Point of (No) return: the Collapse of the USSR and the Formation of a New Russia in the Memorial Discourse of the Russian Orthodox Church

Abstract

The article raises the question of including religious communities in the design of memorial discourses about the 90s. The subject of the study is the dynamics of the image of Russia Day in the policy of remembering the Russian Orthodox Church and Orthodox religious communities in 2009–2021. The author identifies two strategies that are formed in religious memorial discourse: the inclusion of the Russian Orthodox Church in the nostalgic discourse on Soviet society, which makes Russia Day less and less saturated with positive images; the desire to correlate this date with the church calendar, using the image of Alexander Nevsky. From the point of view of socio-political research, an essential element of such a memorial discourse is the desire to fill the symbolic emptiness that has arisen, and due to the design of new promotional practices that connect the festive date with the image of Alexander Nevsky.