RIA Novosti is featuring a six-part series on the history of Russia’s religious sects, their leaders, and particularly, asks why “Russia has proved such fertile ground for the growth of new and bizarre beliefs.” It is estimated that there are 300-500 religious sects in Russia with a total flock of around a million people. They range from small occultist and pagan groups, to more controversial new “religions” like Scientology, foreign imports like Jehovah Witnesses, Baptists and other Protestant groups, homegrown Old Believers (and their offshoots), the small and rather strange Khysty, Skoptsy, Molokans, the Dukhobors, and the flourishing of new cults and the popular practice of magic and divination. And though Russian law ensures the freedom of conscience, some wonder if Russian Orthodoxy under the politically proactive stewardship of Patriarch Kirill is becoming Russia’s state religion. “One has to wonder,’ writes Brian Whitmore, “given these trends and Kirill’s rising influence, if Russia’s much-discussed diarchy of Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin is on the way to becoming a de facto troika.”
Perhaps Kirill’s political flexing is a direct response to the fact that Russian religious sects are flourishing. Many argues that the religious vacuum produced by Soviet communism has resulted in spiritual revival often devoid of rhyme or reason. I often wonder if this “spiritual vacuum” is overstated, because frankly we don’t have the historical studies to prove it, and most works looking at the promotion of atheism show that it didn’t really take among most Russians. After all, Russia is hardly alone in the spiritual revival department. I suspect the increasing search to spirituality has more to do with general global collapse of secular ideologies’ ability to explain our present historical moment. Nevertheless, in her summation of Susan Richards’ observations on Russian religious faith in Lost and Found in Russia, the Guardian‘s Lesley Chamberlain writes:
What then of the actual spiritual life? Susan Richards . . . sees the Russians as emerging from a long period of addiction to unfreedom, with the result that many have lost their spiritual bearings in the relative personal freedom they now have. They don’t know what to believe in and reach for extremes. Travelling in the provinces during 1992-2008 she came across a remote settlement of Old Believers, a sect devoted to a 16th-century form of Orthodox worship, with new converts still joining. In another remote area she found a young couple building a new life for themselves based on self-sufficiency, sensitivity to nature and chastity. At the same time she met scientists keen to measure the ungraspable life-force and intelligent individuals captivated by fortune-tellers and UFOs.
Perhaps this quest for the spiritual in post-Soviet Russia is the reason why Russian religious sects have increasingly become the subject of historical study in the American academy. Sergei Zhuk’s Russia’s Lost Reformation: Peasants, Millennialism, and Radical Sects in Southern Russia and Ukraine, 1830-1917, examines the spread of radical Protestantism in their Russian countryside; Heather Coleman looks at Russian Baptists life and survival in late Tsarist and early Soviet Russia in Russian Baptists and Spiritual Revolution, 1905-1929; Laura Engelstein’s Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom: A Russian Folktale delves into the strange faith of the Skoptsy; for a broad scholarly examination of the occult, there’s Bernice Rosenthal’s edited collection The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture; and finally, for an explication of magic and divination see W. F. Ryan’s mammoth classic The Bathhouse at Midnight: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia.
Religion in Russia is a rich and complex subject. RIA Novosti‘s series proves to be a good primer into a present world neglected by most Russia watchers: Russia’s multi-confessional culture and the large number of religious sects it has spawned over the centuries. So far four of the six parts have been published:
Part One: The Schism and the Skoptsy.
Part Two: Waiting for Doomsday in the Penza Region.
Part Three: Vissarion, the Siberian Messiah.
Part Four: Magical Services.
Hasn’t Russia always been a fertile ground for the growth of new and bizarre beliefs? We’re talking about the country that produced Rasputin, Bakunin and the idea that sitting on the floor freezes your ovaries.
@ Poemless
Russia is vast and often sparsely populated land. I bet some isolated communities belonging to the Moscow Patriarchate might have some very un-Orthodox practices as well.
@ Sean
Thanks for the literature.
I was always under the impression that Russians, at least of the rural variety, had a predisposition towards paganism and mysticism. Whether it Karelians or Siberians, I get the impression that there is one thing that Russians seem to have in common, which is a propensity to make a religion out of nature. But that could be just a matter of my limited knowledge of rural Russian culture though.
Take a look at this compelling, report on Scientology and David Miscavige. High-ranking defectors provide an unprecedented inside look at the Scientology and Miscavige in a report by the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times. It’s a must read for anyone interested in Scientology
http://www.tampabay.com/specials/2009/reports/project/
Jason,
Who are Siberians?
poemless, the idea of sitting on the cold concrete floor can not only “freeze” one’s ovaries but also earn you prostatite. Depends.
Does watching of “Psychic Challenge” (Битва Эустрасенсов) series count for religious fringe?
Hey wait a second. How do Old Believers count as “religious fringe” and get lumped in with Jehovah’s Witnesses? They’ve been there since the 1700s and, like, predate modern Orthodoxy.
