Sacred Sound and Sacred Substance: Church Bells and the Auditory Culture of Russian Villages during the Bolshevik Velikii Perelom

• Published in: The American historical review 2004-12, Vol.109 (5), p.1475-1504
• Main Author: Hernandez, Richard L.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bells; Churches; Cultural identity; History; Peasant class; Political revolutions; Property confiscation; Radio; Religion; Religious icons; Revolutions; Russian culture; Social life & customs; Violas
• ISSN: 0002-8762; 1937-5239
• DOI: 10.1086/530933

Richard L. Hernandez analyzes the auditory components of the Bolshevik Great Turn of 1928-1932, during which a comprehensive revolution of the senses transpired in Soviet Russia. Like conflicts elsewhere between traditional societies and modernizing regimes, political struggles between Russian villagers and Bolshevik agents during these crucial years coalesced around religious beliefs and practices. He contends that while other, more obvious religious institutions or symbols were drawn into these conflicts, church bells had a distinctive role to play because they were physical and aural linchpins in the cultural sensibilities that the Bolsheviks wanted desperately to reconfigure. Hernandez focuses on the bells as both weapons of resistance and targets of destruction. He demonstrates that the regime produced sights and sounds more in tune with modern sensibilities, thereby supplanting the social authority of bells in the new Soviet society. While expanding our understanding of the Bolshevik Revolution's consolidation under Stalin, he also presents a case study of the vicissitudes of religious beliefs and practices in modern society by complicating the typical story of 44 secularization" in two ways. First, he shows that, instead of serving merely as an irrational foil to modern life, religious tradition helped believers form sophisticated views of the world and equipped them to respond to dramatic social upheavals. Second, and conversely, he explains that atheistic regimes like the Bolsheviks fostered cultures rooted in peculiarly "modern" sacred texts, symbols, and ritual practices. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]