The paper is supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, grant № 15-06-08541a
This article studies religious revitalization in post-Soviet Russia, which has been revealed in unprecedentedly active church building as well. On the example of one of the largest Russian megalopolises, Yekaterinburg, authors analyze the process of restoration and development of an Orthodox landscape, start to which has been given during the religious Renaissance in the late 1980s. The snowballing growth of laity of Orthodox parishes in the 1990s was slowly manifested in the form of specific objects in the city space: the first churches often located in non-core buildings outside the city center. The restoration and building of new churches occurring all last decade of the 20th century has led to creation of dense network of Orthodox churches in Yekaterinburg. From this point, the Russian Orthodox Church, having saved up the capital and influence with assistance of the authorities and large business, has started realization of a number of large-scale projects, i.e. to build large Orthodox complexes and restoration of significant pre-revolutionary buildings. The peak of growth of number of liturgical buildings of the Russian Orthodox Church fell on the first half of the 2000s when there were about four or five new Orthodox buildings erected in a year. The Orthodox landscape of pre-revolutionary Yekaterinburg has been substantially restored by the 2010s, and rates of increase of number of the city’s churches have a little slowed down. However, the efforts of the diocese directed to development of lands of the new districts of Yekaterinburg grant the right to predict new splash in church building at the beginning of the 2020s.
Key words: Russian Orthodox Church, religious revitalization, Orthodoxy in modern Russia, post-Soviet megalopolis, religions landscape, historical GIS.
DOI: 10.22250/2072-8662.2017.4.143-153
About the author
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Dmitry S. Bakharev – research fellow at the Department of Archaeology and Ethnology, Ural Federal University; 51 Lenin Ave., Yekaterinburg, Russia, 620083; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |
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Elena M. Glavatskaya – DSc (History), Professor at the Department of Archaeology and Ethnology, Ural Federal University; 51 Lenin Ave., Yekaterinburg, Russia, 620083; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |