Perception of the Theological Seminary by the Soviet Intelligentsia of the Late USSR Period

Abstract

The paper is to study the mythological late Soviet discourse about Orthodox seminaries and academies. The formation of this discourse took place in the conditions of alienation of a significant part of the Soviet intelligentsia from religion, which applies both to the humanitarian and technical intelligentsia. The sources of the formation of the corresponding mythologemes are atheistic propaganda materials, often representing religious relations in a caricatured, vulgarized form, stories of the older generation, often quite ignorant in religious matters, random information obtained from various sources, etc. Along with the Soviet intelligentsia, representatives of the clergy and lower clergy were also exposed to “church mythology”. First of all, this applies to the clergy who began their ministry in the years of perestroika. Many of them came to the church from a secular, sometimes atheistic background, so that they did not have family church traditions and were in many ways bearers of the late Soviet culture of everyday life. The discourse fixes the mythological idealization of spiritual education, with the emphasis on the deep study of classical languages and modern languages, continuity with pre-revolutionary schools, an exceptionally large competition of applicants. Along with the idealization of spiritual education, discourse records another extreme, which is largely a consequence of Soviet atheistic propaganda, portraying the church as a stronghold of ignorance and obscurantism. Negative reviews also demonstrate a significant range both in the harshness of criticism and in its accordance with reality (from fixing real moments in the life of church schools to mythological fantasies). The paper shows that negative reviews differ in the degree of temporal relevance and the desire to globalize the comments. Such reviews demonstrate varying degrees of familiarity with the real state of affairs.