Olga Levitski

DESECRATION OF CHURCHES: RECURRENT NARRATIVE SCHEME/TEMPLATE IN "REAL LIFE" STORIES . NARRATOLOGY AND THE COGNITIVE INVENTORY LANGUAGE.

Abstract: The paper deals with a narrative scheme/template underlying universal motifs that have world-wide parallels. Such motifs were traditionally studied from the folkloristic perspective. We argue that the recurrence of narrative scheme in the various modern texts should be studied through the interdisciplinary approach: combination of methods of comparative folklore and those of discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics. The cognitive foundations of the universal motifs, narrative schemata and cognitive frames are closely related phenomena. The narratives are deeply rooted in a cognitive inventory of language users (shared knowledge, memories, beliefs, opinions, frames, etc.). The reviewed materials vary chronologically and geographically: archival data, legends, "historical" narratives, rumours, tabloid articles, interviews. The aforementioned twofold analysis of structural and semantic elements reveals generic resemblance of different types of narratives. The recurrence of the narrative scheme in question is considered a linguistic defence mechanism that is activated in times of historical turbulence. When a traumatic episode is being interpreted within the familiar narrative matrix retrieved from a collective memory, it becomes more comprehensible and easier to accept.

Keywords: universal motif, narrative scheme, narrative template, desecration of churches, folklore motif, cognitive frame.

1. Introduction:

In expeditions to the Archangelsk and Vologda regions in the early 80s, the Soviet folklorists very often heard narratives about desecration of churches after the Soviet Revolution. These narratives were related as personal experience stories. They referred to real people from the local villages, as well as to non-residents. It was not possible for the folklorists to record and examine the stories before Perestroika, because of the dominant Communist ideology: the protagonists (desecrators) were Communists or Komsomol activists. As a result, such narratives were forsaken in the University archives or buried in the collectors' memories.

Initially the stories about desecration of churches were narrated by the eye witnesses. Later, they have become a part of some peculiar local traditions. There were numerous stories about people who removed bells from the belfries, crosses from the churches, or who turned the churches into the stables or 'kolkhoz' clubs in order to propagate the new Communist ideology. This kind of stories had a rigid narrative scheme. As a rule, some kind of misfortune eventually befell those who have taken part in the sacrileges, or the place where the sacrilege occurred became unsafe. For example, in one kolkhoz cows were placed in the church where the floor was covered with the icons. Several days later the animals were found with their legs broken. Another invariant could feature a person who, after taking part in a sacrilege, either became an invalid or tragically died. [Arch.]

The standard folklore questionnaires, published after the Perestroika, acknowledge the existence of such stories. These questionnaires recommend that researchers ask about the persecution of the religious people and priests, destroyed churches. Likewise, the folklorists should ask whether the women's/children's weeping or moaning was heard from the closed churches; if Our Lady appeared on the desecrated belfry; if there were cases of the God's wrath and punishment of the desecrators, etc. [Kulagina, et al.] It should be emphasized that the narratives in question always involved real people and churches, and came up spontaneously in the course of conversations. The narrators themselves introduced this topic into the conversation, and the original stimulus could be only marginally relevant - person's name, name of a local church, etc.

This paper deals with a narrative scheme/template underlying the aforementioned stories and the motifs they consist of. Such motifs were traditionally studied from the folkloristic perspective. [Shtyrkov; Moroz; L'vov] We suggest that the recurrence of narrative schemes in the various modern texts should be studied through the interdisciplinary approach - a combination of methods of comparative folklore with those of discourse analysis. The cognitive foundations of the universal motifs are closely related to general narrative matrixes and the cognitive processes underlying their formation. As a result, such "real life" stories have world-wide parallels.

