In Russia, Search for Identity Is Caught in a Swirl of Symbols



By SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY
November 5, 2010

Excerpt:
On Red Square, meanwhile, Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox church — powerful now after decades of Soviet suppression — joined aides to President Dmitri A. Medvedev, blessing an icon of St. Nicholas hidden for decades under layers of plaster on a Kremlin tower near Lenin’s mausoleum.

The ceremony Thursday coincided not just with the Day of National Unity, but with the feast day of the revered Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, and the commemoration of Russia’s liberation from Polish occupation in 1612 — attributed to the icon’s power.

Kirill sprinkled holy water on the fresco of St. Nicholas the Miracle Worker, which was restored in a niche on the Kremlin’s Nikolskaya Tower — directly below one of the red stars placed atop the towers 75 years ago by the Bolsheviks. “The desecration and restoration of this image is a kind of symbol of the overcoming of historical divisions,” the patriarch said. the rest image