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FEDERAL STATE AUTONOMOUS EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

FOR HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

Saint Petersburg School of Arts and Humanities

MASTER'S THESIS

Field of Study: 46.04.01 “History”

Remembrance, repentance and restoration: an Orthodox Brotherhood's Critical Memory of the Soviet repressions

Student of Group ¹: ÌÏÈ181Ñ

Lewis Clarkson Purcell

Academic Supervisor

Ph.D. (equivalent), Professor Jeanna Kormina

Saint Petersburg 2020

Abstract

orthodox church soviet historical

My thesis examines the historical consciousness of a ROC (Russian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate) organization and community - the St. Petersburg branch of the Transfiguration Brotherhood. I uncover both the historicist and nonhistoricist elements of their understanding of the past. Furthermore, I examine their historical memory narratives of the Soviet era. These narratives contend with dominant memory actors' narratives. The Brotherhood sees them as impacting the present, too. In this way they are critical historical memory narratives. Finally, I examine the acting out of their critical memory and historical consciousness combined. I reveal this combination in analysis of how their seminal memory acting event - the annual (leave out national, it's redundant) "Prayer of Remembrance” - is also an attempt to draw a greater Russian public into this praxis. My thesis argues that the Brotherhood's memory acting (including its initiating of a social movement) can be seen as the result of the interplay between their historical consciousness, their critical historical memory narratives, and their understanding of their Orthodox Christian faith. In the course of this argument, I reveal how these factors mutually shape each other. This proves vital to truly understanding the Brotherhood as a memory actor.

Acknowledgments

My academic supervisor, Jeanna Kormina provided essential guidance and support that made this thesis into a reality. I am deeply appreciative. She also introduced me to my main contact - Anna Lepekhina to whom I am indebted for her time and opening a window into the Brotherhood's life.

I also want to thank Professor Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov who introduced me to the world of anthropology resulting in this thesis. I am also grateful to Professor Julia Lajus who created a program that made my dreams a reality. The Higher School of Economics and the Russian Ministry of Education played their part in this, too, and deserve my thanks.

My groupmates made this academic and social journey unforgettable and contributed to my thesis as a whole. I thank each of them. However, Lois Kalb deserves special mention. Her deep engagement and feedback shaped my thesis in multiple ways. Her availability to answer questions and take up various “thesis-writing” challenges also proved invaluable.

I also want to thank Dr. Karin Shapiro of Duke University who believed I could be a serious researcher and writer long before I thought in such ways.

My wife deserves a special mention. She allowed me to devote time and energy to this thesis while she single-handedly raised our three sweet kids. I will never be able to repay her but will always be immeasurably grateful. I thank my parents, too, who taught me to love Russia, history, and their God - to whom I owe all of the above and below.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Historiography

Sources & Methodology

Argument

1. The Brotherhood's Historical Consciousness

1.1 Who and what is the Brotherhood

1.2 The Brotherhood's Historical Consciousness

1.2.1 The Brotherhood's Historicist Historicity

1.2.2 The Brotherhood's Christian Historicity

1.2.3 The Brotherhood's Understanding of Memory

1.3 Conclusion

2. The Brotherhood's Critical Memory

2.1 The Brotherhood's Narrative

2.2 The Brotherhood's Critical Memory

2.2.1 Rejection of Dominant Narratives

2.2.2 An Alternative Past, Present & Future

2.2.3 The Present as Tainted by the Past

2.3 Conclusion

3. The Brotherhood's Memory Praxis

3.1 How to “work through a hard past”

3.1.1 As a religious community

3.1.2 As a Memory Actor

3.2 The “Prayer of Remembrance” as a Social Movement

3.3 Conclusion

Conclusion

References

Introduction

Historical memory narratives in Russia lived through a strange year in 2017. One hundred years had passed since the February and October Revolutions. These historical events changed the world forever. Yet, Russia's primary memory actor - the Russian state -downplayed commemoration of these events. Olga Malinova, “The Embarrassing Centenary: Reinterpretation of the 1917 Revolution in the Official Historical Narrative of Post-Soviet Russia (1991-2017),” Nationalities Papers 46, no. 2 (March 4, 2018): 272-89, doi:10.1080/00905992.2017.1386639, 273. Others did not. From November 8-10^th countless professors (many from top universities), cultural figures, and activists from all over Russia gathered for a conference entitled: “The Spiritual Results of Revolution in Russia: Collective Man and the Tragedy of Individuals.” For 3 days they spoke on topics ranging from “The Results of the Russian Catastrophe of the 20^th Century”, “Man as an Object of the Soviet Experiment” to “What's Next? In Search of an Answer to the Challenge of Revolution”. The organizers boasted over 250 attendees. They brought together a slew of scholars and intellectuals for their "academic-practical conference" to analyze the impact of the Russian Revolutions.

Though the speakers and participants were from all different backgrounds the organizers successfully framed the narratives and discussion in their own terms. They aimed to make 2017 a year of remembrance and hosted over 200 events across Russia, pinnacling with "The Spiritual Results of Revolution" conference. “Aktsiia Natsional'nogo Pokaianiia,” accessed April 17, 2020, https://pokayanie1917.ru/anp. But who organized all of this and why? Interestingly a ROC (Russian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate) organization and community - the Preobrazhenskoe Bratstvo (translated “The Transfiguration Brotherhood, henceforth simply the “Brotherhood”) organized these events. The Brotherhood's dedication as a memory actor of the Soviet Repressions stands in stark contrast to the state's position and gives them outsized influence.

But why does this ROC religious community care so much about memory and work so hard as a memory actor? Understanding them and their motivation is difficult. This thesis aims to make sense of the motivations and work of the Brotherhood as a memory actor. It explores the brotherhood through the lens of their historical consciousness, an approach borrowed from the anthropology of history. This approach enables analysis of the content (the historical memory narratives) and form (means of promoting their narrative) of their work as memory actors.

The aims of this thesis are two-fold. The primary goal is to use an anthropological approach to study a religious social actor that works as a memory actor. In doing so, I unlock a deeper understanding of the interdependence of this memory actor's historical consciousness, historical memory narratives, and the rituals by which they act out these ideas. This highlights the importance of historical consciousness to their memory acting. This aspect is often overlooked in favor of political understandings of memory actors' narratives and actions. The second goal is to nuance the scholarship on the ROC as a memory actor of the Soviet Repressions in contemporary Russia.

My primary research question reads: how can appreciating this memory actor's historical consciousness reveal the interdependence of beliefs about what happened in history and the practice of these beliefs about history as both social action and memory acting? To better answer this question, I break it into sub-questions that reflect the structure of my thesis. Chapter 1 asks the question: what is the Brotherhood and what is their historical consciousness? Chapter 2 asks the question: what are the Brotherhood's historical memory narratives of the Soviet past and how do they see them as connected to the present? Chapter 3 asks the question: Why is the Brotherhood such a dedicated memory actor and why does it use its unique repertoire of tools of memory acting? Answering these questions in this order answers the primary research question and achieves the aims of this thesis.

Historiography

The above question places my research into the budding field of the anthropology of history. A field that recognizes the simple but revolutionary fact that most societies and people live life with an understanding of history that differs greatly from standard Western academic perceptions of the subject. This academic perception includes ideas like temporal linearity, a clear separation of the past, present and future, and understanding the past exclusively on evidence/ objectively. This field claims that even “scientific” Western societies, however, combine these with “alternative historicizing practices”. Stephan Palmié and Charles Stewart, “Introduction: For an Anthropology of History,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6, no. 1 (July 16, 2016): 207-36, doi:10.14318/hau6.1.014, 210. Stating that people live with an understanding of how “such past goings-on might relate to the world as people… know it” that differs greatly from historicity as understood by scholars. Palmié and Stewart, “Introduction: For an Anthropology of History”, 226. Until recently scholars often assumed that only non-Western societies lived with different understandings of historicity. Charles Stewart's writing, along with other scholars in the field, counteracts this assumption.

Using Foucauldian language, UK anthropologist, Matthew Hodges, describes the present-day academic understanding of temporality as a "regime of historicity". Matt Hodges, “History's Impasse: Radical Historiography, Leftist Elites, and the Anthropology of Historicism in Southern France,” Current Anthropology 60, no. 3 (June 2019): 391-413, doi:10.1086/703204, 392. He claims that the West's understanding of history - its historicity - has been so normativized that few question it as the only accurate historicity. This historicity is characterized by the firm belief in the irreversible nature of linear temporality. Originally scholars saw this as the only valid form of historicity. However, in the 1980s anthropologists published works that suggested that certain non-Western societies and cultures live with different historicities. Marshall Sahlins, “Other Times, Other Customs: The Anthropology of History,” American Anthropologist 85, no. 3 (September 1983): 517-44, doi:10.1525/aa.1983.85.3.02a00020. In the last two decades, scholars began to recognize what the normativity of historicist historicity obscured: outside of academia (perhaps inside, too) people in the West might also live with nonhistoricist historicity, multiple historicities, or combine historicist and nonhistoricist historicities.Charles Stewart, “Historicity and Anthropology,” Annual Review of Anthropology 45, no. 1 (October 21, 2016): 79-94, doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-102215-100249, 88. Thus, these anthropologists of history began an overhaul of their discovered “regime of historicity”. This Western academic historicity became just one historicity - historicist historicity - in a world of historicities.

Marshall Sahlins, the first anthropologist to write explicitly about the anthropology of history, documented a powerful non-Western example of such alternative historicity. This is a story, from his ethnographic notes taken in what is now modern-day Zambia, told by a “subclan headman of the Luapala Kingdom of Kazemba”:

We came to the country of Mwanshya.... I killed a puku [antelope]... We gave some of the meat to Mwanshya. He asked where the salt came from and he was told. So he sent people who killed me. My mother was angry and went to fetch medicine to send thunderbolts. She destroyed Mwanshya's village.... Lukoshi then told me to go forward and that he would stay and rule Mwanshya's country. So we came away.... Lubunda... heard about my strength. He came to see us and married my mother. They went away and I remained.” … All these events, including the narrator's death, transpired before he was born. Sahlins, “Other Times, Other Customs: The Anthropology of History”, 523.

