- 1 The research is supported by the RANEPA research grant.
1Pushkin Square is one of the central squares of Moscow.1 It is famous not only among local residents, but also outside the capital: firstly, because of the most recognizable monument to Alexander Pushkin in Russia, and, secondly, because of the political rallies that take place there. Many Muscovites with whom my colleagues and I spoke reffered to this square as “Moscow’s main one.” Unlike the Manezhnaya or Krasnaya squares, they consider it inhabited with a special energy: if something happens in the country, it will happen there. However, not all citizens share this belief. Some people do not attach much importance to it, simply crossing it as part of their daily routine. This was the case for me until November 16, 2016. On that day as I was crossing the square, as many locals do, I noticed two women kneeling in the center: I approached them and asked them what was happening. They explained that a convent had stood in this place until 1937. Now they pray for its reconstruction. Since then, I have conducted on-site observations and interviews with members of the Orthodox community of the Strastnoy (Passion) monastery.
2This article analyzes the continuous effort to religiously mark the square made by these faithful in order to highlight the historical rootedness of the destroyed monastery. For them, the monastery’s seventeenth-century origin means the community possesses greater legitimacy to occupy the space. I thus come to the conclusion that the case of the Strastnoy monastery community demonstrates the situation of religious initiatives in contemporary Russia. Aware of their marginal position in public space, they still pursue their goal of restoring Orthodox order in the country. Unlike many other Orthodox groups, they seek non-conflictual ways of interacting with citizens and government institutions, appealing to historical memory and cultural heritage.
3The history of Pushkin Square eloquently illustrates the policy of the Russian state towards religion throughout the twentieth century. In 1928, an anti-religious museum was set in the church of the Strastnaya icon, a traditional way of fighting religion in the early Soviet period (Kormina, 2020; Kelly, 2016). In 1937, the Strastnoy monastery was demolished, and in 1950, the Pushkin monument was moved to its place (thus Strastnoy square becoming Pushkin square). The crowning triumph of culture and secularism over religion was the construction of cinema Russia in this place in the 1960s. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of state support for religion, the opportunity arose to revive lost shrines. Despite the fact that the revival of religion in Russia is taking place in slightly different ways than in Europe or the United States, if only because in these regions there was no violent prohibition of religious practices and militant struggle with religious figures, the processes of interaction between the religious and the secular that took place in Russia and American or European cities are typologically similar. This allows me to place my work within the broader context of the study of religion in contemporary cities (Orsi, 1999; Burchardt and Becci 2013; Saint-Blancat, 2019; Kong, 2008).
- 2 The concept of postsecularity was popularized by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas (Habermas, 2008). (...)
4In the first part of my article’s title, I use a paraphrase of the concept of “the right to the city” coined in 1968 by Henri Lefebvre (Lefebvre, 1996), which was subsequently applied by many researchers to study the interaction of various actors in the urban space, including in postsecular cities (Beaumont and Baker, 2011; Oosterbaan, 2014; see also Tocheva, 2022).2 As Lefebvre points out, “the right to the city” has nothing to do with law: in his conception, it is the right of a human to inhabit it. The “right to the city” enables one not just to occupy city space, but also to participate in its production (Lefebvre, 2015). This concept can be narrowed down to the right to some place—in my case a square. For other researchers, it is the right to a district (Fenster, 2011), a shrine (Bowman, 2014), or a street (Suarez, 2017). Often, the actors operating in such places are either the representatives of different religious groups or secular and religious groups that claim the same space. Each group justifies the right to the space in its own way, and each chooses how to label the space so that others understand to whom it belongs. For describing such places, researchers use different terms (“contested, shared, mixed places”), the choice depending on the situation between the groups in that place, conflictual or peaceful, which can change over time (Hayden, 2022). A more relevant term for such spaces is therefore Glen Bowman’s notion of “mixed” places (Bowman, 2015). This thesis about the changing nature of interactions in mixed spaces is also confirmed by my case, in which the coexistence of several actors in a square does not seem to be constant.
5Another point made by Lefebvre is important for my research: “history and its consequences, ‘diachrony,’ the etymology of these or those loci, that is, everything that happened there, changing the terrain—all this is embedded in space. The past has left its traces on it—inscriptions, the lettering of time” (Lefebvre, 2015: 51). In variance with Lefebvre’s assertion, this case study demonstrates that the embeddedness of the historical presence of the Orthodox religion of Pushkin Square was not obvious to the immense majority of city dwellers until recently. The members of the community have provided specific labour in order to signal this Orthodox embeddedness. They use collective practices and material symbols to make it visible and tangible.
- 3 For example, see Bowman, 2015; Albera and Couroucli, 2012; Hayden Robert M. et al., 2016.
