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Teaching Atheism and Religion in the Mari Republic, Russian Federation

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Teaching Atheism and Religion in the Mari Republic, Russian Federation FORMS AND METHODS: TEACHING ATHEISM AND RELIGION IN THE MARI REPUBLIC, RUSSIAN FEDERATION by Sonja Christine Luehrmann A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology and History) in the University of Michigan 2009 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Alaina M. Lemon, Chair Professor E. Webb Keane Jr. Professor William G. Rosenberg Associate Professor Douglas T. Northrop © Sonja Christine Luehrmann All rights reserved 2009 In loving-guessing memory of my grandparents, Karl Lührmann (1892-1978) and Käte Lührmann née Emkes (1907-1997), who were, among other things, rural school teachers, and bequeathed me a riddle about what happens to people as they move between ideological systems. ii Acknowledgements On the evening of January 18, 2006, over tea between vespers and the midnight mass in honor of the feast of the Baptism of Christ, the Orthodox priest of one of Marij El’s district centers questioned the visiting German anthropologist about her views on intellectual influence. “You have probably read all three volumes of Capital, in the original?” – Some of it, I cautiously admitted. “Do you think Marx wrote it himself?” – I said that I supposed so. “And I tell you, it was satan who wrote it through his hand.” I remember making a feeble defense in the name of interpretative charity, saying that it seemed safer to assume that human authors were capable of their own errors, but could not always foresee the full consequences of their ideas. The priest seemed unimpressed, but was otherwise kind enough to sound almost apologetic when he reminded me that as a non-Orthodox Christian, I had to leave the church after the prayers for the catechumens, before the beginning of the liturgy of communion. As that moment would come around 2 a.m. and it was thirty below outside, he even gave me permission to sit on a bench at the back of the church instead of actually leaving the building, and told me to be sure to stay for tea and breakfast after the service. Being mindful, then, that it is a difficult task to account for the sources of one’s ideas, I would like to acknowledge some of the debts I incurred in the course of my dissertation research. I am thankful first of all to interlocutors like Father Nikolaj, who iii were honest about the suspicions which my eclectic interests raised in them, but were almost invariably willing to go even a little further in their hospitality than their idea of duty allowed. In refreshing contrast, archivists in Joshkar-Ola and Moscow provided professional help and respite from the opinionated worlds of religious and anti-religious actors. My special thanks go to Valentina Pavlovna Shomina and Valentina Ivanovna Orekhovskaja in the State Archives of the Republic of Marij El, and Dina Nikolaevna Nokhotovich and Ljudmila Gennad’evna Kiseleva at the State Archives of the Russian Federation. Galina Nikolaevna Novikova of the Novyj Tor”jal District Museum provided both a quiet working atmosphere and warm-hearted hospitality, a combination for which I am doubly grateful. A number of people and institutions facilitated my entry into the religious and social life of the Volga region. If the Bosch Foundation had not sent me to Mari State University as an instructor of German in 2000/01, I may well never have heard of the republic of Marij El. During my subsequent fieldwork there, Svetlana and Veronika Semënovy and Svetlana Algaeva assisted me in transcribing and translating Mari- language recordings. Writer-folklorist-filmmaker Marina Kopylova shared the contents of her address book as generously as those of her fridge. Beyond facilitating valuable initial contacts, she was also a constant source of moral support. In a friendship that goes back long before my first trip to Marij El, Olga Nyrkova and more recently Andrej Nyrkov (Moscow) have taught me how to move through Russian Orthodox services, and continue to improve my understanding of what goes on there. My travels to Marij El would not have been possible without the reliable support of the International Office of Mari State University, in particular its director Alexey iv Fominykh and the Vice-Rector for International Relations, Andrey Andreevich Yarygin. Among local specialists in problems of religion and atheism, Nikandr Semënovich Popov and Viktor Stepanovich Solov’ëv gave generously of their time and insights. In addition to a number of landladies who provided me with roofs over my head, I would like to especially acknowledge my hosts during shorter trips in 2004 and 2008 respectively: Antonina Ryzhkova and the congregation of the Lutheran Church of the Holy Cross. Faina Mikhajlova provided precious hours of childcare in Joshkar-Ola, as did Yevgenia Shcherbina and Renate and Susanne Lührmann in Canada and Germany. Financially, my research in Russia was made possible by grants from the German Academic Exchange Service, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and