Russian Paganism and the Issue of Nationalism
A Case Study of the Circle of Pagan Tradition
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.v8i2.184Keywords:
Paganism, RussiaAbstract
Nationalism has been one of the most hotly debated issues concerning Russian Paganism, both within the movement and in public and scholarly debates about it. This article critically examines the usage of the concept in scholarly research. After considering Russian Pagan nationalistic discourse in general, it analyses a Pagan umbrella organization, the Circle of Pagan Tradition, as a case study, and focuses especially on its founding document, the Bitsa Appeal. Using this example, the article demonstrates the hazards in applying the concept of nationalism without very delicate consideration of its multiple aspects. Examining the Bitsa Appeal and the reception it received among Pagans also highlights some basic orientations and one central cause of internal tension within Russian Paganism.
References
Alekseev, A.A., ed., Chto dumayut’ uchenie o ‘Velesovoy knige’. St. Petersburg: Nauka 2004.
Asov, Aleksandr. Mir slavyanskykh bogov. Moscow: Veche, 2002.
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1999.
Chatterjee, Partha. The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Demin, Valeriy. ‘Russko-slavyanskoe pravoslavie’. Russkaya pravda 5 (2002): 1-14.
Dobrovolsky, Aleksey (Dobroslav). Yazychestvo kak volshebstvo. Moscow: Fort-Profi, 2004.
Dudko, D.M. Velesova kniga: Slavyanskie vedy. Moscow: Eksmo, 2004.
Gaidukov, Aleksey. ‘Ideologiya i praktika slavyanskogo neoyazichestva’. Candidacy of Science dissertation, St. Petersburg, Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, 2000.
---. ‘Natsional’naya ideya i neoyazychestvo v Rossii’. In Real’nost etnosa, edited by I.L. Nabok, 140-42. St. Petersburg: Asterion, 2002.
---. ‘Programmnye dokumenty sovremennogo slavyanskogo yazichestva, napravlenie protiv religioznogo i etnicheskogo ekstremizma: “Bitsevskiy dogovor” i “Bitsevskoe Obrashenie”’. In Muzei. Obshchestvo. Religiya: Aspekty vzaimodeystviya, 142-44. St. Petersburg: Aksioner i Ko, 2002.
---. ‘Sovremennoe slavyanskoe (russkoe) yazychestvo v Peterburge: Konfessional’naya dinamika za desyatiletie’. In Religioznaya situatsiya na severo-zpade Rossii i v stranakh Baltii (traditsii i sovremennost’), edited by A. Grigorenko, A. Yu and A.M. Prilutskiy, 37-57. St. Petersburg: Svetoch, 2005.
Gardell, Mattias. Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.
Gavrilov, Dmitriy. ‘Otkuda est’ poshel Krug Yazicheskoy traditsii. Predystoriya’. http://triglav.ru/files/p13_sectionid/5/p13_fileid/30 (accessed 20 September 2006).
---. ‘Otkuda est’ poshel Krug Yazicheskoy traditsii. Zachin’. http://triglav.ru/files/p13_sectionid/1/p13_fileid/31 (accessed 20 September 2006).
Gavrilov, Dmitriy, and Aleksey Nagovitsyn. Bogi slavyan. Yazichestvo. Traditsiya. Moscow: Refl-buk, 2002.
Gellner, Ernst. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983.
Georgis, Dionis. ‘Deklaratsiya ural’skogo soobshchestvo; Rech volhva Ljubomira mariyskim yazychnikam’. In Vestnik Traditsionnoy Kul’tury: Stat’i i dokumenty 3, edited by A.E. Nagovitsyn, 128-31. Moscow: Vorob’ev, 2005.
Georgis, Dionis, and Svetlana Zobnina. ‘Slavyanskoe edinstvo? O slozhnykh imitatorakh natsional’nogo ob’’edineniya’. http://slavya.ru/delo/disput/22kres.htm (accessed 3 May 2005).
Hjerm, Mikael. ‘Defending Liberal Nationalism—At What Cost?’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30.1 (2004): 41-57.
Hutchinson, John. The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State. London: Allen & Unwin, 1987.
Istarkhov, Vladimir. Udar russkikh bogov. St. Petersburg: LIO ‘Redaktor’, 2001.
Kandyba, Viktor. Istoriya i ideologiya russkogo naroda. St. Petersburg: Lan’, 1997.
Klein, L.S. Voskreshenie Peruna: K rekonstruktsii vostochnoslavyanskogo yazychestva. St. Petersburg: Evrazia, 2004.
Kobets, Vitaliy. ’Rossiyskoe i ukrainskoe neoyazychestvo kak sotsial’no-religiozniy fenomen’. Candidacy of Science dissertation, Moscow, Rossiiskaya akademiya gosudarstvennoy sluzhby pri Presidente RF, 2003.
Koskello, Anastasia. ‘Sovremennye yazycheskie religii Evrazii: Kraynosti globalizma i antiglobalizma’. In Religiya i globalizatsiya na prostarakh Evrazii,edited by S. Filatov, 296-332. Moscow: Neostrom, 2005.
