Donnerstag, April 20, 2006
Altgläubige in Russland (s. u. Kommentar)
Nach dem Gottesdienst am See Svetlojar, Wladimirskoje 1991
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Über mich
- Lev R. Silber Blog
- Seit 1992 waren meine Bilder in ca. 50 Ausstellungen zu sehen, unter anderem in der Katholischen Akademie in Berlin, in der Schweizer Botschaft in Moskau, in der Evangelischen Akademie in Hamburg, im Jüdischen Kulturverein Berlin, in der Stadtbibliothek Osnabrück, im Lew Kopelew Forum in Köln. Einige meiner Bilder wurden u. a. vom Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin-Dahlem in 1999, von der Galerie Bodo Niemann in Berlin in 1995 und 1996, der Galerie Argus bei Norbert Bunge in Berlin in 1998, vom Museum Folkwang in Essen in 1995 angekauft. Seit 2001 lebt in Osnabrück 2002 Veröffentlichung: Lev R. Silber, „Das verborgene Gesicht Russlands“, Altgläubige. Stadtlandschaften. Porträts. Leipzig, Edition Erata 2012 Veröffentlichung: Lev R. Silber und Ibo Minssen, „Momente ohne Maske“, Karnevalszenen aus Köln und Osnabrück, Bramsche, RASCH Verlag 2011 Mitgliedschaft in der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh)
„Raskohl“ (Spaltung, Entzweiung) – auf den Erhalt der alten religiösen Grundsätze und der alten Lebensart gerichtete Glaubensbewegung im Russland des 17. Jahrhunderts.
AntwortenLöschenAltgläubigkeit eine der größten religiösen und gesellschaftlichen Massenbewegungen in Russland, entstand vor 350 Jahren. Als Auslöser wirkten die Reformen des Patriarchen Nikon im Gottesdienst und Ritus, die im Jahre 1653 eingesetzt wurden. Die Russisch-orthodoxe Kirche, die bis zu diesem verhängnisvollen und historischen Zeitpunkt fast 7 Jahrhunderte einheitlich war; spaltete sich - in diejenigen, die Nikons Neuheiten annahmen und im Schoße der staatlichen Kirche bleiben und in diejenigen, die der Neuerungen wegen die Treue zu den alten Riten ablehnten. Dies waren die Altgläubigen (oder die Eiferer der altertümlichen Frömmigkeit, wie sie selbst sich nannten). Die Raskolniki wurden vom Protopopen Awwakum und seinen nächsten Anhängern angeführt. Berühmt unter ihnen wurde die rebellische Bojarin Feodosija Morosowa. Die Spaltung ging tief und betraf nicht nur die Kirche, sondern die gesamte damalige russische Gesellschaft. Die Historiker schätzen, dass sich ein Viertel bis zu einem Drittel der Bevölkerung der Spaltung anschloss.
Die Macht des Zaren stand im Bunde mit der staatlichen Kirche und fiel mit ungeheuerlich grausamen Strafmaßnahmen über die Anhänger der alten russischen Kirche her. Die Verfolgung der Raskolniki hatte ihren Höhepunkt während der Regierungszeit der Zaren-Regentin Sofia Alexeevna (1682 – 1689). Damals wurde schon allein die Zugehörigkeit zu den Altgläubigen mit dem Tode bestraft. Die Altgläubigen suchten Rettung in der Flucht in abgelegene menschenleere Wälder am Rande des damaligen Moskowiter Reiches und außerhalb. So entstanden die berühmten alten Siedlungen der Raskolniki und die Einsiedeleien im europäischen Norden, in der Gegend von Olonez, am anderen Ufer der Wolga bei Nischni Nowgorod und am Ufer des Flusses Kershenez (linker Zufluss der Wolga), an den Ufern des Flusses Irgiz, in den Steppen hinter der Wolga bei Saratow, in Sibirien, im Gebiet von Tschernigow, im Baltikum.
Auf dem Hintergrund dieses unvorstellbaren Schreckens scheinen die eingeführten Neuerungen in Gottesdienst und Ritus, die der Grund für den Raskol waren, absolut nichtig zu sein: Das Dreifinger-Zeichen beim Kreuzschlagen an Stelle des Zweifinger-Zeichens, die Schreibweise des Namens Christi nicht mit einem „i“ – „Isus, sondern mit zweien „Iisus“; die Durchführung des Kreuzganges um die Kirche „gegen den Sonnenlauf“, anstatt „mit der Sonne“, wie es von je her üblich war; das dreifache Rufen von „Halleluja“ und nicht das zweifache.
Aus dem Aufsatz von A.Schamaro, Zeitschrift „Wissenschaft und Leben “, 1994, № 12
Fr Apr 21, 09:40:00 PM 2006
Sabine Fahl
AntwortenLöschenOld Believers in Russia
"They are no longer persecuted." This sentence has a special ring when it is applied to Old Believers in Russia. Like other Russian Christians they endured the Via Dolorosa through the Soviet period: the Stalinist camps and persecution under Khrushchev. But these persecutions were merely the continuation of a three-hundred year old story when followers of the ancient faith were scorned as "raskolniki" (schismatics), incarcerated, tortured and executed. Indeed, their persecution ceased only for a brief period of fifteen years at the beginning of the twentieth century.
