The Russian Orthodox Church as an Actor of the Politics of Memory: the Study of Local Theological Discourses (on the Example of the Lipetsk Region)

Anikin Daniil Aleksandrovich ORCID: 0000-0001-6232-6557 PhD in Philosophy Associate Professor, Department of Theoretical and Social Philosophy, Saratov State University named after N.G. Chernyshevsky 410012, Russia, Saratov region, Saratov, Astrakhan str., 83 dandee@list.ru

Linchenko Andrei Aleksandrovich ORCID: 0000-0001-6242-8844 PhD in Philosophy Associate Professor, Researcher, Lipetsk Branch of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation; Associate Professor of the Department of Philosophy, Lipetsk State Technical University. 398002, Russia, Lipetsk region, Lipetsk, Tereshkova str., 17, sq. 104 linchenko1@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The article was prepared with the financial support of the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 22-28-00535 "Civil Religion in modern Russia: memorial practices and features of theological discourse".One of the most noticeable trends in the socio-political life of post-Soviet Russia throughout all three decades of its existence is the gradual strengthening of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) as an actor of memory politics.

At first glance, the Russian Orthodox Church has a strict hierarchy and a single line of theological interpretation of the events taking place in Russia and the world. However, unity at the level of federal memory policy often coexists with the specifics of the position of the Russian Orthodox Church in regions where metropolia and dioceses interact with regional actors of memory policy, having their own narratives and images of the past. In this regard, it is far from accidental that in the 2000s the Patriarchate transferred a number of significant vectors of memory policy to the regions, which was expressed in the strengthening of initiatives of diocesan commissions for canonization ^{[1, p.130]}, as well as an increase in the number of diocesan museums appearing ^{[2, p.168]}. In such a situation, the strategies of the memory policy of the ROC are forced to take into account the peculiarities of the region itself, the composition of its population, its confessional composition, its place in the structure of the macro-regions of Russia, as well as the presence of its own history. The last point becomes especially relevant in the light of those regions of the Russian Federation that can be considered "young", having been educated in the most recent Soviet past. One of these regions, indicating a special context for the implementation of the memory policy, is the Lipetsk Region, which appeared on the administrative map of the RSFSR in 1954 along with four other regions: Belgorod, Arzamas, Kamenskaya, Balashovskaya. To date, only two of them (Lipetsk and Belgorod) continue to exist as independent administrative entities, automatically representing metropolitans on the religious map, although, for the sake of justice, it should be noted that after the administrative reform of the ROC in 2012, the Kamenskaya and Balashovskaya dioceses acquired autonomous status, but within the framework of the respective metropolitans.

Despite the fact that domestic and foreign researchers have long been turning to the study of public memorials of the ROC, it cannot be said that the topic of regional discourses of the ROC memory policy has been thoroughly studied. In recent years, researchers have analyzed the main strategies and vectors of the federal memory policy of the ROC ^{[3, 4, 5, 6]}, the peculiarities of its competition with other actors for the symbolic capital of using images of the past are well studied ^{[7, 8, 9, 10]}, various points of contact with the state have been identified ^{[1, 11, 12]}. In several works, the initiatives of the Russian Orthodox Church in understanding and interpreting Russian history have been investigated ^{[13, 14, 15]}. The conclusions of M. Laruelle and E. Makhotina deserve special attention in this case. They believe that "in order to gain access to the sphere of symbolic politics, the ROC had to position itself as one of the main resources of the state" ^{[1, p.123]}, and also that "the language of the church – crosses and other religious signs – can serve as a kind of "protection" for inconvenient from the point of view of states of memory" ^{[16, p.160]}. It cannot be said that the researchers did not touch on regional cases in their works, the most striking of which are the practices of competition between the ROC and the Memorial around Solovki ^{[4, 7, 9, 15]}, issues of canonization of historical figures and some contemporaries ^{[17, 18, 19]}, regional aspects of the canonization of Nicholas II and his family ^{[20, 21, 22]}. At the same time, all the presented studies are more focused not so much on the analysis of the regional context of interaction between the ROC and local actors, as on the representation in individual cases of the main trends in the memory policy of the ROC. This, in turn, actualizes further research in the field of regional aspects of the memory policy of the ROC just in the context of the specifics of individual regions. In this article we will try to analyze the features of the regional discourses of the ROC as an actor of memory policy based on the material of the Lipetsk region.

