Protestant women in the late Soviet era: gender, authority, and dissent

At the peak of the anti-religious campaigns under Nikita Khrushchev, communist propaganda depicted women believers as either naïve dupes, tricked by the clergy, or as depraved fanatics; the Protestant “sektantka” (female sectarian) was a particularly prominent folk-devil. In fact, as this article shows, women’s position within Protestant communities was far more complex than either of these mythical figures would have one believe. The authors explore four important, but contested, female roles: women as leaders of worship, particularly in remote congregations where female believers vastly outnumbered their male counterparts; women as unofficial prophetesses, primarily within Pentecostal groups; women as mothers, replenishing congregations through high birth rates and commitment to their children’s religious upbringing; and women as political actors in the defence of religious rights. Using a wide range of sources, which include reports written by state officials, articles in the church journal, letters from church members to their ecclesiastical leaders in Moscow, samizdat texts, and oral history accounts, the authors probe women’s relationship with authority, in terms of both the authority of the (male) ministry within the church, and the authority of the Soviet state

Любовь без Удовлетворения: Русская Православная Церковь и Российская Армия

The Russian Orthodox Church has positionned itself before the State and society as an organization representing the religious interests of the largest part of the Russian population.For this reason, during the first half of the 90’s, the Church has requested the possibility to perform pastoral  and missionary activities in social spheres closed to her during the Soviet period. The Russian Army and the power ministries were among them. But having received the right to work in these institutions, the Church proved itself unable to fulfill its task, although it  found a “common language” with military leaders on “patriotic upbringing” and “fight against spiritual agression”. The incapacity of the Church to meet the army leadership’s expectation to improve the morale of soldiers and sergents and, at the same time, the low level of religious culture among servicemen gave ground to growing mutual dissatisfaction

V. F. Nekrasov, Apparat TsK KPSS v pogonakh i bez. Nekotorye voprosy oborony, gosbezopasnosti, pravookhranitel’noi deiatel’nosti v TsK KPSS (40-e – nachalo 90-x godov XX veka)

Vladimir Filipovich Nekrasov was an instructor for the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Department of Administrative Organs of the Central Committee of the CPSU and wrote this impressive-looking book with the huge red coat of arms of the Soviet Union. For the older generations of researchers on the Soviet Union, he was probably most famous for writing a series of sensational, historical stories of the NKVD, MGB, and Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) both during, and post..

Любовь без Удовлетворения: Русская Православная Церковь и Российская Армия

The Russian Orthodox Church has positionned itself before the State and society as an organization representing the religious interests of the largest part of the Russian population.For this reason, during the first half of the 90’s, the Church has requested the possibility to perform pastoral  and missionary activities in social spheres closed to her during the Soviet period. The Russian Army and the power ministries were among them. But having received the right to work in these institutions, the Church proved itself unable to fulfill its task, although it  found a “common language” with military leaders on “patriotic upbringing” and “fight against spiritual agression”. The incapacity of the Church to meet the army leadership’s expectation to improve the morale of soldiers and sergents and, at the same time, the low level of religious culture among servicemen gave ground to growing mutual dissatisfaction