Article

Sacred or Secular? ‘Memorial’, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Contested Commemoration of Soviet Repressions

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Abstract

The reconstruction of the history from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s of Soviet repressions critically influenced the social formation of Gulag memory in Russia. Amongst those re-narrating the past, the ‘Memorial’ Society and the Russian Orthodox Church most actively shaped the collective memory of Soviet repressions, trying to establish multi-layered explanatory constructs of the Gulag. Their interpretations were crystallised through contemporary memorialisation acts in significant landscapes of the past. Focusing on Solovki, Ekaterinburg, Butovo and Magadan, and analysing tensions in their memorialisation processes, we discuss secular and Orthodox interpretations of the Gulag, and their impact on the memory of the Soviet repressions in contemporary Russia.

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... This implies that the Stalinist Terror and, some say, the Revolutions of 1917 show the cyclical nature of the Russian national history. Hence, the notion of Smuta is coupled with the theological tropes of martyrdom and resurrection (Bogumil, Moran and Harrowell 2015). Where the activists conjure a collective history of suffering and mass murder, the Brethren subjugate this collectivity to a specific discourse of nation-state building. ...
... It is to be remembered as a historical fact for its existence rather than signification. The Brethren, just like the Russian Orthodox Church in general, operate with a more nationalistic rhetoric (Bogumil, Moran and Harrowell 2015) that constructs the continuity between medieval and contemporary Russia. In Memorial eschatology, there is no conceptual or ethical equivalent to a secular court. ...
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... [Миллер, 2012;Sherlock, 2007;Kaplan, 2009], в 2000-х гг. претерпевала серьезные и неоднозначные изменения как в составе акторов и их удельном весе, так и в подходах [Копосов, 2011;Sherlock, 2016;Bogumil, 2015]. ...
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Introduction. The study of everyday cultural practices of the Ural Mari living in rural areas can not only provide extra information, but also change our views on distinctive features of their culture, the prospects for its development, and resistance to ethnocultural transformations. Materials and Methods. The work used interdisciplinary research methods, the principles of comparative, system and structural analysis, as well as sociological methods: observation, in-depth survey, comparative analysis, interviewing. Results and Discussion. Distinctive features of the ethnic culture of the Ural Mari were influenced by the regional factor, and were recorded not only in the Mari dialect, national dresses, but also in everyday practices, namely household chores, the relationship between a man and a woman, and between generations. Their formation was influenced by folk religiosity, which is closely related to mythological thinking. Belief in the spirits that accompanies the everyday life of a person, has been transformed according to new everyday practices, and is still preserved in the everyday life of the ethnos. The author provides data from in-depth surveys and interviews of Mari living in the Sverdlovsk region and the Perm Territory, and also analyzes examples from literary sources. Conclusion. The transformation of the culture of the Ural Mari in rural areas is a response to scientific and technological progress, global changes, and is exteroceptive in nature with a persisting axiological basis. Further research of the everyday cultural practices of the Ural Mari living in rural areas will make it possible to predict the development of their ethnic culture and point out the critical aspects of transformation.
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Introduction. The article presents the characteristic of emotional culture, reflecting the emotional experience accumulated by society. It is seen as an integral part of the overall culture. Its content includes psychological knowledge, practical skills in managing emotions and feelings, and attitudes toward people. The purpose of the study is to identify the emotional content of the culture of the Finno-Ugric peoples. Materials and Methods. To achieve this goal, the author used the methodology of psychological analysis of the language as the most important carrier of emotional culture. As an object of analysis the dictionaries of four Finno-Ugric peoples: Komi, Udmurts, Mari and Erzia were also used. The subject of psychological analysis were the words reflecting emotional phenomena, for example, sad, angry, joyful, embarrassed, etc. The following analysis parameters were used: sign and form of emotional phenomena. Results and Discussion. The analysis showed that emotional experience takes an important place in the language and culture of the relevant Finno-Ugric peoples. In their language, there are, on average, 315 emotional categories that reflect emotional phenomena that are diverse in content and form. This indicates the breadth of the emotional experience of these peoples. This indicator is characterized by slight deviations from the average value, which indicates the proximity of the emotional experience of these peoples. All the basic forms of emotional phenomena are reflected in their emotional experience: emotional processes, emotional phenomena, emotional properties and conditions, emotional properties of actions. Ethnic features were found in the quantitative ratio of these indicators. It was established that the dominant place in the structure of emotional experience is occupied by negative emotions with a minimal difference between these ethnic groups. Conclusion. Emotional reality is included in the sphere of people’s interests and, in one way or another, is mastered by them. That is why it is reflected in the culture of any people, including the Finno-Ugric ones. However, the ethnic characteristics of their emotional experience and emotional culture remain unexplored. A promising task is to create a holistic concept of the emotional culture of every Finno-Ugric people, including knowledge about emotions and feelings, methods of managing them and attitude to people.
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Memory narratives commonly include characters such as heroes (triumphant or fallen), martyrs, perpetrators, and victims. In recent years, the victim has become the central character in the dominant, western-centric, and globalized memory culture. A victim’s definition is problematic: few existing memory narratives include “ideal,” or innocent victims who suffered meaninglessly. The lines between victims and other characters in memory narratives are blurry in many cases, for instance, between a victim and a perpetrator. Using the case of Russian museums dedicated to the Soviet repressions, I study the problematic relation between victims and heroes, adding to the discussion of the victim character’s complexity. Often, victims of Soviet repressions are presented as both victims of political persecution and heroes who did not just suffer through their imprisonment but continued to live productive and creative lives. The resulting victim-hero character indicates that the category of a victim is too limiting and adds to calls for the theorization of victim taxonomy.