In this regard, the focus of our attention will be not only the analysis of the main activities of the Lipetsk Metropolis in the field of public commemorations, but also interaction (competition) with other actors for the use of images of the past, as well as the specifics of the discourses themselves aimed at recoding the history of the region in line with the religious interpretation of the events of the past.

         We have already had to write earlier that the past ceases to be an impartial "teacher of life", but becomes a source of socially significant symbols and images, for the use of which there is a competitive struggle between various social institutions. At the same time, as with any other resource, there is an economic logic of the insufficiency of existing images with constantly growing needs for the consolidation of certain communities, as well as the legitimization of their claims to participate in the distribution of other power resources ^[17]. This makes it very promising to use Pierre Bourdieu's sociological ideas as a general methodological framework, where the logic of the symbolic functioning of resources presupposes economic algorithms of competition and appropriation, when political actors seek either to demonstrate their involvement in these resources, or to use them to legitimize their own position in the political space. Such symbolic capital, despite its immateriality, has all the properties of economic capital, primarily because it assumes convertibility into quite material goods ^[10]. As Bourdieu himself puts it, "aside from the search for "economic" profit ... there remains a place for the accumulation of symbolic capital, as denied economic or political capital, unrecognized and recognized, and therefore legitimate "credit", capable under certain conditions and always in due time to guarantee "economic" benefits" ^{[23, p. 178]}. Another general theoretical framework of our research is the actor-network approach (B. Latour, M. Kallon, D. Lo], indicating the need to analyze the ways and forms of constructing memory about the past in the context of various actors, the specifics of their resources, as well as networks of interaction between them. In this regard, the task of regional policy is to interface various actors, including them in the existing network of new elements. The flip side of the implementation of this task is the preservation of the dynamic balance of the entire network structure, focused on the realization of political interest. 

An important role in shaping the positions of local actors is played by the public discourses formed by them, which have a dual orientation. On the one hand, they are oriented towards a horizontal network of local actors, demonstrating the appropriation/distribution of symbolic resources at the regional level, and on the other hand, taking into account the specifics of the religious segment of the social space, they are integrated into the vertical of the theological discourse focused on the official position of the ROC.

The network space of interaction between these regional actors is a discursive space and requires an appropriate research methodology. In our case, we used the methodology of critical discourse analysis of Z. Yeager and F. Mayer, which allows analyzing discursive strategies represented not only by text fragments, but also by graphic images, as well as objects of monumental art that together form the cultural text of the region. German scientists use the definition of discourse given by Y. Link, noting that discourse is "an institutionally consolidated language that defines the structure of social actions and, thereby, influences the relations of power in society" ^{[24, p. 34]}. The main objective of this method is to analyze typical textual and figurative-symbolic fragments (fragments of discourses), represented in the symbolic space of a communication message and containing various types of references to the same topic. As Z. himself writes . Yeager, this general theme acts as a kind of discursive strand ^{[24, p.38]}. Methodology of Z. Yeager and F. Mayer assumes a structural analysis that allows you to identify the main topics, their headings and subheadings, elements of the transmitted structural values of each block of information, as well as elements of values that are not transmitted directly. Further, the material is analyzed within the framework of rhetorical means and relevant information messages (types and forms of argumentation and argumentative strategies, logic and composition, implications and insinuations, collective symbolism and metaphors in language). The final procedure is the comparison of the studied information sources, the identification of ideological influences and the selection of typical fragments of discourse that make up the discursive thread. The sources for our analysis were official documents (orders and decrees), periodicals of the Lipetsk Archdiocese, materials of the official website, as well as speeches of the first persons of the archdiocese devoted to various historical events of both a national and regional nature. Their comparative analysis made it possible to identify the very discursive threads (discursive strategies) that Z. speaks about. Yeager.

 Created in 1954, the Lipetsk region was considered primarily as an agrarian-industrial and industrial region, which it continues to remain to this day. The region was created from the districts that are part of the Kursk, Orel, Tula, Ryazan, Tambov and Voronezh regions. National composition of the population: Russians (96.3%). The Novolipetsk Metallurgical Combine (NLMK) plays a key economic role for the region. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the region was steadily included in the "red belt" of Russia. There are 18 districts and 2 cities of regional significance in the region (Lipetsk and Yelets). The regional center of the region is the city of Lipetsk, the main demographic source of replenishment of which in the 1960s - 1990s were residents of rural settlements.

