Martyrdom for the Nation in the context of the Formation of Modern Civil Religions

As the English anthropologist and historian B. Anderson pointed out in his work “Imagined Communities” that one of the characteristics of the nationalist imagination and at the same time its trigger is the cult of the “unknown soldier”, which serves as a kind of symbol of the immortality of the nation and, at the same time, a symbol of the possibility of gaining immortality by an ordinary person in the body nation. At the same time, the reverse side of the cult of the unknown soldier, as well as an equally effective trigger that triggers the nationalist imagination and ensures the perception of the nation as an objectively existing phenomenon, can also be considered the phenomenon of martyrdom for the nation, which, unlike the cult of the unknown soldier, is extremely open and public. As a consequence, an ordinary person, without losing his name, can also become the embodiment of the existence of a nation, acquiring the status of a martyr who sacrificed his life for the life of the community. The indicated phenomenon, the life and heroic death of the hero, or the mental suffering he endured (Mark Junius Brutus, present at the execution of his sons) or physical suffering (Mark Mucius Scaevola, who burned his hand to show the strength and endurance of the Romans to the Etruscan ruler Porsene) was largely studied by the French philosophers of the Enlightenment (Helvetius and Rousseau), who, referring to Greek and Roman history, postulated the need to refer to ancient Roman history as part of the creation of a national state, the ideal of which they saw as the ancient Roman community during the existence of the Roman Republic and the policy during its heyday (6-5 centuries BC). Further, the German philosopher Karl Marx demonstrated how admiration for ancient Roman aesthetics was used in establishing the counter-revolutionary regime of the French President and then Emperor Napoleon III. On the contrary, French thinker A. Tocqueville, a contemporary of Marx, described how the combination of the ancient Roman aesthetics of martyrdom with Christian messianism shaped the American nation. This article considers the issues of the formation of civil religion as an important element of the existence of a modern state that was formed in the 19th-20th centuries. Modern times, the role of martyrs in maintaining the unity of collective memory, the main methods of constructing the most famous images of martyrs in the framework of the formation of national communities are identified. From the point of view of the author of the article, the basis of the cult of the martyr was formed by an appeal to ancient sources, namely to the history of the formation of ancient states (Greek poleis and Rome), which were considered as models for the creation of post-revolutionary states and as models of patriotic behavior. Christianity played a slightly lesser role in the formation of the cult of the martyr. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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