6The situation in Pushkin Square differs from the usual examples of mixed places. Most studies focus on the coexistence in one sacred place of several religious groups, each of which considers this place its own.3 In Pushkin Square, in addition to the citizens who make their daily routes through the square, walking around it and admiring the fountain, there are groups that occupy the square at certain times for a specific purpose. The largest of these are protesters and participants in the annual Moscow International Film Festival. Apart from them, there are also rallies of political parties, such as the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. All of these are opposed by a religious group that is aware of the existence of other groups, but of which the others are unaware. When I asked participants in rallies whether they were aware that a religious community is organising prayers in the square, none of my respondents answered in the affirmative. Examples from other spaces in Russia suggest that if the walls of a temple or chapel begin to appear, the religious group will definitely be noticed, and then conflict cannot be avoided (Kormina, 2020). In this respect, the discourse of struggle for space has so far characterised only the members of the community of the Strastnoy monastery, who are also the most tolerated group among all those who organise gatherings in this place, as state security does not prevent them from holding public gatherings, so-called “standings” (stoiania), and processions. In the preface to Sharing the Sacra, Glenn Bowman writes that when researching mixed places, it is important to pay attention to “the minute details of interaction, avoidance, imitation, affirmation, and disavowal by which members of interacting communities manage the presence of others” (Bowman, 2015: 4). In my study, all of these actions are not exhibited by all groups, but only by one: the religious community. For it alone, the place and its rituals create “images of imagined communities—past, present, and future—with which participants feel connected” (Bowman, 2016: 6).
7The study draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted not only among members of the Strastnoy community, but also among Muscovites and stakeholders who use the square. Since 2016, I have participated in numerous prayer meetings, post-prayer standing tea parties, and other activities, such as gatherings of community activists. Furthermore, I have observed contemporary political events taking place on the square. Interviews were focused on the organization of the Strastnoy community, its goals and internal relationships, and the history of the monastery and that of the movement. Most talks have been recorded over tea, which is a usual socializing practice in Russia. I joined the Strastnoy monastery group in the Russian social network VKontakte (2,322 participants), as well as a group in WhatsApp (thirty-three participants). Finally, I used information from media and social networks. Some topics my interlocutors skirted around, saying that I would find out everything in my own time. Most of the people involved in the prayer standings are aware of my research. The core of community is interested in my presentations about the Strastnoy monastery and is happy that I can tell the world about their initiative.
8After a brief presentation of the history of the community, the article turns to analyzing the performative actions of its members, in particular the different forms of public prayer and cross procession. It describes other means of claiming the square, such as narratives, naming, and mental mapping. It analyses interactions with other occasional users of the square and with the police.
9The Strastnoy monastery community has formed in 2006, with the initial goal of opposing a major redevelopment of Pushkin Square. A city project to reconfigure the square was proposed in the 1990s and included the construction of a tunnel, a shopping centre, and an underground parking—this project was abandoned in 2013, thwarting growing protests (Argenbright, 2021: 130–131). Members of the community at the origin of the movement recall that the first meeting dedicated to the protection of the historic territory of the Strastnoy monastery took place on May 28, 2006. Organized on the sixth Sunday after Easter, it was meant to commemorate the first miracle of the Strastnaya icon. The first prayer meeting was held on the steps leading up to the cinema Russia. It was attended by representatives of several public organisations involved in the preservation of cultural heritage and the revival of Russia’s moral values (dukhovnye tsennosti), including the regional association “Borodino 2012,” “the Old Moscow Commission,” the All-Russian public movement “People’s Sobor” (Narodny Sobor), and the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Monuments of History and Culture. The community of Strastnoy monastery grew out of this social movement. Its plan is, in the medium term, to build a chapel and, in the long term, to revive the monastery.
- 4 UNESCO experts opposed the idea of building these monasteries on the territory of the Moscow Kreml (...)
- 5 A copy of the document provided by Aida Melikhova is kept in the author’s personal archive.
10From that time, members of the community have been collecting signatures for the reconstruction of the monastery, which they hand over to the office of the patriarch. In 2014, Patriarch Kirill gave his blessing to continue collecting signatures. He referred to the Russian president’s decision to restore the Chudov and Voznesenskii monasteries in the Moscow Kremlin as a precedent.4 And in a resolution from April 3, 2017, Patriarch Kirill expressed support to begin building a memorial chapel or a small church in the square.5
- 6 He said he thought of reviving the Strastnoy monastery starting from 1970. He and his acolytes als (...)
11The community is under the pastoral care of the Orthodox priest Alexii, rector of the church of the Assumption of Our Lady in Putinki, located not far from Pushkin Square. A former software engineer, he was ordained in 1996. Some community members belong to his church parish. Others belong to other parishes; they come only for prayer standings and priest Alexii is not their confessor. In the beginning, the prayer meetings were led by the first lay leader, Gennadii Pavlovich,6 president of the “Borodino 2012” regional association, the purpose of which is to promote Russian history and culture. He invited Father Alexii to provide pastoral care for the initiative group.
- 7 Commemorative stones do not necessarily evoke religion. On the erection of stones as signs preserv (...)
- 8 Strastnaya icon literally means “Our Lady of the Passion [of Christ].” This type of Theotokos icon (...)
12In 2012, they installed a commemorative stone7 with a small Strastnaya icon8 sealed on it behind the monument to Pushkin. The installation of this stone was made possible thanks to the efforts of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Architectural and Artistic Centre “Arkhkhram,” which in the late 1990s approved a programme with the Moscow city government to create memorial markers at the places of lost religious buildings.
