Believing in Russia - Religious Policy after Communism

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136213309
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (362 download)

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Book Synopsis Believing in Russia - Religious Policy after Communism by : Geraldine Fagan

Download or read book Believing in Russia - Religious Policy after Communism written by Geraldine Fagan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-23 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a comprehensive overview of religious policy in Russia since the end of the communist regime, exposing many of the ambiguities and uncertainties about the position of religion in Russian life. It reveals how religious freedom in Russia has, contrary to the widely held view, a long tradition, and how the leading religious institutions in Russia today, including especially the Russian Orthodox Church but also Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist establishments, owe a great deal of their special positions to the relationship they had with the former Soviet regime. It examines the resurgence of religious freedom in the years immediately after the end of the Soviet Union, showing how this was subsequently curtailed, but only partially, by the important law of 1997. It discusses the pursuit of privilege for the Russian Orthodox Church and other ‘traditional’ beliefs under presidents Putin and Medvedev, and assesses how far Russian Orthodox Christianity is related to Russian national culture, demonstrating the unresolved nature of the key question, ‘Is Russia to be an Orthodox country with religious minorities or a multi-confessional state?’ It concludes that Russian society’s continuing failure to reach a consensus on the role of religion in public life is destabilising the nation.

Believing in Russia

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0415490022
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (154 download)

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Book Synopsis Believing in Russia by : Geraldine Fagan

Download or read book Believing in Russia written by Geraldine Fagan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As unease mounts over Russia's direction under Presidents Putin and Medvedev, how free are her faith communities? Drawing upon hundreds of interviews with religious and state representatives across Russia, this book explores religious policy as both a gauge of Kremlin commitment to democratic values and a reflection of national identity.

Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice Under the Tsars

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Author :
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271046023
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice Under the Tsars by :

Download or read book Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice Under the Tsars written by and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Popular Religion in Russia

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134369786
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (343 download)

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Book Synopsis Popular Religion in Russia by : Stella Rock

Download or read book Popular Religion in Russia written by Stella Rock and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-09-10 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book dispels the widely-held view that paganism survived in Russia alongside Orthodox Christianity, demonstrating that 'double belief', dvoeverie, is in fact an academic myth. Scholars, citing the medieval origins of the term, have often portrayed Russian Christianity as uniquely muddied by paganism, with 'double-believing' Christians consciously or unconsciously preserving pagan traditions even into the twentieth century. This volume shows how the concept of dvoeverie arose with nineteenth-century scholars obsessed with the Russian 'folk' and was perpetuated as a propaganda tool in the Soviet period, colouring our perception of both popular faith in Russian and medieval Russian culture for over a century. It surveys the wide variety of uses of the term from the eleventh to the seventeenth century, and contrasts them to its use in modern historiography, concluding that our modern interpretation of dvoeverie would not have been recognized by medieval clerics, and that 'double-belief' is a modern academic construct. Furthermore, it offers a brief foray into medieval Orthodoxy via the mind of the believer, through the language and literature of the period.

Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent

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Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691165904
Total Pages : 348 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent by : John Garrard

Download or read book Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent written by John Garrard and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-22 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

The Old Faith and the Russian Land

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801457955
Total Pages : 480 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis The Old Faith and the Russian Land by : Douglas Rogers

