scholarly journals Decisions and Adaptations on the Frontier: The Russian Cemetery at Fort Ross, Northern California

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Lynne Goldstein

This study focuses on stakeholders and changing perspectives on a heritage site. The case study is an historic cemetery within a public state park that was the location of a Russian colony in northern California: Fort Ross State Historic Park. From 1990–1992, I excavated the cemetery at the Russian Colony Ross, which was in use from 1812–1841, and which included Russians, Native Alaskans, Native Americans, and combinations thereof. A total of 135 burials were excavated and reburied. Although the Russian Orthodox Church has clear requirements for funeral and burial, the specific location and extent of the cemetery were unknown. Examining the site from the perspective of different stakeholders and their agendas, this article explores the changing nature of a mortuary heritage site, as well as how different groups interpret and use the same site, how communities reacted to the excavation project, and how the project continues to have an impact on communities. Various stakeholders have used the cemetery in different ways to memorialize their own pasts and make claims in the present.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Avanesová

This text, conceived as an interpretative case study, deals with the role that the Belarusian Orthodox Church plays in the contemporary Belarusian regime. In light of the fact that the Belarusian Orthodox Church is an exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, the author will also look at whether the Belarusian Orthodox Church can actually be considered an instrument of Russian in Belarus. Within the research, the author will show that on the one hand, there are favorable conditions for the development of the Belarusian Orthodox Church. But on the other hand, although the state declares the de facto independence of the Belarusian Orthodox Church, any opposition activity on its part is seen as a threat to the state, which allows the state to interfere with its policy. This leads church organizations in such systems to become significantly weakened within this “cooperation with the state”, even though they have an influence on society and thus a legitimizing potential. As a result, the church is strongly dependent on the state and limited as an actor in civil society within the Belarusian regime. In addition, the author will also conclude in the study that it is difficult to consider the Belarusian Orthodox Church to be a tool of the Kremlin’s influence.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 81-97

The paper focuses on the myth of ‘Holy Russia,’ as restored and promoted by the Russian Orthodox Church under Patriarch Kirill (Gundiaev), and explores the new imagining identities and spatial configurations generated by this myth. While before ‘Holy Russia’ was a metaphor, associated with relics, deposited in Russian monasteries and churches, Kirill ‘geo-politicized’ it, informing it with practical political meaning, and as such it is viewed as including Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and on many occasions Moldova, and less often – Kazakhstan. The paper discusses the metaphor of ‘Holy Russia’ as a geopolitical utopia, as a postcolonial invention, and as a method of mental mapping. It uncovers Kirill’s modernist philosophy of history, based on Messianic meta-narrations of enslavement and subsequent liberation. As such, ‘Holy Russia’ does not stop colonial practices, but perpetuates them in many aspects. It continues the ‘internal re-colonization’ of the Russian population by ‘re-churchizing’ it, and by claiming to be the cultural center of the Western civilization.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-25
Author(s):  
V. O. Pechatnov ◽  
V. V. Pechatnov

Based on the unearthed documents from the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire, the article examines an interaction of Russian diplomacy and Russian orthodox churches abroad in the process of their reform in the early 1860-s. This reorganization was undertaken in context of the “Great reforms” of Alexander II and aimed at rationalization of the previous system of subordination of those churches to civil and ecclesiastical authorities in St. Petersburg. The architects of the reform initiated by the Tzar himself sought to create a unified system of subordination and financing of those churches with identical criteria for their personnel, their rights and duties vis-à-vis heads of diplomatic missions. Accordingly, the Russian Foreign Ministry became responsible for their operation and financing while in ecclesiastical matters they were to answer to the Holy Synod. Foreign Ministry and personally Alexander Gorchakov, as demonstrated in the article, played a leading role in the reform preparation and implementation conducted on an inter-agency basis with the Holy Synod, Ministry of the Court and Finance Ministry taking part. The heads of diplomatic missions and of the affiliated churches were also consulted in the process. The authors trace all stages of these complex negotiations that resulted in achieving a balance of interests between all the actors involved. The newly created system proved to be quite efficient and lasted till the end of the Russian empire. The reorganization revealed a state of the churches abroad and their clergy that was a crème of Russian Orthodox Church. The reform experience is also instructive as a case study of Russian government apparatus in action.


Sæculum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-95
Author(s):  
Silviu-Constantin Nedelcu

AbstractThe present study treats a very little researched subject in the specialized literature, respectively the censorship of the orthodox press in communism. We turned our attention to the periodical publication “Glasul Bisericii”, the official magazine of the Metropolitan Church of Ungrovlahia. During the communist regime, the religious press was doubly censored. This was exercised by two institutions, namely: the Department of Cults and the General Directorate of Press and Printing. The censors of the Department of Cults who dealt with the journals of religious cults did not necessarily have theological studies, for which reason they could not understand certain specialized terms or phrases. This thing can be seen into the report signed by the censor Ecaterina Durosov Macheev, from 1971. Another example would be the typing mystakes that escaped from the watchful eye of censorship, and that could have affected the relations between Romanian Orthodox Church and Russian Orthodox Church and, implicitly, with the Soviet Union.


Slavic Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-364
Author(s):  
Marlene Laruelle

In 2018, Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II, was the most popular of all Russian historical figures of the twentieth century; the fame of White officers such as Alexander Kolchak and Anton Denikin was also on the rise. Obviously, broad sympathy for the last Romanov does not imply support for a potential restoration of the monarchy, yet the past few years have seen the activation of several monarchist lobbies, especially around the Russian Orthodox Church and in some well-connected Kremlin circles that seek the ideological hardening of the Putin regime. In this article, I use the case study of the monarchist idea to explore how the Kremlin manages the production of a large and diversified set of ideologies. I explore how the relationship between state authorities, ideological entrepreneurs, and some societal actors such as the Church is articulated along a continuum of permanent complementarity and competition in the production of ideologies.


2001 ◽  
pp. 91-100
Author(s):  
Yu. Ye. Reshetnikov

Last year, the anniversary of all Christianity, witnessed a number of significant events caused by a new interest in understanding the problem of the unity of the Christian Church on the turn of the millennium. Due to the confidentiality of Ukraine, some of these events have or will have an immediate impact on Christianity in Ukraine and on the whole Ukrainian society as a whole. Undoubtedly, the main event, or more enlightened in the press, is a new impetus to the unification of the UOC-KP and the UAOC. But we would like to focus on two documents relating to the problem of Christian unity, the emergence of which was almost unnoticed by the wider public. But at the same time, these documents are too important as they outline the future policy of other Christian denominations by two influential Ukrainian christian churches - the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. These are the "Basic Principles of the attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church to the" I ", adopted by the Anniversary Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Concept of the Ecumenical Position of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, adopted by the Synod of the Bishops of the UGCC. It is clear that the theme of the second document is wider, but at the same time, ecumenism, unification is impossible without solving the problem of relations with others, which makes it possible to compare the approaches laid down in the mentioned documents to the building of relations with other Christian confessions.


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