In the case of the Lipetsk region as a "young" region, we are faced with a special temporal situation when the region, in a certain sense, lacks its "own" past, and it itself turns out to be a kind of "patchwork quilt" woven from images of the past of neighboring territories. On the one hand, this opens up opportunities for searching for original symbolic constructions, and on the other hand, such a contradictory past of the region is a source of increased competition between regional actors using it as a symbolic resource of their influence in the region. In this situation, one should not underestimate the presence of federal narratives about the past, which, despite their seemingly stereotypical nature, can no less become the subject of symbolic competition, where the ROC is actively promoting the religious dimension of the interpretation of Russian history. 

In the 2000s, the increased presence of the ROC as an actor of memory policy should be associated with two main factors. Firstly, the trend towards restoring the pre-revolutionary heritage has been exhausted, which forces us to look for new trajectories of symbolic representation in the cultural and political space. Secondly, the reformist 90s are being replaced by the reactionary 2000s, when political discourse sensitively captures the need of society for stability and social security, the symbol of which is the Soviet Union of the era of "stagnation". We have already noted the fact that instead of rejecting the Soviet heritage or critical attitude towards certain manifestations of Sovietism (for example, anti-religious campaigns), the desire for symbolic recoding of the Soviet past and, consequently, the formation of a specifically religious vision of the events of Russian history becomes dominant in the religious environment ^[10]. However, this conclusion, which we made earlier in relation to the federal historical narrative, turns out to be true in the situation of the regional context.

It is interesting to note that the Lipetsk Diocese, the predecessor of the Lipetsk Metropolia, appeared much earlier than the Lipetsk region, having been established in 1926 and existed until 1937. Since 1954, the Voronezh-Lipetsk Diocese has been operating. In 2003, the Lipetsk and Yelets diocese was separated from it, which in 2013 will be transformed into the Lipetsk Metropolia, which still exists today ^[25].

The field of public commemorations, where the Lipetsk Metropolis has to deal with the Government (formerly the Administration) Lipetsk region, Novolipetsk Metallurgical Combine (NLMK), the Administration and communities of the memory of Yelets, the administrations of the districts of the Lipetsk region, the Lipetsk Regional Local History Society.

The key importance for the field of public commemorations in the Lipetsk region over the past three decades has been played and continues to be played by the Administration of the Lipetsk region, and now the Government of the Lipetsk region, headed by the governor. At the same time, neither the period of political confrontation in the region (1991-1998), nor the period of the "long" governorship of O.P. Korolev (1998-2018), nor the appearance of a new governor – I.G. Artamonov in 2018 could reverse the main discourses of the history of the region formed during the Soviet era. The basis of the Soviet historical narrative of the region was the discourses of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, the struggle of the working class in Lipetsk and the cities of the region, the Lipetsk Congress of People's Volunteers of 1879, descriptions of the life of G.V. Plekhanov in the Lipetsk region, the history of the Lipetsk resort of mineral waters, discourses of military aviation and cosmonautics. These discourses can be easily detected when referring to a series of textbooks on the history of the region ^{[26, 27, 28]}, to monuments and street names established in Soviet times. So, the main subjects of monumental aesthetics in the cities of the region were monuments to Lenin, a group of monuments dedicated to the Great Patriotic War, monuments to fighters for Soviet power, metallurgists and new heroics (aviators, Chernobyl heroes). The few narratives of Peter I preserved in the city of Lipetsk were supplemented by a monument to Peter's guns in the 1960s, which was supposed to serve as a reminder of the continuity of Peter I's ironworks and the active development of Lipetsk metallurgy.  In line with the above discourses, two waves (1957 and 1977) of renaming and naming streets of the sprawling regional center completely fit.

The central importance for commemorative practices in the Lipetsk region after 1991 is acquired by the figure of Peter I, who turned out to be successful for the regional center in a symbolic way, reflecting both the search for suitable pre-revolutionary figures for commemoration (federal trend) and directly related to the history of the city and the region itself (Lipetsk ironworks, mineral waters resort).

We should fully agree with the opinion of A.V. Skiperskikh that the coming to power in 1998 of O.P. Korolev was a kind of the first symbolic victory of rural areas over the regional center, where the influence of NLMK in the 90s was dominant ^{[29, p.36]}. Leaving aside the main reasons that contributed to the twenty-year period of the reign of O.P. Korolev, who never hid his sympathies for the communist past, let us turn to the transformation of the regional historical narrative.

