Vavulinskaya, L. I. RELIGIOUS RITUALISM OF THE ORTHODOX POPULATION OF KARELIA BETWEEN THE MID-1940s AND 1960s. Proceedings of Petrozavodsk State University. 2026;48(6):52–61. DOI: 10.15393/uchz.art.2026.1351


Marking the 800th Anniversary of the Baptism of the Karelians

RELIGIOUS RITUALISM OF THE ORTHODOX POPULATION OF KARELIA BETWEEN THE MID-1940s AND 1960s

Vavulinskaya
L. I. 		Karelian Research Centre Russian Academy of Sciences
Keywords:
Orthodox culture
religious rituals
Soviet and Orthodox identity		 Summary: As the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the public and political life of the country has been rising over the past decades, research on the history of local Orthodox communities and forms of people’s religious ritualism is gaining relevance. Previously unstudied topics, such as marrying ‘the Soviet’ and ‘the Orthodox’ in the lives of religious citizens, or the various strategies for preserving Orthodox traditions in an atheist society, come to the foreground. Introducing new archival materials into the scientific discourse, the article throws light upon the functioning of Orthodox practices among people of Karelia in post-WWII decades, which has not been specifically addressed before. The author applied the historical-analytical, historical-evolutionary, and historical-statistical methods. The study revealed that despite the prohibitions and restrictions imposed on Orthodox Church operations, a substantial part of the republic’s population maintained the religious holiday customs, baptism and funeral service traditions, and actively participated in solicitation of commissioning of churches and sending clergymen to remote areas lacking a church. Other religious practices in use were performing rituals in closed chapels or traveling to other regions to be baptized. Often, religious people had both the Soviet and the Orthodox identities combined, participating in both Church and Soviet holidays, going to church services as well as propagandist events. The fact that people remained faithful to religious traditions was evidenced also by growing church revenues in the 1950s-60s.



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