The Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra as a source of new senses of Ukrainian state-building (analysis of mediatised discursive practices in the wartime)

Abstract

The article analyses the case of filming a Christmas culinary video programme in the Refectory Chamber of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra2 and the reaction of Ukrainian society to this event. The Orthodox Church in Ukraine is quite conservative in its traditions and rules of behaviour in religious buildings. The very place where the video programme was filmed caused a significant public resonance. The article analyses the immediate news reports of the leading Ukrainian media and the more prolonged echo of this event in public conversations of Ukrainian church ministers, philosophers, theologians, and historians. The approach of critical discourse analysis, the theory of argumentation, and the case study method are used. Ukrainian public intellectuals and Orthodox clergy see the thousand-year history of the Lavra as a source of new meanings and a great potential for state-building and the development of Ukraine.