Download or read book The Old Faith and the Russian Land written by Douglas Rogers and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-15 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Old Faith and the Russian Land is a historical ethnography that charts the ebbs and flows of ethical practice in a small Russian town over three centuries. The town of Sepych was settled in the late seventeenth century by religious dissenters who fled to the forests of the Urals to escape a world they believed to be in the clutches of the Antichrist. Factions of Old Believers, as these dissenters later came to be known, have maintained a presence in the town ever since. The townspeople of Sepych have also been serfs, free peasants, collective farmers, and, now, shareholders in a post-Soviet cooperative. Douglas Rogers traces connections between the town and some of the major transformations of Russian history, showing how townspeople have responded to a long series of attempts to change them and their communities: tsarist-era efforts to regulate family life and stamp out Old Belief on the Stroganov estates, Soviet collectivization drives and antireligious campaigns, and the marketization, religious revival, and ongoing political transformations of post-Soviet times. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork and extensive archival and manuscript sources, Rogers argues that religious, political, and economic practice are overlapping arenas in which the people of Sepych have striven to be ethical—in relation to labor and money, food and drink, prayers and rituals, religious books and manuscripts, and the surrounding material landscape. He tracks the ways in which ethical sensibilities—about work and prayer, hierarchy and inequality, gender and generation—have shifted and recombined over time. Rogers concludes that certain expectations about how to be an ethical person have continued to orient townspeople in Sepych over the course of nearly three centuries for specific, identifiable, and often unexpected reasons. Throughout, he demonstrates what a historical and ethnographic study of ethics might look like and uses this approach to ask new questions of Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet history.

Russian Folk Belief

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317460391
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (174 download)

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Book Synopsis Russian Folk Belief by : Linda J. Ivanits

Download or read book Russian Folk Belief written by Linda J. Ivanits and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-04 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A scholarly work that aims to be both broad enough in scope to satisfy upper-division undergraduates studying folk belief and narrative and detailed enough to meet the needs of graduate students in the field. Each of the seven chapters in Part 1 focuses on one aspect of Russian folk belief, such as the pagan background, Christian personages, devils and various other logical categories of the topic. The author's thesis - that Russian folk belief represents a "double faith" whereby Slavic pagan beliefs are overlaid with popular Christianity - is persuasive and has analogies in other cultures. The folk narratives constituting Part 2 are translated and include a wide range of tales, from the briefly anecdotal to the more fully developed narrative, covering the various folk personages and motifs explored in Part 1.

Law and the Christian Tradition in Modern Russia

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000427935
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis Law and the Christian Tradition in Modern Russia by : Paul Valliere

Download or read book Law and the Christian Tradition in Modern Russia written by Paul Valliere and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-16 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, authored by an international group of scholars, focuses on a vibrant central current within the history of Russian legal thought: how Christianity, and theistic belief generally, has inspired the aspiration to the rule of law in Russia, informed Russian philosophies of law, and shaped legal practices. Following a substantial introduction to the phenomenon of Russian legal consciousness, the volume presents twelve concise, non-technical portraits of modern Russian jurists and philosophers of law whose thought was shaped significantly by Orthodox Christian faith or theistic belief. Also included are chapters on the role the Orthodox Church has played in the legal culture of Russia and on the contribution of modern Russian scholars to the critical investigation of Orthodox canon law. The collection embraces the most creative period of Russian legal thought—the century and a half from the later Enlightenment to the Russian emigration following the Bolshevik Revolution. This book will merit the attention of anyone interested in the connections between law and religion in modern times.

Religion and Identity in Modern Russia

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351905147
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (519 download)

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Book Synopsis Religion and Identity in Modern Russia by : Juliet Johnson

Download or read book Religion and Identity in Modern Russia written by Juliet Johnson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the roles of Russian Orthodoxy and Islam in constituting, challenging and changing national and ethnic identities in Russia, this study takes Tsarist and Soviet legacies into account, paying special attention to the evolution of the relationship between religious teachings and political institutions through the late 19th and 20th centuries. The volume explicitly discusses and compares the role of Russia's two major religions, Orthodoxy and Islam, in forging identity in the modern era and brings an innovative blend of sociological, historical, linguistic and geographic scholarship to the problem of post-Soviet Russian identity. This comprehensive volume is suitable for courses on post-Soviet politics, Russian studies, religion and political culture.

