Between History and Religion: The New Russian Martyrdom as an Invented Tradition

Genealogy ³² of the New Martyrdom

In order to understand the New Martyrdom discourse, we need to go back to 1917 and look for its origins, tracing “the development of practices and their interconnection in time.” ³³ Numerous changes occurred in 1917, not only in the socio-political situation in Russia but also in church–state relations. The Russian Orthodox Church had been without a Patriarch from 1700, and from 1721 it had been ruled by the Most Holy Governing Synod—a collegiate body composed of several of the most important church hierarchs and a chief procurator, who represented the lay authorities. This resulted in the Church being increasingly connected to state structures. On the one hand, this gave Orthodoxy the high status of a state religion and the trappings of power. On the other hand, it deprived the Church of support among the people, who often perceived the clergy as representing state interests. In these circumstances, the collapse of the state was doomed to erode the position of the Church.

The February Revolution and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II wreaked havoc in the Church administration, but at the same time enabled it to convene the Local Church Council, which had unsuccessfully been requested for the previous twenty years. The main task of the Council was to make the Church independent from the State, and the first and most important step towards this was the reintroduction of the Patriarchate after more than two hundred years of Synodal Administration. Tikhon (Bellavin), the Metropolitan of Moscow, was selected to the position. The Council had intended to carry out several reforms meant to revive and improve ecclesiastical life but these aims were never fully realized, with the outbreak of the October Revolution, resulting in the Bolsheviks coming to power and launching persecutions against the Church. From the very beginning these persecutions were violent. On 31 October 1917, Bolshevik troops occupied the town of Tsarskoe Selo near St. Petersburg, arrested the local clergy, and shot Father John Kochurov, who had tried to appease the situation. According to the database compiled by scholars from St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University, by the end of 1917 at least ten clergymen had been killed. On 25 January 1918, the first Church hierarch, Vladimir Bogoyavlensky, the Metropolitan of Kiev and Gallich, was murdered. The day of his death soon became a day of remembrance for all those whom the Bolsheviks persecuted on account of their faith. On 31 March 1918, when the number of clergymen killed, known to the Holy Synod by name, reached fifteen, the first Memorial Liturgy for the “New Martyrs,” those who had perished because of their faith and in the name of the Orthodox Church, was served in the church of the Moscow Theological Seminary by Patriarch Tikhon. Shortly afterwards, on 18 April 1918, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church formulated a special liturgical prayer for those murdered for their faith and passed the decree On Measures Elicited by the Ongoing Persecution of the Orthodox Church. This included the resolution that the 25th of January, or the following Sunday, should be the annual memorial day across Russia for “all Confessors and Martyrs killed in the current fierce years of persecution.” According to Russian scholar Ilya Semenenko-Basin, the decree of 18 April 1918 prepared the ground for the future glorification of the New Martyrs and, in fact, already included all the essential elements of their veneration. ³⁴ As the Civil War spread across the country, the ferocity of Bolshevik persecutions against the Church increased. The Red Terror, introduced in the autumn of 1918, resulted in mass arrests and the murder of clergy who were considered “enemies of the revolution.” According to Anatoly Kashevarov’s estimates, at least 28 bishops, several thousand clergymen and monks, and 12,000 active laymen were murdered in 1918–1920. ³⁵

The worst wave of persecutions came in the 1930s when at least 30,000–35,000 clergymen were arrested or murdered. The climax came with the Great Terror when, according to Mikus Solovejs, “the bloodiest and most ruthless persecutions began with the intention of exterminating Christianity in the Soviet Union. Records of the State Commission revealed that victims of the 1937 political repressions totalled 136,900 clergymen, of whom 85,300 were shot. In 1938, 28,300 clergymen were arrested, resulting in 21,500 martyrs.” ³⁶ On the eve of Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, only four bishops remained at liberty and only some three thousand churches were still open and functioning, the vast majority of these within the territory conquered by the Soviet Union in 1939–1940. ³⁷ Although after 22 June 1941 Stalin’s policy regarding the Church changed and became more tolerant, persecutions did not cease. As Archimandrite Damaskin, one of the conceptualizers of the New Martyrs, claims, “The Soviet authorities’ persecutions . . . lasted throughout almost all of their regime, which can be divided into two periods: martyrdom, which began in 1918 and lasted until approximately 1939, followed by confessorship.” ³⁸

Because of repressions against the Church in the Soviet Union, veneration of the New Martyrs did not initially emerge in the Russian Orthodox Church. Instead, it was initiated and developed by Russian émigrés and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, which was formed by Orthodox refugees after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. In 1927, when the Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) declared the Church’s loyalty to the Bolshevik state, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia separated from the Russian Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. It was not until May 2007 that the canonical link between the churches was restored. During all these years, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia kept the memory of the martyrs alive by collecting and publishing materials about the religious persecutions. ³⁹ One of the most important works on the subject was the two-volume New Martyrs of Russia, written by Archpriest Mikhail Polsky and printed in Jordanville, United States, in 1949–1957. ⁴⁰ In 1981, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia glorified the New Martyrs and established their feast on 25 January, in line with the 1917–1918 decree of the Local Council. It was another ten years before the Russian Orthodox Church commemorated the martyrs and established the feast (in January 1991).

