviet concentration camp(Gulag) and is currently in his 9th year. Shukhov is having a hard time fulfilling the given amount of work every day in the harsh cold weather and harsh environment. Most of the prisoners in the camp were classified as political prisoners, but in fact they were innocent people. Shukhov was also accused of treason and classified as a political criminal, but he too was only a victim of Stalin's violent policies. What is the strength that keeps Shukhov enduring life in the camp despite the harsh environment? In this article, we analyzed the theme of ‘Gulag and survival’. First, we looked at the Gulag in the Soviet Union. And we analyzed the prisoner characters including Shukhov held there. The Soviet Gulag originated from the Siberian exile in the 16th centry, and most of the prisoners in the 19th centry were ordinary criminals. Even in Soviet concentration camps(Gulag), political prisoners accounted for only 20% of all prisoners. However, most of the prisoners in the novel “One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich” were set as political prisoners. This seems to be Solzhenitsyn's intentional character setting. It was a way to emphasize the misguided policy of the Soviet Union. Shukhov and Baptist Alyoshka have a conversation about the Russian church and faith at the end of the novel, and here we learn that Shukhov's will to survive in the Gulag was very strong. That is, he has a clear purpose for survival. Also, although his faith was weak, it was confirmed that he had faith as a Russian Orthodox Christian.

Rola prawosławia w filozofii politycznej Aleksandra Dugina

A. Dugin’s political philosophy is permeated with mysticism and Orthodox Christian religiosity, which leaves a strong mark on such political ideas as Eurasianism, anti-Occidentalism, the Russian World and Dugin’s original Fourth Political Theory. The role of the Russian philosopher in forming of the domestic political thought and politics itself suggests an analogy to the same role of Carl Schmitt in fascist Germany, including an analogy to the discussion on this role. The authors hypothesise that regardless the controversy of this issue, A. Dugin is considered both as an articulator of the spirit of deeply dormant views in Russian society and in part of the elite, as well as a thinker who reinforces this spirit and provides deep moral and philosophical justifications for the Russian opinion-makers. The purpose of this article is the interpretation of Dugin’s theory in the political science senses paying attention particularly to the role of Russian Orthodox Christianity in it. Thus chosen methodological perspective prejudges the structure of the study.

Moral Choice and the Concept of Evil in Military Narratives of Orthodox Christians

The article contributes critically to the current discussion of militant piety in Russian Orthodox Christianity. It argues for a more historically informed use of the notion of militant piety, which can benefit from critical discourse analysis of personal narratives and the focus on lived experience and lived religion of Orthodox Christians who were involved in wars. The article analyses ego-documents collected in two recent volumes: the first showcases the stories of Orthodox clergy and believers in WWII; the second volume gives voice to army officers of late Soviet wars. Both volumes mold personal accounts into a larger narrative with the view to provide Orthodox believers with discursive means for reflection upon wars and to offer an exemplary Orthodox Christian attitude to war. In these narratives, beliefs and principles were understood by religious people not abstractly but in the context of their individual and collective experience. The first narrative reveals how the course of the Great Patriotic War changed the Orthodox Christians’ attitudes from initial self-sacrificial service in defense of the Motherland to waging the sacred war against the Antichrist forces of evil and later to ensuring the retribution for Nazi criminals who were interpretatively exempt from Christian commandment of love. The second narrative does not present a normative ideal of an Orthodox warrior but rather it sheds light on real “militant piety”, on practical religiosity of soldiers and officers, who built their relationship with God and religion in the context of their professional activity, regularly described as “work”. Christian doctrine of love and forgiveness in its abstract form would be inapplicable in this “work”. In personal accounts, however, Orthodox Christian ethics is adapted to the circumstances of the military service and is transformed into the lived religion based on the principles of self-sacrifice, loyalty, and duty.

Between Heaven and Russia: Religious Conversion and Political Apostasy in Appalachia by Sarah Riccardi-Swartz