2. Theoretical framework

The explicit purpose of this paper is to study the typology of traditional motifs and narrative schemes that are triggered by real life events. Comparable historical episodes may be interpreted similarly in different cultures and in different epochs. This fact can be of significant interest for the discursive analysis and general narratology. A comparative study of recurring structural and semantic narrative elements can help understand the mechanisms of text formation, as well as shed light on temporal and causal-sequential organization of narratives in general. It can also facilitate the creation of the model of text comprehension and production / reproduction. [Nekliudov (1)]

The international inventory of the universal motifs can be used for classification of both oral tradition (legends, memorabilia, etc.) and some important personal narratives. As S. Nekludov pointed out, a striking resemblance of the plots, motifs, and protagonists in different cultures and traditions indicate that there is a set of general rules and universal elements that govern the process of text construction. [ibid.]

When collective memories about real life episodes are evoked in the spontaneous speech, they become shaped as narratives, and are told according to the basic rules of storytelling. Such narratives rest upon common knowledge, stereotyped situations, themes, and narrative matrixes. Very often they act as instruments of solving social or psychological conflicts. [Veselova] For example, when community members draw upon collective knowledge of typical situations, such stories function as illustrations or explanatory templates for the particular events that had precedents in history. The stories in question could be told in rural areas, or be circulated as urban legends, rumours, i.e. basically, as any structured narrative that can be easily cliched, memorized, and reproduced. Therefore, not surprisingly, the studied narrative scheme/template was also discovered in an everyday discourse of the educated people in large cities, where individuals do not necessarily belong to the same local tradition. The interviews that we conducted revealed that the real life episodes, or personal experiences, when they are narrated by the people from the cities, are moulded into the same fixed causal-sequential structure as those observed in the rural areas, where they can be considered a product of local oral tradition. This fact can be explained in terms of discourse analysis: the stories represent elaborated mini-scenarios (schemata) which are based on cognitive frames. They draw from the "shared members' resources", and are based on conventional and commonsensical knowledge about a particular subject in a particular society. The narrative schemata and frames are two sides of the mental representation of reality. In discourse analysis a scheme is understood as a "representation of a particular type of activity in terms of predictable elements in a predictable sequence", whereas a frame is a "representation of whatever can figure as a topic or "subject matter" … within an activity". [Fairclough, 158]

3. Research method and data:

As a rule, the narratives in question refer to an act of sacrilege, its consequences, and the desecrators' fate. All the above elements rarely appear in a single narrative together. However, they can be found in different combinations and narratives. This fact confirms the observation made by the folklorists that specific universal motifs can "join or branch out". [Segre, 186-197] Thus, a comparative structural method is very productive, because it helps uncover the resemblance of the narratives that otherwise could go unnoticed. [ibid.] Having assumed the comparative approach we analyzed the variety of texts from the point of view of their structures. It helped reconstruct their universal narrative scheme, which consists of the following semantic components:

o demolition / desecration of a church
o punishment for the sacrilege: the place is cursed or the desecrators are punished
o signs are seen / heard from the desecrated church: people hear voices or see omens, which is understood as a token predicting the demolition or call for reconstruction of the church (children's / women's weeping heard from the closed church)

The analyzed sources vary chronologically and geographically, ranging from the old legends to the contemporary newspaper articles. The method of comparison of motifs, narrative schemata/matrixes, allows us to find similarities in the texts that at the first glance do not appear similar. This method also helps describe the cognitive mechanism that triggers the traditional schemes in such diverse narratives as rumours, legends, and personal stories. Such approach to the narratives is legitimate: according to W. Labov and J. Walezky "the study of narrative structure will achieve greater significance when materials from radically different cultures are studied in the same way". [Labov & Walezky, 38] People perceive and construct reality with the help of the scripts and scenarios, which in their turn, can be traced throughout the various cultures and across historical periods. Such scenarios help individuals cope with stress. One may say that hey represent psychological and linguistic defence mechanisms that are activated at times of historical turbulence.