various institutions at the University of Michigan: the International Institute, the Center for Russian and East European Studies, the Department of Anthropology, and the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History. During the writing of this dissertation, crucial support came from a Humanities Research Candidacy Fellowship (Rackham Graduate School, University of Michigan), a Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship (Woodrow Wilson Foundation), and an SSRC Eurasia Program Fellowship. Intellectually, my thinking about this dissertation owes much to two installments of the Core Seminar of the Program in Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan, taught in winter-fall 2003 by Ann Stoler and Nancy Hunt, and in the fall of 2006 by David William Cohen and Julie Skurski. I am especially indebted to the group of students who took both semesters of the 2003 sequence with me: Dan Birchok, Dong Ju Kim, Oana Mateescu, and Kate McClellan. Doug Rogers offered many stimulating thoughts on things religious in Russia. For reading and commenting on dissertation v chapters, I am grateful to participants of the workshops in Russian History and Anthropology and History, as well as to Michael Bergmann, Susanne Cohen, Britt Halverson, Angie Heo, Cecilia Tomori, and Ilya Vinkovetsky. Writing up the dissertation in Vancouver was made easier by the hospitality of the anthropology department at the University of British Columbia, which facilitated library access – thanks especially to David Pokotylo, Alexia Bloch, and Julie Cruikshank. I would not have written a dissertation that is largely about pedagogy had I not been blessed throughout my life with better teachers than anyone might hope for. At Michigan, my advisor Alaina Lemon has been a tactful and perceptive guide through the vicissitudes of academic life, and a thorough reader of several versions of this manuscript. Among the members of my dissertation committee, I thank Webb Keane for intellectual generosity and a talent for asking the most difficult questions, Douglas Northrop for a creative sense of what is possible with archival sources, and William Rosenberg for help with everything from immigration paperwork to understanding what history is, and for countless cups of chai. Beyond the committee, I have benefited from discussions with Paul C. Johnson, Valerie Kivelson, Brian Porter, Ronald Suny, and Katherine Verdery. Special thanks are due to Rudolf Mrázek for always appearing at the right moment, and for insisting that I include the devil in the acknowledgements. In its limitations as well as in any potential for depth and breadth that there may be, my understanding of what it means to practice a religion was influenced by the clergy and congregations of churches I have attended: the Evangelical-Lutheran congregation of Niederweimar; St. Mark’s Church in Frankfurt-Bockenheim; Concordia Lutheran Church in Pullman, Washington; University Lutheran Chapel in Berkeley, California; Lord of vi Light Lutheran Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Christ Church Cathedral in Vancouver, Canada. I especially thank Pastor Hartmut Wild for clearing up some issues of inter-religious fieldwork, and Pastor Sue Sprawls and Archdeacon Ellen Clark-King for being there when I needed them badly. Silke Lührmann and the other significant atheists in my life remind me that, as Soviet sociologists well knew, it is very difficult to say what difference religiosity or areligiosity make in a person’s life – thanks to them also. Finally, I am grateful that much-missed Jona was with me when I started to write this dissertation, and that Philipp accompanied me on a wrap-up visit to Marij El in September 2008. Thanks to big brother Fedya for his patience and good humor, and most of all, to Ilya Vinkovetsky for a life that has room for all of this. To my parents, Renate and Dieter Lührmann, I am indebted for more than I can know or remember. Perhaps of most immediate relevance, I thank them for having taught me to think of religion not as the limit of all reason, but as an aspect of life worthy of the full exercise of all human faculties. vii Table of contents Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii List of figures ix List of maps x Note on translation, transliteration, and orthography xi Introduction: Atheism, secularity, and postsecular religion 1 PART I: AFFINITIES Chapter 1: Religion and community in the Mari country 48 Chapter 2: “Go teach:” Didactic method and affinities between atheist and religious ecclesiologies 112 PART II: METHODOLOGIES Chapter 3: Church closings and sermon circuits: The power of didacticism 158 Chapter 4: Marginal lessons: Spiritual security in the countryside 214 Chapter 5: Visuality and the search for the concrete 240 PART III: SUSPICIONS Chapter 6: Images and imaginaries 289 Chapter 7: The soul and the spirit: Spectacle in liturgy 318 PART IV: RHYTHMS Chapter 8: Lifelong learning: Biographies of dispersed religion 375 Conclusion: Discernment as method 424 Bibliography 433 viii List of figures Figure 2.1: An amateur methodician in action.
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