It would seem person understands history in a different way than most modern readers. However, the anthropology of history questions this seemingly obvious conclusion. When a contemporary teenager and citizen of Russia says a phrase like "we won the Great Patriotic War" - one must ask, in what historicity is this statement said? Just as with the above story of the tribal leader, the teenager refers to an event that happened long before he was born, and yet he rhetorically places himself in the memory of the Great Patriotic War. As Sahlins wrote:

The problem now is to explode the concept of history by the anthropological experience of culture. The heretofore obscure histories of remote islands deserve a place alongside the self-contemplation of the European past or the history of "civilizations" - for their own remarkable contributions to a historical understanding. We thus multiply our conceptions of history by the diversity of structures. Suddenly, there are all kinds of new things to consider. Sahlins, “Other Times, Other Customs: The Anthropology of History”, 534.

Thus, his work pointed to the simultaneous existence - and equality - of different historicities in different cultures.

Charles Stewart continues to “explode history” by building on Sahlin's work in this budding field. His works, mostly co-authored with British and American anthropologists, set the tone and terminology for the anthropology of history. This field focuses on uncovering the “various methods… for perceiving and relating to the past” and how they represent this past. Stewart, “Historicity and Anthropology”, 84. Stewart also believes it to be about how this perception and relation to the past “inform[s] how we all view and experience our respective worlds and anticipate their futures.” Stephan Palmié and Charles Stewart, “Introduction,” in The Varieties of Historical Experience, ed. Stephan Palmié and Charles Stewart (Routledge, 2019), 1-29, doi:10.4324/9780429456527-1, 6. In his work, historicity is not defined in terms of historicist historicity, rather the opposite: historicity defines historicism. Importantly to my research, Stewart's work recognizes that "modern" Euroamerican contemporaries know the past” in an “ecology of historicities”. Hodges, “History's Impasse: Radical Historiography, Leftist Elites, and the Anthropology of Historicism in Southern France”, 410; Palmié and Stewart, “Introduction.” Palmié and Stewart, “Introduction”, 6. This fits with the idea of Matthew Hodges “that historicist historicity coexists and can hybridize with other historicities.” Hodges, “History's Impasse: Radical Historiography, Leftist Elites, and the Anthropology of Historicism in Southern France”, 393. Stewart calls this mixing of historicities - “hybrid historicity.” Palmié and Stewart, “Introduction: For an Anthropology of History”, 227. Thus, historicity is how people or persons perceive, relate to, and know the past including their understanding of how it relates to the present and future. Historicist historicity - dominant in Western academia - is seen as just one of many possible historicities that can be mixed and combined to form "hybrid historicities".

Stewart recognizes that acknowledging “hybrid historicities” can prevent misinterpretations in research. Most importantly situations in which “anthropologists could highlight the political content of counterhistories and neglect the particular principles and practices on which they depend.” Stewart, “Historicity and Anthropology”, 81. This idea proved relevant to my research as I almost got sidetracked by the political content of their “counterhistories”. The Brotherhood's historical consciousness proved to be more important to understanding them as memory actors. My work can be seen as similar to a recent work in the field by Matt Hodges entitled “History's Impasse: Radical Historiography, Leftist Elites, and the Anthropology of Historicism in Southern France". In this work, he dissects the work of radical historians who attempted to escape the historicist paradigm in their historical work and local leftist activism in villages in Southern France. He highlights how their work proposed an alternative to historicist historicity, but also in many ways failed to effectively live out this proposal. My work builds on Hodges', Stewart's, and Sahlin's work by examining a social actor in Western society that exists in the historicist historicity paradigm, and yet also subverts and transforms this historicity through its unique historical consciousness. Thus, it provides an example of such a “hybrid historicity”.

My work is significant because it reveals a group who lives out a “hybrid historicity” in their historical consciousness and seek to replicate it in their work as a memory actor. This approach is unique in memory studies and the anthropology of history.

As an interdisciplinary work, I borrow from other fields, too. In the field of memory studies, I take the work of Olga Malinova - a Moscow-based professor at the Higher School of Economics and one of Russia's premier memory scholars - as a basis for my work. I borrow from her definitions of most of the basic terms in the field: public memory, memory actor, myth, narrative, etc. Contextualizing my research required building on understandings of the ROC's memory politics. I found these interpretations in the works of these three scholars: Igor Torbakov, a memory studies scholar of Ukrainian origin, Margarete Zimmerman, a Polish memory scholar, and Karin Hyldal Christensen, a scholar of the ROC's memory of the Soviet Repressions. For a broader understanding of Russia's public memory (of the repressions) I looked to the works of Alexander Etkind, Alexei Miller, and others, too.

Understanding memory more conceptually, and particularly as it relates to religion lead me to the work of Jan Assmann, one of the foremost scholars in the field and two French scholars: the father of modern memory studies - Maurice Halbwachs, and an important sociologist of religion - Daniele Hervieu-Leger. Daniele Hervieu-leger, Religion As A Chain Of Memory (New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2000). Assman's understandings of the types of memory and especially "cultural memory" have a role in my work. Halbwach's writings on early Christianity and the role of memory in keeping the religion "authentic" play a similar role. Additionally, I draw from two scholars of other fields whose work intersects with memory. The scholar Lorenzo Zamponi - a prominent academic on the intersection of memory and social movements and Houston Baker Jr. a philologist and African American Studies scholar whose term “critical memory” is vital to my work.

Sources & Methodology

My fieldwork focused on the St. Petersburg branch of the Brotherhood as a local memory actor of the Soviet Repressions. My materials centered around several in-depth interviews with one of the main leaders of the local branch of the Brotherhood - Anna Lepekhina. I participant-observed at an all-day "academic-practical" conference organized by the Brotherhood - "Ethics after the Gulag" and their all-day, annual event “Prayer of Remembrance”. At the latter event the Brotherhood sets up stations throughout the city to which anyone can come read the names of those who suffered from the Soviet Repressions. I also visited a temporary exhibition created by them and displayed at the Dostoyevsky Museum in St. Petersburg entitled “Man at the Breaking Point” (they described it as about the “tragic events of 1917-1918” “«Chelovek Na Perelome» | SFI,” accessed April 17, 2020, https://sfi.ru/announcements/otkrytie-vystavki-chelovek-na-perelome.html.). At these events, I saw and heard firsthand the historical memory narratives promoted by the Brotherhood's leaders and laymen as well as non-Brotherhood participants. I also observed the tools they used to promote these narratives.

In my fieldwork and interviews I aimed at a qualitative understanding of their work as memory actors. In this interdisciplinary work, I borrowed my methods from anthropology. I worked to discover the historical “practicises and orientations” of a people or group and capturing “their inner worlds of thought and experience” of this history. Palmié and Stewart, “Introduction: For an Anthropology of History”, 229. Participant-observation at two all-day public memory events organized by the Brotherhood enabled this. Between events I took in-depth interviews with a Brotherhood leader, Lepekhina, and Brotherhood member - Dmitrii Volnenko.

All of this (and the textual sources I mention later) I view as text which I analyze from the approach of critical discourse, particularly focusing on intertextual analysis, described by Fairclough as “the connection between language and social context.” Norman Fairclough, “Discourse and Text: Linguistic and Intertextual Analysis within Discourse Analysis,” Discourse & Society 3, no. 2 (April 1992): 193-217, doi:10.1177/0957926592003002004, 195. I examine not just the words and language used by the Brotherhood both in personal conversations and in public events but also their actions and activities as part of the communicative act. This is a communicative act with a narrative promoting a very intentional message. A message developed by the Brotherhood, as a memory actor and an initiator of a social movement, in over two decades of existence.

To recognize my fieldwork and oral interview sources as credible it is important to note my position - as the researcher, interviewer, and interpreter of these sources. Analyzing how I might have been seen by those with whom I spoke, interacted, and took interviews. Those with whom I had brief interactions likely saw in me an oddity: a self-identified student with a thick foreign accent asking questions about memory and politics. Brotherhood members with whom I had extended conversations - through participation in their events - often found my subject of study (themselves) intriguing. They often asked my religious and historical beliefs, I readily shared, as the overlap in our beliefs enabled them to quickly open up to me. They often invited me to more of their events, shared with me about some wonderful aspects of the Brotherhood, and in short - inferred, or said outright, that I should get to know them better, and implied that I would then want to join them. Although a far cry from the experiences felt by Susan Harding documented in her now-famous article, "Convicted by the Holy Spirit: The Rhetoric of Fundamental Baptist Conversion" similarities abound. One example follows: as Harding asked questions of fundamentalist churchgoers, she realized that "[i]t was inconceivable to them that anyone with an appetite for the gospel as great as mine was simply "gathering information," was just there "to write a book."” They saw her actually in the spiritual process of "searching” and assumed God to be leading her to Him through her work. Susan Harding, “Convicted by the Holy Spirit: The Rhetoric of Fundamental Baptist Conversion,” American Ethnologist 14, no. 1 (February 1987): 167-81, doi:10.1525/ae.1987.14.1.02a00100, 171. I felt the same feeling from those with whom I interacted. They were kind but also had a smile, almost a smirk, on their face. One that seemed to indicate that they knew that though I thought I was just doing research; I was in fact on my way to joining their group. Thus, it seems they likely saw me as both an ally in their causes and a potential convert. But that they would talk to me at all, truly strengthened my sources, rather than just relying on the words of the Brotherhood's leadership and publications.