For the comparison and classification purposes we use S. Thompson's Motif Index of Folklore Literature. [Thompson] Following is a list of motifs cited by S. Thomson's index. Some of the semantic elements can be found in the modern personal narratives:

o Taboo: profaning shrine - C 51.1;
o Stone bleeds three days before church is plundered - D 1317.12.1;
o Sunken bells sounds - F 993;
o Saint's anger produces extraordinary nature phenomena - F 960.4;
o Desecrated altar bleeds - F 991.4.1;
o Destruction and rebuilding of church foreseen by saint - M 364.10;
o Saint's curse - M 411.8;
o Punishment for desecration of holy places (images, etc.) - Q222;
o Punishment for desecration of holy temple utensils Q 223.6;
o Punishment for heaping indignities upon crucifix Q 222.2;
o Stones fall in churchyard; punish desecrators of church Q 222.5.1;
o Curse as punishment - Q 556;
o Stone in church sheds blood to foretell coming plunder of church - Q 222.0.1;
o Church bell sunk in river - V 115.1;
Thus, the hypothetic full narrative scheme/template that embodies the idea of the desecration of a holy place/ shrine consists of the following semantic elements:
o Tokens / omens predicting destruction or act of sacrilege
o Curse / resistance on the part of those who oppose the sacrilege
o Destruction / sacrilege per se
o Utensils / icons from the church and their positive and negative qualities
o Punishment for the sacrilege
o The place where the sacrilege took place is cursed
o Tokens / omens indicating that the church should be restored

In order to understand the mechanism of construction of the studied texts, it should be noted that the fundamental symbols possess a fathomless semantic capacity. If we interpret "church" as a fundamental symbol, that semantically conveys the idea of a "holy place", which by itself is a primary cultural symbol, it will explain why the narratives about the church desecration so often revive the universal narrative schemes. According to Y. Lotman, "certain fundamental symbols represent compressed mnemonic programs that are stored in a collective memory, and can be unfolded into full texts. They cannot be studied at one point of time only, due to the fact that they belong to a diachronic formation of culture. The symbol is always older than its textual environment in which it is actualized." [Lotman, 1992, 192] Y. Lotman also indicated that the elementary symbols have larger semantic potential than the more complex or compound symbols. [ibid.]

Further we will demonstrate how the elementary symbol "holy place" can carry a compressed mnemonic script - a narrative scheme - that unfolds into the full narratives, and is retrieved from the collective memory during certain historical periods.

4. Discussion

In general, any sacrilege can be considered as an act of iconoclasm, i.e., specific kind of vandalism that results in the destruction - both allegorical and physical - of old symbols. [On the historical definitions and the scholarly descriptions of iconoclasm see the monograph by Andre Grabar (1984), for the list of sources see Brubaker, L.,Haldon J., 2001; consult, also some recent studies by Besancon, A., 1994, 2001; Barber 2002; and the informative work of Helmut Feld, 1990; for some additional historical periods see Christin, O., 1991; Gamboni, D., 1997; for the applications to some modern Western philosophies see Kelly, M., 2003.] Dialectically speaking, the iconoclast attitudes serve the goal of overthrowing the old symbols and establishing the new ones. The desecration of the churches repeatedly took place throughout revolutions, as well as during foreign and religious invasions. Iconoclasm is inevitable during the periods of social turbulence, and it was widespread during and after the Soviet Revolution. [see Stites; Ovtchinnikova; and some narrations in Plaggenborg; and Kolonitsky] According to Y. Lotman, (taking the initial step in the 'antichrist-figure' of Peter The Great as the first 'positive and successful revolutionary on the Russian political and cultural soil'), the 'Revolution' was perceived as the "rebellion against God." [Lotman, 1992, 198]