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Introduction. In modern Russia, patriotism is broadcast by the authorities as the only possible ideology of a democratic state, its national idea, which gives rise to many disputes and discussions within connotational boundaries: “love for the homeland lies outside states and nations – this is an initial, natural, genetic feeling” vs “the idea of sovereign patriotism can and should be the basis of the national idea of Russia”. The purpose of this publication is to consider the conceptual base and the activity of the formation of patriotic consciousness in the period 2012–2020 on the example of a separate subject of the Russian Federation – the Republic of Mordovia. Materials and Methods. The methodology was based on a retrospective analysis, an axiological paradigm, and a systematic approach. Case study was used among the applied methods. The Republic of Mordovia acted as a case, as it is a typical constituent entity of the Russian Federation related to agro-industrial regions, on the other hand as a national republic in which citizens of 119 nationalities live, while the national composition is dominated by Mordovians (Moksha, Erzya), Russians, Tatars. Results and Discussion. In the Republic of Mordovia, as well as in the Russian Federation as a whole, civic and patriotic education and the formation of patriotic consciousness of citizens is implemented through a program-targeted approach. This is expressed in a number of state programs, including “Development of Education in the Republic of Mordovia”, “Development of Culture and Tourism in Russia”, “Counteracting Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking”, “Harmonization of Interethnic and Interfaith Relations in the Republic of Mordovia”, etc., and there is a continuity in their adoption and prolongation. Effective vertical and horizontal interagency links have been created for their implementation. In recent years, individual civil society institutions, in particular, socially oriented non-profit organizations, have been actively involved in civic and patriotic education. The work also examines the activity component in the context of the analysis of individual events, graded by the authors for civic and patriotic, social and patriotic, heroic and patriotic and military and patriotic vectors. The problematic area remains the co-financing of state-funded programs in terms of the region’s obligations due to the accumulated problems in the budgetary sphere and, as a result, the highest debt burden of all the subjects of the Russian Federation. Conclusion. In nowadays Russia, the elements of civic-patriotic education are consistently implemented in the state educational, cultural, national, and youth policy. In the Republic of Mordovia, the implementation of patriotic themes is assessed as diversive and it has various formats. It is carried out according to civic and patriotic, socio-patriotic, heroic-patriotic, military-patriotic vectors.
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Introduction. The phenomenon of “tradition” is a key link in understanding the specifics of the current cultural processes. The problem of preserving and developing the ethnocultural tradition has acquired a new impetus for comprehension against the background of the emergence at the turn of the XX–XXI centuries of the so-called ethnic revival, the increased attention of peoples, including the Finno-Ugric ones to their own cultural and historical roots. This is facilitated by the strengthening of the integration of cultures within the Finno-Ugric community in the context of the formation of a new socio-cultural paradigm. Materials and Methods. The theoretical material of the study was the work of scholars in the field of studying the modern socio-cultural process, in particular on the example of the cultural heritage of the Finno-Ugric peoples. The reliability and research validity of the results is provided by the sociocultural approach, as well as by comparative and typological research methods. Results and Discussion. In the process of being an ethnocultural tradition in modern society, the process of festivization of the cultural process plays an important role, among other circumstances. It is characterized by the use of the phenomenon of ethnoculture as an external attribute, the functioning of which is reduced only to entertainment, creating the effect of festivity of the action, which leads to the devaluation of its value. However, the analysis of the new picture of the world that took shape at the turn of the XX–XXI centuries allows us to conclude that the idea of the integrity of the world, the understanding of space and time that underlie it, as well as the ecological and adaptive potential of the ethnocultural tradition remain consonant with the modern world, and this gives grounds for their preservation and development in the modern era. These conclusions fully apply to the cultural practice of the Finno-Ugric peoples at the present stage. Conclusion. On the basis of the studied material, a conclusion was made about the change in the functioning of the Finno-Ugric ethnocultural tradition in accordance with the objective conditions of its existence.
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Following two decades of a state-supported patriotic campaign, the Russian Orthodox Church has dramatically increased its presence in the public sphere: in the Armed Forces, in public schools and universities, and even in retirement houses and prisons. The Church's recent activities seem to have no territorial limits: they reach up to the space station “Mir” and the Russian Antarctic Station, as well as the (Russian) Orthodox believers in 62 states. Using a critical discourse analysis of the speeches of top Church leaders as our main methodological tool, our research explores the Church's policies on patriotism and patriotic education, its re-interpretation of historical memory, and the role of the Church in Russian politics. We try to show that while the Church's agenda and approach to politics are idiosyncratic, the Church has become a key actor with an increasingly important political role.
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Introduction. The feature of the Baltic-Finnish languages is a system of infinitives and infinitive constructions. The article analyzes the syntactic roles of the inessive of the II infinitive, which according to the Baltic-Finnish syntax classification is considered an adverbial construction that characterizes the verb predicate. Materials and Methods. The analysis is performed using comparative and descriptive methods. The article uses the language dialect material and material of the Veps literary language that has been developing for 30 years, and which writing began to revive in 1989. Results and Discussion. Semantically the inessive of II infinitive has two main functions: temporal and final. The first one indicates an action that occurs at the same time with the action represented by the main finite verb. The second function indicates the purpose of the action represented by the main verb. At the same time, the final function is purely Vepsian. Conclusion. Modern Vepsian syntax is the result of development that was caused by the loss of traditional Baltic-Finnish features and taking of some significant features because of the influence of the Russian language.
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Introduction. The article explores the role and place of ethnosport in the national culture as an important factor in returning to authenticity in order to preserve the identity of ethnic groups. Materials and Methods. The authors pay attention to the theoretical substantiation of ethno-sport as a methodological basis of designing and forecasting the processes of formation and functioning of socio-cultural systems in the conditions of the processes of ethnocultural representations in sports, which are gaining momentum and go beyond the boundaries of places of compact residence of ethnic groups, national states and continents. The authors emphasize that the methodology of studying ethno-sports is of interdisciplinary nature of emerging trends in the area of physical activity in the conditions of globalization processes. Results and Discussion. The article studies the role and place of traditional games in actualizing the axiological field of Finno-Ugric peoples’ culture in modern society in order to preserve the identity of ethnic groups under conditions of cultural localization. Special attention is paid to the revival of ethnic sports within the traditional holidays of Finno-Ugric peoples. The article emphasizes that ethnosport is based on the moral and ethical views of peoples, expressed in the original festivals described in the works of oral folk art. Conclusion. Along with the usual performances of folk groups in the framework of folk festivals, traditional games are getting more popular. It is important to note that this approach is quite historic, because the competitive game tradition has served as the cultural core of the national holiday for centuries. Despite the fact that the territories inhabited by Finno-Ugric peoples have different approaches to the revival and maintenance of ethnic sports, in general, Finno-Ugric territories demonstrate a significant interest in this sphere of national identity. Traditional games have become part of the cultural policy of Finno-Ugric republics.
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Introduction. The article examines the problems arising in the acquisition of Finnish and Hungarian as a foreign language among students who are native speakers of the Mordovian (Moksha or Erzya) and Russian languages, i.e. bilinguals. The work examines the types of bilingualism, identifies the criteria underlying them. The purpose of the article is to identify the nature and causes of the appearance of linguistic features, cases of the manifestation of interference at the level of morphology which further indicate the methods and ways of resolving the emerging difficulties of mastering a foreign language. Materials and Methods. The factual material was obtained as a result of many years of educational and pedagogical activity in the classroom in the Hungarian and Finnish languages with students of the Philological Faculty of National Research Mordovian State University majoring in “Philology”, track “Foreign philology: Hungarian / Finnish, English languages and literature”. The main research methods are theoretical (the study of scientific and methodological literature on the problem under study), comparative (in the analysis of the morphological system of the Hungarian / Finnish and Mordovian languages), as well as the methods of generalization and observation, widely used for this kind of research. Results and Discussion. In the article, as a result of the study, the types of bilingualism are presented, the criteria for identifying the types of bilingualism, based on the existing classifications, are determined, the type of Mordovian-Russian bilingualism of the students of the studied group is determined. In the course of the analysis, it was found that when studying the morphological system of the Finnish and Hungarian languages in the written and oral speech of bilingual students, the influence of both the native (Erzyan / Mokshan) and Russian languages (when mastering some local cases, conditional, etc.) is observed. The presented examples are proof of the manifestation of interference, which appears at different linguistic levels. Conclusion. In the course of the study it was revealed that basically all bilinguals we studied exhibit a contact type of bilingualism, when communication is constantly maintained with speakers of both their native (Moksha or Erzya) and the Russian languages. The recorded phenomena of interference indicate the influence of grammatical systems of non-native (Russian) and native (Erzyan / Mokshan) languages in mastering some morphological structures of Hungarian and Finnish languages by bilingual students. In conclusion, it is concluded that it is impossible to avoid the phenomena of interference in the process of teaching a foreign language at the first stages of learning. The revealed mistakes made by the students make it possible to determine the methods and develop a set of tasks aimed at the perception of a specific foreign language material without using the native language.
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Introduction. The article considers anthroponymous toponyms of Tatar origin in the Republic of Mari El in reference to the genesis and history of movement and contact of the peoples of the Middle Volga region. The purpose of the article is to study the Tatar-Mari toponymic zoning based on the otantroponym oikonyms, which go back to the Tatar language. Materials and Methods. The analysis of toponymic material is associated with the use of various approaches: comparative-historical, comparative, as well as such research methods: the method of component analysis of toponymic units; areal, descriptive, structural, etymological, statistical, cartographic. The body of the research is represented by otanthroponymic oikonyms, selected from cartographic and lexicographic sources created in the Russian, Mari and Tatar languages, in the number of 129 units. Results and Discussion. The Tatar-Mari interactions on the territory of the Republic of Mari-El are concentrated in two main zones: the Tatar-mountain-Mari toponymic zone and the Tatar-meadow-Mari zone. The article defines the basic principles of the nomination of anthroponymous toponyms, provides a classification of toponyms by objects of the toponymic nomination in each of the topozones, and also highlights parallel names. The analysis also makes it possible to trace the patterns of placement of toponymic objects on the territory of the the Republic of Mari-El. Analysis of the identified borrowings from the Tatar language makes it possible to clarify their territorial localization in the territory of Mari El. Oikonyms formed on the basis of Tatar personal names are most common in areas of compact residence of Tatars, as well as in border areas with the Republic of Tatarstan, due to trade and economic, historical and political, administrative, territorial, and geographical factors. The main principle underlying the Mari otantroponym oikonyms was their nomination based on the relationship with a person: their social status; class affiliation; profession; social interactions; place and role in the family hierarchy; human character; appearance; clothing; qualities of a person; their financial status; etc. Conclusion. The names of Mari anthroponymous topoobjects of Tatar origin were implemented in importing Tatar values that are significant for the Mari ethnic group and go back to Tatar names: material wealth, high social status, respect for parents and elders, health and strength of body, friendship, kindness, firmness and strength of character, cleanliness and neatness in clothing.
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Building on contemporary social science, we intend to go beyond current Russian studies by creating a completely new paradigm in the field. In this chapter, we develop the conceptual starting points of this new paradigm and specify our methodological approach to modernity and modernization. Our critique of previous paradigms is not ‘flaw-centred’. Rather we intend to show that Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory gives us instruments for methodological specifications that broaden the horizon towards more comprehensive research programmes. Previous approaches do not seem to find ways to examine both structures and agencies at the same time. Russia’s development is explained either as an inevitable structural process, or only as a result of the intentions of the actors. We argue that it is essential to be able to study modernization both as a representation and as a broader analytical category referring to basic structural challenges. For this, we need new middle range theories and explanatory models. Our endeavour, however, is not only theoretical. Rather, we have developed the new paradigm in the context of interdisciplinary empirical analysis of the five major macro-level challenges of Russian modernization.
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Introduction. Mari people formed in the IX–XI centuries AD and settled due to historical circumstances mostly within the Volga-Kama region. For many centuries it had two ethnonyms: Cheremis and Mari. In the first quarter of the XX century the representatives of the Mari people selected one ethnonym in favor of another one, which was authentic and complimentary; it turned out to be a very complex historical fact. Materials and methods. The use of a systematic analysis of the sources of the studied period, an attempt to restore events in chronological dynamics, studying the events of the Mari ethnic history in the context of all-Russian history allows us to formulate the most objective answers to the research problems. Results and discussion. One of the earliest precursors to the solution of the ethnonymic alternative was “Marla Calendar” yearbook, the first publication to receive official recognition, where the self-name of the people took its rightful place on the cover of the printed edition. The turning point in using of the ethnonym was the First All-Russian Congress of the Mari People in July 1917. The materials of the Congress, both in the original language and in translation into Russian, do not contain a single use of the term Cheremis. February Regional Congress of Mari (1918) made a historic decision to abandon the existing name Cheremis people and replace it with the self-name of the people, Mari. Conclusion. The historical process of legitimization of the ethnonym Mari developed according to a certain pattern: “the position of a broad ethno-social base → a small number of the intelligentsia capable of formulating ideas → the agenda and resolutions of the national movement → legal acts, official record keeping, the language of science …”.