Reviewed by: Between Heaven and Russia: Religious Conversion and Political Apostasy in Appalachia by Sarah Riccardi-Swartz Aram G. Sarkisian Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, Between Heaven and Russia: Religious Conversion and Political Apostasy in Appalachia (New York: Fordham University Press, 2022) Published just weeks after Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, Sarah Riccardi-Swartz's book offers a timely and discomfiting lens into two, interconnected Russian Orthodox Christian communities perched among the mountain hollers of rural Appalachia. Located in pseudonymous Woodford, West Virginia, St. Basil's Monastery and St. John's Parish belong to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR). Founded in 1920 by clergy and laity displaced by the Russian Civil War, ROCOR sought to preserve pre-revolutionary Russian Orthodoxy outside Soviet borders until such time as a post-communist Russia could be evangelized. In 2008, under the watchful eye of Vladimir Putin, ROCOR reunited with the Moscow Patriarchate, widening the reach of a global Russian Church closely allied with Putin's authoritarian regime. Formerly a mostly urban church in the United States, ROCOR by then was expanding into suburban and rural areas like Woodford, where a community formed in the early 2000s. This growth came from an influx of ideologically-motivated converts seeking a traditional and conservative faith, and one which aligned with their values on "culture war" issues like abortion, sexuality, gender roles, and perceived moral decline. ROCOR stood athwart shifting social, moral, and political tides, with its nostalgic emphasis on Holy Orthodox Russia. For some, aligning with [End Page 125] ROCOR led to affinities with Putin, a self-professed Orthodox Christian. In time, the community began to attract far-right converts drawn to ROCOR's conservatism because it spoke to their political inclinations, including some with white nationalist views. Riccardi-Swartz endeavored to discover what might compel twenty-first-century Americans in rural Appalachia to embrace this iteration of Russian Orthodoxy, much less identify with an autocratic leader usually seen as a geopolitical foe. "Why Russia?" she asks. "Why now? Why Appalachia?" (12). Riccardi-Swartz has done exceptional work in setting a much-needed cornerstone in an emerging scholarly literature on Orthodox Christianity in North America. Yet this is not only a book about Orthodoxy. Rather, it also offers a perceptive snapshot of the United States during the age of Donald Trump. Riccardi-Swartz arrived in Woodford shortly after the 2016 US presidential election, a seismic event which placed the US within a global, right-wing project that posed authoritarianism and traditionalism as antidotes to liberalism and progressivism. Having come to study the digital reproduction of icons, Riccardi-Swartz instead found her interlocutors stuck on the Trumpian moment, interested not so much in discussing iconography as they were their spiritual geopolitics, and too their concerns over the "culture war" issues upon which Trump built his electoral appeal. At first glance, a community of religious traditionalists and social conservatives in borscht-red West Virginia might appear tailor-made for MAGA Nation, eager to embrace a president who promised to reflect their values, and who made Christianity a central, if paradoxical, component of his political persona. Yet many interlocutors expressed indifference, even disdain, for Trump and showed general dissatisfaction with US politics. Riccardi-Swartz shines in her exploration of these nuances, explaining that understanding Orthodox practice in Woodford necessitates navigating both the oft-misunderstood complexities of Appalachia and the tensions of fostering transnational faith. Her interlocutors expressed keen awareness of the stereotypes often assigned to Appalachia, and as Russian Orthodox Christians, they were sensitive to being perceived as un-American. All the same, they had inverted the Cold War perception of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" to instead argue that Putin's Russia was their last, best hope for making America great again. For these converts, Russia was "their only hope for social salvation, for reclaiming America for God, and for preserving the status quo of Christian hegemony in an increasingly diversifying Western world" (3). Gender hierarchies are critical in Woodford. The abbot of St. Basil's Monastery required verbal consent from Riccardi-Swartz's husband before she could begin interviewing the monks, educated autodidacts who sought the ascetic rigidity of ROCOR monasticism...

Spatiality and Symbolic Characteristics: Dynamics of Collective Religious Rituals among Sunni Muslims and Russian Orthodox Christians in Kazakhstan during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The article’s purpose is to discuss on a cross-disciplinary plane whether the space’s changing dimension (in terms of social distancing), caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, could affect religious symbols’ characteristics and rituals, leading to new symbolical representation. This is analyzed by addressing the influence of the pandemic on conducting religious practices (Friday Prayer, Namaz, Ramadan, Qurban-ait (Eid al Adha), Sunday Sermon, Easter) among the Sunni Muslims and Russian Orthodox Church believers in Kazakhstan. Theoretically, it seeks to correlate inner dynamics of the typology, or ‘production of space’ vis-à-vis symbolic characteristics and elements of ritual. The proposed hypothesis is that (1) if there is a direct correlation between spatiality and symbols (that are ‘deployed’ in rituals), (2) then change of spatiality can affect the performance of symbol’s each characteristic, and the rituals. The following research methods have been used: online group interview in the religious focus groups differed in religious makeup (Sunni Islamic and Russian Orthodox Church) and thematic analysis. The empirical findings support the hypothesis and show that social distancing triggered the fluctuation and changes pertaining to the figurative quality and perceptibility of the symbol, following the modification of religious rituals and the appearance of a wide range of perceptions, respectively. Though the full-fledged symbolization of the changes of religious rituals due to the pandemic is not the case in today’s Kazakhstan, some elements of new evolving attitude are evident.