Several recent examples taken from the modern Russian folklore archives and the collection of children's folklore demonstrate how our hypothetic narrative scheme ("desecration of a holy place") is realized in the specific motifs (narrative components). Let us look at the archival data:

o Motif of punishment for the desecrators:
a) One man from the village of Shubach has pushed the bell from the belfry.
Several years later his legs were paralyzed. [FA, Vash. 12-5 00-07-09]
b) My aunt Nina's husband pushed the bell from the belfry. Some years later, he
went to the war and didn't come back. That's because the God punished him. That's what my aunt told. [FA, Bel. 24-47 98-07-13]
c) /what you have heard about the people who desecrated churches/ They all were
invalids. The God punished them - took their health. [FA, Bel. 24-53 98-07-07]

o Motif of curse of the icons/utensils from the destroyed church:
a) One man took the panels from the destroyed church. He brought them home
and used them. And as a result his whole family was struck by bad luck. One day his wife got sick. Another day - his daughter got sick. But when the winter came, he's died. And his wife asked her son to take those panels away. And the misfortunes ceased. [KFA]

o Motif of curse of church/monastery: the place were it stood is not safe:
a) When this <summer> camp was built, someone told the constructors that it is
forbidden to build in this place, because in the past there was a Women's Monastery here.... nevertheless they have built this camp....when the kids came and settled, suddenly the girls started to disappear, and on the floors of the wards where they lived there were indelible white spots...[CHS]

The above texts clearly demonstrate that the studied narrative scheme is productive in generating the contemporary Russian narratives. Since the scheme evolves around an elementary symbol, whose historical "memory" can be studied in a diachronic perspective, for further investigation of the narratives we will look at two plausible historical parallels: a destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, and the French Revolution.

It should be stressed, that the following very brief and superficial analysis of several single Talmudic episodes aims exclusively at the formal comparison of the semantic and structural elements. Talmudic legends about the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple contain many of the above semantic elements and motifs. As G. Hazan-Rokem illustrated, the Talmudic legends about Titus, who destroyed the Temple, and who was punished by God have folklore origins. According to the researcher, "we must assume the existence of the innumerable oral versions that have not reached us. This assumption relies both on what is reflected in the ancient texts themselves and what we know about the dynamics of folk literature in our own times". [Hazan-Rokem, 2000, 82] In order to isolate several core semantic elements of the narratives about the destruction of the Temple, we surveyed the collection "Jerusalem legends" by Z. Vilnai. [Vilnai] There were found the following motifs that are strikingly similar to those that appear in the modern "real stories":

o Omens that predicted the catastrophe (for example, the star shaped as a sword appeared in the sky; the Temple's gates opened by themselves that was interpreted as a bad omen, etc.)
o The fate of the ritual objects / utensils (for example, when the Temple pillars were taken away from Jerusalem, they started to "cry": water appeared on them on each anniversary of the catastrophe, etc.)
o The omens after the catastrophe (there were droughts; the dew ceased to fall; the fig-trees and the grape didn't give fruit, etc.)
o The desecrator and his punishment (for example, when Titus tried to ship the ritual objects, a severe storm started at the sea; Titus was punished - the mosquito penetrated his nose and tormented him for seven years, etc.)

As it was shown in Hazan-Rokem's studies, the legends about Titus symbolically depict his challenge to the Jewish God. [Hazan-Rokem, 1993] Similar to the above, the de-Christianization of the French Revolution took the form of symbolic insults and challenges. For example, M. Vovelle states that in order to understand the "obstinacy and tenacity" of the memories about the iconoclastic acts that occurred during the de-Christianization of French Revolution, "it might be appropriate to follow...the way in which the imprint was fixed of something that was much more than just a momentary squall, or a traumatic period of aggression. It was also a gigantic scene of theatrical perspective... the creative instrument of images, allegories, and dreams... the de-Christianization of Year 2 takes its place among the ranks of fundamental events in the evolution of society." [Vovelle, 55; for additional information about the various historical periods as related to the topic see Christophe 1986, 1998; Aston, 2002; Harrison G.S., et. al. eds., 1976; Van Kley, Dale K., 1996, Maier, H., 1969; as well as a classic study by John McManners, 1982, 1969; for the exclusively Russian points see the recent monograph by Shevtsova (2004) as well as Duncan,P.J.S., 2000; Roslof, E.E., 2002; ]

