• A Spiritual Perestroika: Religion in the Late Soviet Parliaments, 1989–1991

    Author(s):
    Ivan Sablin (see profile)
    Date:
    2022
    Group(s):
    Soviet and Russian history and culture
    Subject(s):
    History, Religion, Soviet Union, Russia, Perestroĭka
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    Orthodox Christianity, Parliament
    Permanent URL:
    https://doi.org/10.17613/g2xm-2m75
    Abstract:
    The article discusses various meanings which were ascribed to religion in the parliamentary debates of the perestroika period, which included Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and other religious and lay deputies. Understood in a general sense, religion was supposed to become the foundation or an element of a new ideology and stimulate Soviet or post-Soviet transformations, either creating a new Soviet universalism or connecting the Soviet Union to the global universalism of human rights. The particularistic interpretations of religion viewed it as a marker of difference, dependent on or independent of ethnicity, and connected to collective rights. Despite the extensive contacts between the religious figures of different denominations, Orthodox Christianity enjoyed the most prominent presence in perestroika politics, which evoked criticisms of new power asymmetries in the transformation of the Soviet Union and contributed to the emergence of the Russian Federation as a new imperial, hierarchical polity rather than a decolonized one.
    Notes:
    The research for this article was done as part of the project “ENTPAR: Entangled Parliamentarisms: Constitutional Practices in Russia, Ukraine, China and Mongolia, 1905–2005,” which received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant Agreement No 755504).
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    10.46586/er.13.2022.9915
    Journal:
    Entangled Religions
    Volume:
    13
    Issue:
    8
    ISSN:
    2363-6696
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    11 months ago
    License:
    Attribution
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