Pre-defense seminar with Karin Hyldal Christensen

Karin Hyldal Christensen’s pre-defence seminar when we will discuss her project The Making of the New Martyrs of Russia. Remembering Soviet Repression
the Orthodox Way.

Examiners: Associate Professor Annika Hvithamar, ToRS and Assistant Professor Andreas Bandak, ToRS

Abstract

Venerating saints is an essential element of Orthodox Christianity, and so is the making of new saints. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian Orthodox Church has canonized almost 2000 new saints, more than ever before in its entire history. The vast majority of the new saints are martyrs who fell victim of Soviet anti-religious persecution.

This dissertation investigates the making of the new martyrs of Russia and interprets the significance of the new martyrs in contemporary Russia. The dissertation raises several fundamental research questions: What is a new martyr? How has the Church ‘made’ the new martyrs, and why? How do the Russians venerate the new martyrs, and to what extent? What does it mean to remember Soviet repression ‘the Orthodox way’?

The dissertation understands the making of saints in Orthodox Christianity as an action driven by complex, mutually dependent and deeply intertwined processes, which it terms ‘iconization’,  ‘veneration’ and ‘canonization’. It uses the investigation of the making of the new martyrs to exemplify general dynamics of the making of saints in Orthodox Christianity. Meanwhile, the dissertation recognizes that saints are always ‘made’ in a historical and political context. In the case of the new martyrs, they are bound to two historic-political contexts: the Soviet society which killed them and the post-Soviet society which canonized them. The dissertation, therefore, frames the study of the making of the new martyrs in these two contexts.

In order to receive a copy of the text, please sign up to Karin kvhc@hum.ku.dk