Selected Studies by Dr. Roman Shizhensky
Translated by Jafe Arnold
Edited by John Stachelski
321 pages / Released March 2021 / Available in hardcover and ebook.
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Since the late years of the USSR, a new religious movement has gained momentum in Russia which seeks to return to the ancient faith of the Slavic peoples and to revive the pagan traditions that once embraced vast expanses of Eurasia. The Rodnoverie or “Native Faith” movement has emerged as a constellation of diverse religio-spiritual, philosophical, socio-cultural, and political currents whose identities and dynamics have continued to draw attention within the religious landscape of the post-Soviet space. At the same time, the Slavic pagan revival has figured as part of a larger global trend of concerns with cultural identity in the twenty-first century.
In this unprecedented collection of studies, translated into English for the first time, one of Russia’s leading scholars of Slavic paganism, Dr. Roman Shizhensky, explores the macrocosms and microcosms of contemporary Slavic pagan ideas, figures, practices, and trends from a diverse array of perspectives. From theoretical deliberations on key terminology to comparative studies of doctrines and movements, from sociological portraits and direct interviews with pagan figures to analyses of symbols and art, Shizhensky presents a colorful palette of approaches to paganism in contemporary Russia and Europe.
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Table of Contents
From the Translator and Publisher
Author’s Preface
I. Conceptualizing Contemporary Slavic Paganism in Russia
Russian Paganism in the Twenty-First Century: Ideologists, Organizations, Trends
Contemporary Russian Paganism as an Example of “Imagined Community”
The Russian Pagan Diaspora: Definitions of Neo-Paganism in Contemporary Russia
On the Question of the Terminology of Slavic Variations of “Indigenous Religions”: The Case of the Term “Neo-Paganism”
The Periodization of Modern Slavic Paganism according to the Russian Pagan Diaspora
Aspects of the Codification of Contemporary Slavic Paganism: The Data of Field Studies
Particularities of Studying Contemporary Slavic Paganism: Historiographical Analysis of the Leader of the Koliada of the Vyatichi Community, Nikolai Speransky (Velimir)
II. Landmarks of Contemporary Pagan Faith
Yav’, Prav’, and Nav’ as Religio-Philosophical Foundations of Slavic Neo-Paganism
The Golden Age in the Works and Preachings of Slavic Neo-Pagans
A Comparative Analysis of the Texts of Alexey Dobrovolsky and Herman Wirth: Toward the Question of the Source Base of Russian Neo-Pagans
The Contemporary Russian Priestly-Volkhv “Caste” seen through the Prism of the Religious Concepts of Christopher Dawson
The Concept of Pagan Re-Mythologization: The Case of the ‘Signs’ of the Community of Nikolai Speransky
The Philosophy of Gender in Contemporary European Paganism
III. Symbols and Rituals
The Staff of the Volkhv: The Question of the Sacred Attribute of Twenty-First Century Russian Paganism
The Archetypes of Contemporary Slavic Paganism: The Case of the Fiction Film Guard Outpost
Christian Mystery and Neo-Pagan Ritual Practice: The Rites of “De-Baptizing” and “Naming” in Russian Native Faith Organizations
IV. The Pagan Alternative
Per Aspera ad Astra: The Beginning of the International Contacts of Twenty-First Century Russian Pagans
The Slavic Religious Alternative: The Slovenian Variant
The Term Rodina (Homeland) in the Conceptual Stock of the Contemporary Pagan Diaspora: The Data of Field Studies
Contemporary Pagan Ratings of Russian Historical Figures: The Data of Field Studies
Pagan Tolerance: The Experience of Questionnaire Surveying
Selected Bibliography
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Roman Vitalyevich Shizhensky (b. 1980) is a research fellow at the Institute for the Humanities of Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University in Kaliningrad, where he is a participant in the Russian Academic Excellence Project 5-100. Shizhensky was formerly the founding head of the “New Religious Movements in Contemporary Russia and Europe” research laboratory of Kozma Minin State Pedagogical University of Nizhny Novgorod, where he acquired his doctorate in Historical Sciences and went on to become Associate Professor. The author of more than 50 academic studies and the editor-in-chief of the specialist journal on modern paganism, Colloquium Heptaplomeres, since 2008 he has led field studies among Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, and Slovenian pagans and has organized numerous conferences and publications devoted to the study of contemporary pagan currents. Shizhensky has served on the Council for Conducting State Religious-Studies Expert Analysis under the Russian Ministry of Justice for the Nizhny Novgorod region, and is now an expert of the Center for the Prevention of Religious and Ethnic Extremism in Educational Institutions of the Russian Federation. In addition, he is a contributing expert to the Foundation for Traditional Religions media resource.
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