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Introduction. The article considers the publication of a unique source for the history of the Mordovian people, the “protective memory” dated by 1572 addressed to the princes and Murzes of Mordovia. The “protective memory” is considered in comparison with the “romadanovsky” list belonging to the descendants of the Mordovian prince Romadan, seeking the return of the nobility, the non-criminal record of the Temnik-Kadom Mordva, published in the XVIII century, similar to the records of Tatar Sovereigns to the Temnik-Kadom Mordva. Materials and methods. The author focused on studying the content of the source, revealing the identities of the recipients, analyzing the composition of the princes and Murz of Mordovian records, spelling of the names, origin, and family ties. The genealogy of the princes Edelevs is being reconstructed, the history of their kind is described together with the history of Mordovian Murzas and their representatives in the context of social and historical ties. Results and discussion. The article describes the social situation of Princes Edelevs, the features of land ownership, land use, property and ownership of serfs. The article discusses the history of the discovery and use of the source in the clerical work of the aristocratic deputies’ assemblies and the Governing Senate at the request of the descendants of Mordovian princes and Muzes from the Edelev family to restore the rights of the noble state. It poses the problem of studying the social stratification in Mordovian society, the typology and origin of the Mordovian aristocracy, the peculiarities of the titling and inheritance of power, its role in the historical and social development of the Mordovian people, as well as its legal status in the Russian Empire. It compares the situation of the Temnikov-Kadom Mordovian Tarkhans, Cossacks, White Field and Alatyr princes and Mordovian Murzes, serving Mordovians and Tatars. Conclusion. “Protective memory” indicates that in the XVI century there was a national Mordovian aristocracy, collaborating with Moscow and being in the service of Great Sovereigns, and subsequently becoming part of the nobility and other classes of Russian society. The choice of Mordovian princes ensured the relatively peaceful entry of Mordovian lands into the Russian Empire.
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Introduction. The article discusses the nomination of the forest landscape in the Komi-Permyatsky language, a separate microsystem, as a part of the terrestrial landscape vocabulary. It has its own structural organization, certain composition of nomination objects and a specific set of lexical means for their nomination. The purpose of the article is to establish systemic features typical for this category of nomination only, distinguish it from other components of land vocabulary, determine the composition of the vocabulary, systematize this microsystem and identify the sources and main stages of its formation and development. Materials and methods. The main source of the material was the vocabulary of the Komi-Permyatsky language contained in lexicographic publications. Additional data was obtained as a result of a survey of native speakers of the Komi-Permyatsky language using a specially developed questionnaire. It also used comparative, historical, synchronous-comparative, descriptive and statistical research methods. Results and discussion. As a result of the linguistic analysis, a system for the forest landscape nomination in the Komi-Permyatsky language is presented. It is established that unambiguous and ambiguous names are distinguished at the semantic level among nominative units, which, as a rule, have a direct meaning. Based on the subject-conceptual content, the entire set of nominations, in accordance with denotative signs, is classified into six main subgroups. The primordial fund of the microsystem is characterized by the presence of all four components of ancient vocabulary: Pre-Perm, Common Perm, Pracomi and the proper Komi-Permyatsky. A part of the native vocabulary that arose during the period of the independent existence of the Komi-Permyatsky language and which does not have genetic correlations with other related languages is analyzed taking into account the specific features of structural and word-building system. As a classification criterion for monomial tokens, it employs the derivative or non-derivative criteria of the words. For compound names it employs the belongings of the components to the corresponding parts of speech. A foreign vocabulary of Komi-Permyatsky words used for the forest landscape consists of one type of borrowing. Conclusion. The vocabulary of the forest landscape of the Komi-Permyatsky language has ancient origins; its formation and development proceeded over many millennia on the basis of internal resources. The number of borrowings increased in the late periods of the Komi-Permyatsky language as a result of the penetration of the corresponding number of words from the Russian literary language and its northern dialects.
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Introduction. Active promotion and positioning of the regions is a condition of their competitiveness, which actualizes the study of imaging practices aimed at creating an attractive image of the territory for various target groups: from federal elites and large businesses to tourists, highly skilled migrants, and the population. The image is based on symbolic capital, which is unique for each region. For Mordovia as a Finno-Ugric Republic in Russia, being unique is associated, firstly, with the use of ethnic symbols (elements of a national costume, Moksha / Erzia embroidery, musical instruments, dishes of national cuisine, etc.). These ethnic symbols actualize “ethnic” memory, national traditions and customs. Secondly, it is associated with the inclusion in the information space of the symbols of regional “pride”, such as “successful” fellow country people, whose positive image stimulates the processes of consolidation and identification. The purpose of this article is to study historical and modern personalities and images used in the formation of image-based visualizations of the Republic of Mordovia. Materials and methods. The methodology was based on the hermeneutic, axiological and communication paradigms. Among the applied methods such focus groups were included into the research as “Image of the Republic of Mordovia: symbols, brands, images”; content analysis of foreign, federal and regional mass media, which chronologically reviewed the publications from 2014 to 2019, etc. Results and discussion. The most recognizable historical characters of Mordovia who resonate with the audience are F. Ushakov, S. Erzia, M. Devyataev. Among contemporaries whose images can present the region, there are the representatives of the politicals (V. D. Volkov, N. I. Merkushkin, P. N. Tultaev) and sports (O. Kaniskina, V. Borchin, S. Kirdyapkin). Conclusion. Using famous names that have a weak or implicit reference to the territory does not always lead to a positive emotional response (especially among visitors), which ultimately reduces the significance of this symbolic element for the republican image and strengthens its counter-narrativeness.
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Introduction. Currently, there are special spatial areas in the world that were established on the basis of ethnic identity. One of them is Finno-Ugric, which unites 24 peoples of the Finno-Ugric group of the Uralic language family. For centuries they have preserved their identity, language, traditions and customs of their ancestors. The object of our research is the Finno-Ugric territories in Russia. The purpose of the study is to determine the tourist resources of the Finno-Ugric regions of Russia for their development and interaction in the field of tourism. Materials and methods. Research in the area of tourism at Finno-Ugric areas in Russia deals with, first of all, the tourist resources of the regions, spatial planning and organization of tourist activities. The research required the use of various methods. Thus, the comparative-descriptive method allowed identifying common and distinctive features in the development of tourism in the studied regions, historical method allowed considering the emergence and development of processes and events in the regions; cartographic one dealt with assessing the spatial features of the regions; statistical one analyzed and compared the regions based on statistical data; the method of expert assessments allowed determining the richness of tourist resources of the regions and their areas of interaction in the field of tourism. Results and discussion. The possibilities of the Finno-Ugric regions are quite diverse. The key task for the development of tourism in the regions and their effective promotion in the tourist markets is to create branded tourist routes. Their development allows you to solve the strategic task of including significant regional display objects in interregional routes. Conclusion. The development of Finno-Ugric regions can be more effective due to the formation of a positive tourist image of the Finno-Ugric territories as an independent tourist areas within Russia and beyond.