Figure 1. Commemorative stone with a small Strastnaya icon by Aida Melikhova, Pushkin square (2018).
This granite stele, with an irregular shape about half a meter high, is engraved with the image of the monastery and the following inscription: “The Strastnoy monastery in the name of the Most Holy Theotokos Strastnaya Icon stood here. It was founded in 1654 and destroyed in 1937. In the memory of the Strastnoy monastery and the 200th anniversary of the first divine liturgy in the name of the liberation of Moscow from Napoleon’s army in 1812.”
Credit: Nadezhda Rychkova
- 9 The rest of the apartment building (2,986.9 square meters) has been privatized and is not subject (...)
13In 2015, members of the community registered the Revival of the Strastnoy Monastery Foundation. The latter is aimed at enabling them to attract sponsors. In 2020, the community achieved the return of part of the 930.9 square meter apartment building built in 1912. This is the only surviving building of the Strastnoy monastery. Part of it was transferred to the Moscow patriarchate by the arbitration court in February 2020.9 On October 11, 2021, the priest consecrated the rooms. Members of the community have plans to renovate them and create a chapel and a museum dedicated to the Strastnoy monastery there.
14In addition to the priest, the community of the Strastnoy monastery has a lay leader, Andrei. Officially, he is the chairman (predsedatel’) of the community. He performs the standing prayer when the priest is not present, manages bureaucratic issues, maintains a group on social networks, and informs members about upcoming holidays and meetings. Andrei joined the community in 2007. The priest proposed him as a candidate for the role of chairman in 2019. The priest does not dictate his own will, but God’s: “So God has ordered,” one of my interlocutors told me.
15At present, the core of the community consists of fifteen to twenty people. They participate in meetings where the community’s tasks are discussed, minutes taken, and decisions made. Most of the members are over fifty years old. Sometimes passersby join the community during a standing, returning regularly thereafter. The largest number of people that I have observed congregate for the Strastnaya icon feast on August 26 was in 2019 when about 100 people were present. Sometimes only two to three people participate in the Saturday group vigil.
16Some young people from the Orthodox youth club “Peter and Fevronia,” hosted by the priest’s parish church, occasionally come to pray. Younger participants are involved in education, health care, museum work, publishing, small business, crafts, and music. Some run educational and outreach projects in various Moscow churches, while others organize pilgrimage trips, sing in a church choir, publish literature about religious shrines, paint icons, and participate in social movements that support Orthodox traditional values, such as “Many Children is Good.”
- 10 Aida Melikhova died while I was working on this article.
17Many of those who were at the origins of the community are not physically able to come to the square but continue to support the initiative. Aida Melikhova10 belongs to this category. She has a doctoral degree in architecture. She contributes to the monastery website, writes reports on the need to restore the historical ensemble at Pushkin Square, and speaks at meetings of the city council and Orthodox conferences remotely. Her son, the architect Roman Tsekhanskii, who has passed away, is considered a key former member. He was the author of pre-project proposals for the partial phased restoration of the historical ensemble, including the monastery. His proposals received support from the authorities (Melikhova and Tsekhanskii, 2013: 143). Gender distribution, both in the core of the community and in its expanded membership, is about two women for every man. The past and current composition and paths to conversion are consistent with the usual trends documented in urban Orthodox communities (Sergazina, 2006; Sibireva, 2011).
18The community members believe that they possess expert knowledge of the early-twentieth century look of the square, in particular of the prominent place occupied by the monastery. In fact, none of them has ever seen the real monastery. Therefore, these faithful activists have collected sources that they consider authoritative and trustworthy: stories told by eyewitnesses, photographs, videos, and fiction help them picture a predominantly religious space in place of the contemporary secular square. Archival photos of the monastery, photos of the nuns who lived there, photos of past standings—all this is stored in albums in the social network VKontakte. In addition, before each commemorative day, the leader of the community publishes thematic photos and notes on WhatsApp.
