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SUMMARY:Setting the Soviet Past in Stone:  The Iconography of the ‘Russi
 an New Martyrs of the Twentieth Century’ - Julie Fedor
DTSTART:20130219T131000Z
DTEND:20130219T140000Z
UID:TALK42432@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Xinyi Liu
DESCRIPTION:This presentation examines the emergent cult surrounding the n
 ew twentieth-century martyrs of the Russian Orthodox Church in the context
  of the ongoing quest for an official ‘master narrative’ of Russia’s
  Soviet past. \n\nThe Russian Orthodox Church opened the twenty-first cent
 ury with the mass canonisation of over one thousand victims of Soviet stat
 e terror. The canonisation process has been linked to comprehensive resear
 ch programmes aimed at recovering the names and stories of the new martyrs
 \, and this research has in turn been used as the foundations for what is 
 being described by church memory activists as a new ‘infrastructure of m
 emory’. This research is being used in the design of new churches\, the 
 painting of icons\, the writing of saints’ lives\, and the shaping of a 
 host of newly invented traditions and practices surrounding the new martyr
 s\, such as pilgrimages to the sites where the martyrs died\, and to sacre
 d springs re-named in the martyrs’ honour. This campaign amounts to a st
 rong bid to transform Russia’s memorial landscape\; to re-define and re-
 contextualise the dead\; to create and canonize a new narrative of the Sov
 iet past\, based on the central tropes of martyrdom and blood sacrifice\; 
 and ultimately to help shape a new Russian identity.  The paper explores s
 ome recent examples of the symbolic language that is being created to repr
 esent the new martyrs. 
LOCATION:The Richard King Room\, Darwin College
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