However, it is important to stress that even if there was no specific veneration of the New Martyrs during the Soviet period, important documentation work was undertaken by Vladimir Orlovskiy (who took his monastic vows in 1988, receiving the name Damaskin; in 2017, Patriarch Kirill elevated him to the rank of Archimandrite), who had collected oral testimonies of witnesses of anti-Orthodox repressions since the 1970s. As he told us when we interviewed him, “We had to find the primary source, i.e., witnesses who had seen the events themselves and had lived in those times. . . . They were still alive then, and afterwards they passed away, and, obviously, all the events passed away with them . . . all they had witnessed . . . and thus I conducted this work starting from the end of the 1970s until the beginning of the 1990s.” ⁴¹ When the archives were opened in 1991, Archimandrite Damaskin started doing archival research to verify the information he had gathered though oral testimonies. As he explained, “In order to fulfil the Council’s resolutions we had to achieve two things: first, gather oral testimonies about the New Martyrs, which are irreplaceable, and, second, verify those oral testimonies against the archives . . . against material found in archives, and only . . . afterwards the process of canonization became possible because . . . true canonization and veneration etc. is only possible if these two conditions are met.” In 1996, he became a member of the Synodal Canonization Commission and started to prepare the canonization documents. As a consequence, as Christensen claims, “Vladimir Orlovskiy was to become one of the most influential conceptualizers of the new martyrs, and played a crucial role in the process of canonizing and iconizing them.” ⁴²

Even if some archival research with a view to future canonization was done during the Soviet era, there were no New Martyrs among the nine persons canonized at the Jubilee Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church held in connection with the Millennium Jubilee (1988). Only a year later, in 1989, Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow was glorified but, as stressed by Karin Christensen, “The Church chose not to canonize him as a confessor but under the more politically neutral heading of ‘saintly prelate [svyatitel’]” ⁴³ This event opened the door for further canonizations. During the 1990s, a few more New Martyrs were canonized, including Elizaveta Feodorovna Romanova (1992), a member of the Imperial Family.

Only when Aleksey II became Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia did New Martyrdom start to be intensively developed. Aleksey II saw the glorification of the martyrs as repaying a debt of gratitude to the victims of Soviet repressions. ⁴⁴ He called upon the Russian people to the collective confession of sin. As Kathy Rousselet notes: “a new moral judgment was to be made on Soviet history. The understanding of the spiritual dimension of the Soviet tragedy and the subsequent repentance were considered to be grounds for reconciliation of all Russian people.” ⁴⁵ The Council of Bishops that convened in 1992 decided to “establish canonization committees in all dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church in order to gather and study materials for the canonization of zealots of faith and piety, especially martyrs and confessors of the twentieth century, within each diocese.” ⁴⁶ The role of these diocesan canonization committees was to collect and analyze oral testimonies and archival documents concerning the New Martyrs as well as to send the collected materials to the Synodal Canonization Committee, established as early as 1989, “a key agent in the canonization process.” ⁴⁷ The chairman of this committee until 2011 was Metropolitan Juvenaly of Krutitsy and Kolomna, who played a key role in the process of working out the canonization criteria. According to the Russian Orthodox Church, not every person killed during the Soviet repressions qualified as a New Martyr. As Metropolitan Juvenaly explained, “During the mass persecutions of the 1930s, even the renunciation of the Christian faith by a bishop, priest or layman would hardly have saved the victim from persecution or execution. Therefore it would be wrong to consider all those who were killed, priests as well as laymen, martyrs solely because of the fact that they were murdered. The canonization committee must closely investigate the circumstances of the death and the life of the victims.” ⁴⁸ The selection was not easy, but as Metropolitan Juvenaly said in 2000, “For the 2000 Jubilee of Christ’s Nativity the Russian Orthodox Church brings an abundant fruit of salvific sowing—an assembly of Holy Russian Martyrs and Confessors of the twentieth century.” ⁴⁹

Over a thousand New Martyrs were glorified (1097 saints, of whom 860 were New Martyrs and Confessors) during the Jubilee Council. ⁵⁰ As the official website of the Moscow Patriarchate announced, “Never before in history did the Orthodox Church canonize so many new heavenly advocates.” The canonization was an unprecedented event in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church and had a fundamental influence on its shape. As Karin Christensen claims, “Two Church jubilees marked the celebration of the ROC’s 1,000-year history in 1988 and the Great Jubilee of 2000, commemorating 2,000 years of Christianity. They were marked by the canonization of more saints than the ROC had ever canonized before, (…). Before 1988, the ROC had approximately 300 Russian saints. By 2010, that number was over 2,000. The vast majority of the ROC’s saints are now new martyrs and confessors and, since 1991, the ROC has canonized 1,776 of them.” ⁵¹ The importance of the New Martyrdom for the contemporary Orthodox Church was explained perfectly in an interview with Father Andrey from the Sretensky Monastery: “It is a tremendous feast never before experienced by the Russian Church. In our Church there have never been such widespread persecutions as those of the twentieth century. We had the same persecutions as those which took place in the Roman Empire, for example in the times of Decius and Valerian, when the persecutions were really severe. So we had this kind of persecution in the twentieth century.” ⁵²

After the year 2000, there were further canonizations but they were not as numerous as those of the Jubilee Council. Nowadays the process of canonization has stopped for reasons that will be discussed in the next section.

The New Martyrdom as an Invented Tradition

The main problem with the New Martyrs has to do with the canonization criteria, which raise objections among many people. There is also the problem of historical rifts inside the Russian Orthodox Church at the beginning of the 1920s and, consequently, the canonical status of this or that faction. The Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia have approached this problem differently, which complicates the matter further. Both churches agree that in the early 1920s the only legal power was the Tikhonite hierarchy (which automatically entails the exclusion of the Renovationist Church), but their positions differ in terms of treating its successors. According to the Russian Orthodox Church, the only legal successor of Patriarch Tikhon was the Metropolitan (and from 1943, the Patriarch, Sergius Stragorodsky). At the same time, clergy opposing the official church considered Sergius’s conservative antagonists, who didn’t accept his 1927 Declaration of Loyalty, to be the true successors of the Patriarch. There were several opposing factions that differed from one another on canonical issues. These groups often did not recognize each other, and all of them had their own martyrs.

Semenenko-Basin ⁵³ also raises the question of the chronological time frame of the New Martyrdom phenomenon, essential to its understanding. For the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, it was important to emphasize the continuity of the repressions, inextricably linked to communist rule. However, with the Russian Orthodox Church choosing the 1940s as the cut-off point, this relationship was eliminated. Thus, those canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church do not include people martyred after the 1950s. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia meanwhile glorified Boris Talantov in 1981, an Orthodox human rights activist who was imprisoned in 1969 and died in prison in 1971.

