discourse – RCS

Vladimir Yur’evich Lebedev,
Aleksandr Michaylovich Prilutskiy
Doctor of Philosophy, professor, Tver’ State University (ulitsa Zhjelyabova, 33, Tver’, Russia, 170023)
semion.religare@yandex.ru
Doctor of Philosophy, professor, The Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia (Moika Embankment, dom 48, korpus 20a, St. Petersburg, Russia, 191186)
alpril@mail.ru

Lebedev V. Y., Prilutskiy A. M. Prophecies of «youth Vyacheslav» as an eschatological discourse about disasters, Religiya. Tserkov’. Obshchestvo. Issledovaniya i publikatsii po teologii i religii [Religion. Church. Society: Research and publications in the field of theology and religious studies], Saint-Petersburg, 2022, vol. 11, pp. 80–93.

doi: 10.24412/2308-0698-2022-11-80-93

Language: Russian

The article discusses the religious veneration of the «Youth Vyacheslav», a teenager who died in the city of Chebarkul in 1993. Despite the fact that at present the cult of Vyacheslav is distributed mainly within the Orthodox ritual sphere, in terms of its content it can be assessed as pseudo-Orthodox and para-Orthodox. This article analyzes the specifics of the eschatological narratives about catastrophes attributed to Vyacheslav. The authors substantiate the thesis that the sociopsychological reasons for the demand for apocalyptic narratives about catastrophes in popular religiosity are due to the formation of lumpenized strata in society, who see eschatological catastrophes as an instrument of punishment for their more successful and wealthy fellow citizens. The content analysis of the body of texts allows us to conclude that the discourse on eschatological catastrophes presented in the prophecies of the «Chebarkul lad» contains five interrelated themes: «Hunger», «Death of cities», «Diseases», «Cryptozoological and cosmoeschatological plots», «Social catastrophes». The specificity of this phenomenon is the combination of banal narrative material and the construction of the narrative itself with a somewhat unusual situational frame.

Key words: Orthodox Church, Estonia, World War II, Baltic Exarchate, Pavel Kalinkin

URL: http://rcs-almanac.ru/en/en-lebedev-prilutskiy-2022/

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Vladimir Yur’evich Lebedev Doctor in Philosophy, professor, Tver’ State University (ulitsa Zhjelyabova, 33, Tver’, Russia, 170023)
semion.religare@yandex.ru

Lebedev V. Yu. Trickster discourse in сurrent religious and сultural context, Religiya. Tserkov’. Obshchestvo. Issledovaniya i publikatsii po teologii i religii [Religion. Church. Society: Research and publications in the field of theology and religious studies], Saint-Petersburg, 2018, vol. 7, pp. 92–107.

doi: 10.24411/2308-0698-2018-00005

Language: Russian

The postsecular culture belongs to the type of transitional cultures that breed the inevitable feeling of transition and stagnation resulting from cultural inertia. At such times individuals and society find themselves at the point of polyfurcation, facing the necessity of choice not only in terms of large-scale social issues, but embracing the entire semiosphere and discourses of culture including the religious ones. These changes reach into the very heart of confessional culture with the greatest changes occuring in the sphere of art. The transitional discourse involves a set of languages and the freedom of choosing them, and defines social and cultural image of the period. The transitional period gives rise to the renewed perception of the world as well as both eternal transcendent systems of concept. It gravitates towards the semiotics of the carnival, of cultural semiotic polystylistics that are often characteristic of the turning-point epochs settling after a short period of laminar culture. Hence — the broad-ranging semiotic experimentations with otherwise rigid existential aspects, including such topics as death and the ensuing afterlife. Trickster discourse comes into a wide demand in the current cultural situation. It turns to the inversion, the carnival and the paradox inevitably attracting those who aren’t interested in religious issues expressed in traditional verbal way. The semiotic sophistication breeds multivariate interpretation admitting concurrent opposing interpretations of the text. The same text can be attributed as «primitive» and «mocking» but also as very intricate, i. e. elitist. Thus, the authors face significantly differ from reference groups of recipients. When the renewed perception becomes settled, the situation enters the stage of stability with its content being defined by the cultural choice made during the transitional period.

Key words: laminar culture, polyinterpretativity, trickster, discourse, estrangement, postsecularity

URL: http://rcs-almanac.ru/lebedev-2018-en/