North Caucasus

On the Benefits of Discussions and Metanarratives: Ten Theses

This article is a response to Vladimir Bobrovnikov’s critical review of the issue of the journal State, Religion and Church in Russia and Worldwide devoted to the Islamic reformation. Discussion with the reviewer concentrates on two different issues. First is the organization of interdisciplinary dialogue, its goals, rules and conditions of success.

Islamism and the New Disintegration of Empires

In this interview, Georgi Derluguian discusses the reasons of Islamism’s popularity in the context of collapse of two great projects of the West — liberalism and communism. He pays special attention to organizational peculiarity of Islam, which allows this religion to lead successful wars against powerful empires. People who find this ideology attractive are not “new barbarians”; on the contrary, we are dealing with modern socially active people, whose access to social lifts has been blocked.

“Alanian Princess, Princess of Vladimir”: Maria Yasynia, Russian-Ossetian Connections, and Conservative Family Values

This article is devoted to a canonization initiative — to bring the local (Vladimir diocese) saint, Maria Shvarnovna (Yasynia) (c. 1158–1206), grandmother of Alexander Nevsky, to the Church-wide veneration. Maria Yasynia is seen to be of Alanian (Ossetian) origin, and hence the great interest to her personality among Orthodox activists in today’s North Ossetia-Alania, as well as among some people from local government and Moscow ecclesiastical establishment.