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Introduction. The study of marriage intentions in the attitudes of young people summarizes the experience of the past and create a prototype of the future of the family. The style of prenuptial behavior of young people is not isolated, but largely determines the state of the demographic structure of the whole society. The research novelty of the research is that the conceptual empirical analysis of the trends in the culture of family and marriage attitudes of young people and the prospects of its increase in the crisis of family values. Materials and Methods. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study is represented by a set of concepts and theoretical approaches in accordance with the subject and the problem of the study, which required an appeal to the methodological tools of family sociology, psychology, pedagogy, cultural studies, sociology of youth, demography. When writing the work, general reasearch methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization, interpretation, system method, secondary analysis of empirical data were used. The author’s empirical research was conducted by the method of questioning. A questionnaire survey of Saransk youth was conducted (300 people). Results and Discussion. The research has proved the contradiction of the simultaneous influence on the motives and attitudes of premarital behavior of young people of traditional and modern sociocultural norms, attitudes, relationships and relationships is empirically substantiated. Conclusion. Today young people face a choice of traditional foundations of the family and more radical orientations in the marital and family sphere. As a result, the relations between young adults in the system of premarital behavior are carried out in a difficult situation, which affects marital and family motivation, premarital attitudes and raises the age of marriage. Young people do not have rules of premarital relations enshrined, sanctioned by society and parents. Being the bearer of the innovative potential for the development of society, they have special opportunities for the implementation of their attitudes and needs in the field of premarital behavior.
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Introduction. In traditional culture, wedding clothing is distinguished by its multifunctionality and attractiveness, as it is meant to reflect significant social changes. In a Mari wedding clothing, robes have always played a particular role of an indicator of belonging to the community. The robe’s design and decorative features played a role of a marker. Materials and Methods. The research is based on the collections of the Russian Museum of Ethnography, which has an archive of wedding caftans of the Hill and Meadow Mari, as well as a great deal of written and field sources (2010 – 2018). Results and Discussion. The article differentiates male’s and female’s wedding caftans, underlines their basic local distinctive decor features. The colour serves as the main criterion. Apart from that, there are some distinctive features in the caftans’ back part and breast area. The article singles out highly and least decorated parts of the wedding caftan, takes a look at various materials served as a basis for decoration of the most important areas of the item. The paper highlights the most “alteration-proof” parts of the caftan and underlines the features of the wedding clothing. Conclusion. A study of this clothing item is of great significance in terms of the research of changes in the Mari traditional ceremonial clothes, because as field research in the region has proved, the color of the wedding caftan keeps on varying depending on local customs and remains to be a criterion of the group’s identity.
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Introduction. The special sensitivity of the ethno-national sphere to fluctuations in politics, increased vulnerability to destructive influence, negative historical experience of politicization of ethnicity elevate it to one of the priorities of the work of Federal and regional state bodies. The object of this study is the state national policy of the Russian Federation, the subject is the process and instruments of its implementation in the Finno-Ugric Republics in the Russian Federation, taking into account the state and dynamics of the system of Federal relations. The main tasks are to identify the stages of the evolution of approaches and management practices; to characterize the content and guidelines of official documents; to determine the essence and direction of changes in the considered perspective. Materials and Methods. The study is based on the normative and conceptual-program documents of the Federal and regional levels in state national policy of the Russian Federation, materials posted on the official websites of the state authorities of the Finno-Ugric Republics that are the subjects of the Russian Federation. The main research methods are system, comparative and diachronic analysis, non-formalized traditional analysis of documents and the method of political diagnostics. Results and Discussion. The study of a set of documentary and theoretical sources allowed us to trace the dynamics of approaches and practices of the Finno-Ugric Republics in the implementation of the state national policy of the Russian Federation. Attention was focused on two stages: the periods of 2000-2012 and 2012-2018, with a historical retrospection into the post-Soviet period. It shows the experience and correlation of initiatives and actions of Federal and regional level; compares research feedbacks; reveals key trends in modification of programs and target tools. Conclusion. The experience of the Finno-Ugric Republics in the Russian Federation demonstrates a significant coincidence with the all-Russian trend of the Patriotic-state approach, with certain nuances arising from the specifics of the ethnodemographic situation, the resource potential of regions and political elites and, to a lesser extent from their location.
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Introduction. The article analyzes the communicemas with a negative emotional evaluation in the Komi language. The subject of the research is their implicit meanings and the intentions of communicants transmitted by these syntactic units. The purpose of the work is to identify and describe the most common communicemas with negative emotional evaluation in the Komi language, their pragmatic specificity, and features of functioning in speech. The results can be used for teaching the syntax of the Komi language. Materials and Methods. The sources of the study were communicemas from Komi fiction, obtained by the method of continuous sampling. The main method was descriptive-analytical method. Results and Discussion. Communicemas with a negative emotional evaluation arise in speech spontaneously and are an expressive reaction of the addressee, transmitting the impressions of what has been seen or heard. Usually a negative evaluation is accompanied by appropriate intonation: screaming, angry exclamation, threat, etc. These syntactic units can serve as a speech method for reducing the emotional stress of the subject. The emotional component, expressiveness in the meaning of the analyzed structures determine the impact on the addressee in order to obtain from the necessary, required reaction, which makes these syntactic constructions integral means of effective communication. Conclusion. In the Komi language, the communicemas with a negative emotional evaluation dominate positive ones. Almost all constructions of this kind manifest national specific features, therefore they are difficult to be perceived by the speakers of other languages.
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Introduction. In the languages of different systems, there are many cases when the morphemic structure of a word is not clear. As a result of a comparative analysis of a word with etymologically related words and their reconstructed stems and meanings, single-morphemic, root and polymorphic words consisting of two or more morphemes are distinguished. Considering the nature of structural changes in a word and their nature in linguistics, there is simplification, re-decomposition, truncation of the stem and others. The article describes simplification, one of the most common processes of changing the morphological structure of a word based Mordovian (Moksha and Erzya) and Baltic-Finnish (Finnish and Estonian) languages. Materials and methods. The method of comparative historical analysis allows us to state that many Finno-Ugric foundations have retained the old morphological structure. After the collapse of the former linguistic unity for several millennia of independent development, significant changes took place in each of the languages that affected the morphological structure of the stem. Results and discussion. In connection with the morphological process of simplification, the structure of the primary Finno-Ugric stem of a number of words began to differ significantly from their structural design in the later periods of the development of the Finno-Ugric languages (Finno-Permian, Finno-Volga) and, moreover, their current state. This process covered a large number of the stems of the general vocabulary of the compared languages. All simplified stems can be attributed to different periods of language development. The connection of the ancient Finno-Ugric language with other languages led to numerous borrowings of tokens with which various morphological and morphological structures penetrated and gradually established themselves in the Finno-Ugric language. The latter partially adapted in the Finno-Ugric language system, and partially continued to maintain a special look. Conclusion. The morphological process of simplification took place at different periods in the development of the Mordovian and Baltic-Finnish languages, namely in the Finno-Ugric, Finno-Permian, Finno-Volga periods of their separate development.
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Introduction. The relevance of the study lies in the fact that the Udmurt written monuments are studied only partially at the moment. Today more than 400 names of pre-revolutionary Udmurt monuments are known, but most of them are still not described. An analysis of written monuments is necessary, because they provide important information for language reconstruction, and besides that, they help to determine the chronology of linguistic phenomena. Materials and Methods. The description of morphological characteristics in the article is based on the previously identified graphic and phonetic features of the translation of «God’s law» in the Udmurt language. It involved the method of comparing the linguistic material of the work with the data of the literary language and modern Udmurt dialects. Results and Discussion. As a result of the analysis of «God’s law» in the Udmurt language, we revealed some features in the design of morphological indicators of plural, possessiveness, some case and verb forms, as well as pronouns. Conclusion. A comparison of the linguistic data of the “God’s Law” with the literary language and modern Udmurt dialects confirmed the hypothesis regarding the dialectic affiliation of the written source.
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In recent years, investigations of social or cultural memory have become a major field of inquiry throughout the humanities and social sciences. No longer the sole preserve of psychology, the study of memory now extends to anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, literary studies, communication, history and, increasingly, to geography. This article assesses some of the major trends in this burgeoning literature, especially those works spatial in nature, which we find to be of considerable cross‐disciplinary importance. Together, memory and place conjoin to produce much of the context for modern identities; providing a modest overview of that critical, dynamic relationship, this article serves as an introduction to this special issue of Social & Cultural Geography.
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In discussing the role of streets and urban spaces as a locus of collective memory, I draw a distinction between overt commemoration of public memory and the accumulation of group memories in the setting of the everyday street. Community struggles over postwar street clearances stimulated interest in the physical layout of the public realm as a gestalt for shared memory, a theme of earlier work on memory and urbanism by Maurice Halbwachs. I show how Aldo Rossi and colleagues put the concept onto a practical footing by making morphological analysis the basis for urban infill, repair, and extension, most ambitiously and controversially in the 'critical reconstruction' of modern Berlin.
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This article explores the formation of post–Soviet Russian national identity through a study of political struggles over key Soviet–era monuments and memorials in Moscow during the “critical juncture” in Russian history from 1991 through 1999. We draw on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Pierre Nora to explain how competition among political elites for control over the sites guided their transformation from symbols of the Soviet Union into symbols of Russia. By co–opting, contesting, ignoring, or removing certain types of monuments through both physical transformations and “commemorative maintenance,” Russian political elites engaged in a symbolic dialogue with each other and with the public in an attempt to gain prestige, legitimacy, and influence. We make this argument through case studies of four monument sites in Moscow: Victory Park (Park Pobedy), the Lenin Mausoleum, the former Exhibition of the Achievements of the National Economy (VDNKh), and the Park of Arts (Park Isskustv). In the article, we first discuss the role of symbolic capital in the transformation of national identity. Following an examination of the political struggles over places of memory in Moscow, we analyze the interplay between elite and popular uses of the monuments, exploring the extent to which popular “reading” of the sites limits the ability of elites to manipulate their meaning. We conclude by looking at the Russian case in comparative perspective and exploring the reasons behind the dearth of civic monuments in post–Soviet Russia.
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Using an original survey of adolescents in post-communist Russia and Ukraine, this study analyzes attitudes toward the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The results demonstrate how contextual factors – the republic's position within the former Soviet Union and prior history of colonization – affect the level of nostalgia among the young generation. Based upon semi-structured interviews with adolescents, the study identifies sources of positive and negative attitudes toward the Soviet demise. Furthermore, the research reveals cross-national differences in the relationship between Soviet nostalgia and national pride.
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'Imagined Communities' examines the creation & function of the 'imagined communities' of nationality & the way these communities were in part created by the growth of the nation-state, the interaction between capitalism & printing & the birth of vernacular languages in early modern Europe.
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This article examines the commemoration practices of the Gulag in the Russian Federation. On the basis of qualitative data collected during a field research carried out in a few former lager districts (the Solovetsky Islands, Komi Republic, Perm region and Kolyma), I reconstruct a way the history of Soviet repressions was uncovered from oblivion and the process of Gulag commemoration began. Starting from the assumption that the Gulag memory was not started to working through in Russia till the end of 1980s, and that the last stage of Perestroika had a crucial influence on a way the repression past is nowadays commemorated in the country, I examine several memory projects erected in that time and show how the process of reworking the Gulag experience and presenting it in a narrative form occurred. On a base of the first exhibition dedicated to the Gulag past, SLON-Solovetsky Lager Osobogo Naznachenya, (the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp) I reconstruct a process of rewriting history and describe how the repressive past was perceived at the end of the 1980s. In turn, analyses of meaning and social function of the monuments commemorating Gulag show that at the beginning there was a diversity of the past interpretations and that the processes of the transformation of the soft into the hard memory proceed quite quickly. However, since the mid-1990 a comeback to the traditional, well recognizable model of culture is visible. Thus, the memory of Gulag supported by the Russian Orthodox Church slowly dominates the social perception of the repressive past.
