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The memoirs presented in Women of the Catacombs offer a rare
close-up account of the underground Orthodox community and its
priests during some of the most difficult years in Russian history.
The catacomb church in the Soviet Union came into existence in the
1920s and played a significant part in Russian national life for
nearly fifty years. Adherents to the Orthodox faith often referred
to the catacomb church as the "light shining in the dark." Women of
the Catacombs provides a first-hand portrait of lived religion in
its social, familial, and cultural setting during this tragic
period. Until now, scholars have had only brief, scattered
fragments of information about Russia's illegal church organization
that claimed to protect the purity of the Orthodox tradition. Vera
Iakovlevna Vasilevskaia and Elena Semenovna Men, who joined the
church as young women, offer evidence on how Russian Orthodoxy
remained a viable, alternative presence in Soviet society, when all
political, educational, and cultural institutions attempted to
indoctrinate Soviet citizens with an atheistic perspective. Wallace
L. Daniel's translation not only sheds light on Russia's religious
and political history, but also shows how two educated women
maintained their personal integrity in times when prevailing
political and social headwinds moved in an opposite direction.
The memoirs presented in Women of the Catacombs offer a rare
close-up account of the underground Orthodox community and its
priests during some of the most difficult years in Russian history.
The catacomb church in the Soviet Union came into existence in the
1920s and played a significant part in Russian national life for
nearly fifty years. Adherents to the Orthodox faith often referred
to the catacomb church as the "light shining in the dark." Women of
the Catacombs provides a first-hand portrait of lived religion in
its social, familial, and cultural setting during this tragic
period. Until now, scholars have had only brief, scattered
fragments of information about Russia's illegal church organization
that claimed to protect the purity of the Orthodox tradition. Vera
Iakovlevna Vasilevskaia and Elena Semenovna Men, who joined the
church as young women, offer evidence on how Russian Orthodoxy
remained a viable, alternative presence in Soviet society, when all
political, educational, and cultural institutions attempted to
indoctrinate Soviet citizens with an atheistic perspective. Wallace
L. Daniel's translation not only sheds light on Russia's religious
and political history, but also shows how two educated women
maintained their personal integrity in times when prevailing
political and social headwinds moved in an opposite direction.
Located in the northernmost reaches of Russia, the islands of
Solovki are among the most remote in the world. And yet from the
Bronze Age through the twentieth century, the islands have
attracted an astonishing cast of saints and scoundrels, soldiers
and politicians. The site of a beautiful medieval monastery-once
home to one of the greatest libraries of eastern Europe-Solovki
became in the twentieth century a notorious labor camp. Roy Robson
recounts the history of Solovki from its first settlers through the
present day, as the history of Russia plays out on this miniature
stage. In the 1600s, the piety and prosperity of Solovki turned to
religious rebellion, siege, and massacre. Peter the Great then used
it as a prison. But Solovki's glory was renewed in the nineteenth
century as it became a major pilgrimage site-only to descend again
into horror when the islands became, in the words of Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, the "mother of the Gulag" system. From its first
intrepid visitors through the blood-soaked twentieth century,
Solovki-like Russia itself-has been a site of both glorious
achievement and profound misery.
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