Lunch Time Book Launch mit Liliya Berezhnaya und Heidi Hein-Kircher

Sacralization of History in Times of Crises
Modern Eastern Europe

This book explores the sacralization of history with a focus on modern Eastern Europe where the erasure of Soviet traditions has triggered a search for specific “usable pasts”. It discusses the importance of sacralization in memory and identity-building politics and the complex interplay between religion, history, and identity, particularly within the context of crises and conflict situations, by showing the historical roots of these processes.

The contributors seek to identify the political, societal and religious actors promoting the sacralization of history. They consider which networks promote sacralized visions of history and who is excluded from the sacralized community of national belonging. They also explore which historical topics seem best suited for the sacralization of history and question what happens to the rituals, objects, or spaces, formerly regarded as sacral: are they profaned, neglected, or re-inscribed by new national histories, and is there a religious language of national history? These are the major questions of this book.

Table of Contents

• The Sacralization of History in Modern Eastern Europe: Introductory Remarks, Liliya Berezhnaya and Heidi Hein-Kircher
• Section I Memory politics: Uses and Abuses of the Sacred
     2 Remembering Religious Dissent Through Its Martyrs: The Orthodox Church and the Appropriation of Historical Memory in Post-Socialist Romania, Radu Nedici
     3 The (Ab)use of Orthodox Marian Iconography in the Holodomor Visual Culture in Pre-Maidan Ukraine, Wiktoria Kudela-Swiatek
     4 Holier Than Thou?” Discourses of Orthodox Interdenominational Ecclesiastical Historical Politics in Ukraine at the Time of the Ukrainian Autocephaly Process, Ursula Woolley
     5 The “Lot of the Mother of God”: Imperial Mystique and the Language of Sovereignty in Modern Georgian Political Thought, Nikoloz Aleksidze
     6 Orthodoxizing History, Sacralizing the State, Legitimizing an Autocrat: Russian Past in “Russia—My History” Park(s), Ekaterina V. Klimenko
• Section II Staging Martyrdom
     7 Between States: Macedonia as a Contested Terra Sancta (1878–2023), Denis Ljuljanovic
     8 Churches and Sacralization of Euromaidan Protest in Ukraine From a Post-Secular Perspective, Yuliya Yurchuk and Andriy Fert
     9 Martyrdom and Glory: Sacralization of Memory Practices in Modern Poland, Ma.gorzata G.owacka-Grajper
     10 “This Is a Sacred Legend that No One Must Touch”: Narratives of Martyrdom and the Sacralization of History of World War II in Contemporary Russia, Maria Falina
     11 Passion According to Nationalists: Martyrs for Faith and Sacralization of History in the Baltic Provinces of the Russian Empire and in Post-Soviet Estonia, Irina Paert
• Section III Narrating Paganism
     12 “Nacjopoganie”? The Sacralization of the Pre-Christian Past as Identity Politics in Modern Polish Paganism, Karin Reichenbach
     13 Re-sacralizing Hungarianness: Pseudo-History, Ethno-Paganism, and High Politics, István Povedák
     Concluding Afterwords
     14 Heroes and Saints: The Sacralization of History in Contemporary Eastern Europe, Piotr Kisiel
     15 The Sacred Power of History: The Useful Past and the Politics of Memory in Eastern Europe, Alexander Agadjanian