19The community and the priest claim the square by spreading a standard story about the origin of the monastery that works as a myth of origin. According to it, this place was not accidentally chosen for the construction of a church: a monastery was erected as a result of divine revelation. In the seventeenth century, a miracle-working icon of Our Lady, that is, Our Lady herself, showed the precise location on which a church was to be erected, effectively built in 1646:
On this day, a cart transporting an icon, the original of which is now kept in Sokolniki [district of Moscow] in the church of the Resurrection, passed by this place. The cart was heading to the place prepared and chosen by the Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich [for the erection of a church]. He had heard about this miracle-working icon from Palitsa village in the Nizhny Novgorod region and ordered it to be delivered to Moscow; a place was prepared for it. On this day, the cart stopped right there under the stairs [of the contemporary cinema hall], at the base of the stairs, where the altars were afterwards. And it just stood there like a stone. [Regardless of] how much effort people made to move the cart, they whipped the horses, it just stood there dead. Then they understood, our ancestors were quick to realize the spiritual reasons for the phenomenon. They realized the Mother of God wanted to settle down here, with this icon. They built the church, then the monastery, named it Strastnoy (Passion) after the Passion instruments of the murder and suffering of Christ. This is the church where the Mother of God was presented. (Priest Alexii, speech after a standing, August 26, 2018)
20This narrative is not necessarily repeated every time in the above extended form; the priest often refers to it with a few words, as do the leader of the community and its members. The emphasis on the remote historical origin of the monastery is meant to demonstrate that the community has greater legitimacy to claim the square than its main secular occupants, such as the Pushkin monument, which was moved to this place in 1950, and the cinema hall, constructed in 1961. The narrative about the icon’s choice of place is a typical folklore text (Remmel, 2014; Antonova, 2015). These stories are needed for justifying the sanctity of this place and asserting the legitimacy of the existence of only religious buildings on it. This legend serves to validate the importance of prayer at this site for community members. It does not need any explanation—it is assumed that the participants of the prayer standings are familiar with narratives of this type, and most of them are generally involved in the “secret knowledge” that separates them from the rest, the “secular,” the “uninitiated” (Levkievskaya, 2011: 413). Sergei Shtyrkov speaks of a kind of heightened semiotic sensitivity among the representatives of many religious traditions:
In a number of events and phenomena, the believer tries to discern signs of the constant divine presence in his life, which implies the identification of non-obvious meanings of ordinary and seemingly random events. The latter, thus, pass from the category of accidents to the status of signs and wonders (even if small, individual). (Shtyrkov, 2019: 131)
21Using the terms of a miracle, Aida Melikhova describes the events that led to disparate groups coming together to form a community. She uses the words “unexpectedly” and “accidentally” in inverted commas, implying the opposite meaning. Her reflections once again confirm the special view of the world of a religious person as “a constantly unfolding text composed of sign-events” (Kormina, 2019: 76). The destruction of the monastery, according to the members of the community, also did not happen by chance, but by the will of God. The Russian people were unworthy of having it because they stopped praying in the holy places: in this way, a direct link is established between prayer in the square and the monastery. This is the work that the community does continuously—showing others what to do in this place.
22The sacredness of the place is emphasized, besides the legendary component, by historical evidence. These narratives reveal another side of the monastery—not only a holy place for the Orthodox, but also a special monastery in the life of the country. Members of the community mention visits that the Romanov royal family is supposed to have paid to the monastery, from Alexei Mikhailovich to Nicholas II. Ambassadors and foreign royal visitors to the monastery are also mentioned, including King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway. A story based on this plot was told to me by a woman during my first encounter with the community. Her speech was full of different types of stories about the power of the place, its uniqueness, holiness, and prayerfulness. An abundant chain of plots was needed to convince me, an outsider, of the legitimacy and necessity of their goal:
When the Strastnoy monastery was built, any ambassador who came before Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov he would first come here to confess, take communion, and only then went to the tsar. (Woman, about 75 years old, November 16, 2016)
- 11 Since 2007, the “Kadashev Readings” have been regularly held in the church of the Resurrection of (...)
- 12 “The relevance of the Moscow Passion monastery in the new reality of the world order of 2022.” Ema (...)
- 13 “Why is it necessary to rebuild the monastery of Passion?” Email sent on March 5, 2019 to the auth (...)
23Spreading narratives about the square that reveal the history of the monastery and the acquisition of that place is, according to Michel de Certeau, a way of appropriating it, along with a number of other elements through which community members construct the monastery, invisible to the ordinary person but obvious to them: “…stories tell us what one can do in it and make out of it. They are treatments of space” (Certeau, 1984: 122). Besides, stories about the choice of the place by the icon and visits to the monastery by important personalities are complemented by the written texts by Aida Melikhova. Her last presentation, delivered at the twentieth Kadashev Readings conference in 2022,11 was dedicated to the need to revive the Strastnoy monastery during “the special operation” in Ukraine. In her paper, she argues that the restored monastery will help restore order (poryadok), as its foundation back in the seventeenth century was closely connected with the reunification of Ukraine and Russia. Aida Melikhova notes that in 1654, Alexei Mikhailovich founded the monastery, and “in the same year the fateful decision of the Zemskii Sobor and the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on the reunification of Ukraine with Russia was made.”12 In another work, she relates the destruction of the monastery and “the separation of Ukraine from Russia, which was decided in the early years of Soviet power, in the context of hastily invented borders between two twin states with a common culture and economy.”13 These stories are added to a meta-narrative about the unique role of the Strastnoy monastery in Russia’s fate. The Strastnoy monastery thus becomes one of the places on which order and balance in Russia depend. In this regard, efforts to restore religious life in the square take on a momentous significance on the scale of the entire country, thus convincing members of the community, outside observers, and the authorities of the legitimacy of the presence of religion and only religion in this place.
24The appropriation of space also takes place through the creation of an imaginary map. Members of the community describe how churches were located on the territory of the monastery and how Strastnoy Square looked like in the pre-revolutionary period:
- 14 In the Eastern Orthodox Church, St Anastasia is known as St Anastasia the Pharmakolytria, i.e. “De (...)