The iconoclasm of the French revolution in all cases was a matter of "destroying everything that came under the heading…of "signs of religion" [ibid.] As it is put by Vovelle, "the sans-culottes felt that they had won the essential gamble which had vindicated them, a gamble on miracles. They had drunk from the sacred bowls and had not died. They had burnt the effigies of the saints without incurring their vengeance. And this power to work miracles is in future ascribed to Revolution. [ibid, 60] The last remark is very important for our study, because it shows that the public beliefs and the anticipation of the celestial punishment permeated sacrileges. Here is an excerpt from the revolutionary tribunal transcript showing how the social expectations served as a lens through which the sacrilege was seen:

"Next the priest was taken to the tabernacle. Taking a wafer in his hand, he asked to die right then if this wafer held divinity. He invited his enemies, in case any were in the assembly, to unite their wishes that, before leaving the temple, the vengeance… would fall on his head, if he was a profaner. No one witnessed any marvel or miracle. The municipality invited everyone present to attest to what they had seen and heard". [Annales]

Despite the fact that the revolutionaries felt that they were able to justify their actions in the eyes of the believers if they were not punished, we can assume that the stories about the opposite, the punishment, also existed. For example, M. Aldanov, who knew archival documents very well, gives such evidence, either documentary or artistic, that the narratives about the punishment for a sacrilege circulated: "Groups of Austrian officers examined the church that was desecrated by the revolutionaries recently. An old woman was telling them how the unholy revolutionaries, who tried to seize the ornaments from the altar, were incinerated by Our Lady right on the spot. They fell dead one near the other ". [Aldanov, 172] This illustrates how the social reality was constructed: the anticipation of a miracle, or a punishment, was a commonsensical knowledge taken for granted by all the participants of the iconoclastic acts. Thus, knowing about the universal narrative scheme and the dynamics of a narrative formation, we can suggest that the narratives about the acts of sacrilege during the French Revolution had the same surface structure as the ones that appeared after the Soviet revolution.

It is evident from the aforementioned excerpts that, when the real episode is being narrated, it is crystallized into the text with a rigid structure. The narration is rule-governed, and the narrative components have temporal and sequential organization. Semantic elements reflect the interpretation of the events that is based on the common shared knowledge.

Taking into consideration all the above findings, we suggested that the narratives about desecrated churches might have existed also in large cities among educated people. In order to validate this hypothesis, we conducted several interviews in Canada among the immigrants, who have arrived from the large Soviet cities, such as Moscow, St-Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, and Yerevan. The recorded interviews showed that the narratives in question, indeed, existed. They took shape of urban legends, personal narratives, rumours, and also individual interpretations of the events that our informants witnessed or heard about.

Our informants were not religious people, aged from 30 to 60, and most of them held University degrees. They were asked what they heard about the Moscow Church of Christ the Saviour that was first destroyed, and after the Perestroika restored, and also about the swimming pool that was built in its place.

5. Results: narrative structure, sequential organization, model of text production and comprehension

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Church of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, in a Russian consciousness is a symbol of many churches that were destroyed in the Soviet Union. When the restoration of the Church of Christ the Saviour begun, there was a strong sentiment that the Church symbolically represented hundreds of the destructed churches and the millions of the lost lives. [for example, Luzhkov]

Under the premise that the rumours and personal narratives based on the outlined semantic elements were very widespread immediately after the church demolition when the shocking memories were strong, it can be said that they faded when the time passed. However, when the restoration of the Church of Christ the Saviour begun the collective memory revived this type of narratives. The collected interviews were analyzed in terms of their semantic and structural organization. The recorded texts can be regarded narratives; they meet the criteria of a narrative: "narrative is any sequence of clauses that contains at least one temporal juncture". [Labov & Walezky, 21] The narratives are characterized by the use of simple and limited grammatical forms and categories, and have linear sequence. According to Labov & Walezky, narratives must have surface structure and temporal conjunction "then" as their essential characteristic. Temporal organization is as follows: A - "then" - B. As it will be demonstrated further, all the recorded texts have sequences of episodes that are connected by the temporal junctures (either explicit or implicit).

