ORTHODOX CHURCHES OF HARBIN IN THE BOOKS OF NATALIA ILYINA

Abstract

The images of Orthodox churches in the Natalia Ilyina’s books are fragmentary, but with careful reading they allow us to restore the cultural image of Harbin in the first half of the twentieth century. Natalia Ilyina never writes the full names of temples and, most often, uses the word “church” in books. The writer tells about a variety of Orthodox places in Harbin: St. Nicholas Cathedral (St. Nicholas Cathedral) Cathedral (not far from it the writer lived in the first years of her stay in Harbin), as well as a number of other Harbin churches: St. Sophia Cathedral (the Church of St. Sophia, St. Sophia Church), the temple of the Iver Icon of the Mother of God, the Alekseevskaya Church in Modyagou (the name of one of the districts of Harbin), the Kazan-Bogoroditsky Monastery and the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. Natalia Ilyina associates the Orthodox Church not only with religion, but with the space in which the heroes of the books dream about their future, go through difficult times of personal and public life, and remember Russia.