Sacred or Secular? ‘Memorial’, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Contested Commemoration of Soviet Repressions

The reconstruction of the history from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s of Soviet repressions critically influenced the social formation of Gulag memory in Russia. Amongst those re-narrating the past, the ‘Memorial’ Society and the Russian Orthodox Church most actively shaped the collective memory of Soviet repressions, trying to establish multi-layered explanatory constructs of the Gulag. Their interpretations were crystallised through contemporary memorialisation acts in significant landscapes of the past. Focusing on Solovki, Ekaterinburg, Butovo and Magadan, and analysing tensions in their memorialisation processes, we discuss secular and Orthodox interpretations of the Gulag, and their impact on the memory of the Soviet repressions in contemporary Russia Publisher Statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Europe-Asia Studies on 19 Nov 2015 available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09668136.2015.1085962