Anna Lepekhina - my main contact and most important source - likely saw our relationship slightly differently than many other non-leaders of the Brotherhood. Trained in an entirely different profession, her desire to work for the Brotherhood led her to become a designer for their publishing house. Although she never stated this explicitly, from our interactions I garnered that she does much more than just that - she also coordinates many of their events in the city, travels to (and perhaps helps organize) Brotherhood events all around the country, and works on building connections with likeminded members of civil society, academia, and religious institutions. It quickly became clear to me that she saw me as such a contact - as a potential ally. This likely contributed to her willingness to spend hours at a time answering my questions. It doubtless also made her willing to explain at a deeper level the Brotherhood's religious and philosophical underpinnings. Her work with the Brotherhood's national structures alleviated fears that my sources gave me only a local picture of the Brotherhood's beliefs and works.

As she is also a student of history and as the Brotherhood is generally a quite intellectual organization - my work and methods did not surprise or scare her as they might have others. Similarly, my religious family background and love for Russia allowed her to see in me even more of a potential ally, rather than a potential convert. And I think it is this that, at moments, allowed me to discover moments of the Brotherhood's beliefs and positions that their more public sources do not state.

On the other hand, I must also recognize the limits that this type of relationship produces. Lepekhina shared with me, even if a more intimate and detailed picture than many get, a public face of the organization. And one that is polished to attract - not push away - potential allies. Topics or stances that we might have a different opinion on could have been avoided by her. This is where I had to look outside of my participant observation and interviews as sources to textual sources. I primarily use published and publicly available sources: their website and affiliated websites, social media accounts associated with them, and publicly available printed materials such as brochures, pamphlets, and books. However, in my research, I use unpublished textual sources generously shared with me by Lepekhina. All of these textual sources - theses of “repentance”, the texts of the litany-prayers they use in the “Prayer of Repentance”, a pdf they used to convince St. Petersburg's Metropolitan of the importance of their work, etc. - proved vital in cross-checking and confirming ideas and conclusions drawn from my fieldwork. They allowed me to confirm the relatively homogenous nature of the Brotherhood members' and leaders' thinking and practices.

Argument

My first chapter uncovers the Brotherhood's historicist and nonhistoricist understandings of the past. Next, I examine their historical memory narratives. I show how they see this memory as tainting the present. In the final chapter, I examine the praxis of their critical memory and historical consciousness. I uncover how their seminal memory acting event - the annual national "Prayer of Remembrance" - is the acting out of their beliefs about the past. Furthermore, it is also an attempt to draw Russia's public into their praxes by initiating a social movement of memory. In sum, my thesis argues that the Brotherhood's memory acting (including its initiating of a social movement) is the praxis of the interplay between their historical consciousness, their critical historical memory narratives, and their Orthodox Christian faith. This, in turn, reveals these factors' interdependence and their importance in making sense of the Brotherhood as a memory actor.

1. The Brotherhood's Historical Consciousness

"The memory of my [Orthodox Christian] ancestors brought me back to the Church [ROC]," Elena expressed to me in a matter-of-fact tone. Informal Conversation with Elena, a Brotherhood member. St. Petersburg, Russia. May 6, 2019. Our informal conversation over dinner happened by chance. We sat by each other in an overcrowded banquet hall at the end of an all-day conference hosted in St. Petersburg, Russia by the Brotherhood. Elena is not a leader in the Brotherhood, just a longtime member. But her words revealed an interesting understanding of the past. Her words gave it agency. They implied that memory can directly interfere in the present. Statements like this forced me to look beyond the Brotherhood's historical memory narratives and examine their historical consciousness.

I use the term "historical consciousness" borrowing from Stewart's work where he defines it as the "basic assumptions that a society makes about the shape of time and the relationship of past, present and future”. Charles Stewart, Dreaming And Historical Consciousness In Island Greece, 1st ed. (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2017), 2. Scholars have generally seen historical consciousness as historicist - which Stewart describes as a way of thinking about the past that is “widely shared as a form of common sense in Western societies.” Stewart, Dreaming And Historical Consciousness In Island Greece, 1. He, however, claims that historical consciousness' form will be different in different societies and can only be uncovered through ethnographic research. I build off this idea by proposing that the Brotherhood though not a society, but rather as a religious community, organization, and memory actor has its historical consciousness: assumptions about time, and the past and how they relate to the present and future.

This chapter aims to answer two questions: (1) who and what is the Brotherhood? and (2) what is their unique historical consciousness? The latter question can only be answered sufficiently if the former is first answered fully.

1.1 Who and what is the Brotherhood

It is difficult to define the Brotherhood. There are few similar organizations, religious or secular, in contemporary Russi. They are first and foremost a Christian religious community within the ROC. The ROC itself holds a contradictory position in Russian society. On one hand, the ROC is the biggest church in the Russian Federation. A poll in 2014 found that over 60% of the population of Russia identifies as Russian Orthodox. On the other hand, less than 50% of those people visit church once a year and 60% of them had never taken communion. Jeanne Kormina and Sonja Luehrmann, “The Social Nature of Prayer in a Church of the Unchurched: Russian Orthodox Christianity from Its Edges,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 86, no. 2 (May 17, 2018): 394-424, doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfx055, 402. Thus, ironically, being part of the ROC, both puts one simultaneously on the margins and at the center of society. Alexander Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities,” Archives Des Sciences Sociales Des Religions, no. 162 (July 1, 2013): 75-94, doi:10.4000/assr.25058, 91-92.