There were many churches here. There was the church of Anthony Theodosius—the founder of Russian monasticism, then here, in place of Pushkin, there was a chapel or the church of the great Alexii the Man of God, then the church of Anastasia Uzoreshytelnitsa,14 Nicholas the Wonderworker, Michael the Archangel … It is huge... kings prayed here and people prayed very much. (Man, about 65 years old, April 15, 2017)
25The physical existence of preserved objects makes the imaginary monastery more tangible. As Certeau writes, “narrative activity … thus continues to develop where frontiers and relations with space abroad are concerned. Fragmented and disseminated, it is continually concerned with marking out boundaries…stories ‘go in a procession’ ahead of social practices in order to open a field for them” (Certeau, 1984: 125). Storytelling thus fulfills a sanctioning function in this case—the community has every right to occupy the square.
Figure 2. A prayer meeting (stoianie) in Pushkin square (2022).
Credit: Nadezhda Rychkova
26An additional attribute of the creation of an imaginary monastery is the accompaniment of sound—bell ringing, which in a physically existing church is always present. During festive prayer meetings, members of the community set up a portable bell tower; during ordinary standings, one member of the community rings hand bells throughout. At the same time, this sound does not block out all the city noise: it is even quieter than the festive music played during city events, it is drowned out by the sound of the machine that pumps out the public toilets near the commemorative stone. Thus, the sounds in the square are “important expressions of the battle for the right to the city” (Fenster, 2011: 80). They, along with the other elements described in this section, are necessary for the group to make the space their own. At the same time, the presence of other sounds in parallel to the bell ringing emphasizes that the square is first and foremost the space of the city, and community members can only embed themselves within it.
- 15 An akathist is a type of hymn usually recited by Eastern Orthodox or Eastern Catholic Christians, (...)
- 16 A kondak is a short chant in honour of a saint or feast. The kondak is followed by an ikos, which (...)
- 17 For a similar example, see Agadjanian, 2011; Luehrmann, 2016.
- 18 The community actively discussed the location of the Pushkin monument. On the one hand, they call (...)
27Orthodox ritual in public is a key marker of the square as a religious space. As Chantal Saint-Blancat notes, citing Kim Knott, “through rituals, actors ‘take up space’ by appropriating spaces, and ‘make space’ by endowing them with a different meaning, regardless of the space they occupy” (Saint-Blancat, 2019: 12). Every Saturday at 2 p.m., community members stand in front of the commemorative stone in prayer. In addition, they gather around the stone about twenty-seven times per year: on eight major church feasts and nineteen memorial dates of the monastery. Priest Alexii usually conducts standings on feast days. On Saturdays, the standings are led by the lay leader. The standing unfolds as follows: members of the community gather at the memorial stone and read a prayer—the akathist15 of the Most Holy Theotokos Strastnaya or another akathist, depending on the date. There are two models of reading the texts: if the meeting is led by Father Alexii, he reads the kondak,16 while all present sing the ikos. When Alexii is absent, each participant reads the whole akathist in turn. Each member of the community has a booklet—booklets are brought from the priest’s church and handed out to those present. Giving the text of the akathist to newcomers is a way to integrate them into the collective prayer. Nobody remains without praying: everyone and all together.17 After reading the akathist, everyone gathers in a cross procession around the territory that once belonged to the monastery, that is, the entire square. The procession begins and ends at the commemorative stone. Walking from the stone, members of the community go through imaginary gates beyond the imaginary walls of Strasnoy monastery. According to a preserved plan, the gate was located on the site where the Pushkin monument now stands.18 Above the gate was a bell tower and the gate to the church of St Alexii the Man of God. The procession stops at important memory places for a short prayer: the apartment building, under the stairs of the cinema hall, and before the Necropolis. Here the members of the community commemorate dead people whose life was connected with the Strastnoy monastery. Among them are the new martyrs of the Strastnoy monastery executed and buried at the Butovo site (Rousselet, 2007; Christensen, 2018) and dead members of community and unknown people whose bones were found during the renovation of the square in 2013.
Figure 3. Necropolis, Pushkin square (2020)
In 2013, the community members placed a monument over the burial with the inscription: “Necropolis of the Strastnoy monastery, seventeenth-twentieth century. Here lie the remains of people collected by the Strastnoy monastery community during the renovation of the square in 2013.”
Credit: Nadezhda Rychkova
28The procession is led by men carrying placards stating “For the revival of the Strastnoy monastery” and icons, followed by women, many of whom have icons in their hands or hanging from their necks. Some icons are kept in the church of the Assumption of Our Lady in Putinki and brought out on the occasion of this cross procession. Some participants bring extra icons with them, which they lend to participants who do not have them. During the procession, the participants sing uninterruptedly “Our Lady, rejoice” or, on the days following Easter, “Christ has risen from the dead.”
29The final episode of the standing is a priest’s sermon or a speech by the community leader if the priest is not present. Usually, the talk is about the fate of the monastery or the present struggle for its restoration. After religious celebrations, often, all the participants go to the refectory of the church of the Assumption of Our Lady in Putinki or to the church itself to drink tea and exchange news, with stories about Orthodox miracles being the most popular topic.
