Between museum and church
Remembering and reinventing national heritage
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9641908 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Katia Dianina (University of Virginia, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 63 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| Pages | 72-95 |
| Publication date | 2021-04-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Canadian Slavonic Papers (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0008-5006 • E-ISSN: 2375-2475 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00085006.2021.1915528 |
| OpenAlex | W3180211606 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 21 |
The proposed transfer of the St. Isaac’s Cathedral museum to the Russian Orthodox Church occasioned a major controversy in 2017. This essay considers the contestation between the museum and the Church as one conspicuous manifestation of competing heritage discourses and a useful lens through which to examine the religious renaissance of today. St. Isaac’s and the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg, two major churches and popular tourist attractions, with much shared history yet rather dissimilar situations in the present, demonstrate the ambivalence of post-Soviet desecularization. During the Soviet era, both cathedrals functioned as antireligious museums. Today, one is a fully functioning church that welcomes occasional excursions for tourists; the other is a major museum with certain hours reserved for religious services. While the religious revival today is viewed conventionally as a reversal of twentieth-century secularizing trends, the St. Isaac’s controversy reveals a remarkable continuity with Soviet models of heritagization. The divergent fates of the two main cathedrals in St. Petersburg offer different templates for the current coexistence of “cult and culture” – now peaceful, now confrontational – and demonstrate the plurality of heritage discourses at work in post-Soviet public space
Ambivalence · Ancient history · Art · Art history · Cult · Sociology · Classics · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · History · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Religious Tourism and Spaces
Multiple Moralities and Religions in Post-Soviet Russia
Religion and Politics in Russia
Uses of Heritage
Socialist Churches
Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More
Religion and the State in Russia and China
Stalin's Talking Museums
Introduction
Church or Museum? The Role of State Museums in Conserving Church Buildings, 1965-1985
Desecularization
Contentious Heritage
The Politics of Religious Heritage
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2024 (2) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |