Tag: History
-
Patriarch Kirill wants monastery that was Gulag to be spiritual center
From Ecumenical News International (26 August 2009): By Sophia Kishkovsky Moscow, 26 August (ENI)–The Solovetsky Islands off the coast of Russia’s northern Arkhangelsk region – settled by monks in the 15th century – became in the 20th century a center for the Soviet Gulag system of prison camps. Now the monastery archipelago should become a…
-
‘Stalin’s Ghost Still Walks’
Writing in History Today, Catherine Merridale examines “competing versions of Russia’s troubled past in the light of present politics.” The excerpt below from “Haunted by Stalin” discusses the decline of interest in the Soviet past, and especially the work of Memorial, the research organization dedicated to keeping the memory of Communism’s victims alive. For some…
-
Bureaucratic Church and Imperial State
In response to comments here on this blog about whether the Byzantines will one day “save” the American Church, the answer to that, as has been observed, is that there are no Byzantines remaining to save us. What’s more, there would be little support among American Orthodox Christians for the sort of deep involvement by…
-
Review: How the Byzantines Saved Europe
The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies. Edited by Elizabeth Jeffreys, John Haldon, Robin Cormack. Oxford University Press (2008) Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire by Judith Herrin. Princeton University Press (2008) Ask the average college student to identify the 1,100 year old empire that was, at various points in its history, the political,…