30Before my arrival, there was a split in the community as to how to act in the square: actively and loudly or quietly. Even though the members dislike discussing the quarrel, Father Alexii sometimes mentions it, calling the loud mode “climbing the barricades” (lezt’ na barrikady). He advocates silent prayer. All members of the community can be divided into loud activists and walkers with the cross (krestokhodtsy), with the former having been much more numerous at the beginning of the movement. According to community members, in the beginning, the priest also supported the path of “manifestations and public action.” This mode of action caused problems and did not lead to the desired results. Then the priest suggested holding only weekly prayers and processions, which bore fruit—the community was given part of the building of the former apartment house. Now the majority are krestokhodtsy who believe in the efficacy of silent prayer.
31Some members of the community still think that they need to be more radical in their activity. For example, they believe that signs should be put up to describe the history of the place and red tape should be placed around the place where they think the thrones used to stand so that people do not trample over them. However, the priest and the community leader have a different opinion, as seen in the following dialogue from a chat in a WhatsApp group (February 21, 2022):
Woman (in her late forties). Does anyone have a map of the monastery to determine the exact location of the altars and thrones? I will personally bring stakes and white and red tape and will write notices that there is NO WALKING there!
Community leader. Dear T., to have a public discussion you must have the blessing of the community’s confessor, Father Alexii. You know that.
Woman. My heart bleeds. For years on end. About these altars.
Community leader: Talk to the confessor. Rallies (mitingi) won’t bring clarity. The closer to the monastery, the more important the obedience.
Woman. How we treat our shrines and restore structure will determine what will happen. How much blood will be shed. Whether there will be a restoration of the monarchy. We are slowing down a lot.
32The community leader referred to a rally to describe the loud mode of action. In asking for obedience, he called on his interlocutor to align her actions with the will of God transmitted through the priest. This position is consistent with the community’s belief that the restoration of the monastery evolves the way it does not because people have decided so, but according to God’s will. In their understanding, finding the correct way of acting can affect the destiny of the country. The priest often reminds of this in his sermons after the prayer meetings:
The akathist of the Passion icon and the Passion icon itself are more appropriate than ever in this place in Moscow, because here [this square is popularly referred to as Pushka—literally cannon], here all kinds of slogans are fired, here all kinds of appeals are fired, forgetting that the fate of Russia, the fate of the state is decided not in rallies or on barricades, but in the silence of monasteries, temples, and cathedrals. There, in silent prayer, in humble appeal to God, in repentance, repentance brings us back to the origins of all upheavals and revolutions. In this penitential prayer in the silence of the monasteries the fate of Russia is decided. (Priest Alexii, speech after a standing, August 26, 2022)
33This position of the priest indicates that he understands the consequences of violating the norms accepted in public space. He realizes that belonging to a privileged Orthodox community supported by the state will not ensure the complete acceptance of the authorities for their behavior in the secular central square of the capital. Only legitimate interaction with the authorities through confirmation of all steps with documents can help them move towards their goal. Humility and submission to the will of God in the mouth of the priest, but in reality to the institutions of power is a subtle position developed by the community over quite a long stay in the square. This position helped them gain a foothold in this place and conduct quiet prayer, which both this place and the country as a whole need.
34Researchers of religious practices in European cities note that “public religious ritual is not only a process of identity labeling, a demonstration of the collective self or a testimony of faith. It is also a clear desire for public visibility” (Saint-Blancat and Cancellieri, 2014: 4). However, in their case, there are migrant minorities who, through religious rituals in public spaces
demand social recognition, which implies becoming full actors capable of demonstrating their identity and specificity in public space. We are dealing with a strong symbolic message: people of low socio-economic status, usually pushed to the periphery, are conquering the “centre,” even if through temporary but ‘legitimate’ appropriation. (Saint-Blancat and Cancellieri, 2014: 4)
35All these statements are true in my case, with the only difference being that the actors are representatives of the dominant state-supported religion in Russia. At the same time, their atypical presence in public space predetermined the reaction of some citizens who consider the community to be a sect, publishing photos of those standing in social networks with this caption. As it turns out, the community of the Strastnoy monastery looks not like a representative of Russian Orthodoxy, but like a minority (like the migrants in the example of Saint-Blancat) in the eyes of others (Kormina, 2023). When confronted with a religious ritual, the townspeople, just as in Saint-Blancat’s example, do not understand what is going on, why these people have come to this square, and what they want. The idea of making a loud statement about oneself and enclosing the area with ribbons can increase misunderstandings over the role of the community. This may cause other urban-dwellers to think about taking over the urban space and turning them against the community. In fact, a conflict has already occurred. Near the necropolis, someone from the community installed a large wooden cross, and the burial area was surrounded by a chain—the whole thing began to resemble a real cemetery. Before the Moscow Film Festival, the city authorities dismantled the cross, explaining to the community that the festival organisers had complained. Here is how Father Alexii recalls it:
One day we woke up and there were crosses put up, chains fenced around everything—a challenge to the city authorities. No one wanted to set up a cemetery here with crosses. This is the centre of Moscow—it’s a cannon—anything goes wrong (off) and they shoot! They shoot at anything. Everything must be balanced and timely. (Priest Alexii, speech after a standing, August 26, 2023)
36The path that the community has chosen now can be called an intellectual struggle. The following sections will talk about its manifestations when it clashes with other actors in the square.
