Russian Orthodox Church

Taft R. F. The Great Entrance. A History of the Transfer of Gifts and other Preanaphoral Rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. [A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, vol. II]. Roma, 1975. (Orientalia Christiana Analecta; 200).

This essay was published in The Bible and Early Trinitarian Theology, edited by Christopher A. Beeley and Mark E. Weedman, for the CUAP Studies in Early Christianity (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2018); this is the uncorrected proofs. Exploring the humanity and divinity of Jesus, the Son's relation to the Father, and the agency of the Holy Spirit, it is one of five essays suggesting Johannine contributions to trinitarian discussions in the early church.

Should Russia become part of the West, or follow an Eastern path? This has been a centuries-old discussion among Russian intellectuals. For Westernizers in Russia, the " West " symbolized progress, freedom, democracy, civil society, normality, and a nation-state. Their opponents saw the West as representing moral decadence in the beginning and later capitalist exploitation. This paper attempts to lay out the foundations and the evolution of the 200-year-old discussion of Russia's place in the world. It briefly examines the period of Muscovite Russia, where the foundations of the authoritarian state tradition were laid and further strengthened. The paper then focuses on the period of Peter the Great's reign, in which educated Russians became increasingly acquainted with Western European culture and started having doubts about Russia's status in the face of perceived European superiority. Trying to summarize how the international and internal developments of the 1800s and 1900s have affected the debate about Russia's place between East and West, the paper then examines the current state of discussions in Russia under Putin's leadership and finally attempts to make predictions for the future.

Pussy Riot’s surprise punk prayer at the altar of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ Our Savior instigated significant controversy in Russia and resulted in the conviction of three Pussy Riot members on the charge of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” While the Russian Orthodox Church swiftly condemned the performance as blasphemous, Pussy Riot has contended that its punk prayer is consistent with the message of the Gospels. This study investigates the punk prayer controversy in relation to the figure of the holy fool, a radical behavioral model canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church and secularized in Russia’s literary and artistic traditions.

Символом Удмуртии стали родники. В прошлые времена удмурты охотно участвовали в православных обрядах водосвятия. Мифологические водные «хозяева» издавна были весьма значимы у финно-угорских народов, и, соответственно, природные водоёмы имели большое значение в их жизни и религии. А у русского населения горнозаводского Урала записаны легенды и предания о человеческих жертвах, которые якобы приносились при строительстве плотин и заводов. Здесь очевиден распространённый фольклорный мотив «строительной жертвы». Но на сходных мифологемах, поверьях, преданиях выстраивались улики против удмуртских крестьян из с. Мултан Вятской губернии, обвинённых в 1892 г. в ритуальном убийстве. Один из важных аспектов Мултанского дела оказался связан с представлениями удмуртов об опасных для людей водных «хозяевах».

Starodub A. V. Jurisdictional policy of the Russian Orthodox Church during 1917 –  1921: Ukrainian aspect. Manuscript.
Thesis for a Candidate’s degree on Speciality 07.00.02. – World History. M.S.Hrushevs’ky Institute of the Ukrainian Archeography and Source Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyjiv, 1999.
The thesis to be defended concerns the study of Russian Orthodox Church’s jurisdictional policy in the period of Civil War and the National Revolutions and its Ukrainian aspect in particular. A number of factors that influenced the formation of general principles of Russian Orthodox Church’s jurisdictional policy in the entire Russian Empire are analysed in this paper, which’s complied of original archive sources, most of which are first involved into scientific use. An attempt has been made to reconstruct a number of cases related to the problem of Orthodox Church’s status in the Ukraine as it been taken up at the All-Russian of 1917–1918 and All-Ukrainian of 1918 Sobors (Church Counsils).
Special attention has been paid to the specific of the “Ukrainian policy’s” evolution of ROC in the common Orthodox context. The degree of Ukrainian jurisdictional contradictions’ influences onto national-orthodox movements in North America, Poland, Rumania, Czechoslovakia was estimated here. The issue of probabile recognition of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine as autocephalic is studied here on the background of the redistribution of influence centres in the world of Orthodoxy after break-up of Russian Empire and in the context of contradictions between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Key words: Russian Orthodox Church, Sobor (Church Counsil), jurisdiction, autocephaly, autonomy, national-orthodox movement, inter-orthodoxy relations.

Abstract: during the building in Don Belogorsky Resurrection Monastery a cave which was earlier unknown was found. There were the items of the religious cult and the culture of the founders of the cave that dates from the end of the XVIII century (a crucifi xion, a pendent in the form of a heart, an adze, shoes, a silicic fl ake, candles, a coin etc.). Such fi ndings didn’t occur earlier among numerous chalk caves. Not only do they allow to present the work of the caves’ founders, but also to elicit new aspects that highlight a spiritual quest of the folk eastern orthodox
traditions in the zone of contact of the russian and ukrainian ethnies.