Krutous, Viktor. ‘Novoyazichestvo v sovremennoy kul’ture’. Svobodnaya mysl’ 7 (2000): 78-89.
Kulikov, I. Neoyazychestvo. Novye religioznye organizatsii Rossii destruktivnogo, okkul’tnogo i neoyazycheskogo kharaktera. 3.I. Moscow: B.i., 2000.
Kuraev, Andrey. Trudno byt’ russkim. Moscow: Svyato-Bogoslovkiy monastyr, 2001.
Kuzio, Taraz. ‘The Myth of the Civic State: A Critical Survey of Hans Kohn’s Framework for Understanding Nationalism’. Ethnic and Racial Studies 25 (2002): 20-39.
Mil’kov, V. ’Neoyazychestvo’. In Religii narodov sovremennoy Rossii. Slovar’, edited by M.P. Mchedlov, 294-99. Moscow: Respublika, 2002.
Moroz, E.L. ‘Vedizm i fashizm’. Bar’er 4 (1994): 4-8.
Nagovitsyn, Aleksey. ‘Vozrozhdenie dokhristianskikh traditsionnykh verovaniy v sovremennoy Rossii’. Vestnik Traditsionnoy kul’tury: Stat’i, izvednik 1 (2004): 2-8.
---. ‘Revival of Pre-Christian Traditional Beliefs in Modern Russia’. In Vestnik Traditsionnoy kul’tury 2, edited by A. Nagovitsyn, 172-75. Moscow: Vorob’ev, 2005.
Nairn, Tom. Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited. London: Verso, 1997.
Popov, V. Yu. ‘Konstitutsiya Rossiyskoy imperii’. Nasledie predkov 1.17 (2003): 4-15.
Pribylovsky, Vladimir. ‘Russkoe neoyazychestvo—kvazireligiya natsionalizma i ksenofobii’. In Dia-Logos, edited by M. Smirnov, 137-59. Moscow: Istina i Zhizn’, 1999.
---. ‘Neoyazycheskoe krylo v russkom natsionalizme’. Panorama 49 (2002). http.//www.panorama.ru/gazeta/p49yaz.html.
---. ‘Ideynye tsentry politicheskikh neoyazychnikov’. Novaya politika (23 June 2004). http://www.novopol.ru/material127.html.
Rezunkov, Andrey. ‘Manifest obshchiny ekologii soznanya ”Krina”’. In Tropa na krinitsy: Pesni bratichny, edited by A. Rezunkov, 64-65. St. Petersburg: Bronko, 1998.
---. ‘V Krine sey-voda zhivaya’. Vedicheskaya Kul’tura 2 (2004): 27-31.
Sevast’yanov, A.N. Russkiy natsionalizm, yego druz’ya i vragi. Moscow: Russkaya Pravda, 2001.
Shnirel’man, Victor. Neoyazychestvo i natsionalizm: Vostochnoevropeyskiy areal. Moscow: Rossiyskaya akademiya nauk, 1998.
---. Russian Neo-Pagan Myths and Anti-Semitism. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1998.
---. ‘“Christians! Go home!”: A Revival of Neo-Paganism between the Baltic Sea and Transcaucasia (An Overview)’. Journal of Contemporary Religion 17.2 (2002): 197-211.
---. ‘Mnogolikoe neoyazychestvo’. Rodina 4 (2005): 30-35.
Shterin, Marat. ‘New Religious Movements in the 1990s’. In Religious Transition in Russia, edited by M. Kotiranta, 175-217. Helsinki: Kikimora Publications, 2000.
Sinyavin, Igor’. Stezya pravdy: Ideologiya Russkogo Dukha. Moscow: Russkaya Pravda, 2004.
Smith, Anthony D. Nationalism. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001.
---. Nationalism and Modernism. London: Routledge, 2003.
Speransky, Nikolay. ‘Pis’mo-mnenie’. Za Rus’ 4 (2004): 3.
Speransky, Nikolay, et al. Ruskiy yazycheskiy manifest. Moscow: Obshchestvo Vyatichi, 1997.
Storchak, V.M. ‘Sovremennoe russkoe neoyazychestvo: Istoki, mirovozzrenie, obshchestvenno-politicheskie organizatsii’. Gosudarstvo, Religiya, Tserkov’ v Rossii i za rubezhom 3.24 (2000): 35-46.
Volkova, Irina.’Kupalo v Kaluge 2004’. Rod. 3 (2005): 5-18.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. ‘Culture as the Ideological Battleground of the Modern World-System’. Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity, edited by M. Featherstone, 42-51. London: Sage Publications, 1990.
Yashin, V.B. ‘“Tserkov” pravoslavnykh staroverov-inglingov’ kak primer neoyazycheskogo kul’ta’. Neoyazychestvo na prostarakh Evrazii, edited by Victor Shnirel’man, 39-55. Moskow: Bibleysko-bogoslovkiy institute sv. Apostola Andreya, 2001.
Zobnina, Svetlana. ‘Traditsionalizm i russkoe samopoznanie v sovremennoy Rossiy’. Mir yazicheskoy traditsii, edited by Llir, Iggel’d, Yastreb, Ogneyar, Velemysl and Yarosvet CD-ROM, Moscow, 2003.