37As I am writing, the square has four dominant features: the monument to Alexander Pushkin, the commemorative stone with the small Strastnaya icon, the fountain, and the cinema hall, located on one line. These four objects correspond to the four groups of actors who identify with the square: respectively, political activists, the religious community of the Strastnoy monastery, ordinary citizens and consumers of citywide activities, and participants in the Moscow International Film Festival.
Figure 4. Map of Pushkin square, Moscow.
1. Monument to A.S. Pushkin
2. Necropolis of Strastnoy monastery
3. Commemorative stone
4. The cinema Russia
5. Preserved building of the rental house
© OpenStreetMap France (background map by OpenStreetMap France, CC BY-SA), the OpenStreetMap project and its contributors (OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL)
- 19 For a similar example, see Bowman, 2014: 129–130.
38The community members and political protestors differ in the ways they occupy the square; their respective claims are expressed through postures and movements. The Orthodox group uses the commemorative stone as if it were an altar: the icons brought for the prayer service are leaned against it and the praying people face it, turning their bodies towards the east. Often, people with icons line up opposite to other participants, making an imaginary altar. According to community members, behind the stone was the entrance to the church of the Strastnaya icon of the Mother of God, so that by standing in a certain way people behave as if they were in the former church.19
- 20 For a similar example of recreating invisible infrastructure, see Kormina, 2022: 183.
39On days when there are no other actors in the square, their space expands—the procession leaves the imaginary monastery through an imaginary gate near the monument to Pushkin and goes around the entire territory of the monastery. The procession returns to the commemorative stone, where, after religious practices, the members of the community socialize with each other. The lost infrastructure of the monastery is delineated by the trajectory of the procession.20 The religious space is undoubtedly dynamic, a point made by Knott (2005: 165–166) based on her reading of Lefebvre. For these believers, religious space is where the practices takes place.
- 21 The westward oriententation of the Pushkin monument is criticized by community members. I have exa (...)
40Participants in political rallies always face the Pushkin monument.21 They usually occupy the opposite side of the monument, with the stairs leading to the statue separating their side from that of the Orthodox believers in a way so, in the case of small gatherings, the two groups do not notice each other’s presence.
41In the case of larger political rallies, the participants leave a small space around the praying members of the community that they dare not breach, as if there was a wall between them. Interestingly, once the community leaves its place, the commemorative stone stops being a religious marker—the political activists fill the void by standing with their feet where they did not dare to step during the prayer. The religious space ceases to exist as soon as the religious practice ends. However, this is so for the uninitiated; members of the community think otherwise. For community members, in addition to the visible objects representing the Strastnoy monastery, there are invisible ones. Some are material, in particular the foundations of the monastery preserved under the asphalt covering. But others can be sensed only by the initiated faithful. The community members claim that angels are present in this place even though they are invisible.
42Pushkin Square is under the constant supervision of the authorities, represented by the police. The aim of the authorities is to keep the space as it is “conceived” (Lefebvre, 2015: 47, 52), which means that in a situation of conflict, they will completely deny access to the square. At such times, neither protestors nor community members are given access to the square. When political protestors and community members are present simultaneously, they find a modus vivendi, even though they dislike each other. It is at such moments that clashes and interactions take place. For members of the community, prayer meetings are of utmost importance; during these meetings, they communicate their message to the other group. It is equally important that the message is understood correctly (Wood, 2015), so members of the community stop and speak to anyone who shows interest.
43A clash occurred during a 2019 rally, where people demanded that independent candidates be allowed to run for the State Duma. The square was surrounded by metal fences and several thousand people gathered around it. This event took place on a Saturday, the day when the community holds prayer meetings in the square. Since access to the square was closed, the community gathered under the stairs of the cinema, and then the traditional procession took place. The procession with banners, icons, and singing prayers was met with disapproving shouts, whistles and questions: “Are you sent by Putin?” The president’s active participation in Orthodox festivities, the Church’s support for state messages, and the joint promotion of the so-called traditional Orthodox values have led those critical of the regime to believe that any Orthodox community supports the authorities. Some activists wanted to know more about the community, for example by asking whether the religious procession had been authorized. I believe this question was prompted by the popular perception that Orthodox Christians can do whatever they want and do not even need to obtain permission to speak in public, while political activists have to negotiate with the local administration every time they take to the streets of the city. The leader of the community gave the standard answer:
Three years ago we submitted documents to the legal department of the mayor’s office and received an answer that the prayer does not need sanctioning. On the other hand, we have two blessings from the holy patriarch. (Andrei, leader of the community, August 3, 2019)
44One of the protestors asked about the purpose of the Orthodox presence here and about the political views of the cross procession’s participants. Members of the congregation skirted the hot topic, because most of them support the authorities, and focused on the history of the place, on the importance of preserving its historical memory by creating a museum and restoring the chapel, which will resemble, they explained, a seventeenth-century bell tower. They spoke purposefully about restoration because they are aware of public resentment regarding the construction of new churches. Members of the community have repeatedly voiced fears that when the construction starts, conflicts with citizens cannot be avoided.