The Brotherhood's page on Russia's dominant social network, vk.com, self-describes them as a movement that is "an informal fraternity of Orthodox Christians who realize and fulfill their vocation: to promote the revival of the fullness of the life of the Church and all ministry therein.” “Preobrazhenskoe Bratstvo,” accessed April 17, 2020, https://vk.com/psmbru. My fieldwork revealed much about how they try to accomplish this goal as a memory actor but not as much about their religious beliefs and life. A study by Alexander Agadjanian of a Brotherhood community in Moscow fills this gap by dissecting the Brotherhood's religious belief and practice.

His most important findings - none of which contradict the general observations I made in my fieldwork about the Brotherhood's religiosity - briefly follow. He found that the Brotherhood puts Jesus and the Apostles of the early church at the center of their theology "thus downplaying other aspects which the mainstream church is committed: tradition, post-biblical texts, custom, cultural texture/ clothe of faith." Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities”, 77.. They have an intellectual slant and are word-focused (God's Word and books and reading in general). They are often accused of having Protestant influences. Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities”, 77-78. However, the theological genealogy or “chain of memory” they claim, according to Agadjianian, comes largely from Russian philosophers and various priests of the “catacomb” Russian Orthodox Church and is not particularly tied to Protestantism, though they are ecumenical in outlook. Wallace L. Daniel, The Orthodox Church and Civil Society in Russia, 1st ed. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006), 82; Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities”, 79-80. Their theology and worldview can be seen as closely connected to their founder and current leader, Fr. Georgii Kochetkov. Agadjianian describes him as "a self-made seeker-turned-neophyte” who “construct[ed] his spiritual ancestry from scratch, as a deliberate, rational (and passionate!) enterprise”. Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities”, 89. This deliberate construction of their own theological genealogy leads Agadjianian to classify them as part of “religious modernity.” Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities”, 90. Referencing American sociologist Nancy Ammerman, by calling them “social creations of the modern world”. Nancy Ammerman, Congregation And Community (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 352. This “modern world” with its “new choices of belief and non-belief” but where they chose to “operate…within a “chain of memory” which is both Eastern Orthodox and pan-Christian.” Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities”, 91. Agadjianian sees this “orthodox modernity” in many ways but one of the main ways is their desire to be “involved in the world - through culture.” Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities”, 80.

This desire to be connected to the world is related to their founder's goal of creating a movement “engaged in continuous efforts to recreate Christian communities relevant to a new social context and the new spiritual, intellectual and social needs of their potential congregation - urban educated middle class” something American researcher, Daniel Wallace, also noted. Daniel, The Orthodox Church and Civil Society in Russia, 98-99; Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities”, 76. The Brotherhood is not prone to “monastic ascetic world-detachment” but rather seeks to be “world-involved” via “many activities (developed catechetical programs, educational and publishing projects, sponsoring conferences, etc.); social/charity work (wide, intense, and multi-faceted charitable programs); and civil engagement.” Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities”, 80. In my fieldwork, I saw this aspect again and again. They relish an "openness to culture" which they see as a set of modern resources related to sciences, art and humanities.” Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities”, 80.

This connects to the second part of their activity - the part that is less spiritual and on which my research focused - the part that can be categorized as memory acting. In an interview, one leader described the Brotherhood's work thus, “our priority service is prosveshchenie [a word meaning “education” but also more broadly “enlightenment” or “illumination”]… Christian and Church prosveshchenie… we propose to people that they be votserkovlen [literally to be “churched” aka brought into active church life] through catechism… but here, one way or another, we touch the question of history - the history of Russia, the history of the church.” Interview with Anna Lepekhina, a Brotherhood leader. St. Petersburg, Russia. May 22, 2019. As will be covered extensively later, they find a direct connection between an individual's spiritual renewal and their understanding and appreciation of Russia's history. They take this idea further by working around the year to host events and conferences dedicated to promoting their understanding of Russia's past. They focus on Russia's 20^th century, especially the political and social repression by the Soviet state and persecution of the ROC and their beliefs about the implications of this past for the present. These events are aimed not only at members but at the ROC and society more broadly.

A glance at their website reveals the extent of their work. Prominently featured on their homepage were “announced” events. Three out of four of them were directly related to historical memory. “30^th November 2019 (in) Electrostal: Conference “Who are we: how to love your history?", "20^th December 2019 (in) Moscow: Conference “The legacy of Nikolai Nepliuev and the affair of the spiritual revival of Russia", and "until 12^th January (in) Voronezh: Exhibition "Man at the Breaking Point" (the same one I saw in St. Petersburg in August). “Glavnaia | Preobrazhenskoe Bratstvo,” accessed November 26, 2019, https://psmb.ru/. Their national website is exclusively original content and is plastered with evidence of their work of articulating the ideas of their proposed myths about Russia's past. Malinova defines a memory actor as a social actor that can “articulate the ideas that form the repertoire of symbolic politics of memory,” Olga Malinova, “Politika Pamiati Kak Oblast' Simvolicheskoi Politiki,” in Metodologicheskie Voprosy Izucheniia Politiki Pamiati: Sbornik Nauchnykh Trudov, ed. Aleksei Miller and D V Efremenko (Sankt-Peterburg: Nestor-Istoriia, 2018), 27-53, 34. and it's clear that in these activities the Brotherhood takes on the role of a memory actor in Russia's public memory sphere.