It would be a significant exaggeration to say that there is a unified strategy of regional memory policy in the Lipetsk region in the period 1998-2018. Instead of a single and consistent line, we see a set of discourses that were situationally formed in the region in the light of current federal trends and features of political processes in the region. As in other Russian regions, the central place in the regional discourse is occupied by the commemorations of the Great Patriotic War ^[30], as evidenced by a significant increase in the number of monuments primarily in the districts of the region (the largest in the Terbunsky and Volovsky districts affected by the war).

The youth of the region actualized the second discursive thread related to issues of territorial and political subjectivity in the region, and reflected in the installation of monuments to the pre-revolutionary mayor Mitrofan Klyuev (2006), the founders of the city (2008), as well as the 300th anniversary of the city of Lipetsk (2003), accompanied by large-scale celebrations (2003) with mandatory indication of the same age Lipetsk and St. Petersburg. The relevance of the designated discourse is also clearly demonstrated by the official calendar of memorable dates of the Lipetsk region ^[31], where 90% of the dates represent the dates of the founding of the cities of the region, various authorities and regional institutions.

The third discursive thread, characteristic of both the commerational practices of the regional center and the districts of the region, is associated with the preservation of the Soviet narrative, which visibly manifests itself in the steady trend of preserving Soviet street names both in all district centers of the region and in the regional center, measures to maintain the appearance of monuments of the Soviet era, the preservation of the main thematic exhibitions in the Lipetsk Regional Museum of Local Lore, Zadonsky, Dankovsky, Usman, Chaplyginsky and Gryazinsky museums of local lore. At the same time, if the revolutionary theme is gradually eroded in Yelets ^{[32, p.126]}, then the analysis of the discursive space of the main exhibitions in district centers shows the preservation of the important place of the theme of the October Revolution in the museums of the region. 

The absence of a single semantic line in the memory policy of the regional administration is still characteristic of the new governor – I.G. Artamonov, appointed in 2018. The four years of his reign were marked by multidirectional trends associated with the expansion of collaborations with the Russian Orthodox Church in the region (monuments to St. Panteleimon and Nicholas the Wonderworker), the return of the Soviet narrative (reconstruction of the Zvezdny Sports Palace in its original Soviet form), deconstruction of the Soviet narrative (reconstruction of the Bykhanov Garden Park and removal of most elements of its Soviet appearance), critical statements about the installation of the bust of I.V. Stalin. Such a divergence is largely dictated by the desire for a kind of neutrality in relation to conflict-related issues of the past in the context of the incompleteness of the process of rotation of the political elite in the region.

Over the past ten years, NLMK has been gradually distancing itself from participation in political and cultural life in the region, visibly reflecting the general federal trends between big business and political power. Having huge financial resources, the combine continues to be an actor of the memory policy, while concentrating its attention on the commemorations around the enterprise itself and its history. In recent years, this has found expression in three main areas of activity: the activation of museum and exhibition activities within the NLMK Museum, the installation of memorial plaques to former employees of the plant in Lipetsk, the financing of charitable projects to help veterans of the city, as well as the support of youth projects in the framework of patriotic education related to the commemorations of the Great Patriotic War.

Under these conditions, the growth of the influence of the metropolia is quite noticeable in the region, which in the 1990s, as throughout the country, focused on the restoration of churches and monasteries. The figures show the significant growth of the diocese. Thus, during the period from 2003 to 2013, according to the metropolitan, the number of clergy increased more than three times (382 clergymen). 97 parishes were opened, 7 monasteries out of 10 operating, 82 thrones were consecrated, 26 temples were built, 28 temples were built, 207 deacons and 199 priestly ordinations were performed. Divine services were resumed in more than a hundred churches, the number of monastics in monasteries doubled ^[25]. Significant commemorations were deployed around three key figures of the Lipetsk pantheon of saints: St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, St. Siluan of Athos, as well as George, the Recluse of Zadonsk. On July 29, 2017, the Holy Synod approved and recommended for general church liturgical use the text of the service to the Council of Lipetsk Saints, which was an important step towards changing the status of the Lipetsk and Yelets dioceses. Representatives of the metropolis can be seen at all official commemorative events in the regional center and in the districts of the region, which also fit into the all-Russian trend of linking the church with state memorial events and "coloring" the history of Russia with religious references ^{[1, p.127]}. However, within this trend, those discursive strategies that are directly related to the region and indicate the processes of creating a religious dimension of the history of the region, which, thanks to the cooperation of the metropolis with other actors, is becoming more and more noticeable, are of significant interest.