In spite of a different interpretation of past events, both churches cooperated in preparing documents for the glorifications of the New Martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church during the 2000 Jubilee. After this canonization, they continued to work together, signing the Act of Canonical Communion in 2007. Although both churches retained their administrative autonomy, they restored the canonical link between them. The act was signed in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow by the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Aleksey II and Metropolitan Laurus of Eastern America and New York. Two days later, Patriarch Aleksey II and Metropolitan Laurus consecrated the main Russian Sanctuary of the New Martyrs—the Church of the New Russian Martyrs and Confessors in Butovo, together. In this way “the blood of novomucheniki bound together the church both inside and outside Russia.” ⁵⁴ As a result of these events, the Russian Orthodox Church has begun to promote the New Martyrdom as a symbol of Russian reconciliation and a model of national reconciliation to be followed by all Russians. ⁵⁵

Another problem which the Russian Orthodox Church had to confront were the mistakes made during the canonization of a number of saints. The canonization of the new saints was to be an example of sound procedure and of justice rendered to the victims. Yet it quickly turned out that not all of the newly canonized deserved such honours. The Commission for the Canonization of New Martyrs worked under enormous time pressure before the 2000 jubilee and several mistakes were made in the course of the procedure. Serious doubts emerged as to the credibility of many archival documents from the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation archives ⁵⁶ which had served as evidence in the canonization process. Some of them contain untrue testimonies, with a falsified signature or statements extracted under torture, however, they were used because they were the only preserved source. This produced an extraordinary situation—the so-called “decanonization” of 36 New Martyrs (the most famous of them Vasily (Preobrazhensky), Bishop of Kineshma), which took place in late 2012 and early 2013. They were simply erased from the register of saints and their feasts disappeared from the official Moscow Patriarchate calendar.

Political and ideological influences were even suspected, although the main reason for the decanonizations was in fact the disclosure of new documents suggesting that the New Martyrs and Confessors in question could have revealed others’ names during the investigation. Such was the case with Bishop Vasily (Preobrazhensky), who was arrested several times and spent ten years in prisons and labour camps. During his final arrest and interrogation in 1943, when he was already very ill, he probably testified against church-choir director Iraida Tikhova, who had been arrested at the same time. As Ksenya Luchenko demonstrates, this fact was known as early as 2003 but was only recently cited as the reason for his decanonization. ⁵⁷ Decanonization barely a few years after canonization as well as the manner in which it was conducted was broadly commented in the Russian media and had an adverse effect on the image of the New Martyrdom and the Russian Orthodox Church as an institution seeking justice. It shows how much history, and being true to historical truth, are important for the initiators of the New Martyrdom. This situation significantly differentiates the cult of the New Martyrs from the cult of the early saints, where other factors were important. ⁵⁸

It is also controversial that although not all of the New Martyrs’ names are known, the Russian Orthodox Church is not planning any further individual glorifications. The idea is that it is enough to commemorate them collectively as a group of unnamed saints during the New Martyrs’ and Confessors’ feast at the end of January. As Archimandrite Damaskin (Orlovskiy) told us during his interview, “simply, we have an element of sufficiency, you understand . . . is there any point in multiplying people’s names in the calendar? In order to perceive these people as alive—and if they are saints, this is how they should be perceived, as should their experience—people should address them, perceive their experience, try to use their experience . . . somehow . . . For this aim it is already enough. It is possible for the universal church or the Russian Orthodox Church to accept more than one thousand, a thousand and a half twentieth-century saints, [but] it really is a lot.” As a consequence, the Russian Orthodox Church made the decision to stop further canonizations and concentrate on the veneration of the already canonized New Martyrs.

Traditionally, in the Russian Orthodox Church canonization was a “down-top” process, which meant that the person was already being venerated and iconized. ⁵⁹ In the case of the New Martyrs it was a top-down process, which meant that the Church canonized the new martyrs “before the hagiographers, iconographers and hymnographers had ‘iconized’ them in liturgical art and before the believers began to venerate them.” ⁶⁰ As a consequence, when the New Martyrs were canonized, no liturgical art and literature devoted to them existed. It was necessary to write their icons, hagiographies (saints’ lives) and prayers and hymns to be said and sung during liturgical worship. Creating liturgical texts for a saint is always a lengthy process, as the icons, hymns, and prayers need to jointly reflect the essence of their sainthood while following the canon. This is why several representations of the saint are usually made before his or her canonical representation crystallizes. In the case of the New Martyrs, it was not possible to undertake such a multi-stage process. The liturgical texts had to be composed quickly and for so many unknown saints all at once. Moreover, specialists who could create new icon texts were lacking. In Soviet times, the efforts of the Russian Orthodox Church had largely been geared towards survival; icon and hymn writing was not taught and new institutions had to be set up to educate specialists capable of understanding the message of the New Martyrdom and conveying it through new icons and prayers. It shows that the New Martyrdom is not a process of adaptation to ensure relevance to present needs but rather a complex invention.

When the decision to promote the New Martyrs’ cult was made, it was frequently underlined that twentieth-century acts of martyrdom would be more understandable than those from the first centuries of Christianity. The Orthodox Church was hoping that although imposed from above, the new saints would rapidly be embraced by worshippers and would be intelligible to them. But as our interviewees point out, this did not happen. The situation at the opening of the lower church (nizhnii khram) in Butovo seems symptomatic in this respect. As we were told by Father Kaleda, who is a rector of this parish, “Old women were waiting [for the church to open—ZB], . . . they had bought candles and were waiting. We opened the church for them and they entered, you could almost say they rushed in and stopped in their tracks; they didn’t know where to light a candle. They wanted to light a candle at the icon of St Nicolas, the Holy Virgin or other familiar saints. And in fact there isn’t an icon of St Nicolas there, only of the New Martyrs. There are lots of icons, only they are all of New Martyrs, and the women walked around with their candles and didn’t know where to put them. That was the situation. What we need is thorough education.” ⁶¹ Father Kaleda didn’t say that time is needed for worship to develop, but that it is important to educate parishioners so that they spread the cult. His statement perfectly illustrates that the New Martyrdom is constructed from above and has a different trajectory of development than traditional cults.

