Five Elements Of Faith Russian

In Gorbachev's Russia and outside of it the strength and scope of Russian nationalism is currently a subject of strenuous scholarly debate. The many and varied forms national ideology takes in Russian literature are the subject of this collection of essays. Over the past two hundred years Russians have used their literature to express both conformist and nonconformist views on the relationship between the individual and society and on Russian national destiny. Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Grossman, Tvardovsky, Rasputin, Zinovyev and others have taken diverse stands in regard to Russian nationalism, and their points of view are explored in this book. Several chapters offer suggestive overviews of nationalism's role in literature. The influence of Stalinist mentality on nationalism is also explored, as are the overt expressions of nationalist sentiments in the conditions of Gorbachev's glasnost. This book offers a rare insight into the present Soviet Russian literary scene, and it will help refocus future studies of Russian literature.

This book, based on extensive original research in the field, analyses the political, social and cultural implications of the rise of Islam in post-Soviet Russia. Examining in particular the situation in Tatarstan and Dagestan, where there are large Muslim populations, the authors chart the long history of Muslim and orthodox Christian co-existence in Russia, discuss recent moves towards greater autonomy and the assertion of ethnic-religious identities which underlie such moves, and consider the actual practice of Islam at the local level, showing the differences between "official" and "unofficial" Islam, how ceremonies and rituals are actually observed (or not), how Islam is transmitted from one generation to the next, the role of Islamic thought, including that of radical sects, and Islamic views of men and women's different roles. Overall, the book demonstrates how far Islam in Russia has been extensively influenced by the Soviet and Russian multi-ethnic context.

Faith and Science in Russian Religious Thought provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between science and faith in Russian religious thought. Teresa Obolevitch offers a synthetic approach on the development of the problem throughout the whole history of Russian thought, starting from the medieval period and arriving in contemporary times. She considers the relationship between science and religion in the eighteenth century, the so-called academic philosophy of the 19th and 20th century, the thought of Peter Chaadaev, the Slavophiles, and in the most influential literature figures, such as Fedor Dostoevsky and Lev Tolstoy. The volume also analyses two channels of the formation of philosophy in the context of the relationship between theology and science in Russia. The first is connected with the attempt to rationalize the truths of faith and is exemplified by Vladimir Soloviev and Nikolai Lossky; the second wtih the apophatic tradition is presented by Pavel Florensky and Semen Frank. The book then describes the relation to scientific knowledge in the thought of Lev Shestov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergius Bulgakov, and Alexei Losev as well as the original project of Russian Cosmism (on the examples of Nikolai Fedorov, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and Vladimir Vernadsky). Obolevitch presents the current state of the discussion on this topic by paying attention to the Neopatristic synthesis (Fr Georges Florovsky and his followers) and offers the brief comparative analyse of the relationship between science and religion from the Western and Russian perspectives.

The Old Faith and the Russian Land is a historical ethnography that charts the ebbs and flows of ethical practice in a small Russian town over three centuries. The town of Sepych was settled in the late seventeenth century by religious dissenters who fled to the forests of the Urals to escape a world they believed to be in the clutches of the Antichrist. Factions of Old Believers, as these dissenters later came to be known, have maintained a presence in the town ever since. The townspeople of Sepych have also been serfs, free peasants, collective farmers, and, now, shareholders in a post-Soviet cooperative. Douglas Rogers traces connections between the town and some of the major transformations of Russian history, showing how townspeople have responded to a long series of attempts to change them and their communities: tsarist-era efforts to regulate family life and stamp out Old Belief on the Stroganov estates, Soviet collectivization drives and antireligious campaigns, and the marketization, religious revival, and ongoing political transformations of post-Soviet times. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork and extensive archival and manuscript sources, Rogers argues that religious, political, and economic practice are overlapping arenas in which the people of Sepych have striven to be ethical—in relation to labor and money, food and drink, prayers and rituals, religious books and manuscripts, and the surrounding material landscape. He tracks the ways in which ethical sensibilities—about work and prayer, hierarchy and inequality, gender and generation—have shifted and recombined over time. Rogers concludes that certain expectations about how to be an ethical person have continued to orient townspeople in Sepych over the course of nearly three centuries for specific, identifiable, and often unexpected reasons. Throughout, he demonstrates what a historical and ethnographic study of ethics might look like and uses this approach to ask new questions of Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet history.

Following the end of the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church has canonized a great number of Russian saints. Whereas in the first millennium of Russian Christianity (988-1988) the Church recognized merely 300 Russian saints, the number had grown to more than 2,000 by 2006. This book explores the remarkable phenomenon of new Russian martyrdom. It outlines the process of canonization, examines how saints are venerated, and relates all this to the ways in which the Russian state and its people have chosen to remember the Soviet Union and commemorate the victims of its purges. The book includes in-depth case studies of particular saints and examines the diverse ways in which they are venerated.

Russia’s Skinheads: Exploring and Rethinking Subcultural Lives provides a thorough examination of the phenomenon of skinheads, explaining its nature and its significance, and assessing how far Russian skinhead subculture is the ‘lumpen’ end of the extreme nationalist ideological spectrum. There are large numbers of skinheads in Russia, responsible for a significant number of xenophobic attacks, including 97 deaths in 2008 alone, making this book relevant to Russian specialists as well as to sociologists of youth subculture. It provides a practical example of how to investigate youth subculture in depth over an extended period – in this case through empirical research following a specific group over six years – and goes on to argue that Russian skinhead subculture is not a direct import from the West, and that youth cultural practices should not be reduced to expressions of consumer choice. It presents an understanding of the Russian skinhead as a product of individuals’ whole, and evolving, lives, and thereby compels sociologists to rethink how they conceive the nature of subcultures.

The resurgence of religiosity in post-communist Europe has been widely noted, but the full spectrum of religious practice in the diverse countries of Central and Eastern Europe has been effectively hidden behind the region's range of languages and cultures. This volume presents an overview of one of the most notable developments in the region, the rise of Pagan and "Native Faith" movements. Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe brings together scholars from across the region to present both systematic country overviews - of Armenia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, and Ukraine - as well as essays exploring specific themes such as racism and the internet. The volume will be of interest to scholars of new religious movements especially those looking for a more comprehensive picture of contemporary paganism beyond the English-speaking world.