Children of Rus'

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801469252
Total Pages : 348 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Children of Rus' by : Faith Hillis

Download or read book Children of Rus' written by Faith Hillis and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-27 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Children of Rus’, Faith Hillis recovers an all but forgotten chapter in the history of the tsarist empire and its southwestern borderlands. The right bank, or west side, of the Dnieper River—which today is located at the heart of the independent state of Ukraine—was one of the Russian empire’s last territorial acquisitions, annexed only in the late eighteenth century. Yet over the course of the long nineteenth century, this newly acquired region nearly a thousand miles from Moscow and St. Petersburg generated a powerful Russian nationalist movement. Claiming to restore the ancient customs of the East Slavs, the southwest’s Russian nationalists sought to empower the ordinary Orthodox residents of the borderlands and to diminish the influence of their non-Orthodox minorities. Right-bank Ukraine would seem unlikely terrain to nourish a Russian nationalist imagination. It was among the empire’s most diverse corners, with few of its residents speaking Russian as their native language or identifying with the culture of the Great Russian interior. Nevertheless, as Hillis shows, by the late nineteenth century, Russian nationalists had established a strong foothold in the southwest’s culture and educated society; in the first decade of the twentieth, they secured a leading role in local mass politics. By 1910, with help from sympathetic officials in St. Petersburg, right-bank activists expanded their sights beyond the borderlands, hoping to spread their nationalizing agenda across the empire. Exploring why and how the empire’s southwestern borderlands produced its most organized and politically successful Russian nationalist movement, Hillis puts forth a bold new interpretation of state-society relations under tsarism as she reconstructs the role that a peripheral region played in attempting to define the essential characteristics of the Russian people and their state.

Old Believers in Modern Russia

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Author :
Publisher : Niu Slavic, East European, and
ISBN 13 : 9780875809984
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (99 download)

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Book Synopsis Old Believers in Modern Russia by : Roy R. Robson

Download or read book Old Believers in Modern Russia written by Roy R. Robson and published by Niu Slavic, East European, and. This book was released on 2008-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The schism that split the Russian Orthodox Church in 1667 alienated thousands of devout men and women. These traditional worshippers, who came to be known as the Old Believers, practiced their faith as outsiders for more than two centuries. Denied the Russian Orthodox Church's sacraments, they in turn denied that its "new" ways could lead them to salvation. Always at odds with the established Russian Orthodox Church and the tsar, the Old Believers created a vibrant separate culture within the imperial Russian state. Old Believers in Modern Russia shows how Russia's most traditional religious group created a "culture of community" distinct from the dominant culture and society. This culture provided a lens through which the faithful could view, interpret, and interact with their world. Focusing especially on imperial Russia's twilight years, Robson explores how the Old Believers adapted to rapid change in the early twentieth century. Until recently, little has been known about Old Believer faith and culture. Most previous studies have relied upon information provided by outsiders, usually the state or the Russian Orthodox Church. Robson explores Old Believer experience from the inside in this first detailed study of the group in the late imperial period. He integrates historical methods with communication theory and symbolic anthropology to reveal the many facets of Old Believer life.

Doubt, Atheism, and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Intelligentsia

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Publisher : University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN 13 : 0299284433
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (992 download)

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Book Synopsis Doubt, Atheism, and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Intelligentsia by : Victoria Frede

Download or read book Doubt, Atheism, and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Intelligentsia written by Victoria Frede and published by University of Wisconsin Pres. This book was released on 2011-09-08 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The autocratic rule of both tsar and church in imperial Russia gave rise not only to a revolutionary movement in the nineteenth century but also to a crisis of meaning among members of the intelligentsia. Personal faith became the subject of intense scrutiny as individuals debated the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, debates reflected in the best-known novels of the day. Friendships were formed and broken in exchanges over the status of the eternal. The salvation of the entire country, not just of each individual, seemed to depend on the answers to questions about belief. Victoria Frede looks at how and why atheism took on such importance among several generations of Russian intellectuals from the 1820s to the 1860s, drawing on meticulous and extensive research of both published and archival documents, including letters, poetry, philosophical tracts, police files, fiction, and literary criticism. She argues that young Russians were less concerned about theology and the Bible than they were about the moral, political, and social status of the individual person. They sought to maintain their integrity against the pressures exerted by an autocratic state and rigidly hierarchical society. As individuals sought to shape their own destinies and searched for truths that would give meaning to their lives, they came to question the legitimacy both of the tsar and of Russia’s highest authority, God.