Although less than a hundred years have passed, the acts of the New Martyrs are incomprehensible. It is because historical conditions have changed, intergenerational transmission has been interrupted, knowledge about the period is incomplete, was systematically falsified by the authorities, and has overgrown with myths and legends, which makes the past extremely difficult to understand. Moreover, most places are inhabited by newcomers without local roots. ⁶² As a priest’s wife in the Yekaterinburg region told us: “This community was formed in the 1990s. Some of these people came from Kazakhstan . . . Yes, some of our parishioners are newcomers, migrants as it is called, and they asked for some building and they gave them this building.” As a consequence, there is no biographical continuity—a martyr who served somewhere a hundred years ago is incomprehensible to contemporary parishioners.

But the problem of a lack of interest in and understanding of the past goes deeper. Before 2000, the year of the canonization, most members of the Orthodox Church did not view people persecuted for their faith as martyrs. This is a common attitude. Even people from clerical families or those who have a New Martyr in their family did not perceive their relatives as saintly persons till they had learned of their canonization. But even then, as one of our interlocutors in Moscow stressed, she mostly perceives her grandfather as a grandfather and prays to him as her grandfather. However, on her night table she has his icon, not the picture.

Sometimes even if a New Martyr is familiar and remembered, there is no worship because there is no interest in the past and in the New Martyrdom phenomenon as a whole. One significant example is that of Father F., whom we interviewed in Moscow in 2017. He has a new martyr in his distant family. Although he became a priest in the 1990s and even wrote a prayer to his martyr relative after 2000 (his spiritual supervisor ordered him to do so), he was neither able to reconstruct his life nor to name other famous martyrs. He has not visited any sites of the New Martyr cult either. ⁶³ His example shows how much a personal interest in history and the New Martyrdom is important for the development of worship. It is yet another example that confirms the great significance of history for the New Martyrdom.

In this context, it is worth noting that even the first monument in Butovo, a site which at the moment is the most important sanctuary of the New Martyrs and Confessors in Russia, was erected by the Memorial Society, and not by the Russian Orthodox Church. ⁶⁴ As for Yekaterinburg, the first meeting at the cross was organized in 1989 by a monarchist priest and a group of monarchist supporters, and not by representatives of the official Church authorities. Similarly, it was only at the end of the 1990s that the Russian Orthodox Church made the decision to erect sanctuaries in Alapayevsk (where members of the Royal Family were murdered) and at Ganina Yama mine (where the Bolsheviks threw the bodies of Nicholas II and his family). As one of the monks working in Alapayevsk told us, “The first cross standing in front of the mine, as we learned afterwards, had been erected by a Muslim who had lived here. He was in Alapayevsk and then he went to Kazan, to his homeland. After many years he came back, he brought a package of chak-chak, their national food, he brought photos and told us that he had lived here, he was ashamed of the Russian people because such an evil had taken place here. . . . There was nothing at the place. So he decided to erect an Orthodox cross. An Orthodox person had died here, so he erected an Orthodox cross.” ⁶⁵

These examples show a significant disruption of historic continuity. In spite of the Synod decision of 1917, the cult of the New Martyrs did not develop automatically, neither in 1917 nor after 1991, when it would have been possible. The Church authorities needed time and internal reflection on the significance of the New Martyrdom before they took any steps to disseminate the cult. As Archimandrite Damaskin said in our interview, “Yes. We had a break, a historical gap. . . . History has changed too much. . . . It is a fact. Yes, I can also confirm that some of it is not comprehensible, yes. But this is a matter of education and dissemination of the research of those who do it, and an attempt to understand those who are in the Church, of those who want to understand Church history.”

This situation meant that initially the veneration of the newly glorified saints depended mostly on the goodwill of the local priest and his interest in history. A great example is the worship of St. Vladimir Proferansov, the last priest at the Church of St. George the Great Martyr in Lubyanka Passage in Moscow before it was closed in 1932. After his canonization during the Jubilee Council in 2000, Father Aleksey, the Rector of the Church of St. George the Great Martyr, started to organize pilgrimages to Butovo, where Vladimir Proferansov had been killed on 15 December 1937. As Father Aleksey said during his interview, “We celebrate a service in his honour, we have the feast of St. Vladimir of Lubyanka on 15 December . . . or on the Sunday nearest to this day. . . . We have been gathering at the Butovo firing range every year for the last fourteen years.” ⁶⁶ Father Aleksey also initiated the collection of historical materials to supplement the information on the martyr’s life collected by Archimandrite Damaskin and presented in the latter’s multivolume The Lives of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in the Twentieth Century. Moreover, he obtained consent from Patriarch Aleksey II to dedicate the left altar of the church to the hieromartyr Vladimir Proferansov. As he said in our interview, “Immediately after the canonization we filed a petition to His Holiness the Patriarch and he approved. We wanted to dedicate the altar to the hieromartyr Vladimir of Lubyanka and all the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, because we are at the Lubyanka, where all the interrogations took place, but His Holiness the Patriarch said ‘no,’ let it be only Vladimir, and all the martyrs there, in Butovo.” There is also a small historical exhibition about the life of the martyr at the site of the church.

When the Moscow Patriarchate understood that the worship of nearly 2000 new saints posed quite a challenge for priests and believers alike, in 2011, during the Council of Bishops, it adopted a special resolution, On measures to preserve the memory of the New Martyrs, Confessors and All Those Innocently Persecuted by the godless theomachists, which includes guidelines on how to commemorate the New Martyrs. A regulation issued in 2014 by the Yekaterinburg Diocese, which obliged all the parishes to display an icon of St. Arkady Yershov in their church, is a good illustration of this state of affairs. Yershov was not from Yekaterinburg, but as he is the only hierarch glorified in the Yekaterinburg region, the Yekaterinburg Diocese wanted to develop his cult. This did not mean, however, that all the priests automatically followed all of the Synod’s directives. As Archimandrite Damaskin said in our interview, “they should do this as a part of Church discipline, because this is a general Church document, mandatory for all priests, and they should do this, they are obliged to commemorate their own martyr celebrated in their church, and if they don’t do that, well, it is an open violation.”

