Paper short abstract:

During the last twenty years, the Russian ritual year has undergone many transformations and re-evaluations, resulting in a total change of the entire ritual map of modern Russia. The aim of this paper is to scrutinize this process and to illustrate it with several case studies.

Paper long abstract:

During the last twenty years, the Russian ritual year has undergone many transformations and re-evaluations. These changes have impacted on the division between sacred and profane space and have given rise in turn to new loci for ritual performance. Thus the Ritual Year has modified the whole ritual and festival map of Russia, the very towns as well as their internal space. The aim of this paper is to scrutinize this complicated and manifold process and to illustrate it with several case studies. I will analyze the semantic and semiotic rules governing the making of new images for previously ideologically marked settlements, which with the decline of Soviet festivities have lost their ritual significance. The relative proportions of authentic and invented folk knowledge in this process are interpreted in terms of old and new social values. I will discuss the mechanisms used to turn a local festival known in one place into a national one celebrated all over Russia (the case of Murom and the Day of the Family, Love and Fidelity). Other ritual spatio-temporal changes in modern Russia (new tragic dates and commemoration of the dead at the site of recent terrorist attacks and in other places, etc) will be also investigated.