The first discursive strategy identified by us in the course of the research is the desire to present the Lipetsk land and its history as the history of the formation of Orthodoxy in the region, which fits well into the well-known formula of the Holy martyr Thaddeus (Uspensky) Tverskoy: "The history of the Church is the history of holiness, the history of Russia is the history of the Church." In the case of the Lipetsk Metropolia, the realization of this intention, which has long been actualized by the Patriarchate, is achieved to the greatest extent through the publication of information about the Cathedral of Lipetsk Saints ^[33], as well as the history of miracles in the Lipetsk region, related, for example, to the finding of the relics of St. Hilarion of Troekurov ^[34], St. Tikhon of Zadonsk ^[35] or the icon of the Mother of God "Passionate Lipetsk" ^[36]. Such a strategy is one of the most common ways of representing the historical through a religious narrative and has its own specifics only within the details of the stories themselves. Another element of this discursive strategy, which also fully corresponds to the orientation of the memory policy of the ROC as a whole, is the presentation of the narrative of the New Martyrs. So, as of the fall of 2022, out of 60 Lipetsk saints, 19 canonized had personalities before 1917, and 41 personalities were associated with the Soviet era. It is also indicative of the fact that out of 60 Lipetsk saints, 12 persons had the status of a saint, and 8 persons were in the status of reverend. At the same time, the status of a priest-martyr was recorded in 40 canonized persons ^[37]. It would seem that the discourse of the New Martyrs, which directly points to a topic that is "inconvenient" for the regional authorities, should have caused an appropriate reaction. The absence of such a reaction from the regional authorities, in our opinion, is primarily due to the desire of the Lipetsk Metropolis to interpret this topic in a special way. The traveling exhibition "Russian Golgotha turned out to be almost invisible in the region. New Martyrs and Victims for the Faith in the Lipetsk Region", presented at the Lipetsk Regional Museum of Local Lore in June 2022. The scanty lines about the event on the metropolitan's website do not contain references to the semantic interpretation of the role and meaning of the exhibition ^[38], visibly demonstrating the figure of silence. It is significant that the holding of the exhibition in the local history museums of Lipetsk and Yelets is maximally aimed at avoiding conversations about individual responsibility and shaming the punishers, orienting the visitor to samples of "the height of lifestyle in the years of trials" ^[39]. In this case, we also encounter a trend characteristic of the ROC as a whole ^[1].

         The history of Orthodoxy in the Lipetsk region is represented in religious discourse, including as the history of temples and monasteries. This allows us to see the history of the region within a different chronology and periodization, where the most significant historical events are presented from the perspective of the stages of creation, destruction and reconstruction of monuments by architects. In this case, the restoration of monasteries is accompanied by intensive historiographical work, where the cooperation of the Lipetsk Metropolitanate and the Lipetsk Regional Local History Society turned out to be the most active. So, over the past two decades, thanks to the efforts of A.Y. Klokov, A.A. Naidenov and A.V. Novoseltsev, a multi-volume series of books dedicated to the temples and monasteries of the Lipetsk and Yelets dioceses has been published (at the moment books about Lev Tolstovsky, Dankovsky, Chaplyginsky, Usman, Zadonsky, Yelets and Lipetsk districts have been published) ^[27]. It is also significant that the history of Lipetsk and the Lipetsk region is viewed not only through the prism of preserved monuments, but also in the context of lost religious buildings ^[40], thereby marking the narrative of loss.

It is also necessary to point out the active interaction of the Lipetsk Metropolia (and earlier the Lipetsk and Yelets dioceses) with the districts of the region, where the cultural influence of large monasteries (Zadonsky Nativity-Bogoroditsky Monastery, St. Tikhon's Transfiguration Convent and Bogoroditse-Tikhonovsky (Tyunina) Convent) is more noticeable than the influence of traditional museums in district centers. If we look away from the commemorations of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, dominating in the discursive memory space of the districts of the region, we can see that the districts of the region are trying to acquire their special subjectivity through the "appropriation" of the memories of neighboring regions (L.N. Tolstoy's commemorations in Lev Tolstovsky, A.S. Griboyedov in Izmalkovsky, M.Y. Lermontov in Krasninsky districts), the creation of imaginary memory spaces (Pushkin's places in the village of Korenevshchino), as well as the commemoration of individual plots of the past that fall out of both the all-Russian and regional historical narrative (the monument to John VI Antonovich in Chaplygin). In this regard, the districts' reliance on the use of images of cultural heroes makes it very important for them to cooperate with the Lipetsk Metropolis, whose monasteries and temples in the districts of the region are associated with the names of the all-Russian saints we have already mentioned earlier: St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, St. Siluan of Athos, as well as George, the Recluse of Zadonsk. In this case, it is pilgrimage and Orthodox tourism that turn out to be ways of drawing attention to the space of collective memory of areas where secular commemorations already act as an addition to religious ones.

