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Full Description
Former Gulag sites—operating theaters of terror during the Stalinist period—are scattered across western Siberia, where memories of the purges run deep. The camps represent some of the most horrific events of the Soviet past, and yet their current role is complicated. Focusing on three former prison camps, folklorist Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby untangles a surprising nexus of memory, legend, and vernacular religious practice afforded by the existence of sacred springs at these sites.
Grounded by detailed ethnography, Sacred Springs in the Camps explores how legend creates, negotiates, and challenges collective memory; how lived religious practices intersect with the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church; how politics intertwine with belief; and how the social construction of sacred places affects folk narratives, faith, and local identity. These unlikely holy waters thus reflect important facets of contemporary Russian religion, politics, and society, refracting and reframing memories of the socialist past even as they offer important lessons for the present moment.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Note on Transliteration
Introduction
Chapter 1. Negotiating Religious and Secular Memory
Chapter 2. Interacting with the Holy Springs: Ritual, Pilgrimage, and Tourism
Chapter 3. Legends of the Holy Springs
Chapter 4. Politics of the Holy Springs
Chapter 5. Healing and Medicine
Chapter 6. Ecology of the Holy Springs
Conclusion: Haunted by the Past
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index