Another problem with the New Martyrdom is the frequent lack of relics. ⁶⁷ For Russian Orthodoxy, relics are very important; traditionally their presence and incorruptibility were considered a significant factor in the canonization process (although it was not a condition sine qua non). In the case of the New Martyrs, criteria similar to those applied by the Russian Orthodox Church in medieval times were used. These, as stressed by Maksim Maksimov, member of the Synodal Canonization Commission, include “a righteous life, immaculate Orthodoxy, popular veneration, miracles, and, if these exist, incorruptible relics.” However, in the canonization of the New Martyrs “incorruptible relics,” or relics at all, were not a key criterion. As Father Kirill Kaleda said in our interview: “During the canonization process of the New Martyrs, the question of the need to find relics was not raised. We have now glorified more than 1,700 New Martyrs, and relics have only been found in some 50–60 cases. This is because in the vast majority of cases the actual place of burial is unknown, or it is only known that the person was buried somewhere within an area. If there was a lager cemetery, for instance, it would be difficult to locate the exact place of burial.” ⁶⁸ However, even if relics are not required, they are important for believers and make the cult of a New Martyr develop better than in the absence of any relics. One of the interviewees in the Yekaterinburg region mentioned that the cult of the New Martyr Arkadii Gorayev in Borovskoye village is growing so popular because his relics have been found. Several kilometres from this village is the town of Katayskoye, where another new martyr, Aleksey Vvedenski, was killed in the same period of civil war. However, his cult is not developing because his relics were removed and destroyed in the 1970s when a school was constructed at the site of the former Orthodox church. ⁶⁹ It is worth noting that places witnessing dynamic development of New Martyr cults are mostly those where relics have been found.

As the bodies of many New Martyrs are missing, their photographs or belongings quite often serve as a substitute. A good example is the aforementioned Church of St. George the Great Martyr in Lubyanka Passage in Moscow. Inside the Church there is a showcase presenting the life of hieromartyr Vladimir Proferansov (Figure 1). As the current priest explained in our interview, the role of the showcase is to make the story of St. Vladimir’s martyrdom more understandable for the faithful. The showcase, though, also has another function: the martyr’s belongings presented inside fulfil the role of relics. As Father Aleksey said: “Here, as you can see, we have a small historical stand dedicated to him but, as we cannot find the relics, as we don’t even know where his grave is, we have just a cross with soil from the Butovo firing range, the place of his martyrdom. This photo with his wife was also found, and even their wedding rings are here. When a man is ordained as a priest, he takes off any rings he has and is betrothed to the Church, although he stays with his wife and family, but they don’t wear any rings, even wedding rings, and they are left here. And here, a small stone cross as may be worn by a priest. I have a simple one, but they can have various ornaments, and the upper part, the one with the stone, belonged to the hieromartyr Vladimir.” It is equally interesting that some parishioners find their own family stories connected to these objects—for instance, an old woman, who recognized her own father, also executed during the Great Terror, standing next to the saint in one of the photographs. Such showcases may therefore integrate parishioners’ stories, thus contributing to their religious and local identity, and—just like city museums—convey a narrative of people’s lives.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1

Showcase with items/relics presenting the life of the hieromartyr Vladimir Proferansov in the Church of St. George the Great Martyr at the Lubyanka Passage in Moscow. Photo by Zuzanna Bogumił

Another example of a museum displaying objects and photographs instead of relics is the exhibition in the lower church at the Sanctuary of the New Martyrs and Confessors in Butovo. Even if 330 of the New Martyrs were killed in Butovo, their bodies are not available, as they were buried in mass graves. Therefore, objects displayed in the lower church, which were brought either by family members or found by the priests preparing the exhibition, substitute for the relics. As Father Kirill Kaleda explained, the items were recovered in different ways: “Some objects were donated by relatives, other things were passed on somehow by people who knew [them]. Some objects were given to our family even before we moved to Butovo. And they turned out to be connected with this place. There, for example, you have the mitre of Bishop Arseny (Zhadanovsky). It was passed on to my family by a priest. It is a long story. And when we started to take care of Butovo, where Bishop Arseny is buried, I decided that the mitre should be kept in the church and not in my house. And so on. Some objects we simply got from relatives, or rather from other people who had them.” ⁷⁰

In these displays, history and religion intermingle and complement each other. Especially striking is the typical display strategy of juxtaposing photographs of the martyrs taken before their execution in 1937 and the Orthodox icons made on their basis (Figure 2). It is worth mentioning that these pre-execution photographs are commonly used as icon prototypes, ⁷¹ but they are not understood in accordance with Susan Sontag’s argument regarding the pain of others as an accomplice to what caused the suffering. To Sontag, there is an ethical problem when a viewer faces the pain of people who are aware that they are about to be killed. As she claims, those who are awaiting death are “as in Titian’s The Playing of Marsyas, where Apollo’s knife is eternally about to descend—forever looking at death, forever about to be murdered, forever wronged. And the viewer is in the same position as the lackey behind the camera; the experience is sickening.” ⁷² Sontag stresses that looking at such pictures not only puts the viewer in the position of the perpetrator, but also prolongs the victimization of the victims. Orthodox believers perceive this experience differently. As Archimandrite Damaskin (Orlovskiy) told us during his interview: “when you see a lot of photos, it seems frightening, because they were shot, but if you look at every person, he is nicer, more beautiful than he was when he was simply living. Not one of them shows any marks of fear or terror. They all, surprisingly, have the faces of free people, they are just photographed front-view, side-view, but if you don’t pay attention to the fact that these are mug shots, the photos are really good.” In Damaskin’s view, these photographs are more evocative than photographs from a martyr’s earlier life because the martyr’s holiness is more visible in them. The faces are beautiful because of the faith demonstrated in anticipation of death. Thus, the icons made on the basis of these photographs are also more spiritually profound.

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Figure 2

Photograph of prepodobnomuchenik Gavril (Gur) taken before his execution on 19 November 1937 in Butovo and a contemporary Orthodox icon made from this picture. Photo from http://www.xn——5cdggbbeeki3bf1bidmmpbjabdb2ar0kwnf.xn–p1ai/index.php/30-news/47-den-konchini-gavriila-gura

Interestingly, even icon painters see a substantial difference in icons created on the basis of such photographs. As Yekaterina Sheko, icon painter and member of the Expert Council of the Moscow Patriarchate for Church Art, working at St. Tikhon Orthodox University, said in our interview: “we think that a photo is just a photo, it is a kind of testimony, a living testimony in the form of a portrait. And icons are images for veneration and prayer, something supplementary. It means that we don’t substitute an icon for a photo but rather that in an icon we create an image for eternity.” ⁷³ She also sees a certain power in the photographs taken before death: “they are simply absolutely amazing. It is visible that they are so soulful. It means that even in a photo, even the one from the execution document, there can be the presence, the image . . . the spiritual image.” We see the same intermingling of the religious (veneration) and the historical element (photographs from the family’s life and their belongings, etc.) in Yekaterinburg and its surroundings, in memorial complexes commemorating Tsar Nicholas II and his family. This is also seen at Ganina Yama, where a sanctuary with seven churches devoted to New Martyrs has been built; apparently, the language of religion dominates here. However, the fence leading towards the main gate features historical photographs—scenes from the Royal Family’s life—which create a historical context for the site (Figure 3). The same thing occurs in Yekaterinburg, where even the location of the church is meaningful, as it was built on the site of Ipatiev’s House, where the Tsar’s family was imprisoned. In front of the Church on the Blood, photographs of the Tsar’s family are displayed to inform both religious and secular visitors about the meaning of the place (Figure 4). The lower church is dedicated to the Royal Family. Initially, architects drew up plans to restore the room in the exact location where they had been executed, but the Church did not agree to this and eventually an iconostasis was erected, low enough for everybody to see inside the room where the Tsar’s family was killed.

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Figure 3

Historical photographs on the fence leading to the main gate at Ganina Yama, where the bodies of the Royal Family were buried, and current site of a sanctuary with seven churches devoted to New Martyrs. Photo by Zuzanna Bogumił

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Figure 4

Historical photographs of the Tsar’s family in front of the Church on the Blood, built at the site of Ipatiev’s House, where the Royal Family was imprisoned and killed. Photo by Zuzanna Bogumił

The church space itself combines the features of a shrine and of an exhibition. One sees here, for instance, the gonfalons used during the first meeting to commemorate the Tsar’s family in 1989 as well as photographs of the family’s “faithful servants,” who were also shot dead with the Imperial Family but have not been canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church. ⁷⁴ In the lower church there are also two exhibition areas. The first tells the story of the Royal Family’s life and death and demonstrates the holiness of the Tsar’s family based on historical documents and photographs. The second area is dedicated to temporary exhibitions. During our research visit, there was an exhibition about New Martyrs from the Yekaterinburg region which explained their holiness using historical materials. The presence of historical exhibitions in churches dedicated to New Martyrs and at cult sites also results from the fact that all of these objects are perceived both as religious relics and tourist attractions. When the Church on the Blood was opened, a journalist from Uralskiy Musey described the Church as “one of the main showplaces in Yekaterinburg.” ⁷⁵

It should be emphasized that besides the positive aspects of such exhibitions—relaying information about a local community’s life and bringing together objects connected with its history—they also have a less positive side. There are people who donate objects that had belonged to a New Martyr, although they themselves are not interested in worshipping them. During research in Yekaterinburg, we learned about a family who discovered that one of their ancestors was a New Martyr. They went to the church where he had served, paid to have his icon painted and his hagiography published, which initiated veneration of the deceased, but the family itself does not come to the church and does not take part in the cult. As our interlocutor said, these people are not believers, but having learned that a member of their family had been canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church, they wanted this New Martyr to be remembered among Orthodox believers. It was clear that our interlocutor perceived such an attitude as immoral and detrimental to the development of the worship of New Martyrs. However, this story also shows that some people perceive the New Martyrdom as a powerful means of keeping the past alive. The family turned to the Church and not to public archives such as those being created by the Memorial Society to preserve the memory of their relative.

The canonization of the New Martyrs therefore is not an instance of evolution, a natural part of Church history, where a Christian testimony (i.e., of martyrdom) results from spontaneous veneration of those who gave up their lives (i.e., the martyrs), but rather an arbitrary, invented tradition, in most cases created by Russian Orthodox Church hierarchs because of political demands and not because of a spiritual need among the faithful. As Christensen points out, the existing materials on New Martyrs “are not testimonies of survivors, and they are not ‘histories of mourning’ of the relatives of the victims of repression. They are ‘histories of martyrdom’ written and painted decades after the events they recount by contemporary Russian Orthodox hagiographers and iconographers.” ⁷⁶

Milestones in the Development of the New Martyrdom

The New Martyrdom would not have developed into a story of Soviet anti-religious persecution if not for theorists like the already mentioned Archimandrite Damaskin, Metropolitan Juvenaly of Krutitsy and Kolomna, or Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov, who laid down the main narrative. An important role in disseminating the story was also played by events that had brought the New Martyrdom into the centre of media attention, thus convincing those involved in promoting it that they were not alone. At the same time, a platform for broader discussion and cooperation was also established. The first of these events was the canonization, in 2000, and the elevation of over 1070 new saints. This event was broadly commented not only in the Orthodox but also in the mainstream media, the news thus reaching a broad audience (the mainstream media mostly concentrated on the canonization of the Tsar Family, which they perceived as highly controversial). For the first time, Orthodox media needed to formulate a convincing discourse about the significance of the New Martyrdom so that believers would understand the message clearly.

