ABSTRACT
This chapter centres on a microstudy of St Simeon of Verkhoture’s relics to examine how the ideological priorities, pragmatic compromises, and local peculiarities of the Soviet campaign against relics impacted upon the practice of pilgrimage. Most research on the anti-relic campaign has focused on the importance of incorruption/decay; this chapter focuses on physical access and the importance of seeing and touching, both for those determined to curtail relic veneration and for those who continued to seek the holy in the bodies of the saints. In tracing the fate of this nationally significant Urals saint from relic exposures in the 1920s, to confiscation, museum display, and eventual return to the church in 1989, comparisons are drawn with other shrines in Soviet Russia, and specifically with St Sergius of Radonezh, returned to the church in 1946.