         The second discursive strategy, which is original for the Lipetsk Metropolia, is associated with the special status of the Lipetsk land as the defender of Russia. In this case, we mean the tacit support of the Metropolitan of the landscape opera "The Legend of the City of Yelets", the plot of which is the story of the capture of Yelets by Tamerlane's troops in 1395 and subsequently turned his troops to Asia. It is significant that in recent years public commemorations have been launched around this date, reflecting on the one hand the attitude towards the heroic historical experience of the city, and on the other hand the attitude towards the important role of the sacred sacrifice of Yelets in saving Russia from Tamerlane. Even more importantly, the 1395 commemorations contain references to the religious discourse on the intercession of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God ^[41]. After several years of productions, the landscape opera received the award of the Government of the Russian Federation in the field of culture (2016). It is significant that despite the criticism of the opera by Orthodox activists of Yelets ^{[42, 43]}, the diocese chose not to go into direct conflict with the leadership of the city and the region, and is also considering the creation of an Orthodox culture center together with the authorities.

         The third discursive strategy of the Lipetsk Archdiocese is connected with the commemorations of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, as well as the servicemen who fell during a special military operation in Ukraine. In this case, we are talking not only about the performance of religious rituals as part of the reburial of the remains of Soviet soldiers, but also the search and publication of information about the priests of the metropolis – participants in the war ^[44]. It is significant that, following Patriarch Kirill, we also see a desire to interpret the Victory in the Great Patriotic War in the light of religious metaphysics and allegory: "Having allowed purifying sufferings, the Lord did not leave the people who brought repentance by His mercy. The war that began on the day of All Saints, who shone in the Land of Russia, with the bombing of the Baptismal font of Holy Russia, the mother of Russian cities, capital Kiev, ended on the day of the Bright Resurrection of Christ, when the entire Orthodox world celebrated the Victory of Life over death" ^[45]. Another area of activity of the representatives of the Archdiocese in 2022 was the active participation in the commemoration of Russian soldiers who died in Ukraine. So, in September 2022, in one of the Orthodox gymnasiums of Lipetsk, with the participation of Metropolitan Arseny, a memorial plaque was installed in memory of the deceased graduate, Mikhail Chudin ^[46].

         The important role of the image of Peter I in Lipetsk is another significant symbolic resource and a discursive strategy for any actor of memory policy in the city and region. In this regard, the celebration of the 350th anniversary of the birth of Peter I could not but go unnoticed by the metropolitan, although in this case it is worth seeing not a regional initiative, but rather a successful combination of local and federal agenda. The fact is that the main public forum of the ROC – Christmas Readings – in January 2022 was dedicated to the theme "To the 350th anniversary of the birth of Peter I: secular world and religiosity", which is worth seeing not even the specifics of religious discourse, but its inclusion (forced or conscious) in the discourse of the federal government. It is worth recalling that in recent years a number of Christmas readings have been devoted to topics directly related to individual images of historical memory – Alexander Nevsky, Prince Vladimir, the Great Patriotic War, etc. For the Lipetsk region, the appeal to the image of Peter I at the federal level was combined with local commemorative images that received a certain religious interpretation.

