The article examines the activities of the social-missionary association “Pravoslavnoe Delo”, created in 1935 in émigré Paris by mother Maria Skobtsova, the spiritual daughter of Archpriest Sergius ...Bulgakov, who comprehensively supported the work of the organization. The article focuses on a dual relationship: on the continuity and overlap between the religious thought of mother Maria and the theology of Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, and on how the ecclesiological views of both thinkers became the foundation for the practical work of the “Pravoslavnoe Delo”. The very first experiments of the philosophical thought of Elizaveta Skobtsova are connected with her definition of the “main channel’ of the Russian thought. She regards the Bulgakov’s sophiology as the creative result of this channel the main intuition of which is “God-participation of the world”. After her monastic vows, mother Maria reflects on the proper response of the Church to the social challenges of the 20 th century, relying in her reflections on Fr. Sergius’s thought about socialism as a challenge of the time, to which the Church must give the answer. Both thinkers reflect on the ecclesiological basics for such an answer: Bulgakov builds an ecclesiology of “living sobornost’” that opposes the atomized fragmentation of the collective. Developing the ideas of Fr. Sergius, mother Maria evolves the ecclesiology of the “Liturgy outside the church walls”, pouring out of the center as communion with the Eucharistic sacrifice into the world, embracing everyone. Both thinkers reflect in this domain on the role of creativity, on the rootedness of ecclesiology in the Eucharist, on the role of suffering and compassion. The idea of the Church as a “living polyunity” becomes the foundation of the activity of the “Pravoslavnoe Delo”, with its approach to every person in need as a true personality, whose help should be provided holistically, at the level of body, soul and spirit. An important point is also the fraternal unity of those who provide such assistance: they must be a “small Church” that unites the rest to the creative common life in Christ.
This article analyses the formative nature of the work of memory in The Gulag Archipelago of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn inspired by the writer’s desire to tell about the victims of Gulag and become ...a witness. This approach determines the uniqueness of the genre and temporality of the work and the history of its creation. The combination of the personal memory of the narrator and collective memory of other victims is not achieved through a mechanical multiplication of different positions, but through a framework of testimonies. In the article, the figure of the witness is examined in the context of the typology of witnesses proposed by Aleida Assmann and through the prism of reflections by Primo Levi and Giorgio Agamben. The desire to become a witness of Gulag victims does not only require an intellectual effort of memory (attention, memorisation) from the author but also obliges him to make a moral choice (i.e. show readiness to share the destiny of victims, risk his life in the process of writing and publishing the book) and demonstrate capacity for accumulated suffering and deep empathy. The testimony is made on behalf of a diverse group marked as “we” and mainly implying prisoners. This group is opposed by another one marked as “they” and consisting of warders and executioners. By means of sympathising and demonstrating capacity for inner transformation, one can transfer from the second group to the first one. The figure of the reader is very important in this work of memory. The reader may join the group denoted as “we” from the very beginning, following the narrator on his way of suffering, thus transforming themselves and becoming someone who is capable of perceiving the testimony. Besides real memories, the text includes typologically modelled situations. They can be recognised as true both by witnesses and by readers as they are represented from the position of a real witness.
PDF