Though their numbers are small and hard to ascertain with any certainty - it seems they number no more than 1500 permanent members in all of Russia (and maybe 10 of these members are ordained ROC priests). Informal conversation with Aleksandr, a Brotherhood member. St. Petersburg, Russia. October 30, 2019. Numbers alone do not point to efficacy or influence of their work either as a ROC actor or a memory actor. A recent article published online by Kommersant.ru (and in their monthly magazine) points this out. Olga Filina, “S Voenno-Sakral'nogo Na Russkii,” Ogonek, March 2, 2020, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4268893. The article spoke of recent efforts by Patriarch Kirill of the ROC to pilot a project of Church renewal by appointing a young, educated Bishop to oversee the Tver eparchy. This bishop immediately began working closely with the Brotherhood and generally showed “unprecedented openness” for a member of the Church hierarchy. This eventually led to open conflict with more conservative forces that culminated when those forces led a protest to disrupt a Church service held by the Brotherhood with the blessing of the Bishop. The article highlights two voices of opposition: “Sorok sorokov” and “Dvuglavyi orel” both considered to be radical, ultra-conservative Orthodox groups with support that reaches high into the ROC hierarchy. The former is most famous for being formed and promoted by people close to the Church hierarchy to push against Pussy Riot in 2013 and later for their attempts to disrupt the release of the film “Matilda” about Nicholas II and the latter is famous for being founded by Orthodox lay leader and businessman Konstantin Malofeev with a questionable reputation. (For more information see the following news articles: “V Tsentre Moskvy Protivniki «Matil'dy» Vyshli Na Molitvennoe Stoianie :: Politika :: RBK,” accessed April 17, 2020, https://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/5980bfc59a794768b2fe716d; “The Bell: Osnovatel' «Tsar'grada» Konstantin Malofeev Sozdaet Monarkhicheskuiu Partiiu,” accessed April 17, 2020, https://www.znak.com/2019-11-19/the_bell_osnovatel_cargrada_konstantin_malofeev_sozdaet_monarhicheskuyu_partiyu.) These groups successfully prevented, despite the blessings and work of the Bishop of Tver, the Brotherhood from co-hosting a conference by somehow ensuring that just hours before the start of the conference all the agreed-upon venues changed their minds and refused to host the conference. This article firmly places the Brotherhood in the “liberal wing” of ROC priests in opposition to ultraconservative movements within the Church.

The Brotherhood has pressed the ROC to change since its founding. In the 1990s, Fr. Georgii Kochetkov (from whence comes the name by which the Brotherhood is most often referred to by non-Brotherhood persons - Kochetkovtsii), a parish priest of several churches in downtown Moscow slowly built a vibrant congregation and active parish life - in sharp contrast to what the Soviet Union had allowed in ROC parishes. Daniel, The Orthodox Church and Civil Society in Russia, 8. (I also heard this story in bits and pieces throughout my time spent with Brotherhood members and leaders.) His background included expulsion from the ROC's Leningrad seminary at the behest of the KGB in the 1980s for his "extracurricular activities, his contacts with dissident religious groups, and with foreigners in Leningrad." Daniel, The Orthodox Church and Civil Society in Russia, 80. According to the Brotherhood's narrative, his work from the beginning centered around his ideas of indoctrination in Orthodoxy through “catechism”. At this same time Fr. Georgii also pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable within the ROC. He even translated the whole liturgy into Russian (as opposed to Church Slavonic) and used it in his parishes. Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities”, 78; Daniel, The Orthodox Church and Civil Society in Russia, 8. And, according to one researcher, he led his followers in this Russian-language services towards a “new, more direct, more personal approaches to worship.” Daniel, The Orthodox Church and Civil Society in Russia, 84. A few years earlier, in 1988, he founded an Orthodox Christian school of higher learning now called St. Philaret's Christian Orthodox Institute. Through the years this has been a center for developing their ideas of theology and history. Ideas often in conflict with mainstream Orthodox ideas.

All this work led Fr. Georgii into direct conflict with members of the ROC hierarchy - including the now famous and powerful Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov) (considered by many to be the personal spiritual advisor to President Putin). Fr. Georgii published works critical of the ROC hierarchy, stating that if the “church [was] to be effective, it had to concern itself first with correcting its internal weaknesses, beginning with asking forgiveness for its "sins" and "historical mistakes." Daniel, The Orthodox Church and Civil Society in Russia, 8. These ideas remain a hallmark of the Brotherhood's teaching. This conflict ended in Fr. Georgii losing his parishes and being banned from serving as a priest for several years. Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities”, 84; Daniel, The Orthodox Church and Civil Society in Russia, 105. In the interim, he transformed his followers into the organization and community called Preobrazhenskoe Bratstvo (The Transfiguration Brotherhood) the object of my study. From the outset, it had branches in several cities, including St. Petersburg.