Let us look at the data. Although the texts bear distinctive marks of the modern urban social reality and their details vary, the narrative scheme is unmistakably seen in all of them.

Interviews:

1. Yes, I've heard many stories about this church. There was a swimming pool in
its place. So, there were rumours that due to the fact that the church was destroyed, a gang of religious people was at work there. The sect of religious fighters, you know what I mean, they drowned many swimmers there. They pulled the swimmers by their legs and drowned them. It was a bad place there. You know, there was this narrow passage - you had to dive into it in order to get to the pool. So they entered, but never came back.
2. The ground was floating. It was impossible to build anything else, but the
swimming pool, because the ground was so bad... Yes, I agree, it is strange indeed how such a big church was built there in the past… Now there are all these new technologies; that's why they succeeded to restore it. But have you ever heard how the church was detonated? There were several attempts to blow it up, they succeeded to blow it up only at third or fourth attempt, a lot of dynamite was used. And have you seen in the films how it was destroyed? It levitated in the air for several seconds, untouched, and only then it fell apart.
3. It couldn't be destroyed from the first attempt. It jumped in the air, then it came
back to its place without any damage. In order to blow it up, they had to put an explosive charge several times.
4. I only remember how I watched a movie and there was this scene, how the
Nazis tried to blow the church up - maybe it was in Pskov. They put the dynamite - the earth trembled and all the people died, but the church didn't move. They used to make such good cement in old times... They knew a secret...They put the dynamite again and again, but it was hopeless. The church withstood...

In these examples, the universal semantic elements are refurbished and get modern interpretation. For example, the motifs "curse of a saint" and "celestial punishment," become vengeance of a religious sect. The motifs "cursed place" and "the church is unbreakable in a miraculous manner, enormous effort is required in order to destroy it" is being interpreted in terms of modern technology. This motif undergoes the similar process of "refurbishment" in other modern narratives: the indignant saint was seen carrying a briefcase, a typically modern accessory. [Prohorov] The narrative has its own logic, which infers certain presuppositions. Temporal conjunction "then" is used: first the church was destroyed, and then the gang appeared. Also the narratives appeal to the shared common knowledge for validation presuming that "everybody knows that". The informant, who is an atheist, uses discourse markers: "you know what I mean".

5. It's a well known fact! A swimming pool stood in place of the destructed Church of Christ the Saviour. So, hundreds of people have drowned there. That's what my aunt, she was married to a Communist, used to tell me: that's because one cannot deceive God…you cannot cheat God.
6. I never heard anything officially, but there were rumours. When they demolished
the Church, they wanted to build there a commemorative stele or something. But they didn't like something, so they've built a swimming pool. So you know, in order to enter the pool, one had to go through the passage. People entered it, but you never know if they managed to get to the pool - a lot of people drowned there. The corpses of suffocated people were found there. I personally don't believe it, but many people did. … It is nonsense of course, but I was very little when I heard these stories, so I believed it.

These two texts are based on a motif of "cursed place". Again, here is a temporal conjunction "then" - a-"then"-b, temporal and sequential organization is highly structured. The interpretation of the events is based on a narrative scheme. The informants also appeal to the common knowledge for validation: "maybe it's not a fact, but many people believed it, so there must be something in it". It is also appeals to the collective authority:"it's a well known fact". Interestingly, the question about the Church of Christ the Saviour framed the stories about the similar events - the destruction of the Church of Christ the Saviour in Leningrad. Following are two examples:

7. There were rumours that Sennaja square was cursed, because there was a
cemetery there. But I remember there were rumours that all these misfortunes that happened there also related to the fact that the Church was destroyed there. Also, the atmosphere and the energy there were very bad.
This text refurbishes the motif "cursed place" using the modern concept of "bad spiritual energy", but essentially the narrative scheme, its logic and the sequential organization of the events, draw upon the members' shared resources and beliefs: such a place must be cursed.

