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.
List of figures
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 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 RussiaMy History Park(s), Ekaterina V. Klimenko
Section II Staging Martyrdom
7 Between States: Macedonia as a Contested Terra Sancta (18782023), 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, Istvįn Povedįk
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
Liliya Berezhnaya is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and a Visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven and at the Central European University in Vienna. Till 2021, she was an Associate Professor at the University of Münsters Religion and Politics Cluster of Excellence in Germany. She earned her MA degree from Moscow State University, and her MA and PhD in history from the Central European University. Her research is focused on comparative borderland studies, imperial and national discourses in Eastern European history, symbolic geography, and the construction of the other, Ukrainian religious and cultural history and eschatological notions in Christian traditions. Her publications include Die Militarisierung der Heiligen in Vormoderne und Moderne (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2020); Iconic Turns: Nation and Religion in Eastern European Cinema Since 1989 (Leiden: Brill 2013; co-edited with Christian Schmitt); Rampart Nations: Bulwark Myths of East European Multiconfessional Societies in the Age of Nationalism (New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books 2019; co-edited with Heidi Hein-Kircher); and The World to Come: Ukrainian Images of the Last Judgment (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press 2015; co-authored with John-Paul Himka). ORCID: 0000-0003-1604-2566 Heidi Hein-Kircher is director of the Martin Opitz Library (Herne) and professor at Ruhr-University Bochum. She earned her M.A. and PhD from Heinrich Heine-University in Düsseldorf in 2000 and worked on the research staff of the Herder-Institute for Historical Research in East Central Europe Member of the Leibniz-Association in Marburg, Germany between 2003 and 2024, since 2009 as the head of department Academic Forum. In 2018, she received her habilitation degree at Philipps-University Marburg. In her research, she focuses on urban history (emerging cities), on memory studies, historical critical security, and conflict studies, and on modernity, family values and gender history in Eastern Europe. Selected Publications: Lembergs polnischen Charakter sichern. Kommunalpolitik in einer multiethnischen Stadt der Habsburgermonarchie 1861/62-1914 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2020), Consumption and Advertising in Eastern Europe and Russian in the Twentieth Century, ed. with Magdalena Eriksroed-Burger and Julia Malitska (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023); Rampart Nations. Bulwark Myths of East European Multiconfessional Societies in the Age of Nationalism, ed. with Liliya Berezhnaya (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books 2019). ORCID: 0000-0003-3455-5410.