The article examines material situation of orthodox parish clergy of the Ekate-rinburg district on the eve of carrying out church reforms by the government of Alex-ander II. The author compares a situation on city, rural and factory parishes (both state, and private plants are considered). The article is based on materials the clergy registers of the Ekaterinburg district of the Perm province. Clergy registers have high information potential, allow to reveal the main official sources of the income of parish clergy. The article examines the extent to ensure the parish clergy allotments (arable land and hayfields), housing, which could compensate for the lack of salary and natural payments. Besides, the assessment of clergy of their material position on the eve of reforms and after their carrying out is compared (at the end of the seventies– the beginning of eighties of the nineteenth century).

The article is devoted to the creation and development of the higher ecclesiastical school in Russia in the XIX — early XX century. More specifically it deals with the history of «The idea of the Academy» as the basis of this school. The topic is relevant due to the Russian ecclesiastical and educational reforms in the recent years. Having studied materials of the pre-revolutionary reforms of theological academies in Russia, the projects, analytical reports and discussions, the author shows the influence of Western scientific and educational models, on the Russian universities’ experience and theological schools’ experience and implementation of the “idea of Academy” at different stages.
Keywords: Orthodox Theological Academy, the history of the spiritual education.

Сталинградская битва стала заметным фактом общественно-политической жизни Великобритании и США, одновременно явившись истоком многих перемен во внешнеполитической и социальной программе союзных государств. Соответствующая интерпретация военных событий подавалась в прессе Великобритании благодаря активной работе советского посольства. Предпринимались первые попытки оказания гуманитарной помощи. В прессе США реакция общественности на битву была менее активной. Общий настрой прессы союзных стран в 1942-1943 гг. менялся от тревожно-пессимистического (привлечение внимания, заблуждения, ошибки, обсуждение необходимости «второго фронта») до восторженного (после победы).

Аннотация. Автор статьи ставит своей целью критическое осмысление причины преследований духовенства и верующих Русской православной церкви со стороны большевиков и Советского государства. Тезис нынешних клерикалов о том, что причиной гонений на церковь и духовенство стало богоборчество большевиков, не выдерживает серьезной критики и является типичным историческим мифом. Вожди революции в Бога не верили, Бог для них был величиной несуществующей, поэтому бороться с пустым местом было бы нелепо. Кроме того, сама специфика идеологии марксизма не предполагает насильственной борьбы с религией, так как находит религию несамостоятельным явлением. Мотивом для преследований духовенства была не идеология, а реальная политическая ситуация.


Annotation. The author of the article aims at critical re-evaluation of the reasons for persecuting the clergy and the faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church by the Bolsheviks and the Soviet State. The thesis of current clergymen that the cause for persecuting the Church and the clergy was theomachy of the Bolsheviks does not hold up against strong criticism and is a typical historical myth. Revolution leaders did not believe in God, for them God was a non-existing figure, so fighting with a nonentity would be ridiculous. Furthermore, the specificity of Marxism ideology does not involve forcible struggle against religion as it finds religion to be a dependent phenomenon. The motive for persecuting the clergy was not ideology, but a real political situation.

The article is based on the memoirs and interviews, and attempts to address the pastoral practice of the well known Orthodox priest, archpriest Alexander Men (1935-1990). The author examines his attitude towards reading of the Holy Scripture, to the common prayer of the priest together with the lay people, to the way he thought the new Christians should participate in the Liturgy. The author also discusses the reading practices of the congregation of father Alexander and the characteristics of his spiritual guidance. The author comes to the conclusion that the pastoral practices of the father Alexander were traditional for the Orthodox Church, but to a certain extent, he has adapted them to the needs of his parishioners. The author notes that further study of the pastoral care of father Alexander Men must contain the comparison with the pastoral practices of his contemporaries and predecessors (for example, priests Nikolay Golubtsov and Dimitry Dudko).

В статье на основе мемуарных свидетельств и интервью делается попытка рассмотреть пастырские практики известного православного священника протоиерея Александра Меня (1935–1990). Автор рассматривает его отношение к чтению Священного Писания, к совместной молитве со священником, к тому, как новоначальные христиане должны участвовать в литургии. Также автор останавливается на круге чтения прихожан отца Александра и на особенностях его духовного руководства. Автор приходит к выводу, что пастырские практики отца Александра были традиционны для Православной церкви, но при этом в определенной степени адаптировались им к потребностям его прихожан. Автор отмечает, что дальнейшее исследование пастырства отца Александра Меня должно идти в сопоставлении с пастырскими практиками его современников и предшественников (например, священников Николая Голубцова и Димитрия Дудко).

On June 3, the European Union reached an agreement on the sixth package of sanctions against Russia after difficult talks with Hungary. To avoid its veto, the other member states had to remove the name of the Moscow patriarch from the EU’s blacklist. Why does the prime minister of a non-Orthodox state so fervently support to head of the Russian Orthodox Church, the main ally of Putin in the war against Ukraine?

Read the whole text at: https://publicorthodoxy.org/2022/06/14/why-did-viktor-orban-block-the-eus-sanctions-against-patriarch-kirill-of-moscow/

On the occasion of the opening in 2020 of the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, stylistic trends of modern Orthodox architecture and ecclesiastical art are analyzed. It’s considered the phenomenon of the reconstruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, its influence on the development of monumental religious painting in Russia, as well as the building the Cathedral of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church on Lubyanka. The problematic of the style of new Orthodox architecture and ecclesiastical art is formulated in terms of eclecticism (historicism) that has a programmatic symbolic meaning in the context of the “statization” of Russian art culture of the past few decades.

Рассматриваются имена, которыми в календарном обрядовом фольклоре обозначается Масленица, воспринимаемая антропоморфно. Оба основных имени – Авдотья (Дуня) и Прасковея – восходят к календарным олицетворениям христианских святых: св. Евдокии и св. Параскевы-Пятницы. В простонародном восприятии Евдокия, Параскева-Пятница, Масленица имеют много общего.

Th e Miracle in Narva, 11 May 1558:
On the History of Russian Polemics against
the Reformation in the 16th Century
Narva was the fi rst town occupied by Russian forces in 1558 during the
Livonian War (1558–1582). Th e conquest of this border town had a huge
propaganda meaning: both contemporary Livonian and Russian chronicles
paid special attention to it. On 11 May 1558 a confl agration broke out
in Narva that quickly spread throughout the whole town due to a strong
wind. Having seen what was happening in Narva, Russian forces successfully
attacked Narva from Ivangorod. Th e Russians interpreted their victory
as a sign of divine mercy. Th is belief was connected most notably with
a miracle that apparently had happened in Narva. According to Russian sources, the reason for the confl agration that brought fortune to Russian
forces was a Narva citizen who threw an Orthodox icon into fi re. However,
when the Russians entered the town they found the icon undamaged.
Several more or less similar variants of this story are found in diff erent
sources although they diff er in details. Th e article argues that this miraculous
story is signifi cant with regard to interdenominational relations in
16th century Eastern Europe. At that time Russian polemics against heresy
and the Reformation made accusations of iconoclasm against Lutheranism,
which was widespread in Livonia.
Recent research on the Livonian War has begun to focus on the religious
aspects in Moscow’s politics, i.e. understanding the military campaigns of
Ivan IV as struggle against Lutheran heretics in Livonia and Lithuania.
Th us the conquest of Narva appears to be one of the fi rst episodes in the
war of the Orthodox tsar against the heretics. Th e importance of these ideas
was confi rmed already in 1558 by the fact that the icons found in Narva
became offi cial objects of worship immediately after the town’s conquest.
Th e icons were sent to the Moscow, where they were take to the Kremlin
and handed over to the Church of the Assumption of the Birth-Giver of
God. Later the icons were kept in the tsar’s palace for a while before being
additionally decorated and sent back to Narva. At that time, it was a common
practice to bring icons from all over Russia to Moscow for a temporary
or permanent deposit. Th e main person organising the worship of the Narva
icons, as well as others from Novgorod seemed to be Archbishop Pimen
of Novgorod, who was at that time prominent within the tsar’s immediate
circle. Th e main motive behind the Narva miracle may be considered
the Russian polemics of the 16th century related to Lutheranism and other
movements that denied the worship of icons. At the same time, it was quite
logical that there were Orthodox icons in the border town. Th e Icons of
Narva represented St. Nicholas the miracle-worker and Mother of God
Hodegetria who were the two most popular subjects depicted on icons.

This text discusses several aspects of the interwar history of the Orthodox Church in Romanian Transylvania through the lens of the early life and political achievements of Father Liviu Stan (1910–1973). By using a microhistorical approach, his life stands as proof of the ability of ideological reconversion to describe the various totalitarian challenges that defined the destiny of an entire generation of Orthodox theologians in the twentieth century. Rather than painting the biographical tapestry of Father Stan's life, the main focus of this text falls precisely on his interactions with various ideologies (Fascism and Communism), his ideological and professional reconversions, and Transylvanian Orthodox theologians’ ability to survive when confronted with various totalitarian challenges.

This article focuses on the activities of Metropolitan Philareta (Vahromeeva), who are in-separably connected with the life of the Russian Orthodox Church in Belarus during the last two decades of the twentieth century and the ensuing decades. In Belarus, from that time to this day interfaith peace reigns as a manifestation of tolerance, which is a positive example for the whole of modern society. The article is written for professional historians and anyone interested in the global problem of religious tolerance and the history of the Russian Orthodox Church in Belarus.