8. No, I never heard anything about this church in Moscow, but you know, there
was also the Church of Christ the Saviour in Leningrad. So it was also demolished. I was a little girl back then. My father took me to watch the demolition. It was awful, all the debris around. But you know what, because of this, many years later there was this terrible accident in a subway station, Sennaja Square. Its roof fell and as a result a lot of people died.
This text is a personal interpretation of the real events the informant witnessed. The temporal and sequential organization is transparent and follows the universal logic: the roof falls because the church was destroyed, peoples' deaths are a logical consequence of the broken taboo. The underlying belief is that such a deed cannot go unpunished and the place where the sin was committed is cursed.

9. I never heard about this church. But in Armenia a lot of churches were destroyed. For example, three years ago in Yerevan I've heard about this church demolished long ago. And in its place there was the apartment building. And one boy lived in this building, he was terminally ill. And he started to dream, such strange dreams. And his parents called one man and asked to explain what it meant. And he said that God wants them to build a church there. They knew nothing about the church that stood there in the past. So they went to the archive and found out that there was a church in the past. And they started to collect money for the construction. And this boy, their son, he died. But he died with ease, not suffering at all. That's because they started to collect money. I was there in this spot; there was a chair, and a candle on this chair, and a charity box, where people put their money.
This text is built upon the motif "omens predicting reconstruction of the church". The sequence of narrated events is stipulated by the logic of the narrative scheme. The boy died with ease, because his parents started the restoration. This is also a personal interpretation fully based on a shared knowledge and beliefs about the "holy place".
The above interviews have parallels in newspaper and tabloid articles. The role of newspapers in transmission of the popular and universal motifs and plots is well known [for example, Schechter 2000; for some additional mythographic materials see Henderson, Joseph L., Oakes, M., 1990] The newspapers very often reproduce conventional knowledge disguising it as factual materials. [Fairclough, 140-169] Herein the motif of the destroyed church in Leningrad as it was elaborated in a certain newspaper:
"Very soon the Sennaja Square will change its appearance. It is probable that the belfry will be built here - the very same belfry that existed here quarter of century ago; the one that reminded about itself by the tragic events of the last summer. The idea to "remove a curse" from the Sennaja Square is deeply rooted in the heads of the municipal officers". [NP 1]

The motif "saint's curse/ vengeance" was also found in a newspaper:
"At the Irtysh banks, there was a church of Saint Alexander Nevsky... In 1929, the church was closed and later on demolished. There was a legend that when it was being demolished, there was an apparition of Archangel Michael who chased the desecrators away.... this legend was a silent protest against those who destroyed the temple ". [NP 2]

Another variant of the motif "miraculously unbreakable church" was found in the newspaper article about the Greek Church in Leningrad, which was also destroyed after the war and left a traumatic trace in the 'collective memory' of many Leningrad citizens.
"During the World War II, the Nazi's bomb entered the dome of a church, but by some miracle IT hasn't exploded. The church was announced a dangerous object and was closed. After the war, the bomb was extracted, but when the mine-sweepers tried to carry it away on a truck, after it moved off for 200 meters, the bomb exploded". [NP 2]