Dining with Russian Old Believers: guesthood, gender roles and rules of ritual purity

This paper discusses religious restrictions of the Old Believers, a group within Russian Orthodox Christianity. In particular, I refer to communities of the Chasovenny faction in Siberia. These Old Believers are supposed to eat separately from anyone who does not belong to the group and to use tableware (the so-called “fine bowls”) that are not shared with anyone except community members to avoid defilement. I observe my own field experiences as a guest in these communities, in which the practice of separation is often performed ad hoc. I argue that, despite seeming to establish strict isolation from non-Old Believers, the rule of separate tableware is more important for structuring social relations within the group than for drawing boundary lines between different confessions. I also focus on the gendered aspects of this practice. Maintenance of ritual purity concerns both women and men, but it is represented in their lives differently. The rule requires women to keep profound knowledge of dogmas and local community practices because this is important for supporting other aspects of group religious and social life.

Their Daily Dread: Russian Orthodox Christians in Red Scare Detroit, 1918–1920

Abstract After World War I, Americans shifted xenophobic fears of German “Huns” to Russian “Reds.” Historians have largely ignored, however, that among the thousands of Slavic immigrants targeted in the ensuing First Red Scare were adherents of the Russian Orthodox Church. One example was on Detroit's east side, where ethnic Russian automotive workers used the spiritual, social, and educational resources of All Saints Russian Orthodox Church and a parish-affiliated fraternal organization, the Russian National Home, to advance in the Motor City's competitive labor market. Yet the Russian Revolutions of 1917 altered neighborhood dynamics, manifesting political disagreements that fractured the congregation. In April 1919, federal agents arrested thirteen men from the All Saints community, using sworn affidavits from other parishioners to allege the men constituted a dangerous “soviet” plotting to seize the church for revolutionary purposes. Exploring lived experiences in one immigrant neighborhood adversely affected by the Red Scare, this article excavates links between Russian Orthodox Christians and the Progressive Era political left. It also explores how amid heightened nativism, immigrants themselves seized on the federal government's zeal to root out “Reds,” wielding the full power of the Red Scare surveillance and deportation state to police the boundaries of their own religious community.

"A Dishonor to You and to the Church": Patriarch Tikhon, Pogroms, and the Russian Revolution, 1917–19

"A Dishonor to You and to the Church"Patriarch Tikhon, Pogroms, and the Russian Revolution, 1917–19 Francesca Silano (bio) In the summer of 1919, the Russian Civil War was in its bloodiest phase. The Volunteer Army, a faction of the anti-Bolshevik White Army, had steadily gathered strength over the spring. It had won a string of victories in the southwest region of the former Russian Empire, gaining territories that had previously been conquered by the Bolshevik Red Army.1 The chaos that had overtaken huge swaths of the former empire was magnified in these months as White Army troops began taking reprisals against the inhabitants of the territories formerly occupied by the Red Army. By August, antiBolshevik forces, including White Army units and Ukrainian nationalist forces, had begun perpetrating mass pogroms in Ukrainian territories that were quantitatively and qualitatively different from the anti-Jewish violence that had previously taken place in Russia or Europe as a whole.2 In July 1919, even before the outbreak of organized pogroms, Patriarch Tikhon, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, strongly condemned both the violence of the Civil War in general, and the pogroms specifically, [End Page 5] in one of his few public messages of the year.3 "Remember," he warned his Orthodox Christian readers, "pogroms are a dishonor to you and a dishonor to the Holy Church!" He condemned such violence as posing a demonic challenge to Christians, tempting them from the path of good to that of evil, thus putting their souls at risk. The patriarch also argued that the pogroms were representative of a general "misanthropy" (chelovekonenavistnichestvo) that had overtaken Russia since the beginning of the civil war. The trials of war, disease, and deprivation, he claimed, had led to a degradation in human relations that was destroying the country and the people. The patriarch insisted that this misanthropy had been fostered by the atheism that was inherent to Bolshevik ideology. By condemning religion, Tikhon argued, the Bolsheviks were condemning citizens of the former Russian Empire to fall victim to the base passions and violent instincts that religion in general—and Orthodoxy specifically—could have helped to curb.4 Historians have pointed to a number of factors that contributed to antisemitic violence in the early years of the revolution. Peter Kenez has argued that, in the absence of a unifying ideology, antisemitism became a central tenet of White Army ideology.5 White propaganda often identified Bolshevism with Jewry and blamed Jews for Bolshevik attacks on the Orthodox Church and its property.6 Moreover, the fact that Jews, who had previously been largely restricted from participating in civic life, were now taking up key positions in the new government, was threatening to White Army leaders.7 Longstanding tensions between Jews and their neighbors in the areas in which pogroms occurred, combined with years of chaos and privation generated by World War I, provided fertile ground for the White Army's propaganda.8 These same tensions could, and did, lead perpetrators of pogroms to participate in violence against Jews.9 [End Page 6] At the same time, the end of World War I and the collapse of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires had precipitated immense confusion in Eastern Europe as Poles, Balts, and Ukrainians sought their independence. These nationalist forces, who also fought among the Red and White armies for control of pieces of the former empires, had their own histories of tension and violence with Jews. Indeed, during Russia's Civil War, all participants were in some way responsible for violence against Jews in this area—including the Red Army, Bolshevik supporters, Polish troops, and various bands of fighters led by warlords.10 Through the experience of total war, moreover, perpetrators of pogroms had learned "new forms of extreme violence that tapered the inhibition to kill and witness murder."11 Scholars generally claim that a long history of Russian Orthodox Christian antisemitism helped to stoke the pogroms.12 Although eyewitnesses of the pogroms during the Civil War report cases of Orthodox clergy both spurring on pogroms and trying to restrain people from participating in violence against Jews, there currently exist no studies dedicated exclusively to the role...

