Militant Russia's neopaganism
Russians have always lived with dvoeverie, the Christian and pagan "double faith," which appears not only in devotions and liturgical practices, but above all in the people's attitudes towards life's great challenges. This practice is widespread among soldiers sent to Ukraine, who place their hopes of victory in dark spirits rather than in missiles and drones.
The Fifth Scientific-Theological Conference on the Study of Sects, featuring international speakers, was held recently at the Sretensky Theological Academy in Moscow, with as its main theme “Slavic Paganism and Russian Neopaganism”.
The meeting was organised by the Academy's Patrology Centre and the Commission for the Rehabilitation of Persons Who Have Abandoned Orthodoxy, along with other bodies of the Moscow Patriarchate.
The first conference on this topic was held in 2023, prompted by the rise of occultism and idolatrous practices among Russian soldiers – sent to Ukraine in Russia’s special military operation – of placing their hopes of victory in dark spirits rather than missiles and drones, and ignoring Orthodox saints.
The conference, held in person and online, was attended by numerous researchers from various Orthodox theological faculties in Russia and from state and private universities from many regions of the Russian Federation and from Greece.
Roman Shizhensky gave the opening address. A philosopher at the Research Centre for Religious and Ethnopolitical Studies at the A.S. Pushkin Leningrad State University in St Petersburg, he spoke about “Russian Paganism in the Orthodox Church: Traditions and Innovations”. This was followed by a presentation from theologian Roman Kon on “Themes of Ethnicity and Patriotism in Orthodoxy and Native Religions”.
The question of neopaganism has returned to the forefront due to its connection with military operations, highlighting a trend towards paganised in the "religion of war" to which the Orthodox Patriarchate itself has attributed particular importance.
This aspect goes straight back to the very origins of Christianity in Rus', when the baptism imposed by Prince Vladimir on the people of Kyiv was celebrated through immersion in the waters of the Dnieper River, after casting all pagan idols into it.
Somehow, the flow of ancient and new religions mingled in the souls of the Russians, who have always lived in the tension of “dual faith” (двоеверие, dvoeverie) of Christianity and paganism, which resurfaces in devotions and liturgical practices, but above all in grassroots attitudes when faced with life's great stresses, as well as collective tragedies like famines and natural disasters, and in the many internal and external conflicts with invasions and aggression by (and against) neighbouring peoples.
The literary masterpiece of Kievan Rus' is, in fact, the "Tale of Igor's Host," which recounts the ill-fated campaign of Prince Svyatoslavich’s son against the steppe nomads in 1185, a last attempt to defend the territory from external enemies, a few decades before the invasion of the Tatar-Mongol hordes.
The poem is narrated by “Boyan the bard”, who ranged in thought [like the nightingale] over the tree; like the gray wolf across land; like the smoky eagle up to the clouds.
In addition to splendid descriptions of nature, plants, and animals, the bard urges the sons of Rus' to break a lance on the limit of the Kuman field, drawing inspiration from vatic Boyan, grandson of Veles, one of the ancient gods from whom the term Vlas derives, the "power" at the root of the name Vladi-mir, "power over the world," the most popular name, from the first prince to the last tsar.
In the tale, all the idols of Scandinavian, Asian and Caucasian origin are presented. [S]tirring, the daeva calls [. . .] Surozh, and Korsun, and you, idol of Tmutorokan! to support the assault of Dazhbog’s army and a series of other mythical figures, up to the great Khors and Perun, the god of war who sank two hundred years earlier in the Dnieper, but who continually rises again to "reawaken the strife".
Prince Igor was defeated in battle by the Polovtsians from Asia, and grief spread across the Russian land. Only then did Christianity enter the scene, first with foreign praises: the Germans, and the Venetians, now the Greeks, and the Moravians sing glory to Svyatoslavm, but chide Prince Igor, until the epilogue, in Polotsk [where] they rang for matins early at St. Sophia the bells; but he heard the ringing in Kiev. Although, indeed, he had a vatic soul in a doughty body.
The epic ends with a moral triumph. Despite the defeat, The sun shines in the sky: Prince Igor is on Russian soil [. . .] Igor rides up the Borichev [slope] to the Blessed Virgin of the Tower [. . .] Hail, princes and knights fighting for the Christians against the pagan troops!
