THE HOLY ALL-RUSSIAN NEW MARTYRS (original) (raw)
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'Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.' (Mt 5:11–12) At present, the Russian Orthodox Church faces a serious evaluation of the history of the Church in the 20 th century. As it is known, the 20 th century for the Russian Orthodox Church was a tragic one. The communist regime realised not only mass physical and spiritual terror, but created falsifica tions and myths of history as well. One of the main ideals of the communist regime was the exter mination of Christian faith and the aspersion of religious practice. Therefore one of the essential steps in the direction of renewal of historical truth was the canonisation of the victims – the new martyrs and confessors – of communist terror in the Local Councils of the Moscow Patriarchy. Similarly, saints have always served as examples of religious practice. That would serve as well as a reminder about the goals of human life, the value of life and the highest example for respect to wards a person. In the first part of the article, the bloodiest pages of history of the Russian Church are examined, when the Bolshevik, coming into power, started the persecution of the Orthodox Church. The article observes the persecutions commenced by the Soviet state in the 1918–1941 period, as during this time the most ruthless persecutions took place, and the martyrs of this age form the greatest proportion in number within the body of holy new martyrs and confessors of the 20 th century. Next, the relevance of studying the archive documents and the methodology of analysis are examined, as the process of canonisation is based on the study and analysis of histor ical facts; the conformity of the person being canonised is rigorously examined. The second part of the article reviews the very process of canonisation as well as the chronological sequence in accordance with the decisions of the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. Similarly, the deci sions of the Synod regarding the veneration practice of saints are attached. The end of the article focuses on the tasks that derive from the fact of canonisation.
Between History and Religion: The New Russian Martyrdom as an Invented Tradition
East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures, 2018
This article is part of the special cluster titled Social practices of remembering and forgetting of the communist past in Central and Eastern Europe, guest edited by Malgorzata Glowacka-Grajper In the year 2000, during the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, more than one thousand victims of Soviet repressions—people persecuted and murdered by the Soviet regime—were glorified and named the New Russian Martyrs. By presenting the origin and background of the phenomenon, authors demonstrate that the New Martyrdom is a kind of invented tradition. They focus on analysis of the tension that occurs when history becomes religion by highlighting some problematic issues with regard to the New Martyrdom and showing how the Russian Orthodox Church is addressing them. The analysis sheds new light on the political use of religion for the creation of narrative about the past in contemporary Russia.
Setting the Soviet Past in Stone: The Iconography of the New Martyrs of the Russian Orthodox Church
In recent years, one subgroup of the victims of Soviet state terror has been coming into ever-sharper focus: the so-called 'Russian new martyrs and confessors of the twentieth century', that is, the clergy and laity of the Russian Orthodox Church who suffered as a result of state repressions during the Soviet period. This article explores the meaning-making practices surrounding the new martyrs through a discussion of the new symbolic language that is being developed in order to narrate and represent these events. Its focus is on the iconography produced and endorsed by the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), and the sometimes paradoxical ways in which it is being used to undergird a model of the correct Orthodox Christian attitude of unquestioning loyalty to the state. The article looks in particular at the ways in which the ambiguities of Russia's transition and the hybrid nature of the post-Soviet Russian state are reflected and played out in the new symbolic language and forms being created to represent and remember the new martyrs and, by extension, to shape a master narrative of the Soviet past and the post-Soviet transition aimed at declaring where Russian identity begins and ends.