The Policy of the Russian Orthodox Church on International Labor Migrants: How the Public Role Collides with Preaching the Word

The authors’ objective was to find out how and why the approach of the Russian Orthodox Church to sociocultural adaptation of predominantly Muslim international labor migrants has evolved from its initial stage to now. Research methodology is based on a critical analysis of various sources, on observations, and archival materials. The adaptation program of the Church was advertised as a secular project pursuing the goal of peacekeeping because of a tacit agreement on mutual non-proselytisation between the basic faith-based communities in Russia. The initiative, launched in December 2012, had to merge adaptation courses of all dioceses into a nationwide network that then was expected to become part of an all-Russian system of preparation for language and culture tests. The Church also planned to open its own network of testing centrescenters for migrants. The authors emphasize that, although some of the diocesan courses were successful, the initiative deteriorated due to many external and internal factors. One of them was that diocesan courses have proven to be unattractive for labor migrants; their curriculum was too thick and overloaded with information about Russian culture and Orthodox Christianity, while Muslim labor migrants preferred to adapt to their new environment with a mediation of their own networks. It is suggested by the authors that the main cause of the project’s non-fulfillment was an intra-church cleavage between the enthusiasts of adaptation who convinced that diocesan courses must aim at spreading the Orthodox faith to foreign workers, including Muslims, and the church officials who promoted secular curriculum and forbade preaching Christianity to labor migrants.

The Word as an Icon

How do Russian Orthodox Christians frame their understanding of semiotic ideologies of worship? That is to say, how do worshippers interpret liturgical language ‘signs’ and how do these interpretations colour their views as to which language is ‘right’ for the Church? There are to be found two semiotic ideologies of worship in Moscow. There are traditionalists for whom the liturgical language is embodied; it becomes the language of God through its vocalisation and enactment. Then, there are those who believe that Church Slavonic is not an indelible part of Russian Orthodox life and that in terms of its semiotic status its relation to the world it represents is an arbitrary one. Those who invoke the former, folk understandings of semiotic praxis perceive the Holy language as an icon or experiential portal that makes the presence of God more presupposable. Conceptions of language and linguistic register vary intra-culturally. Fieldwork showed how different perceptions of form map onto consciousness, raising questions of intentionality as assumptions about who is speaking (God or the priest) are bound up with the form that is used. Keywords: liturgical language, embodiment, semiotic ideology, worship, icon

Spiritual Well-Being of Russian Orthodox and Evangelical Christians: Denominational Features

Till the early 2000s, the Russian “religious renaissance” caused by the collapse of the USSR had been characterized by the rapid growth of religiosity. However, these spiritual changes had been occurring within the Russian Orthodox church and among Evangelical Christians in different manners. Evangelical communities are still relatively small; however their members are highly devoted to their traditions. Meanwhile, Orthodox religiosity is primarily characterized by the nominal self-identification of believers and relatively low level of religious practices’ intensity. The article presents the study results (2017–2019) of the spiritual well-being of Orthodox and Evangelical Christians and its basic confessional and social determinants. The results demonstrate a strong correlation between the enchurchment level and the spiritual well-being level. The authors place particular emphasis on the role of religious coping that determines subjective well-being. The analysis confirmed that the positive ways of religious coping are determined by the regularity of religious practices and the believers’ social capital. We interpret the peculiarities of Orthodox and Evangelicals’ spiritual well-being in the light of differences between their church life’s arrangements which are defined by the believers’ practical religiosity and social capital.