The Brotherhood in St. Petersburg in St. Petersburg traces its roots back to when an informal ROC community, that banded together in the early 1990s to restore the Troitse-izmailovskii Cathedral, linked up with the movement started in Moscow by Fr. Georgii. Interview with Anna Lepekhina, a Brotherhood leader. St. Petersburg, Russia. May 22, 2019.

The Brotherhood in St. Petersburg now counts about 80 persons according to their estimations. Interview with Anna Lepekhina, a Brotherhood leader. St. Petersburg, Russia. May 22, 2019. However, they seem much larger due to the intensity and constancy of their activity, especially in the sphere of memory politics here in St. Petersburg. In 2015 with the help of the central branch in Moscow bought a small ground-level facility in part of St. Petersburg's large historic district. It is here where I had my first encounter with the Brotherhood at a conference hosted by the St. Petersburg Brotherhood.

It is important to understand, before moving on, the Brotherhood's general position within the ROC and the ROC within society. As mentioned earlier, Agadjianian pointed out how the ROC is simultaneously at the margins and center of society. Despite growing in public prominence and political power, ROC only 0,5% of the Russian population attend church weekly, according to the lead sociologist of the ROC, Nikolai Mitrokhin. Furthermore, he finds that ultimately the opinion of Church Patriarch has “little public significance.” Dmitrii Kartsev, “«Vzgliadam Patriarkha Kirilla Otvechaet Katolicheskaia Model' Ustroistva Tserkvi» Sotsiolog Religii Nikolai Mitrokhin -- o Tom, Kak Izmenilas' RPTs Za 10 Let Pravleniia Nyneshnego Patriarkha,” Meduza, February 1, 2019, https://meduza.io/feature/2019/02/01/vzglyadam-patriarha-kirilla-otvechaet-katolicheskaya-model-ustroystva-tserkvi. And the Brotherhood, according to Agadjianian, is in the center of via the ROC, but not in the mainstream of the ROC, but rather the ROC's margins. On the other hand, the ROC is on society's margins, and so is the Brotherhood, yet due to its “religious modernity” and desire to engage with the public sphere - it is closer to the “structural centers” of society than the ROC as a whole. Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities”, 92. Thus the Brotherhood's position can be seen as simultaneously two opposites further confounding researchers and those that would classify them.

More specifically, their history and activity put them within the Church as part of what Mitrokhin describes as those who worked to transform the atmosphere of the church from being conservative and "stifling" to more dominated by priests' who promote "Orthodox liberalism", a movement most often associated with Aleksandr Men - a murdered charismatic and reformist priest of the late Soviet period. The research of Agadjianian also classifies them "conventionally" as "liberal" and in this work, he shows the parallel between them and the communities that claim Men's tradition. Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities”, 90. He makes this claim due to moments discussed above: their openness to other Christian traditions, their appeal to the intelligentsia, their work at being “socially relevant” and “civically involved” and one moment not yet discussed: how they “distance themselves from an official great narrative of the “National Church”.

This is a hallmark of their community - how they “distance” themselves from “regular Orthodoxy.” This manifests itself in the downplaying of “popular devotional practices” often seen as the “core of Russian Orthodox spirituality” such as: “the veneration of saints, miracle-working relics and icons, holy water” etc. Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities”, 77. Ultimately, they reject the “culturalist type of religiosity - the one dominant within most official church institutions and massively adopted in Russia by the large majority of people with thin religiosity.” Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities”, 79. In my interviews, I was told outright that this type of religiosity enabled the Russian Revolution of 1917, should not be a goal of today's church (though my interviewee implied that she understood it to be one) and does not please God. Interview with Anna Lepekhina, a Brotherhood leader. St. Petersburg, Russia. May 22, 2019. Agadjianian goes so far as to say that “nationalism is very untypical of them” - I cannot agree with him on this point - and my thesis will dissect the Brotherhood's patriot at a later point, but for now I would rephrase this to say that mainstream nationalism and especially its Orthodox variant is not found in the Brotherhood. Agadjanian, “Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities”, 79. This returns us to the idea that the Brotherhood belongs to “Orthodox liberalism” The Brotherhood is unique, also, in that it is one of the few internal groupings of the ROC that has a relatively well known public image outside of the ROC. Andrei Pertsev, “«Posledstviia Koronavirusa Patriarkhiia Nedootsenila» Sotsiolog Religii Nikolai Mitrokhin -- o Tserkovnykh Gruppirovkakh, Sferakh Vliianiia i Tom, Chto Seichas Proiskhodit Vnutri RPTs,” Meduza, May 10, 2020, https://meduza.io/. And this image is certainly more liberal than its ultranationalist opponents within the ROC.