Monuments to Saints: Controversies and Uncertainties Around the Sacral Landscape of Russian Cities [Pamiatniki sviatym: protivorechiia i neopredelennosti sakral’nogo landshafta rossiiskikh gorodov].

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Abstract

From 1991 to 2023, over 470 monuments to saints were erected in Russia. These new points of the sacred landscape turn out to be objects of public ritual practices (both official and vernacular) and the causes of urban conflicts associated with the implementation or impossibility of implementing regular public space practices near such a monument. Based on the material of media texts (including social media), we identify key controversies associated with monuments to saints, ideologies of interaction with them, and the reflection of these ideologies in the monuments themselves, texts about them, and ritual practices associated with them. Research showed that the key point of conflict is the concordance between the memorial and the visual, affective and / or ideological landscape of the territory where it is located, as understood by emergent ensembles of urban actors.

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Daria A. Radchenko

Institute for Social Sciences Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration

Author for correspondence.
Email: darradchenko@gmail.com
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-9298-7783

канд. культурологии, старший научный сотрудник Лаборатории теоретической фольклористики Школы актуальных гуманитарных исследований

Russian Federation, Moscow

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2. Fig. 1. Monument to St. Sava Storozhevsky. The rubbed parts of the monument, which are usually touched, are visible. Zvenigorod, 2020. Photo by the author

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3. Fig. 2. Monument to Saints Peter and Fevronia of Murom in the park near the Kelarsky Pond: a) – saints and an icon built into the monument; b) – bunnies on the back of the monument are popular as an object for rubbing. Sergiev Posad, 2022. Photo by the author

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4. Fig. 3. Monument to St. Prince Alexander Nevsky facing the city. Stary Oskol, 2022. Photo by the author

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