In 1653, under pressure from Patriarch Nikon and Czar Aleksei Mikhailovich, a Church Council ordered that the liturgical books and rites of the Russian Orthodox Church be reformed. The changes, instituted in 1667, were dictated by the practices of the Greek Orthodox Church, ostensibly closer to those of the ancient church than those which the Russian Church practiced. For example, the position of the fingers when making the sign of the cross was changed; the name of Christ was to be spelled not with one, but with two vowels ("lisus" instead of "Isus"). Religious processions were to proceed counterclockwise rather than clockwise. The word "alleluia" was to be repeated not two but three times at specific junctures in divine worship. The mandated reforms forced upon believers met with strong resistance. Historians estimate that a fourth, possibly half of the entire population opposed the changes, which they did not understand. Protests lead by charismatic clerics and laymen, such as Archpriest Avvakum and Lady Theodosia Morozova, developed into a broad-based movement.
The areas of dispute that caused a schism in the Russian Church and led both church and state to severely persecute all opponents to their reforms may seem trivial at first glance, inasmuch as the most controversial questions concerned matters of form. The significance of formal matters whose importance is easily u-nderestimated may be well illustrated by considering the problem of how the fingers should be positioned to form the sign of the cross.
The sign of the cross, made repeatedly by Orthodox Christians during private devotions and corporate worship, is one of the most important expressions of faith. Long before children understand the words of prayers and can recite them, they are taught to make this sign of their faith in Christ and their membership in his community. The position of each finger has meaning such that the shape assumed by the hand symbolizes the triunity of God and the divine and human natures of Christ. The crossed hand that touches the forehead, shoulders and stomach can be viewed as an image or icon helping the believer to perceive his body as God's shrine and the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. Any tampering with this image, and change in symbols that were theologically grounded and deemed salvific, were bound to be looked upon with suspicion by a believer.
The "Old Believers" regarded the reforms as senseless, even heretical. And since the unthinkable had happened, namely, that esteemed bishops of their own church had to be regarded as apostates, the Old Believers concluded that they had would rather abandon the official church than abandon rites that they regarded as sensible and salvific. The immediate onset of brutal persecution only strengthened their conviction that the reign of the Antichrist had begun. Up to the end of the seventeenth century adherence to the Old Belief regularly lead to execution. The Solovki Monastery, the only cloister that refused to accept the reforms, was besieged, destroyed and plundered by the czar's army. All of the surviving monks were killed. When the soldiers then turned against defenseless laymen who confessed to observing the ancient rituals, burning the inhabitants of entire villages at the stake, some decided of their own free will to burn themselves alive. To this day the myth of massive group martyrdoms through "self-immolation" by defenders of the ancient faith persists. Evidently this legend was propagated in order to charge victims of persecution with at least one mortal sin.
Patriarch Nikon, an extraordinarily ambitious and power-hungry man, fell from the czar's graces soon after the implementation of the reforms. Nikon was defrocked at the same Church Council of 1666/1667 that approved the reforms and anathematized the Old Believers. Exiled to the Ferapontovo Monastery in the Russian North, Nikon conducted services to the end of his life according to old, uncorrected books. It was not until 1971 that the anathema on the Old Believers was lifted by a council of the Russian Orthodox Church. But the Old Believers have yet to receive an official apology from the church or the state for the persecutions they endured.
As time went on fewer and fewer believers kept the ancient rite which entailed many difficulties, including higher taxes, physical risks, and increasing isolation from mainstream society. These exiles moved deeper and deeper into the forests, hoping to live peacefully and unobserved in small settlements. Even those groups who did not recognize the priesthood were careful to maintain fidelity to their beliefs. They taught each other and their children to read and write, not a usual phenomenon among seventeenth-century peasants, and all the more difficult because the liturgical language, "Church Slavonic," differs substantially from spoken Russian. Rituals, icons, books, songs and traditions were carefully handed down from one generation to the next. In the nineteenth century when government persecution temporarily subsided, the fruits of their efforts quickly became apparent. Old Believers lived at a higher standard than other Russian peasants. Developing industries and trade were concentrated chiefly in the Old Believer communities.
Their high educational level deteriorated only in the Soviet period, for in the 1930s and 1940s even reading Church Slavonic books could lead to a death sentence.
One who visits the distant villages of the Old Believers today will find ancient customs long forgotten and elsewhere extinct, including clothing and foods. For that reason folklorists, musicologists and literary scholars organize summer expeditions to their settlements. The photographer Lev Silber, who participated in five such expeditions, discovered another side to these "research subjects." He found people who, having endured centuries of defamation and persecution, had not only managed to preserve their rituals and specific form of piety over the years, but also retained their ability to trust strangers and to treat the convictions of outsiders with the respect that they had so long sought, in vain, for their own faith.