From these ancient poetic inspirations, Russians draw reasons to boast even in failed war campaigns, a recurrent experience in their history, from the battles against the Tatars to those against the Baltic peoples, the Poles, and the Turks, even in the victories against Napoleon and Hitler, which cost the lives of millions of Russians, to proclaim the everlasting victory.
Today, the feeling of glorious defeat is renewed in the war in Ukraine, where Russia sacrifices hundreds of thousands of human lives without achieving any real conquest, but proclaiming the great victory of "traditional values" against the depravity of Western pagans.
After the year 2025, dedicated to the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, President Putin proclaimed 2026 as the Year of Unity of the Peoples of Russia together with the "memory of the victims of the genocide of the Soviet people," tracing history back to "Igor's Host" who unites everyone in tragedy and illuminates the reasons for the greatness of Russians vis-à-vis peoples near and far.
The overlapping of Christianity and paganism is certainly not unique to Russian Orthodoxy, especially in the first centuries of Christianity in the Roman Empire and beyond.
While the ancient Churches have over time assimilated and “purged” the Christian faith of ancient Greco-Roman and Eastern cults, with ecumenical councils setting the boundaries of true dogma, Russians have instead experienced the coexistence of the traditions of their forebears with the new religious institution, failing to separate them in the hearts of the faithful. As a result, it is not uncommon today to see young people wearing t-shirts with the slogan “I am not a servant of God, but an heir to the gods of my ancestors”.
The spread of pagan cults in the new, post-Soviet Russia went unnoticed for a long time, revealing itself only in sporadic complaints from the Orthodox Church about local festivals and orgies in various regions of Russia, ranging from "religion of the ancestors" to "destructive nationalist movements”.
In 2021, a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church's Synodal Department for Church-Society and Media Relations, Vakhtang Kipshidze, said that "as far as we know, the phenomenon of neopaganism takes on very diverse and diametrically opposed characteristics. We see nothing that unites neopagans."
This is precisely what is happening with the war, despite the great commitment of military chaplains to the "purification" and glorification of the combatants.
In general, the reference to the religions present in Rus' before the Christian baptism is more fantasy than reality, based on decidedly unreliable sources, to elevate a pantheon of gods who appear more like movie characters, complete with amulets and rather grotesque clothing, than ancient religious philology.
Some neopagan tendencies extol naturalism against hyper-technological civilisation, proposing a "return to the roots" and harmony with nature, echoing the verses of Igor’s ancient poem or Tolkien's stories of gnomes, elves, and hobbits.
Religious historian Alexei Gaidukov notes that “paganism is a Christian term for non-Abrahamic religions, while neopaganism or new paganism is a contemporary phenomenon, developing precisely out of the break in all religious traditions."
The transmission of the customs and beliefs of ancient paganism was overcome and ended in the first Christian millennium, but Russia itself, which was baptised on the eve of the second millennium, preserved them more than any other people, so much so that they remained alive even during the phase of Soviet atheism, which in turn ended up resembling a pagan religion.
The imposition of state Orthodoxy in Putin's Russia has given rise to certain forms of pagan radicalism, from those who want to distinguish themselves by claiming “we are not like Christians”, to super-Orthodox monks who demonstrate that “we are the true Christians”.
One example is former Abbot Sergiy (Romanov), arrested at the end of 2020 in his monastery in Sredneuralsk, where he had set up his own "No-Vax Church" with 150 nuns who danced in the woods against all restrictions, extolling himself as a "prophet of the Apocalypse" who incited the faithful to resist the "forces of the Antichrist”, among whom he counted Patriarch Kirill of Moscow himself, who spread COVID-19 to "erase the divine image" in people.
The last straw for civil and religious authorities was the latest video featuring a homily by Sergiy, in which he asked several of his followers, including some children, if they were ready to "die for Russia," with explicit calls for suicide.
Today, it is Patriarch Kirill himself who urges the faithful to pray for victory in war, and to be ready to give their life for the Fatherland against the Antichrist of the West in Ukraine.
Neopaganism is the religion that replaces the love of Christ with hatred and violence, and the Russia of the two Vladimirs, Putin and Kirill, has effectively returned to worshiping Veles, the god of power that destroys the entire world.
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06/12/2021 09:36
31/10/2020 08:00
