Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета: Серия I. Богословие, философия (Dec 2021)
Religious nativism in Russia in the coronavirus period
Abstract
The changes caused by the spread of Covid-19 not only aff ected the economic and social spheres, but also had a signifi cant impact on the religious component of the life of Russian society. While information on the impact of the pandemic on traditional confessions is regularly covered in the media and in reports of the authorities, the data on the state of the nativist segment of the religious space of the Russian Federation remain outside the informative fi eld and, therefore, outside the academic fi eld. It should be noted that, despite the young age of the neo-pagan movement as one of the brightest directions of new religious movements (Russian Rodnoverie originates in the late 1970s, whereas the similar Polish movement started as early as at the beginning of the 19th century) and the relatively small number of the permanent group, i.e. the community of adepts (according to the community leaders, in the Russian Federation the number of representatives of Slavic paganism ranges from one hundred and twenty to three hundred and twenty thousand people, whereas in the Republic of Poland the number of “Rodzimovets” makes up about two thousand followers), nativism is actively developing and is in the stage of permanent proliferation. The representatives of the constructed ethno-oriented pre-Abrahamic worldview are fully obliged to the fixed passionarity to the fi gure of the ideologist of the association and the movement as a whole. It is the leaders — a priest, an elder, a shaman, a sorcerer — who act as the only accumulators of ideas and practices, as conductors of nativism. The article draws on the Internet interviewing of representatives of the 21st century nativism phenomenon (Russia, Poland) and examines the complex of reactions of the studied community to the consequences of the emergence and spread of the virus. Leaders and rank-andfi le representatives of Slavic Rodnoverie, Neo-Tradition (non-traditional paganism), shamanism, Lithuanian paganism, Asatru (German-Scandinavian tradition), Shuy Way (left hand path), Iron Din (Ossetian traditional faith) took part in the survey. Despite the lack of a unifi ed point of view when characterising the eff ect of the virus on nativism, the analysis of the material obtained revealed three main types of responses of nativists to the spread of the pandemic. These include mythology-based, conspirological and sanitation theories.
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