The question about the factuality of the events is irrelevant, because the noticeable semblance and the recognizable semantic components in the narratives demonstrate that the newspapers are yet another channel of distribution of the familiar motifs retrieved from the collective memory.
As it was pointed out earlier, the studied narrative scheme is universal and can emerge anywhere and at any time. Here is a similar story about destruction of mosques in Azerbaijan:
"The Bibi-Heybat Mosque on the outskirts of Baku has an unusual history. When the mosque was destroyed during Stalin's rule, legends arose about it…
…the thick walls of the Bibi-Heybat Mosque were not easy to destroy. The minaret also caused a lot of trouble. In order to blow it up, they had to dynamite it twice. … Two nights after it was demolished, the people of the village had trouble sleeping, outraged that their holy place had been desecrated. When dawn broke, hearing shouts and a loud crash, they ran to the mosque. A Red Army soldier, who was supposed to be guarding the remnants of the mosque, stood there with eyes wide open in horror, pointing to the sea and shouting something unintelligible. Where he pointed, the people could see a woman wrapped in a white veil walking down to the sea. … An old man whispered: "She is sure to come back! She'll return in better times…
…Yet another legend says that the soldiers who were involved in Bibi-Heybat's destruction died in freak accidents. One of them allegedly drowned, another died when a boulder fell on his head, a third one was killed by electric shock." [Sharifov]
Therefore, the universal narrative scheme and its elements are disseminated through the various channels: rumours, personal narratives, and newspaper articles.
The hypothesis that the narrative scheme outlined above is alive, productive and universal in conceptualizing the idea of inevitability of punishment for the sin of desecration of holy place, might be also supported by the fact that during the war in Croatia in 1992, the soldiers were afraid to fight with the legend:
"… the painting of the Holy Virgin was … handed over …to Catholic people who decided to lay it in the Komusina Church. When they tried to lift the painting, they were unable to do it. Therefore they used to organise a big celebration every year in honour of the Holy Virgin from Kondzilo, where they brought the miraculous image from the Komunisa Church to the Kondzilo shrine…. On May 28, the first confrontation line between Bosnian-Croats and Bosnian-Serbs was established. …The fights between the two factions … finished in September. For the third time in its history, the Christian community had to move the holy painting.… Nevertheless, Kondzilo Church was spared by B-Serb troops. According to some B-Croats, soldiers were scared to fight against the legend". [Lavigne]

The interviews were conducted in accordance with the ethics of work with human participants; the informants' written consent was obtained

Conclusions:

The analysis of the above data shows that the narrative scheme/template that embodies the idea of sacrilege of a holy place, and the punishment for this act, are productive in generating the modern personal "real life" stories. In these narratives, the temporal, casual, and sequential organization of the episodes is highly structured, and is shaped by the universal scheme consisting of several main semantic elements, either explicit or implicit in each particular text: the act of sacrilege, its consequences and the desecrators' fate. The scheme (template) in question is a compressed script, which can be unfolded into full-text narratives. It is stored in the collective memory, and is retrieved during traumatic historical periods, such as Revolutions, foreign and religious invasions, etc. The scheme leans upon the shared commonsensical knowledge about the inevitability of punishment for breaking the taboo. It acts as a linguistic mechanism transmitting the common wisdom. Such scripts help individuals perceive and accept reality, justify it, and cope with the stresses and traumatic episodes. The personal experience, when narrated, is moulded into narrative template that draws upon the shared members' resources.

The narratives absorb meta-textual reality: on the one hand, they rest upon ideology (beliefs, stereotypes, assumptions, i.e. cognitive frames); on the other hand, they follow the basic rules of storytelling. Y. Lotman emphasized that when a narrative is constructed into a text above a phrase level it is tailored into a literary plot, which has its own logic. In order to relate an episode, one has to organize the chain of the events, not necessarily related to each other, into a whole structure. [Lotman, 1994] The conclusions presented hitherto are supported by R. Garagozov's findings study. The scholar showed how the Russian collective memory retained a particular narrative template throughout its history. The Russian "schematic narrative template" (ideologeme - motif of "triumph over alien force") that was widespread in the ancient historical chronicles was discovered in the Soviet ideological texts. [ibid, 56-57] Collective memory is understood as "textually mediated memory" [Wertsch, cited in Garagozov, 55] that apparently influences group behaviour and subtly shapes the mode of thinking. [ibid, 87]

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