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Combining ideas from cultural studies, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism, this essay proposes an interdisciplinary approach to the emerging field of post-Soviet memory studies. Sociological polls demonstrate that approximately one-fourth of Russians remember that their relatives were victims of terror, yet the existing monuments, museums, and rituals are inadequate to commemorate these losses. In this economy of memory, ghosts and monsters become a prominent subject of post-Soviet culture. The incomplete work of mourning turns the unburied dead into the undead. Analyzing Russian novels and films of the last decade, Alexander Etkind emphasizes the radical distortions of history, semihuman creatures, fantastic cults, manipulations of the body, and circular time that occur in these fictional works. To account for these phenomena, Etkind coins the concept "magical historicism" and discusses its relation to the magical realism of postcolonial literatures. The memorial culture of magical historicism is not so much postmodern as it is, precisely, post-Soviet.
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Russian Orthodoxy Resurgentis the first book to fully explore the expansive and ill-understood role that Russia's ancient Christian faith has played in the fall of Soviet Communism and in the rise of Russian nationalism today. John and Carol Garrard tell the story of how the Orthodox Church's moral weight helped defeat the 1991 coup against Gorbachev launched by Communist Party hardliners. The Soviet Union disintegrated, leaving Russians searching for a usable past. The Garrards reveal how Patriarch Aleksy II-a former KGB officer and the man behind the church's successful defeat of the coup-is reconstituting a new national idea in the church's own image.In the new Russia, the former KGB who run the country-Vladimir Putin among them-proclaim the cross, not the hammer and sickle. Meanwhile, a majority of Russians now embrace the Orthodox faith with unprecedented fervor. The Garrards trace how Aleksy orchestrated this transformation, positioning his church to inherit power once held by the Communist Party and to become the dominant ethos of the military and government. They show how the revived church under Aleksy prevented mass violence during the post-Soviet turmoil, and how Aleksy astutely linked the church with the army and melded Russian patriotism and faith.Russian Orthodoxy Resurgentargues that the West must come to grips with this complex and contradictory resurgence of the Orthodox faith, because it is the hidden force behind Russia's domestic and foreign policies today.
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Data collected in a multistage probability sample of Russian-speaking citizens of the Russian Federation in the spring and summer of 1991 (as part of the International Social Survey Program's study of Religion) indicate a substantial increase in religious belief and affiliation in the Federation. A third of the Russian people who said they once did not believe in God now do believe in God -- 22% of all Russians. There has also been a substantial affiliation with the Orthodox Church of those who were not previously members. The "revivalists" are disproportionately young and (relatively) disproportionately male. They tend to have become believers because of a "religious turning point" experience and to view the purpose of religion as giving a meaning and purpose to life. They propose to raise their children as religious and, like all Russians, to have a great respect for the Orthodox Church.
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The author surveys three times and places where the public history of certain events has changed radically over time. The mass killings and arrests of the Stalinist Soviet Union were deliberately ignored for decades afterwards, then drew intense attention in the Gorbachev years. The end of British Empire slavery was for a century or more ascribed to British virtue and generosity; today we pay far more attention to the role of slave revolts. And Belgium officially ignored the murderous slave labor regime King Leopold II imposed on the Congo in the late nineteenth century until the last decade or so.
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À Butovo, dans la banlieue de Moscou, 20 761 personnes furent fusillées entre août 1937 et octobre 1938 par le pouvoir stalinien. Parmi elles, 304 ont été canonisées. Après la découverte dans les archives des noms des victimes et de leur lieu d’exécution, l’Église orthodoxe russe investit le Polygone et lui donne un sens sacral. Butovo acquiert ainsi à la fois une signification politique, au sens où le lieu permet la critique d’un système politique, et une dimension religieuse, l’histoire locale étant intégrée dans l’histoire du Salut. Au statut de lieu de mémoire s’ajoute ainsi celui de lieu sacré, et la coexistence des logiques mémorielle et religieuse devient parfois source de conflits. Des pèlerins apparaissent, même si la mobilisation tant politique que religieuse reste faible : peu nombreux sont ceux qui désirent briser le silence.
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Since the 19th century at least public monuments have been the foci for collective participation in the politics and public life of villages, towns, and cities. They have acted as important centres around which local and national political and cultural positions have been articulated. Monuments are an important, but underutilised, resource for the geographer interested in debates surrounding national identity. Through a variety of examples, the ways are explored in which examinations of the sociology, iconography, spatialisation, and gendering of statues reveal important ways in which national "imagined communitiies' are constructed. -Author
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The opening of the Soviet archives has enabled scholars to correct some previously held misconceptions about the history of the Russian Orthodox Church since World War II. Western observers had mostly believed that the Russian Orthodox Church had 20–25 000 churches in the 1950s, while the real number was 13 000–14 000. The losses during Khrushchev's antireligious drive were 44 per cent of the parishes. Brezhnev's period of stagnation witnessed a further erosion, followed by a recovery in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since then, the resurgence of church institutional life has slowed, as the Church struggles with schism, a calamitous financial situation and an immense shortage of priests.
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Ireland is sometimes said to be cursed with a surfeit of history; memory is seen as one of the principal causes of an endless cycle of violence. In contrast, this article focuses on collective memory and examines the way in which this was drawn on as a resource by republican and loyalist communities in terms of identity and endurance during almost four decades of conflict. These identities were displayed in various commemorations and symbols, including wall murals. During the peace process these murals have been judged officially to be anachronistic, leading to a recent government-funded scheme to remove them, the Reimaging Communities Programme. This article questions the political motivation of this programme. It considers the attempts by people in republican and loyalist areas to come to terms with the peace process by emphasizing traditional symbols of identity, while at the same time reinterpreting them for a new era. Symbols can be the bridge between the past and the future which makes the present tolerable.