Religion and Society in Russia

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0195069463
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (95 download)

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Book Synopsis Religion and Society in Russia by : Paul Bushkovitch

Download or read book Religion and Society in Russia written by Paul Bushkovitch and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study traces the evolution of religious attitudes in an important transitional period of Russian history. It reconstructs the main events of the age, such as the rise of miracle cults, and demonstrates how they foreshadowed the secularization of Russian society.

Russian Church in the Digital Era

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000420949
Total Pages : 175 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis Russian Church in the Digital Era by : Hanna Stähle

Download or read book Russian Church in the Digital Era written by Hanna Stähle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-08-23 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Russian Orthodox Church, the largest and most powerful religious institution in Russia, has become one of the central pillars of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism. While church attendance remains low, the religiously inspired rhetoric of traditionalism has come to dominate the mainstream political and media discourse. Has Russia abandoned its atheist past and embraced Orthodox Christianity as its new moral guide? The reality is more complex and contradictory. Digital sources provide evidence of rising domestic criticism of the Russian Orthodox Church and its leadership. This book offers a nuanced understanding of contemporary Russian Orthodoxy and its changing role in the digital era. Topics covered within this book include: • Mediatization theory; • Church reforms under Patriarch Kirill; • Church–state relations since 2009; • The Russian Orthodox Church’s media policy; • Anticlericalism vs. Church criticism; and • Religious, secular, and atheist critiques of the Church in digital media. Using contemporary case studies such as Pussy Riot's Punk Prayer, this book is a gripping read for those with an interest in media studies, digital criticism of religion, religion in the media, the role of religion in society, and the Russian Orthodox Church.

Russia

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 067497848X
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

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Book Synopsis Russia by : Gregory Carleton

Download or read book Russia written by Gregory Carleton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-24 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No nation is a stranger to war, but for Russians war is a central part of who they are. Their “motherland” has been the battlefield where some of the largest armies have clashed, the most savage battles have been fought, the highest death tolls paid. Having prevailed over Mongol hordes and vanquished Napoleon and Hitler, many Russians believe no other nation has sacrificed so much for the world. In Russia: The Story of War Gregory Carleton explores how this belief has produced a myth of exceptionalism that pervades Russian culture and politics and has helped forge a national identity rooted in war. While outsiders view Russia as an aggressor, Russians themselves see a country surrounded by enemies, poised in a permanent defensive crouch as it fights one invader after another. Time and again, history has called upon Russia to play the savior—of Europe, of Christianity, of civilization itself—and its victories, especially over the Nazis in World War II, have come at immense cost. In this telling, even defeats lose their sting. Isolation becomes a virtuous destiny and the whole of its bloody history a point of pride. War is the unifying thread of Russia’s national epic, one that transcends its wrenching ideological transformations from the archconservative empire to the radical-totalitarian Soviet Union to the resurgent nationalism of the country today. As Putin’s Russia asserts itself in ever bolder ways, knowing how the story of its war-torn past shapes the present is essential to understanding its self-image and worldview.

The Public Image of Eastern Orthodoxy

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501749528
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis The Public Image of Eastern Orthodoxy by : Heather L. Bailey

Download or read book The Public Image of Eastern Orthodoxy written by Heather L. Bailey and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-15 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the period between the revolutions of 1848-1849 and the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), The Public Image of Eastern Orthodoxy explores the circumstances under which westerners, concerned about the fate of the papacy, the Ottoman Empire, Poland, and Russian imperial power, began to conflate the Russian Orthodox Church with the state and to portray the Church as the political tool of despotic tsars. As Heather L. Bailey demonstrates, in response to this reductionist view, Russian Orthodox publicists launched a public relations campaign in the West, especially in France, in the 1850s and 1860s. The linchpin of their campaign was the building of the impressive Saint Alexander Nevsky Church in Paris, consecrated in 1861. Bailey posits that, as the embodiment of the belief that Russia had a great historical purpose inextricably tied to Orthodoxy, the Paris church both reflected and contributed to the rise of religious nationalism in Russia that followed the Crimean War. At the same time, the confrontation with westerners' negative ideas about the Eastern Church fueled a reformist spirit in Russia while contributing to a better understanding of Eastern Orthodoxy in the West.

