CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Murastova, Kseniia |
|---|---|
| Title | West, East and Discourses of Peace and War in the Public Representation of the Russian Orthodox Church (1943 - late 1940s) |
| Summary | The thesis examines how the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) produced imaginaries of the East, the West, and itself in the context of the relationship between the Moscow Patriarchate (MP) and two postwar global initiatives on unity: the ecumenical World Council of Churches (WCC), officially established in 1948 in Geneva, and the World Peace Council (WPC), organized in Europe by Cominform in 1949-1950. This specific angle has not been precisely elaborated by scholars and represents an account of my own research interests. However, researchers have considered the issue of church-state relationships in the USSR after the war and the use of the ROC in the public sphere abroad as an instrument of 'religious diplomacy.' In my thesis, I argue that focusing on the instrumentalization of the church by the state primarily emphasizes institutional aspects and the decision-making process, rather than the production of ideas. This approach prevents us from seeing the mutual interests of the church and the state or the areas where their interests intersected. I draw on the extreme consolidation of clergy representatives and Orthodox thinkers with the state during and after WWII and their patriotic sentiments. I argue that this consolidation enabled them to contribute their experience and knowledge to the production of ideas and discourses represented by the MP in the public context. The analysis of the life trajectories of key figures shows that many of them gained experience and knowledge during the pre-revolutionary period or in the White Emigrés intellectual context, making it easier for them to transmit pre-revolutionary imaginaries and contribute to the continuities in the representations of 'West' and 'East.' The main sources for this work are the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate (JMP), restored in 1943 simultaneously with the MP, and the correspondence between the ROC and the WCC from the WCC archives in Geneva. Despite possible censoring of the ROC's messages, Orthodox clergymen, intellectuals, and ideologues expressed their thoughts on current issues of Christian unity, peace and war, and the role and place of the ROC and the Soviet state within the context of these global issues. I reveal that representations of the East and West by the MP were affected by the Great Patriotic War, the Cold War context, and postwar global debates on peace. During the Great Patriotic War, a unified imaginary of the 'West' had not yet formed, with 'enemies of Russia' represented only by Nazis and historical examples from the Russian medieval and imperial ages. However, under the conditions of the Cold War, a unified imaginary of the West as a 'camp of warmongers' was already represented in ROC texts and public speeches, with the intervention of Marxist-socialist language into those representations. In contrast, the 'East' was represented by the MP as a 'Peace camp,' unified by a sense of Christian unity and supported by the socialist USSR and Russian Orthodoxy, which both allegedly shared common ideas of social justice and 'brotherly love,' having sacrificed for the purpose of fighting enemies to achieve 'peace.' I examine those representations and imaginaries in the context of both short-term factors influenced by a flexible historical context and the church-state relationships in postwar USSR, as well as the long-term continuities with the church-state relationships and historical imaginaries of Orthodoxy in imperial Russia. |
| Supervisor | Matthias Riedl, Vlad Naumescu |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/murastova_xenia.pdf |
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