In his speech at a recent conference, he tried to highlight several basic meanings of the interpretation of the Petrine era. Firstly, Peter I appeared in the assessment of the church hierarch not only as a defender of the country, but also a zealot of Orthodoxy: "it was to him, the youngest of the six sons of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich the Quietest, who had the smallest chance to inherit the throne with five older brothers, that the Lord judged to accept the heavy burden of the "Monomakh cap" in difficult conditions the development of the state at the turn of the XVII-XVIII centuries, when once again the primary task was to save the country from being plundered by interventionists, and the Orthodox Church from the schism that shook it, heretical currents, the strengthening of Protestant and Catholic proselytism <...> Peter the Great's attitude to the Church, despite some negative aspects known to everyone, is generally positive and supportive character" ^[47]. Secondly, even such events that have traditionally been perceived in the light of the ideas of the relevance of Western values are subjected to religious interpretation – for example, the foundation of St. Petersburg: "Such a grandiose achievement as the construction of a new capital has not been left without pious undertakings. The sovereign did not dare to reshape the original architecture of Moscow in a European way, but founded the capital of the future empire on the site of the glorious victories of Grand Duke Alexander Nevsky. Having built a monastery in St. Petersburg in the name of the holy defender of Russia (now it is the Alexander Nevsky Lavra), the tsar with appropriate honors orders to transfer the incorruptible relics of the blessed prince from Vladimir to Stolny grad and personally participates in this procession" ^[47]. Thirdly, the Lipetsk Metropolitan also attaches special religious importance to the reform of the church in the era of Peter I, which always caused a lot of controversy among believers and church hierarchs: "Despite the administrative constraint under the wing of the sovereign's care, the Orthodox Church did not become impoverished in that era by its workers, did not turn into a kind of bureaucratic organization devoid of creative forces and heights of spirit. Already in the reign of Peter himself, she gave the Fatherland and the entire Orthodox world ascetics of piety, who became significant figures of Russian culture and church education" ^[47].        

The preservation of the Soviet historical narrative in Lipetsk and the Lipetsk region, as well as the clearly positive attitude of the Governor O.P. Korolev towards it throughout the entire period of his reign, could not but be reflected in another discursive strategy associated with a special representation of the Soviet experience. It has already been noted in the literature that the theme of the Soviet period of Russian history is primarily associated in the ROC with repression and persecution of the Church, is perceived as the collective fault of the Russian people, but is less expressed in criticism of the state ^{[1, p.135]}. Similar motives are also found in regional discourse, where frequent references to the persecution of Orthodox and the destruction of churches are depersonalized, when only victims are named by name, but real characters who took part in the destruction of buildings and the persecution of Orthodox persons are outside the naming. Moreover, the Soviet time itself is present in the texts as a kind of metaphysical frame, "a time of cruel persecution" ^[25]. This situation turns out to be very convenient, since it allows the metropolia to simultaneously maintain a distance from the Soviet period, but also allows it to positively interpret individual pages of the Soviet history of the region during the anniversaries of public commemorations.

         Thus, the results of the analysis of local discourses of the Russian Orthodox Church allow us to speak of it as one of the most active actors of memory politics in the modern regional space of Russia. This is especially noticeable in the "young regions" of Russia, which do not have their own long historical tradition and represent an eclectic mix of remnants of the Soviet historical narrative, current trends in federal memory policy and images of the past, acting as the most acceptable symbolic resource for preserving social consensus. At the same time, a significant methodological problem urgent for further research is the combination of the official discourse of the ROC with its local variations, the adaptation of theological discursive strategies to specific regional specifics in order to designate their symbolic priorities and guidelines. Of course, the proposed hypothesis of the strong role of religious actors in the conditions of the "new regions" needs further comparative study, but the example of the Lipetsk region demonstrates the flexibility and variability of theological discourse in terms of forming a religious picture of the past, based on the existing symbolic landscape.

In this regard, the Lipetsk Metropolia strives not so much for competition and dominance in the symbolic space of the region, as it tries to strengthen the religious dimension and interpretation of all the main events in the history of the region, developing interaction with each of the actors of the memory policy. This makes it possible to further strengthen the potential of the ROC in the rapid mobilization of resources to promote its own memorial projects, which in the Lipetsk region are primarily associated with the restoration of churches and monasteries. An appeal to the experience of the Lipetsk region showed that despite the transfer of a number of commemorative functions to dioceses and metropolitans, the structures of the ROC in the regions still demonstrate a strict hierarchy, when metropolitans and dioceses on regional material hold the point of view of the Patriarchate regarding the religious interpretation of the events of Russian history. The study revealed five main discursive strategies of the Lipetsk Metropolitanate as an actor of memory policy related to the desire to present the history of the Lipetsk region as the history of the formation of Orthodoxy in the region, to present the Orthodox Lipetsk land as the defender of Russia, with active participation in military commemorations (the Great Patriotic War, Special Military Operation), the desire to interpret the important role of the era of Peter I in the formation of Russian Orthodoxy, as well as selective criticism of the Soviet historical experience.