The point of the author’s research interest is mechanisms for the formation of a private religious community on the example of the Intersession brotherhood. A group of believers was emerged as part of the revival of the Orthodox life of the Kama region, but transformed into specific organization with features of popular religion, new religious movements and so-called “historical sects.” Author reconstructs the history of the community involving elements of the biographical method. The study is based on interviews and correspondence with former members of the community, close people of the residents of the commune, as well as analysis of the materials of the closed group on the social network, some audio of the groups’ seminars, photocopies of the working notebooks of the group and a series of photographs made by the believers. The investigation is based on the theoretical constructions of E. Goffman and the concept of total community. Intersession brotherhood appears as a community with the features of totality – territorial and communication closure of the residents, their employment in internal jobs, perception of the group as a family. Lack of privacy is combined with the presence of “mother-child” connection to the leader. The practice of naming for adults, the creation of new marriages, participation in gender-oriented councils create a special micro-environment with the unification of the world view. The system of privileges for advanced residents is supplemented by a developed system of fines. It makes possible to speak about special tools that lead to a change of values, a narrowing of the set of social roles and a reduction of critical thinking.

The article investigates the strategies of adapting to the changing social environment of city-based religious communities on the example of the case of the Intercession Commune (Pokrovskaya obitel’) in Perm. The community of believers led by activists developed as an Orthodox institution and subsequently evolved into a closed group with elements of mysticism and esotericism under the leadership of a charismatic female leader. The logic of the changes that have taken place is described through an analysis of interviews with former believers, private correspondence, and is performed using elements of the biographical method, materials from a closed group on a social network, records of classes conducted by the leader of the monastery, and photographs. The Intercession Commune as a community successfully evolves and adapts to the changing environment in response to the lawsuits filed against it. As a defensive strategy, community members chose active participation in patriotic projects, applying for grants issued by the local administration, and active appeal to Russian cultural traditions. Emphasis was placed on military education, which led to the creation of a special training center named after a former foreign intelligence officer. An additional way of legitimizing the community in the social space was participation in all-Russian patriotic actions (Immortal Regiment). All the above mentioned indicates a special mimicry of the group to appear as loyal to society, since it contradicts the ideas of withdrawal from social life, broadcast by the leader during internal seminars in the community. The chosen defensive strategy of the Intercession Commune allows us to say that religious associations that are not affiliated with official religious organizations are open to the active use of non-religious ways to assert themselves in society.

The article examines social instruments used to consolidate small religious groups in modern society. Such groups are viewed as a variation of the development of a local Orthodox parish founded as a community of like-minded people. The research subject is closed religious community that has existed in the Perm region (Russia) for over thirty years. The community has evolved from a typical Orthodox parish to a modern-type spiritual group that used non-Orthodox sources of information and devotion, and was led by a woman. The study identifies most effective social instruments for the consolidation of those type of religious community. The research includes reconstruction of the history of the community and the analysis of the materials of spiritual seminars held there, reflecting gradual transformation of the teachings and change of the leader’s status. The research data were acquired from several sources: interviews and personal correspondence of the author with former members of the community, materials of journalistic investigations, etc.

The authors propose a typology of sites of memory of political repressions that took place in different periods of Russian history, which emerged under the influence of a set of historical, social and cultural factors. The purpose of the study is to trace the logic of the formation of specific types of monuments, including those existing in the form of the so-called counter-monuments, in the process of implementing the politics of memory and formulating ideas about the traumatic past. The authors used the chronotopic method of examining sites of memory in a number of regions of Russia, such as the memorial complex Perm-36, multiple sites of commemoration at the Bolshoy Solovetsky Island, places of memory at the Rybinsk water reservoir, the Butovo polygon, memorial objects in the Saratov region, and the Republic of Mordovia, architectural constructions in the Russian Far East, etc. Theoretically, the research is rooted in the concept of “memory sites” proposed by Pierre Nora and understood as a combination of material and spiritual elements of culture that carry a symbolic load associated with understanding the social past. The authors demonstrate the presence of several types of memorial sites. It turned out that in the Russian domain of memory about the political repressions there are no sites that meet the criteria of a traditional monument. Conditionally traditional monuments can be territorially localized (solitary or complex) or dispersed (standard or heterogeneous). The second type of monuments is defined as hybrid, including vernacular, alternative and palimpsest varieties. Vernacular monuments are determined by their agents of construction, while the alternative ones are associated with specific interpretations of the past and can be supplemented with new constructive elements in the course of existence, palimpsests imply the explicit or hidden presence of many symbolically loaded layers. Counter-monuments constitute a special type represented by walking, landscape, ecological, and disappearing monuments. They are characterized as performative and participatory. The presence of different types of monuments proves not so much the absence of a unified strategy of commemoration in Russian society, but rather the fact that multiple social groups participate in the process of commemoration, producing heterogeneous and polyphonic monuments.