Igor Kometchikov The Vows of Socialism: A Transformation of Religious Holidays in Rural Nechernozemye in the Mid-1940s - Early 1960s Igor Kometchikov - Associate Professor, Kaluga State University (Russia), kometchikov.igor@mail.ru Celebrating religious holidays was in the core of religiosity of rural Central Russia. Before the Revolution, the holidays contained a tension between the strict following of church calendar and the specific local sacral rhythm and collective memory. The paper explores the changes in the Soviet times, in particular in the postwar period until the early 1960s, when the tradition underwent a deep transformation. The paper draws upon the documents of the state Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, Party and local institutions, Komsomol, as well as the ethnographic data. By arbitrarily moving the borders of legality in the religious field, the authorities modified the tradition: the holidays were accepted within fewer registered churches while restricting other practices. This led to the interruption of the local memory of sacred places, and thus the former organic link between liturgical and mundane practices was broken. The Festive date was recast as a secular pastime. The crisis of the tradition of holidays was completely secularized and transformed the entire peasant culture. Keywords: the rural Central Nechernozemye, religious holidays, religiosity, Russian Orthodox Church, spiritual culture of peasants, Soviet antireligious policy, secularization of leisure. The tradition of religious holidays is one of the key components of the spiritual culture of the Russian countryside. In Soviet literature, it was seen as fading page 238due to the total "crisis of religion" and the natural success of secularization of social life under socialism in the course of "eliminating the social roots of religiosity"1. "Residual" religiosity was explained by the action of "unfavorable circumstances of public and private life" 2. Modern researchers also ana ... Читать далее