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Journal of American Folklore 117.466 (2004) 363-372 In this Presidential Plenary Address, I discuss the concept of "spontaneous shrines," along with other examples of public memorializations of death. These phenomena combine the personal with the public, or, following the work of linguist J. L. Austin, the performative with the commemorative (1962). I discuss the social dynamics and political repercussions of spontaneous shrines and suggest that, by combining the personal with the public, they can be seen as a metaphor for folklore itself. In keeping with the theme of the 2003 AFS meetings, I examine the concept of "the public" throughout. I recently attended a ceremony at Bowling Green State University called "Operation Transformation," held in memory of victims of domestic violence. The event was sponsored by the BGSU Women's Center and was held inside a Christian chapel on campus. In front of the prominent cross were twenty-two votive candles in purple glasses—purple being the designated color of mourning; twenty-two victims were being remembered. This was the opening event of a month-long public display of twenty-two two-dimensional silhouettes, each shrouded in black cloth. October 1, 2003, was the unveiling. As each effigy was unveiled, an individual woman read the stories of the deceased in the first person and the present tense: "My name is________. I am __ years old and have _ children. On ________ I was shot to death in front of my children by my estranged husband. My name is _____; remember my name." Audience members included family members of the victims and BGSU students. Overcome with emotion, some of the women reading the brief biographies had trouble maintaining their composure. The victims and the audience members were young and old, black, white, and Latino. All were from the surrounding area. This ritualistic event, the unveiling, simultaneously memorialized deceased individuals and drew attention and tried to mobilize action toward a social problem, that is, domestic violence. Both aspects—the personal identity of the victims and the social malignancy that led to their deaths—were emphatically manifest in the presentation. The readers called attention to the life stories and personal relationships of the victims, and the entire event was presented in the context of domestic violence as a gendered crime. Moreover, the ceremony borrowed heavily from traditional Christian ritual. This kind of public memorialization of death toward a social end seems to be a growing phenomenon. The AIDS quilt is an example, as are the demonstrations of the Madres de la Plaza—calling attention to the disappeared in Argentina and Chile, the Bloody Sunday commemorations in Northern Ireland, gang memorial walls, roadside crosses, and all the other "spontaneous shrines" (as I term them) that we see. Central to all of these phenomena is the conjunction of the performative memorializing of personal deaths in the framework of the social conditions that caused those deaths with the commemorative or celebratory. (To commemorate is, in a sense, to celebrate something or someone. I use the terms equivalently, but not interchangeably.) In a sense, death has always been publicly memorialized. Think of the funeral procession of hearse and cars down the street; the rituals held in houses of worship and in cemeteries. In these and other cases, though, participation in the ritual activities is restricted to a particular group—family and friends, for instance. I refer to the tendency to commemorate a deceased individual in front of an undifferentiated public that can then become participatory if it so chooses. First, then, I explore the concept of the public, beginning with rituals generally found in public, and not just rituals concerned with death and mourning. Historian Samuel Kinser cites the slaughtering of "steers and other animals before the Pope and other Roman notables after a parade through the city," as reported in a document circa A.D. 1140, as the earliest report of festive customs held prior to Lent, that is, Mardi Gras or carnival (Kinser 1990:3). This is clearly an expressive public event in that it is a festive or ritual act carried out in...
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In treating memory as a cultural rather than an individual faculty, this book provides an account of how bodily practices are transmitted in, and as, traditions. Most studies of memory as a cultural faculty focus on written, or inscribed transmissions of memories. Paul Connerton, on the other hand, concentrates on bodily (or incorporated) practices, and so questions the currently dominant idea that literary texts may be taken as a metaphor for social practices generally. The author argues that images of the past and recollected knowledge of the past are conveyed and sustained by ritual performances and that performative memory is bodily. Bodily social memory is an essential aspect of social memory, but it is an aspect which has until now been badly neglected. An innovative study, this work should be of interest to researchers into social, political and anthropological thought as well as to graduate and undergraduate students.
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We will examine the views of the country's political and cultural elite as well public opinion on the mass terror in Stalin's time. The authors conclude that public attitudes toward Stalin and the mass repressions are deeply contradictory. It is another powerful indicator that Russia still, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, does not have an ideology that can unite the majority of the elite and the masses. Russian society continues to oscillate between imperial dreams and liberal values, between beliefs in the authoritarian rule and democratic institutions as the desirable future of the country.
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The role of monuments in producing contested national histories and identities is increasingly receiving critical attention in geography. This paper contributes to the existing literature on monuments and nationalism by examining the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria and illustrating how it became a key site at which Afrikaners produced a distinct political identity in the late 1940s. Through examining the discourse surrounding the monument's inauguration in December 1949 it looks at five key discursive themes that attached different, but often complimentary, meanings to the monument. Through analysing these themes, I demonstrate how a contemporary Afrikaner identity was constructed through a particularistic interpretation of an heroic Voortrekker past and argue that the construction of this history and identity was governed by political debates in the 1930s and 1940s rather than any historical authenticity to Afrikaner nationalist claims. Moreover, the monument's inauguration just months after the election of the first apartheid government provides a useful window into the specificity of apartheid political identity. I argue that the representation of Afrikaner identity at the monument in distinctive ethnicist terms both legitimised, and was fundamental to the possibility of, apartheid. Finally, building on this analysis of apartheid I conclude by suggesting how this illuminates debates concerning South Africa's contemporary nation building project and the content of post apartheid identities.
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Many of the traditions which we think of as very ancient in their origins were not in fact sanctioned by long usage over the centuries, but were invented comparatively recently. This book explores examples of this process of invention - the creation of Welsh and Scottish ‘national culture’; the elaboration of British royal rituals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the origins of imperial rituals in British India and Africa; and the attempts by radical movements to develop counter-traditions of their own. It addresses the complex interaction of past and present, bringing together historians and anthropologists in a fascinating study of ritual and symbolism which poses new questions for the understanding of our history. © E. J. Hobsbawm, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Prys Morgan, David Cannadine, Bernard S. Cohn, Terence Ranger. 1983.
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In many different parts of the world people cordon off sites of great suffering or great heroism from routine use and employ these sites exclusively for purposes of remembrance. The author of this book turns to the landscape of contemporary Berlin in order to understand how some places are forgotten by all but eyewitnesses, whereas others become the sites of public ceremonies, museums, or commemorative monuments. The places examined mark the city’s Nazi past and are often rendered off limits to use for apartments, shops, or offices. However, only a portion of all “authentic” sites—places with direct connections to acts of resistance or persecution during the Nazi era—actually become designated as places of official collective memory. Others are simply reabsorbed into the quotidian landscape. Remembering leaves its marks on the skin of the city, and the goal of this book is to analyze and understand precisely how.
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Russian Society and the Orthodox Church examines the Russian Orthodox Church's social and political role and its relationship to civil society in post-Communist Russia. It shows how Orthodox prelates, clergy and laity have shaped Russians' attitudes towards religious and ideological pluralism, which in turn have influenced the ways in which Russians understand civil society, including those of its features - pluralism and freedom of conscience - that are essential for a functioning democracy. It shows how the official church, including the Moscow Patriarchate, has impeded the development of civil society, while on the other hand the non-official church, including nonconformist clergy and lay activists, has promoted concepts central to civil society.