Сегодня Всехсвятский храм возле метро Сокол является одним из самых доходных в Москве. При это о том, что в XVIII-XIX вв. он служил усыпальницей грузинской аристократии, ныне почти не помнят из-за неоднократных изменений его интерьера и произошедшего в 1981-м сноса прилегающего погоста. Анализ сохранившихся описаний и характеристики нескольких уцелевших надгробий позволяют составить – пускай дискретное – представление о том, каким был облик некрополя внутри храма и возле его стен. Данные же из метрических записей дают дополнительную информацию о социальном составе погребённых, а систематизация эпитафий позволяет понять, каким было их функциональное предназначение.
Nowadays the church of All Saints near subway station Sokol is one of if not the most profitable in Moscow. Due to the numerous changes of its interior and the demolition (partly removal) of the churchyard in 1981, the fact that this church located in XVIII-XIX centuries in the namesake village of Moscow county, had been also the necropolis for Georgian nobility, was deleted from the public memory. An analyze of archival descriptions and features of a very few remained tombstones enables to create – even discretely – the perception of how the cemetery looked like inside the church and around its walls. The data from the metric books of the parish provides us with an additional information about social accessory of the buried people, while the systematization of epitaphs shows its functional purpose.

In 1910, parts of Iran were under Russian occupation. In the occupied northwestern city of Tabriz, the French Catholic mission began to build a new church, which today is one of the largest churches in the Middle East. Previous scholarship has not explored the history of this edifice. This article locates the establishment of this church in the urban history of
Tabriz. It elucidates the geopolitical context of the city during a period of widespread social turmoil. Using an array of French and Persian archival documents, the paper narrates a story with crucial details about strangers becoming friends and friends collaborating with one another to build an urban construction in the midst of protest, revolution, and
war.

В данной статье исследуются начинания митрополита Иосифа (Семашко) (1798–1868), который стоял во главе Литовской православной епархии, в сфере народного просвещения. Его деятельность рассмотрена в контексте его взглядов, его представлений об истории литовско-белорусских губерний и общности этого края с Россией. Статья фокусируется на его роли в реформировании народной школы в Северо-Западном крае Российской империи в 1840–1860-х годах. В частности, в 1863 г. митрополит Иосиф предложил осуществить «слияние» народных училищ Виленского учебного округа и приходских школ Литовской православной епархии.
This article examines endeavors of Metropolitan Iosif (Semashko) (1798–1868), who was in charge of the Lithuanian Orthodox eparchy, in the field of the public education. His activities are considered in the context of his convictions, his ideas about history of the Lithuanian-Belarusian Provinces and about theirs community with Russia. The article focuses on his role in reform of the public school in the North-Western Provinces of the Russian Empire in the 1840–1860s. In particular, in 1863 Metropolitan Iosif suggested to achieve the “merger” of government schools of the Vilna educational district and parish schools of the Lithuanian Orthodox eparchy.

Review of Norman Russell, Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age (Oxford University Press, 2019).

Forum of the International Orthodox Theological Association, 4 May 2020

https://iota-web.org/2020/05/04/norman-russell-gregory-palamas/

THE NEW ARCHIVE INFORMATION ABOUT CAVES IN GALIEVKA IN PODONYE (REVISITING MOTIVATION OF CAVE DIGGERS AND AUTHORITIES’ ATTITUDE TO THEM). The paper deals with the history of artificial cave in chalk bank of the river Don near Galievka village. It is written on the basis of archive information found by V.V. Stepkin in 2014. There was information about the names of the cave creators: Aleksey Dubov (began digging in 1817) and Miron Gnoevoy (continued digging in 1865). In the letter to tsar Aleksandr II written by peasant Miron Gnoevoy explains motivation of the cave builders by visitation of Holy Mother and saints. The report of archbishop Seraphim published in the article helps understand motivation of the authorities who prohibited the cave building because they were afraid of superstitious beliefs and offense against the law. The article demonstrates the difficult relations inside the developing civil society institutions represented by peasant community of the village of Galievka and the state authority.

As tensions on the Russian-Ukrainian border grew, the difference between the two main Orthodox churches in Ukraine became clearer. While the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) spoke straightforwardly about the prospect of the Russian invasion and urged believers to protect their Homeland, the leadership of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) remained silent up until recently. Several UOC-MP public figures and media outlets repeatedly dismissed the prospect of invasion as "hysteria" and accused the OCU of spreading panic in the interest of the West.

Russian commemoration book (pomyannik), dated to the early 20th c. discovered in Aceldama, Jerusalem, during the excavations of disturbed burials near the Greek Monastery of St. Onuphrius the Great. The original archaeological context of the find, a Medieval charnel-house, is discussed, together with possible identification of the book owner, a woman pilgrim from Russia.