“Whether it Karelians or Siberians, I get the impression that there is one thing that Russians seem to have in common, which is a propensity to make a religion out of nature.”
Kerlians are not Russians and have a different culture. This like saying “Whether it is Cherokee or New Yorkers, I get the impression that there is one thing that Russians seem to have in common, which is a propensity to make a religion out of nature.”
If Old Believers get counted as religious fringe in Russia, then Jews should be counted as religious fringe in Europe.
“Hasn’t Russia always been a fertile ground for the growth of new and bizarre beliefs? We’re talking about the country that produced Rasputin, Bakunin and the idea that sitting on the floor freezes your ovaries.”
Poemless, don’t you live in a country inhabited by the descendants of religious schismatics that contains snake-handlers, speakers in tongues, the homeland of Scientology, and a whole state of people who believe that American Indians are Hebrews who have been punished by God with red skin?
““One has to wonder,’ writes Brian Whitmore, “given these trends and Kirill’s rising influence, if Russia’s much-discussed diarchy of Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin is on the way to becoming a de facto troika.”
Jesus Christ. Does anybody actually believe this bullshit?
Wonderful film the “Strannik” (Wanderer) must be in this theme.
http://rc.foto.radikal.ru/0709/49/5332ddc99836.jpg
Actually, the headline should’ve been:
“Exploring the Russian Christian Religious Fringe”.
I noticed that too. Where are the f&%^**^ Salafists? The delusion that Russia is a Christian country persists.
Actually, I think that these stories speak more about the traditional Western European fear of the hellbound Orthodox heretics and their evil Muslim allies (the main myth that has defined “the West” for about a thousand years) than it does about Russia. Or Eastern Europe in general — the same bullshit gets said about Poland. You know — everybody east of the Oder is a savage superstitious barbarian.
(Poland is Catholic of course, but it was part of the Russian Empire for long enough to count as part of the Evil Pope-Denying Heretics.)
In regard to the Witnesses, they are also not so “new” a religion to Russia. Witnesses first arrived in western Ukraine, Moldova, and the Baltic States in the 1920s and 1930s, territories later annexed to the Soviet Union. By the 1940s, there were already roughly 4 to 6 thousand Witnesses on Soviet soil. During the Soviet period, these Witnesses were harshly persecuted and even exiled en masse to Siberia in 1949 and 1951. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were already 20 to 40 thousand Witnesses. Thus, their strong growth in the past two decades notwithstanding, there are already three or four generations of Witness families in some parts of Russia who would object to being labeled a “new” religion.
“Poemless, don’t you live in a country inhabited by the descendants of religious schismatics …”
I’ve never argued Russia was alone in its colorful history of religious fringe! I think America sent the crazy JW’s to Russia, anyway.
And to address another point you keep making, “Old believers” is a kind of catch-all phrase for many different “sects”, some of which are fringe. Making the sign of the cross with 2 fingers might not be a “fringe” thing to do, but I’m pretty sure self-castration, flagellation and immolation are still not too mainstream, even in Russia.
And “Old believers,” is not meant to refer to all Russian Orthodoxy, elderly Orthodox believers or even monasticism, but those who specifically broke with the Russian Orthodox Church during the Schism. So they are not analogous to Jews in Europe, but maybe to Hasidic Jews in Eastern Europe.
“They’ve been there since the 1700s and, like, predate modern Orthodoxy.”
How does having been around for a while preclude them from being fringe? I think you are conflating “fringe” with “imported from abroad” (which Christianity was anyway so anything outside paganism would fall under the “fringe” label by that definition) or “unRussian.” I take it to mean, “not mainstream.” Even in their hey-day, the Old believers were not considered mainstream.
“Who are Siberians?”
I forget that the rest of the world outside of North America thinks in terms of genetics versus regions. When I refer to Karelians or Siberians, I am refering to people that live in those areas. It’s was a regional distinction, not racial, like referring to Arizonians or Virginians.
Or Russians.
(blah blah blah something for the spam-eater)
It’s obviously true that Old Russia had its share of strange cults (in terms of bizarreness it’s hard to beat the act of voluntarily cutting one’s own testicles for the sake of God.) I have no idea that when compared to population size there were more such cults in Russia than in Western Europe, North America or India.
I think, though, that the proliferation of newly introduced cults and religious and other sort of “spiritual” charlatans from the late 1980s and all through the 1990s is, to a great extent, a consequence of the coercive anti-religion policies of the Soviet regime. Because of it,, when compared to Westerners, most Soviet citizens were not as exposed to religious hucksters and charlatans. And this lack of exposure, instead of making the population more rational about religion, actually made it particularly vulnerable to charismatic preachers and charlatans.
Speaking of charlatans, I remember being dumbfounded that during Gorbachev so many otherwise reasonable Russians took charlatan Kashpirovsky with absolute seriousness. I mean, there are charlatans like him all over the world, but there he was, being a star on prime time Soviet TV at a time when people had very limited choice on what to watch.