A Review of J. V. Kormina, Palomniki: etnograficheskie ocherki pravoslavnogo nomadizma [Pilgrims: Ethnographic Sketches of Orthodox Nomadism]. Moscow: HSE Publishing House, 2019, 349 pp.

This book draws attention to Orthodox religiosity in contemporary Russia as a lived religion beyond church buildings and the Church as an institution. The study approaches the topic from an innovative theoretical frame of religious nomadism and analyses such phenomena as pilgrimages, sacred sites, saints, and the Orthodox fairs. The book collects some of the main findings and theoretical insight from Jeanne Kormina’s long experience in ethnographic fieldwork among Russian Orthodox Christians and is a welcome contribution to research on vernacular Orthodoxy in contemporary Russia.

Middle East Direction in the Diplomatic Mission of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1943 — the mid-1950s

The article analyzes the practice of restoring church contacts between the Russian Orthodox Church and the patriarchs of the Orthodox East and the reconstruction of the church infrastructure in the Holy Land after the break in the Second World War in 1943 until the end of the Stalinist era. Russian Orthodox Christianity was able to regain its presence in the Holy Land through the organization of diplomatic visits and gifts to the new head of the Russian Church, Patriarch Aleksei I, with the support of the Soviet government. This "return" after the formation of the State of Israel and with its support was accompanied by the displacement of the structures of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and the redistribution of church property in the region. The restoration of the presence of the USSR and the ROC in the region had long-term consequences for state-church relations in the USSR.

Onomasticon of the Story by B. K. Zaitsev ‘Priest Kronid’ in the Context of Constants of Russian Orthodox Christianity

The article examines the problem of studying the semantics of linguistic units in fiction, in particular, the study of how proper names function in a literary text. In this study, proper names are treated as functional and semantic units of language, speech, and culture. The re-search material is the story by B. K. Zaitsev ‘Priest Kronid’ (1905), and its object is onomas-tic vocabulary and specific constants of Russian Orthodox Christianity. The onomasticon of the story consists of anthroponyms (Kronid, etc.), toponyms (Kostenka, Dmitrovo), hagionyms (Christ, God), eortonyms (Easter, Trinity, Egor’s day, etc.), zoonym (Kashtan), etc. The purpose of the article is to examine how proper names function in B. K. Zaitsev’s text. The study makes a new contribution to as of yet insufficient research of the onomastic space of fiction by B. K. Zaitsev, and its relevance is enhanced by the importance of studying proper names as a component of the writer’s linguistic picture of the world and the need for scientific understanding of the functional role of onomastic units in the literary text in terms of national religious ideas about the world. The paper uses a complex method of studying proper names in fiction, combining various methods and techniques, namely: the method of conceptual analysis, the method of component analysis of fictional text, the method of continuous sampling as well as the semantic and stylistic methods. The author investigates the onomastic field of B. K. Zaitsev’s text and determines the functional role of proper names of different categories. The story reveals associative and semantic connections of individual onyms with certain constants of Russian Orthodox Christianity. The author also makes a number of specific conclusions about the features of B. K. Zaitsev’s poetics, including those about conceptualizing meanings of individual linguistic units and strengthening of the value component in their meaning in the literary text. The linguistic material can be used in special courses on the onomastics of a literary text or issues related to the writer’s linguistic picture of the world, or in courses that include philological analysis of texts.

Day Tripping in Jerusalem: The Curious Case of How Russian Orthodox Christians Became the Same-Day Religious Tourists in the Holy Land

Day Tripping in Jerusalem: The Curious Case of How Russian Orthodox Christians Became the Same-Day Religious Tourists in the Holy Land

Totalitarian Transhumanism versus Christian Theosis: From Russian Orthodoxy with Love

AbstractTechnological change and the growth of technocratic approaches to government have gone hand-in-hand with the development of secular transhumanism in the West. The result is a perfect storm for the onset of cultural or “soft” totalitarianism in what during the Cold War was known as the “Free World.” Accelerating political opposition to traditional and biological definitions of sex, and to traditional marriage and family networks in Christian contexts, has undermined anthropological and value assumptions basic to self-government. Paradoxically, in this post-Cold War environment, Russian culture now provides a model for renewing the Christian understanding of sex related to defining freedom as self-restraint. Specifically, that model is that of the Russian Orthodox Christian anthropology of sex and its related theological tradition.