Sean Griffin

This project investigates the memory politics of the contemporary Russian Orthodox Church. It documents the complex and ambivalent relations between the Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate and uncovers their collaborative efforts to transform cultural memory in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, in the three decades since the disintegration of the USSR. Mikhail Zadornov once described Russia as ‘a great country with an unpredictable past’. The study explores the development of these unpredictable pasts in the post-Soviet period and shows how they are being cultivated in an attempt to legitimize the contemporary Russian political order. The Second Baptism of Rus is currently under advanced contract with the ‘Religion and Conflict Series’ at Cornell University Press.