Paper short abstract:

The report is devoted to the interaction of local religious tradition and institutional church religiosity in post-Soviet Russia. The material is the case of the village Oshevenskoye in the Arkhangelsk region. Local revered natural objects become the main "arena" of interaction.

Paper long abstract:

The village Oshevenskoye is located in the Kargopol district of the Arkhangelsk region (Russia). The local religious tradition was largely based on the venerating of natural objects - stones, trees, groves, in that were installed wooden crosses . Their agency was delegated to the local revered Orthodox saint - Alexander Oshevensky. There were practices of visiting such places not regulated by church institutions, and a special tradition of reciprocity, expressed in requests for healing - "offering" to the shrine votive offerings. Its continued to be actively reproduced in the Soviet period.

At the end of the 1990s the local church was reopened and began the restoration of the district's largest monastery. A priest from St. Petersburg comes to the village and begins active preaching work, organizes regular services, including "churching" local natural shrines. This process is accompanied by the adjustment of traditional practices that are unacceptable from the point of view of the Orthodox Church doctrine. With his move to another parish the old tradition begins to return in its previous form. Very few villagers visit the monastery, while participation in local pilgrimages to revered shrines remains a mass practice, despite a tendency to reduce the number of residents visiting local shrines. The miraculousness of the place is explained by a special "energy" and expressed by discursive schemes of New Age ideology.

The report is based on materials from the author's field work and materials from expeditions of the Russian State Humanitarian University.