Maybe this is something that had to work itself out. Perhaps things are more back to normal and Russians are not as gullible as they were in the late 1980s and 1990s.
“I mean, there are charlatans like him all over the world, but there he was, being a star on prime time Soviet TV at a time when people had very limited choice on what to watch.”
Uri Geller? Psychic Friends Network? “Touch your television screen and you shall be healed”?
“Making the sign of the cross with 2 fingers might not be a “fringe” thing to do, but I’m pretty sure self-castration, flagellation and immolation are still not too mainstream, even in Russia.”
Self-castration is not exactly common among Old Believers. This is like classifying snake-handlers as Protestants. Technically true, but… Actually in using the fingers example you’re kind of cheapening it. The real OB concern was the relation between religion and the state.
I think what I’m objecting to is the use of the word “fringe,” which implies “crazy.” As if Old Believers were some new-fangled cult. There are lots of them in Lithuania. If you said “minority,” I wouldn’t have a problem.
“It’s obviously true that Old Russia had its share of strange cults (in terms of bizarreness it’s hard to beat the act of voluntarily cutting one’s own testicles for the sake of God.)”
Origen did it.
As I said, there are charlatans of the Kashpirovsky type all over the world, but, personally, I have never seen such a charlatan taken so seriously and given so much access to prime time TV. This is especially obvious when one considers that in the Soviet Union of 1989 flipping channels wasn’t much of an option. I remember well the amazement of Russians visiting the US (circa 1990) when they saw the number of choices they had when watching TV.
I’m no expert, but I think the Skoptsy and the Old Believers are two very different things.
I don’t even know who Kashpirovsky is.
Oh goodness. Can we at least agree they’re not representative of the modern Russian Orthodox Church?
“Can we at least agree they’re not representative of the modern Russian Orthodox Church?”
That’s makes them fringe? Are Catholics in Russia fringe?
(second attempt….)
[After a quick search.]
According to an article found in his site, back in 1989 the great Kashpirovsky was the most popular man in Russia. The number two in popularity was Yeltsin (yeah, twenty years is a long time):
“В молниеносно короткий срок его имя приобрело фантастическую популярность и стало одним из самых ярких среди суперзвёзд советского телевидения.Многие газеты в 1989 году отдали Анатолию Кашпировскому предпочтение как “Человеку года”. A ведь среди претендентов на это звание были руководители государства, известные политические и общественные деятели. Бывший президент России Б.Ельцин по популярности тогда занимал после него второе место.”
And here is the link, since it has an amusingly Soviet retro style video about him:
http://kashpirovskiy.com/ru/pages/164
And the following from youtube (there is a lot of stuff on him there):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyqORu2AufU
Starovery (Old Church Believers) are not fringe. I know one of them. Nice person with big family and pitch-black beard. A specialist in fiberoptic communications.
I guess some of us interpret “fringe” differently. Perhaps it’s bad English on my part, but for me “fringe” does not necessarily have a negative connotation.
I looked into onelook.com dictionary:
the fringe=social group holding marginal or extreme views, фронда in short.
Fringe means cooky.
“…for me “fringe” does not necessarily have a negative connotation.”
That was not entirely “intellectually honest” of you, Kolya.
To answer the question about whether Skoptsy (self-castrators) are Old Believers, yes, they are. Old Belief encompassses a wide range of religious communities. Skoptsy emerged as a distinct religious community out of the larger prism of Old Belief, and never accounted for more an extremely small fraction of Old Believers.
And “fringe,” for the record, carries a clear negative connotation. “Religious minority” is by far a more objective term. Among academics, the term “new religious movements” is most often employed when speaking about the plethora of religious groups that emerged in the past century. The Soviet Union, for its part, always preferred the term “sect.” It’s still the most popular descriptor in Russia–applied to everything from Adventism to the White Brotherhood.
Emily, thanks for your informative comment. Do Old Believers themselves also consider that the Skoptsy are Old Believers? For instance, the Unitarians came from Protestant Christians, but now without denying their origin few Christians (as well as Unitarian themselves) consider them Christians.
And thank you for writing about the word “fringe.” I was not aware that it is clearly meant in a negative way. In my mind it didn’t necessarily have a negative connotation because I have friends who describe themselves as belonging to the fringe or being part of the fringe–and they say it without irony, but simply as a statement of fact. (To clarify: the context under which they use “fringe” has nothing to do with religion.)
Apologies if I’ve offended anyone.
I’ve been using the word “fringe” not in a derogatory or judgemental way, not to mean “cooky”, “crazy”, “illegitimate” or “outdated”, but to mean something on the periphery of the mainstream. That’s it. That was my understanding of its meaning.
You are not the only one, poemless. My understanding of the word “fringe” was quite similar. Live and learn.
You guys and your semantics.
Thanks Kolya for the link on Kashpirovsky. That guy could really make people fall over.
Part Five is up now -
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20090817/155832205.html