Agnieszka Halemba

Size and Place in the Construction of Indigeneity in the Russian Federation

Within the Russian Federation there are nearly 200 recognized “nationalities,” approximately 130 of which could claim to be “indigenous.” However, only 45 peoples are officially recognized as “indigenous small‐numbered peoples of the Russian Federation” and thereby qualify for the rights, privileges, and state support earmarked for indigenous peoples. This status is conditioned upon a maximum group size of 50,000. While experts insist that this numerical criterion is provisional and without serious political implications, our fieldwork demonstrates that it has become a social fact that cannot be ignored, especially in light of the 2002 All‐Russia Census and the release of its results in 2004. This numerical benchmark forces a dichotomization into small‐numbered versus non‐small‐numbered peoples and creates a peculiar type of identity politics based on ethnic‐group size. The “indigenous small‐numbered” status is also conditioned upon a set of overlapping but often contradictory residency requirements. Using case studies from southern Siberia and the north of European Russia, we document the dynamic interplay between these dimensions of identity and the opportunities for maneuvering in the competition for the benefits that attach to certain categories. However, indigenous peoples who engage in such identity politics run the risk of becoming “incarcerated” within the confines of those categories.

Contemporary religious life in the Republic of Altai: the interaction of buddhism and shamanism

Based on extensive fieldwork, this article analyses the state of religious beliefs and practices in present-day and recent Altai. The contending claims and historical traditions of Shamanism, Buddhism and Burkhanism are discussed as part of the process of forging a new Altaian national identity. Altaian intellectuals tend to favour Buddhism over Shamanism, as providing more systematic philosophical content and links with the wider Buddhist community in neighbouring countries. Shamanism, however, more spiritual, unstructured and heterogeneous in its make-up, is more popular at grass-roots level, though there are some attempts at institutionalization and interaction with the political process. Supporters of this view see Buddhism as extraneous and non-indigenous and ‘un-Altaian’. Despite instances of open clashes, the author concludes that in the future there may develop more constructive interaction between the two religious traditions.

Trust, organisational boundaries and gender: Mothers Prayers in Ukraine

ABSTRACT This article is focused on the Ukrainian branch of an international prayer network Mothers Prayers and its relations with the hierarchy of the Greek Catholic Church. The argument made here can be located within investigations on the transformations of religion and gender relations under Soviet socialism and the post-Soviet conditions (Buckley 1997; Kormina et al. 2015; Luehrmann 2011; Ngo and Quijada 2015; Wanner 2012). While a gender-focused analysis can undoubtedly help us understand some crucial aspects of this movement’s development, here I put forward a complementary interpretation which stresses the need to understand religious vitality and the role of religion, including religious organisations such as churches, in social and political struggles as an outcome of the Soviet secularisation project. The secularisation politics in the Soviet Union resulted both in the appearance of an ‘ambient faith’ (Engelke 2012; Wanner 2014) in unexpected areas of life and in changes of how people perceive the role of religious organisations in religious and political life. I argue that the praying mothers mobilise their motherhood to challenge the male-dominated hierarchical religious organisation in ways that are implicit and indirect, but nevertheless significant.

Suffering for and against the church. The politics of memory and repression in the Mukachevo Greek Catholic Eparchy

ABSTRACT This article analyses the significance of martyrdom and suffering in struggles over collective memory in contemporary Transcarpathian Ukraine and beyond. Through an analysis of the discourses of suffering that developed around the canonisation process of the so-called priests-martyrs-votaries of faith (sviashchenniki-muchenniky-ispovidnyki viry), I show that the notion of suffering under the Soviet regime is mobilised to strengthen the moral authority of the Greek Catholic Church in Transcarpathia, either as a whole or with regard to particular factions within this organisation. Suffering is instrumentalised in the internal politics of this church and it can be used both to legitimise and to challenge the church’s authority. Moreover, the experience of suffering forms a part of autobiographical memory among Transcarpathian believers; at the same time, it quickly becomes a part of collective memory in Maurice Halbwachs’ sense (see Olick and Robbins 1998, 111). In this article, I address the following questions: how do present collective and autobiographical memory, as well as Greek Catholic commemoration practices referring to religious activities from the Soviet times, shape and are shaped by internal church politics in Transcarpathia? Which survival strategy in times of repression is nowadays seen as crucial for contemporary Eastern Catholicism in this region?

The Virgin Mary, State, and Nation in Transcarpathian Ukraine

This chapter analyzes the processes of identification and conceptualization of the borders of the state and the nation through the establishment of a cult to the Virgin Mary in one Ukrainian region. First, it introduces the reader to the history of Transcarpathia, reflecting on why some today believe that the intervention of divine powers, especially of the Virgin Mary (through her apparitions), was called upon to provide a commentary on the relations of this region to the Ukrainian national idea. At a recent apparition site at Dzhublyk, the Virgin Mary as a symbolic figure is instrumentalized in discussions concerning national identification processes. Nevertheless, the apparition cannot be reduced to its political significance.

Agnieszka Pasieka, Hierarchy and pluralism: living religious difference in Catholic Poland

Janice Broun, an Oxford graduate, is a specialist writer on religion in communist and post-communist societies. She has had several articles published on Bulgarian religious affairs since the early 1980s, and book reviews on a wide variety of aspects of religious life in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly on martyrs and confessors in the former Soviet Union. She is the author of Conscience and Captivity: Religion in Eastern Europe (1988) and of six contributions to Censorship: An International Encyclopedia (London, Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001).