45The main message that the community members wished to convey to the political activists was the following: your rallies deprive this place of sanctity, your behavior in this place is “dancing on bones.” The approving statements of some participants of the rally about the noble goal of the community and the disdainful attitude of the majority are a good illustration of Wood’s thesis, who noted that society is able to perceive religious messages when it is ready, when there are good conditions for this (Wood, 2015).
46For many years, the opening of the Moscow International Film Festival has taken place right on the square, in the open air: the staircase leading to the cinema turns into a red carpet. On August 26, 2022, for the first time, the most important events of both groups coincided: the opening of the festival and the main feast of the Strastnoy monastery, the celebration in honour of the Strastnaya icon. The square that day was fenced off in a way that an alternative place under the stairs was not available. The community decided to hold a prayer service in front of the Pushkin monument, where the throne of the church of St Alexii the Man of God used to stand.
47The community members usually gather at 2 p.m.. On that day, they gathered at 5 p.m., assuming that the opening of the festival should be already over. In fact, both events started at the same time. Around 100 people gathered for the prayer. Police officers suggested that the group disperse. The community leader entered into a dialogue with the policemen and mostly told the story of the place. They ended up shaking hands and parted friends. Neither during COVID restrictions nor during any other events did the police disperse the gathered community. None of the other groups have been granted such privileged treatment. The authorities’ leniency reinforced the faith of the community members in their legitimate presence. For them, through the community, Our Lady herself expressed her authority.
48On this day, some passersby joined the prayer group. Others were interested in what was going on; they heard what was for them a new history of Moscow. Still others took photos. Members of the community answered questions and handed out the akathist to those who showed interest. They behaved in a hospitable manner, as if they were the rightful masters of the place. The degree of visibility was aptly summed up by one woman from the community: “Today everyone was supposed to shoot the artists, but they filmed us.”
Figure 5. The stoianie during the Moscow International Film Festival (2023).
Credit: Nadezhda Rychkova
49In moments of co-presence, the religious community, virtually invisible on other days, reveals itself, emphasising its existence and informing others about the purpose of its presence. By telling the story of the Strastnoy monastery to other groups, the community asserts its right, stemming from history, to the territory.
- 22 For example, the recent resonant case of amendments to the law on transferring icons kept in museu (...)
- 23 As an example, members of the community refer to the story of the cathedral of Christ the Savior.
50The Strastnoy monastery community perfectly illustrates how the largest religious denomination in Russia tries to legitimate claims not only for the return of property that belonged to the Church before the USSR’s formation,22 but also to society’s recognition of some spaces as primordially Orthodox. According to this group, their actions have received sanction from above: the Mother of God stopped the cart at the site of today’s Pushkin Square to create a place for people to pray. The authorities do not challenge the validity of this claim. In addition, the appeal to history, an essentialist understanding of religion, and reference to the successful experience of building churches in place of the destroyed ones23 allow the community members to feel that they are the only full owners of the place, called to overcome temporary chaos and restore order in the square and the country through prayer. Although other groups come to this place, according to the community they do not have legitimate authority to own it. They are guests, and the religious group is the host, although a hospitable one, which, for now, cedes its home, sharing it with outsiders, even with those who do not behave as required.
51Robert Hayden, studying the practices of communities simultaneously present in mixed places, identified several particularly popular ones in different countries that are designed to identify differences between communities: “the dual identity of a deity or saint; separate rites/rituals; temporary separation of rituals into different communities; maintaining invisible boundaries” (Hayden, 2022: 77–78). I have applied Hayden’s observations to the groups present on Pushkin Square. Surprisingly, all four practices are followed only by members of the community. Firstly, Pushkin is also a saint for them, as he has been protecting the place from development for many years. For other groups, a memorial stone or necropolis does not represent sanctity, which is confirmed by their actions described in the article. Only the members of the community find out in advance which groups may coincide with them in time and try to reschedule either the time or the method of prayer. Other groups do not even try to observe the time interval, “maintain invisible boundaries and ensure that some spaces remain inviolable,” or “observe the unspoken rules of non-interference” (Hayden, 2022: 78). Protesters or participants of the Moscow Film Festival do not worry about the presence of a religious group, about the time of its ritual. If they want to occupy the square, they coordinate their actions with the city authorities, and that’s it. The city authorities take into account only the interests of large groups: they block access to the square during the festival, fence it off during rallies, and do not let even a loyal religious community through. This was the case during the rally I described, when members of the community tried to explain to the police that they had the right to be in the square. However, the authorities treated them the same way as the protesters, leaving them behind fences. Thus, despite state support of the Church, in contemporary Russian society, religious groups trying to symbolically take over urban facilities or spaces during tense periods are perceived by the police on an equal basis with other actors: they are also not allowed to enter the square, and in the early years they were even taken to police stations. At the same time, other social groups perceive the community, and more broadly other religious actors, as a marginal minority, tolerated in public space only until religion begins to displace secularism and a mixed place becomes controversial.