Because the cult did not develop as well as the Moscow Patriarchate would have liked, Aleksey II decided that the Twelfth International Educational Congress organized in 2004 would be devoted to the New Martyrs and Confessors. The congress is an annual event organized by the Department of Religious Education and Catechesis of the Russian Orthodox Church to discuss state–Church relations, education, culture, social service, and spiritual and moral education. Each year it is attended by a few thousands of people. In 2004, all of the panel sessions and discussions were devoted to “acts of bravery of the New Russian Martyrs and Confessors and spiritual revival of the Motherland.” ⁷⁷ As one of our interlocutors working at the Moscow Patriarchate Department of Education said, it was the first public event that created a forum for discussion on the New Martyrs for a wider group of Orthodox activists. The result was not only exchange of ideas but also joint discussion on how to develop the cult of the New Martyrs and the purposes it should serve, as well as the establishment of contacts between promoters of the new cult.

The next milestone was the consecration of the Sanctuary of the New Martyrs and Confessors in Butovo in 2007. The act of consecration was performed by Patriarch Aleksey II together with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, Metropolitan Laurus, which also reinforced the image of the New Martyrdom as a narrative of reconciliation. The temple was consecrated on the seventieth anniversary of the Great Terror, which gave the event a special significance. It is worth stressing that it was the first time that the Great Terror was officially commemorated in the Russian Federation. Although a number of non-governmental organizations such as the Memorial Society had prepared a range of commemorative events, all of these were overshadowed by the Solovki-Butovo procession, which was widely presented and commented upon in the official media. ⁷⁸ The importance of this event was clearly defined in the introductory text of the exhibition, “Stations of the Cross: Solovki—Butovo,” which was an important element of the event and was presented at the site of the Solovetsky Monastery in 2007. We read in the exhibition text:

Seventy years ago, in August 1937, a campaign aimed at the mass annihilation of “enemies of the people” was launched in the Soviet Union. The whole territory of Russia became Calvary where hundreds of thousands of martyrs gave testimony to their faith in God, devotion to the Church and love of their Homeland. They persevered in the truth because they understood that without this sacrifice Russia had no chance of spiritual and moral revival. Through the prayers of these pious people the Russian Church is regenerating and re-establishing the edifice of Russian statehood. This is why such attention is drawn to places of martyrdom and sacrifice sanctified by the blood and prayers of the New Martyrs, especially Solovki and Butovo.

That same year, on 30 October 2007, the official national Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repressions, Vladimir Putin came to Butovo and took part in a religious service there. Putin (or any other high-ranking Russian politician) has never been to the Solovetsky Stone on Lubyanka Square during the remembrance event organized by the Memorial Society. According to Victoria Dorman ⁷⁹ , this union of church and state under the Solovetsky Cross at Butovo was a historical event because the state thereby confirmed the duty to remember the victims of Soviet repressions. However, this act of remembering also confirmed something else, namely, that not all of the victims of Soviet repressions had been political prisoners, and that there was a particular group—the martyrs—who should be remembered. From that moment on, the commemorative activities of the state and the Orthodox Church began to complement one another. Meanwhile, the consecration of the temple and Vladmir Putin’s visit to Butovo sent a message to believers that the New Martyrdom was a narrative backed by the state authorities.

In 2010, a Commission for Cooperation between the Church, State and Society was established within the framework of the Inter-Synod Committee, the former headed by Metropolitan Juvenalius who had earlier presided over the Canonization Commission. The year 2012 saw the establishment of the special Church-Social Council for Commemorating the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose aim is to implement the content of the 2011 resolution On measures to preserve the memory of New Martyrs, Confessors and All Those Innocently Persecuted by the godless theomachists, which includes guidelines on how to commemorate the New Martyrs so that the New Martyrdom is strengthened in Russian society and becomes widely perceived as an important moment in national history. As Father Andrey said in his interview with us, “Deliberate commemorative works are carried out within this committee. The committee . . . sets tasks to build new churches, publish new books, think about and paint new icons and church decorations, develop lecture series, etc. All of this is decided by the committee. [The committee] includes representatives of various branches of the Russian Orthodox Church, such as the Department for Religious Education and Catechization, the Educational Committee, the Mission Department, the Department of Culture, the one headed by Father Tikhon, and all together they try to . . . or rather for the time being they are coordinating their plans with regard to immortalizing this memory.” From 2014 on, the Church-Social Council for Commemorating the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church has met regularly to analyze how the commemoration of New Martyrs has evolved in different dioceses and to produce recommendations for further development.

One of the main tasks of the Council, established in 2012, was to prepare the commemorations of the one-hundredth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in 2017. The Church believed that the anniversary would be an excellent opportunity for intensive development of the New Martyrs’ cult and, consequently, for instilling in society an Orthodox vision of the past. The official agenda of the commemorations was approved in March 2017. One of the key events was the consecration of the Temple of the Resurrection of Christ and the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church at Bolshaya Lubyanka inside the Sretensky Monastery grounds in Moscow on 25 May 2017. The church was consecrated by Patriarch Kirill and visited by the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin. During his speech, Putin stressed that a new temple was important not only for believers but for all of Russian society. This is because, as he stressed, “Our country, the Russian state, is impossible to imagine without the spiritual and historical experience of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is passed on from generation to generation through the pastoral word.” He also added that a temple in honour of New Martyrs and Confessors should “perpetuate in our [Russian - ZB] society the ideas of goodness, mutual respect and reconciliation.” The fact that the Russian president participated in the consecration of an Orthodox church dedicated to the New Russian Martyrs and that during its consecration he gave his first official speech on the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution shows that the New Martyrdom is becoming an important framework for interpreting Soviet repressions, not only for the Orthodox Church but also for the Russian state. This is clearly seen in the state support granted for various kinds of activities undertaken by the Russian Orthodox Church.

The recommendations adopted by the Russian Orthodox Church with regard to the commemoration of New Martyrs include not only the construction of typical Orthodox memorials such as churches, crosses, and chapels but also secular productions such as documentary and feature films, TV programs about the deeds of the New Martyrs and Confessors, as well as proposals to include the issue in contemporary history textbooks and to rename streets, squares, and boulevards in honour of New Martyrs and Confessors. ⁸⁰ A great example of such a memory project addressed to the public at large is a historical exhibition presenting one thousand years of Russian history, titled “Russia—My History,” featured at the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy (Vystavka Dostizheniy Narodnogo Khozyaystva (VDNKh) in Moscow since 2016.

