Garrard Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent

Faith and Power in the New Russia
Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-2899-9
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten

Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent is 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 Resurgent argues 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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Garrard, John

Garrard, Carol

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religion & Politik, Religionsfreiheit
• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Christliche Kirchen, Konfessionen, Denominationen Östliche & Orientalische Orthodoxe Kirchen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations viii
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv
Note on Transliteration xix
PROLOGUE Sergiev Posad: Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent 1
Chapter One: The End of the Atheist Empire 14
Chapter Two: A New Hope 36
Chapter Three: Rebuilding Holy Moscow 70
Chapter Four: Accursed Questions: Who Is to Blame? 101
Chapter Five: Irreconcilable Differences: Orthodoxy and the West 141
Chapter Six: The Babylonian Legacy: Exiles, Martyrs, and Collaborators 181
Chapter Seven: A Faith-Based Army 207
EPILOGUE: Twenty Years After: From Party to Patriarch 242
Appendix A: Translated Documents 255
Appendix B: Authors’ Letter to the New York Times, May 27, 1990 261
Notes 263
Select Bibliography 309
Index 315

Über Autor(innen)

John Garrard is professor of Russian studies at the University of Arizona. Carol Garrard is an independent scholar. Together they are the authors of The Bones of Berdichev: The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman and Inside the Soviet Writers' Union.