Building the Road to the Temple: Religion and National Revival in the Chuvash Republic

In June 1996, the newly reconstructed waterfront in Cheboksary, the capital of the Chuvash Republic, was officially opened with a formal ceremony led by the President of the Republic, Nikolai Fedorov, and attended by the Patriarch of All Russia, Alexei II. “We have built a road to the temple,” the President declared. In a literal sense, he was referring to the construction of an embankment leading to one of the city's oldest Orthodox churches. But his phrase had a symbolic meaning as well. Metaphorically the phrase equated the physical reconstruction of the capital city with the cultural and spiritual revival of the Chuvash nation.