Russian Ideology + Autocracy and the Salvation of Russia

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Author :
Publisher : Vladimir Djambov
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Russian Ideology + Autocracy and the Salvation of Russia by : St. Seraphim (Sobolev), Sofia wonderworker

Download or read book Russian Ideology + Autocracy and the Salvation of Russia written by St. Seraphim (Sobolev), Sofia wonderworker and published by Vladimir Djambov. This book was released on with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Wealth without work Pleasure without conscience Science without humanity Knowledge without character Politics without principle Commerce without morality Worship without sacrifice. https://vidjambov.blogspot.com/2023/01/book-inventory-vladimir-djambov-talmach.html I was invited to expound the ideology of the Russian Christian Labor Movement at the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church Abroad, which was held in December 1937, chaired by His Eminence Metropolitan Anastasius. I complied. (My report on Russian ideology was heard at the Council of Bishops in August 1938. The conclusions of the report were adopted by the Council, and in accordance with this a council decree was issued. In addition, at the 1938 Council of Russian Bishops with the participation of the laity, some of the laity - members of the Council, representatives from dioceses in Yugoslavia and Western Europe, asked me to give them information about Russian ideology and, in particular, the justification of the tsarist autocratic power.) This prompted me to engage in clarification of the real issue, vital and so close to the hearts of Russian people, the fruit of which was my book: “Russian Ideology”. The first chapter of this book indicates that Russian ideology consists in the Orthodox faith and the life of a Russian person based on it in all its manifestations. This faith was assimilated by the Russian people from the time of baptism of Himself, as the main rule of life, which is evidenced by the fact that the most beloved books for reading Russian people, in addition to the book of life – the Bible – were the Lives of the Saints (The Minions of Minea). But especially the vitality of this faith was testified to by the holy monastic life in monasteries and the pious life of the laity, as evidenced by the countless churches in Russia and the church life of our ancestors, to whom they openly professed their faith - their great prayerful deeds both in churches and at home, their sincere deep repentance of sins and the purity of their Orthodox faith. The same chapter notes the marvelous protection and intercession that the Lord showed the Russian people for their devotion to the Orthodox faith and the desire for holiness, which is the same for life that is consistent with this faith. The second chapter of our book depicts another - the sad side of the life of the Russian people - their retreat from the Orthodox faith and, above all, through the assimilation of Protestantism. It is shown here that this retreat did not happen immediately, but gradually, starting with John III , from the time the Germans entered the Russian service. But especially devastating for Russia was the retreat from the Orthodox faith under Peter the Great. This misfortune was facilitated by his anti-church reforms, which brought about the breaking of the Orthodox faith itself. Particularly detrimental were the reforms in relation to monasteries with the selection of monastic and generally church property. As a result of this, the monasteries have lost their great significance as church educational centers in the life of the Russian people. Education and enlightenment were taken away from the Church and passed into the hands of the state and began to be conducted along the line of withdrawal from the Church and Her saving influence. To the retreat of the Russian people from the Orthodox faith was directed and personal behavior of Peter. Russia is a salvific ark, keeping afloat before the eyes of the mankind drowning in sin. What awaits Russia (our Motherland) in the apostatic world, what idea will unite the nation and who will lead this union? The works of the remarkable Russian hierarch - Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev ; 1881-1950) "Russian Ideology" and "On the true monarchical world outlook" are devoted to the answers to these difficult questions . The Russian saint and theologian is deeply revered in the Slavic world not only as a man of deep intelligence and extensive knowledge, but also as a righteous man and seer, through whose prayers hundreds of miracles have been performed and are still being performed.