"More than Alive: The Dead, Orthodoxy and Rememberance in Post-Soviet Russia" 

The Working Group on Lived Religion in Eastern Europe and Eurasia invites for an online book launch of "More than Alive: The Dead, Orthodoxy and Rememberance in Post-Soviet Russia": 

Zuzanna Bogumił (IEiAK UW)
Tatiana Voronina (independent scholar)

With commentary by Hans Ruin (Södertörn University, Stockholm)

The process of the Orthodoxization of memory in Russia started long before the Russian Orthodox Church engaged in memory politics. It was a grassroots process initiated by both the living and the dead. By using religious symbols and rituals, various groups of living were restoring their relationship with the forgotten dead of Soviet repressions and war. When the Moscow Patriarchate returned to active public life and started developing its religious memory infrastructure, the Orthodoxization process received a new up–down dimension. Finally, a turn of Putin’s regime towards religious commemorative
practices caused the disappearance of the boundary between religious and political memory. A bricolage memory, consisting of elements of Orthodox tradition and Soviet memory culture, appeared.