Religion and Spirituality in Russia and Eastern Europe
Forthcoming Events
The first event of the RSREE Study Group for 2010-11 will be a seminar at The University of Leicester, to which all are warmly welcome:
Dr Philip Boobbyer
'Dead Souls? Spiritual Life and Death in Soviet Dissident Literature'
5.00-6.30pm, Friday 26 November 2010
Room 212, Attenborough Building, The University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH
Abstract: Much of Soviet dissident writing can be described as spiritual survival literature. The great novelists and memoirists sought to offer advice on how people could navigate through the pressures of Soviet life with their souls intact. In this paper, Dr Boobbyer examines the nature of this spiritual discourse, while also exploring the challenges of using oral history evidence for writing about issues of conscience and spiritual experience.
Biography: Dr Philip Boobbyer is Senior Lecturer in Russian and Soviet History and Deputy Head of the School of History at the University of Kent. He is particularly interested in the history of ideas, and in religious and moral experience in historical context. His publications include S.L.Frank: The Life and Work of a Russian Philosopher 1870-1950 (1995), The Stalin Era (2000) and Conscience, Dissent and Reform in Soviet Russia (2005).
For further details, contact Zoe Knox
Background
The Religion and Spirituality in Russia and Eastern Europe (RSREE) Study Group was created in 2009 to bring together the increasing number of scholars in Britain working on aspects of religion in Russia and Eastern Europe. By founding RSREE, the Convenors hope to create and sustain links between academics and postgraduate students in Britain and beyond researching religion and spirituality in the region. A closed mailing list is maintained by the Convenors; to be added to the list please contact them directly (see below for details).
Aims
The RSREE Study Group is broad in its geographical, historical and disciplinary scopes: it focuses on religion and spirituality in the former Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe across all historical periods and disciplines. The rationale behind the Group is to create and sustain a network of academics, scholars and pedagogs in Britain whose research and teaching interests relate to religion and spirituality in the region of BASEES’s remit. A substantial number of researchers now work in the area of religion broadly construed. The Study Group brings together scholars from anthropological, sociological and literary disciplines as well as historians and political scientists. The website will be an important way for scholars across the country to share ideas and information between workshops and conferences. In line with BASEES’s aim to advance education on the region for public benefit, the Study Group will open its events to the broader public.
Activities
The activities of the Study Group include the compilation of a newsletter which will alert the membership list to academic events related to the Group’s themes. The web site will also list news and events which may be of interest to its members. There will be an annual workshop for researchers working in the area as well as postgraduate students. The Study Group will organise at least one panel at the annual BASEES conference. Finally, a conference on a salient aspect of religion in the region will be held on a tri-annual basis.
Past Events
The most recent event of the RSREE Study Group was a seminar at the University of Sheffield on 30 April 2010. Professor Simon Dixon (SSEES, UCL) spoke on 'Celebrity monks in Late Imperial Russia'. The paper explored some unintended consequences of the revival of Orthodox 'learned monasticism' in the 1880s. Whereas K.P. Pobedonostsev envisaged the phalanx of zealots who emerged from Russia's theological academies over the next generation as a means of reinforcing clerical discipline, they proved instead to be an unstable influence on both the Church and wider society. Antonii (Vadkovskii), Antonii (Khrapovitskii), Sergii (Stragorodskii), Mikhail (Semenov), and Iliodor (Trufanov) were among the individuals discussed in the paper, which concentrated on attitudes to ecclesiastical authority, populist politics and individual celebrity.
The first event of the RSREE Study Group was a seminar at the University of Leicester on 4 December 2009. Dr Stella Rock (Baylor University, USA) spoke on ‘Living chronicles of our Fatherland’: The revival of the krestnyi khod (procession of the cross) in post-Soviet Russia. The paper explored the interplay of history, piety and politics at work in the creation and recreation of pilgrimage traditions in post-Soviet Russia. Focusing on the Velikoretskii and Ekaterinburg krestnye khody, it addressed the astonishing flourishing of the procession of the cross as a form of pilgrimage. The former is a revived tradition which is promoted by the Church as being over 600 years old, the latter a post-Soviet construction which commemorates the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family. Pilgrims’ perceptions were compared and contrasted with clerical representations of these pilgrimages, examining the role of historical memory in the creation of post-Soviet sacred space and ritual.
Contact
The Convenors of the RSREE Study Group are Miriam Dobson (University of Sheffield) and Zoe Knox (University of Leicester). Please contact them to be added to the RSREE mailing list.