The Historical Park “Russia—My History” is composed of four multimedia exhibitions devoted, respectively, to the reign of the Rurik dynasty, the Romanovs, the first half of the twentieth century, and the second half of the twentieth century until 2016. The exhibitions were originally prepared by the Department of Culture of the Russian Orthodox Church and presented under the title “Orthodox Russia. My History” at the Moscow Manege. From 2013 to 2016, ⁸¹ on the occasion of National Unity Day (Den΄ narodnogo yedinstva) and the Feast of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, the Russian Orthodox Church presented its interpretation of Russian history in one of the most important exhibition venues in Moscow. What is significant is the fact that, first of all, the exhibitions were called “Orthodox Russia. My History” and were presented as Russian Orthodox Church projects. At present, they are titled “Russia—My History,” the term “Orthodox” has disappeared, and the Historical Park itself is not an Orthodox institution but a cultural centre managed by the City of Moscow. According to information on the project website, more than two million visitors have seen the exhibitions. It is also important to stress that similar multimedia exhibitions under the same title are under construction in many other Russian cities. ⁸²

The exhibition dedicated to the first half of the twentieth century, “The Twentieth Century. From Great Upheaval to Great Victory. 1917-1945,” is divided into twelve galleries portraying events considered important in understanding twentieth-century Russian history. One of the rooms that each visitor has to pass through is entitled “The New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia”. It should be emphasized that other victims of Soviet repressions are discussed separately inside a small side room devoted to repressions attached to a room entitled “Stalinist Socialism.” The room devoted to the New Martyrs is situated in the main line of galleries after rooms themed on the February and October revolutions of 1917 and the civil war. The placement of the New Martyrs’ story in a separate part of the exhibition highlights the meaning assigned to these events and their impact on the subsequent course of Russian history by the Orthodox Church. The fact that the exhibition is currently featured as part of a secular city-run institution shows that the New Martyrdom phenomenon should not be treated as internal to the Orthodox Church but as an important and powerful voice about the past in contemporary Russia. ⁸³

Conclusions

We have analyzed the New Martyrdom as an invented tradition that, although drawing on the past, has origins reaching out to the Holy Synod 1917 and was for most part devised after the year 2000. Although invented traditions are not unique to Russia, the political transformation that occurred after the fall of communism forced the Russian Orthodox Church to develop new traditions adapted to the new social and political reality, giving meaning to the recent past and helping the Church regain social trust and achieve the status of an institution to be reckoned with. The canonization of the New Martyrs, whom the Soviet authorities had persecuted and killed on account of their faith, was supposed to help achieve these goals. By canonizing the New Martyrs, the Church wanted to stress that it was returning to its old traditions and roots and that it was not indifferent to twentieth-century history, which had impressed itself on its identity. This explains the decision to canonize so many martyrs, which underlines the uniqueness of the experience of repressions that afflicted both the Church and Orthodox Christians in the twentieth century. Meanwhile, the collaboration and dialogue established between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia were meant to demonstrate that the Church was not afraid of difficult discussions, that it was open to dialogue and reconciliation and, since it had managed to reach agreement with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, that it could serve as a model of national reconciliation. It also shows that from the very beginning, the New Martyrdom was invented in order to help achieve various religious, social, and political goals.

The Orthodox Church was also quick to realize that the New Martyrdom had the power to forge a new identity and could serve to establish dialogue between the Church, state, and society. This follows from the fact that it is impossible to deny Soviet repressions, while the Russian Federation today needs to maintain historical continuity. Mikus Solovejs from the Latvian Christian Academy has claimed that the New Martyrdom may serve as precisely this kind of bridge because it “provides a good foundation for a critical evaluation of the history of twentieth-century Russia. Today, in addition to other historical sources, the hagiographies of the New Martyrs make an essential contribution to public opinion when it comes to critically re-examining the ideas of the communist regime and condemning the terror it wielded.” ⁸⁴ The interpretation offered by the Russian Orthodox Church accuses nobody; instead it focuses on the victims whose martyrdom is interpreted as a manifestation of Russia’s greatness and spiritual strength, these being important ideals in constructing a national identity.

But not all of the actions undertaken by the Russian Orthodox Church to develop the New Martyrdom brought the intended results. A range of problems emerged and had to be confronted, particularly when it came to the implementation of the new cult. This made it necessary to establish special commissions and undertake efforts to instill the cult of the New Martyrs among Orthodox Christians as well as to conduct an information campaign among the whole society. A number of mistakes were also made, such as the decanonization of a number of saints, including some whose cult had already taken root, which had a negative effect on the image and development of the New Martyrs’ cult.

Nevertheless, if we look at the number and grandeur of the commemorative activities undertaken by the Russian Orthodox Church over the last dozen or so years, it is clear that veneration of the New Martyrs will develop, even if slowly. The development of saintly cults is slow and depends on a whole range of factors. Barely 17 years have passed since most of the New Martyrs were canonized, and yet within this time the Russian Orthodox Church has managed to set up a vast and intricate network of memorials. These include both new icons and hymns but, above all, sanctuaries constructed at historical sites symbolizing Soviet repressions, like the Solovestky Islands, Butovo, Yekaterinburg, Ganina Yama, Alapayevsk, Katyn, and the Lubyanka in Moscow. These memory sites play an important role in the construction of the New Martyrdom discourse. As Halbwachs has already stressed, “it would be very difficult to describe the event if one did not imagine the place.” ⁸⁵ Only events that have a location are perceived as real, “a memory that lacks localisation runs the risk of not being attested as true, and so of being lost.” ⁸⁶ Since places symbolizing Soviet repressions are currently places of commemoration of the New Martyrs, it seems clear that the New Martyrdom phenomenon will affect the perception of Soviet repressions among believers. On the other hand, the example of the multimedia exhibition “Russia—My History,” and plans to construct similar exhibitions all around the Russian Federation, shows that the memory of non-believers will also have to be informed by the story of the New Martyrs.