Neobyzantinisms in contemporary social (religious) discourse of the orthodox Slavs
Abstract
The paper investigates modes of historical appropriation of the Serbian Middle Ages and of the Byzantine history in contemporary social and religious discourses in post socialistic Republic of Serbia and the Russian Federation. The paper deals with several examples which have to illustrate the main notion that contemporary monument culture, as displayed in the case of the monument dedicated to Serbian grand zhupan Stefan Nemanja, and the Cathedral church of St. Sava represented as the new Hagia Sophia in Belgrade, and on the other hand, in the case of the historical documentary film “Fall of the Empire – the Byzantine lesson” directed by the Russian archminadrites, now bishop of Pskov, Tihon Ševkunov, testify to pretensions of the contemporary Serbian and Russian states and their societies and culture to a identity as new Byzantiums. We aim to show that this idea of new Byzantiums or new Serbias are forged in the process of building of a new political and national identities of the two nations, in which history is utilized as an instrument of national identity in close relations to contemporary political processes. The paper demonstrates that in these processes history is not preserved or displayed in an objective way, but rather such utilizations mislead into inappropriate understanding of the past.
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