Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe

Kaarina Aitamurto, Scott Simpson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781844656622
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317544616
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

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.

1. INTRODUCTION: MODERN PAGAN AND NATIVE FAITH MOVEMENTS IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

Kaarina Aitamurto and Scott Simpson

History is omnipresent in this anthology on many levels. There are historical reasons why, for example, Czechs are more secularized than some other nations in the region, or why Bulgarians are more oriented toward Russia. Furthermore, because the Pagan movements being studied often make reference to the pre-Christian past, there are many references to the historical figures, tribal kingdoms, and ancient mythologies of the nations featured in this volume. The modern Pagan discussion about how that past should be understood often becomes entangled in the discipline of history itself, as individual communities either attempt to mold their practice to match a mainstream academic understanding of history or critique that mainstream view and offer alternative interpretations.

All of the countries represented here share a common historical experience of some form of twentieth-century communism. But even their experiences of communism were not the same, with some becoming part of the new communist reality during the First World War, while others were brought into the Soviet sphere only after the Second World War. Different nations suffered different hardships and traumas, such as the Holodomor (forced starvation) of Ukrainians 1932–3 or the mass deportations of ethnic Balts from their homelands in 1944–55. All of the countries experienced forms of dissent and revolt against the system, but their most intense expressions happened at different times and in different manners (the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, the Prague Spring of 1968, the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s, and the Singing Revolution in the Baltic states in 1987–91).

Policies toward religion varied greatly across the Communist Bloc as well. In some states and at some times, almost every expression of religiosity was harshly punished, especially in Czechoslovakia and the USSR. In other countries, Church structures were left relatively intact as long as they did not interfere directly with the state. In some cases, such as Poland in the late 1970s and 1980s, new religious movements were permitted to function (often unofficially) because they competed against the largest and better-established Churches that posed a greater threat to the system. In many cases, especially Lithuania and Ukraine, the modern Pagan communities flourished abroad in the national diasporas, especially in North America. Recent studies of Cold War history prove that the Iron Curtain was not as impenetrable as is sometimes assumed.¹ For example, the text of the Book of Vles was sent to Russia by Russian emigrants, and it was studied by the Soviet experts of the time. In most of the cases, the connections were, however, much more informal or secret. The truth is that it was only after the collapse of the Communist Bloc and the opening of the borders that these diaspora modern Paganisms could have a more significant influence on the religiosity of the “motherlands.”

In the past two decades, there have been ambitious attempts to study modern Paganism on a global scale. By definition, this would embrace the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region; it is not always easy to situate the CEE movements in notions of Paganism developed elsewhere. Michael York, in discussing “Paganism as a world religion” (explicitly including a broad geographic, cultural and linguistic range of religious traditions such as Wicca, Ancient Greek religion, Yoruba Orisha-worship, Hinduism, Shinto, etc.), repeats the etymology of the English word, and makes a brief detour into Hindu terminology before simply continuing to apply “Paganism” globally without much further consideration of local concepts.² While this is a quick solution, it runs the risk of taking one culture’s concept as the most central version, reducing the others to peripheral status from the start. Michael Strmiska’s review of Paganism cannily limits the range of examples to Europe and North America, and he is sensitive to the local, overlapping notions that compete with “Paganism,” making it one of the most useful with reference to the CEE region.³

In recent years, as the various modern Pagan movements across the globe have come to learn more about each other, we find observations on both sides that the Western forms (especially North America and the British Isles) are left-wing and that the Eastern forms (especially the ex-Soviet Union) are right-wing. There is some truth to this, if we bear in mind that this is a highly simplified model. However, even when divided into two camps, they still share many features. Genealogically, they have common ancestors, especially in the Romantic visions of Paganism, nature, and the noble savage. In the present, they see themselves as continuing ancient religions, but act in the modern world as new religious movements in terms of their demographics and reception by society at large. They reject the Abrahamic traditions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) that have dominated the recent history of Western civilization, and, along with it, they have rejected the world-denying streams of thought that have been found in that tradition. In seeking an immanent sacred, they show deep concern for nature and the physical world, which often manifests itself in activism in politics and environmentalism.

The list of substantive features that separate Western and central or Eastern European Paganisms is more fraught with caveats. On the whole, the stereotypical Western European type is more concerned with magick and with liberation from traditional gender and sex roles, and many participants lean politically to the left. On the whole, the stereotypical Eastern European type is more concerned with the nation and with local ethnic traditions, and many participants tend to lean politically to the right. Rather than seeking to develop clear-cut types, it would be more accurate to see modern Paganism as a broad spectrum of overlapping sets of ideologies, practices, and communities that share a family resemblance. The geographical segments of this spectrum fall under different historical and social influences, leading to a spectrum that is not equally “populated” across its length but produces—if we may be forgiven a mathematical analogy in a qualitative analysis—a polymodal continuum (that is, a range of possibilities in which there is more than one point at which we find peaks of frequency) without producing discontinuous phenomena.

If we look for the sorts of historical experiences that shaped the left-leaning peak, they would be rooted in nineteenth-century individualistic-Byronic Romantic models—the free individual is natural, the state is unnatural— and more recent development in 1960s counterculture. If we look for the sorts of historical experiences that shaped the right-leaning peak, they would be rooted in national-martyr Romantic models—the tribe is natural, bond-breaking is unnatural—which developed in an environment of 1930s nationalisms, communist suppression, and the subsequent chaos of postcommunist transformation.

It would be inaccurate to imply that any one point on the spectrum represents the real, original, or ideal modern Paganism and that the others are some kind of perversion of the original. Even taking into account the serious ethical and lifestyle difference between these groups, they are rather like siblings who have taken different paths in life but still retain many visible similarities. And like such siblings, they have a great deal to discuss, negotiate, argue, and “agree to disagree” about when sitting at the same table. The similarities often only make the differences more painful.

For those readers who are most familiar with the left-leaning peak, one of the more obvious differences is the centrality of the nation, the ethnic group, or the tribe in CEE Paganism. This nationalism or ethnocentrism can be expressed in many ways, from an exuberant passion for one’s language, folklore, ancestral lands, and homespun virtues, to a staunch defense of an embattled position in the face of pop culture, mass-marketing, consumerism, and an erasing of identity—or (least attractively) as an aggressive xenophobia and belittling of the achievements of other peoples. We hope that this anthology illustrates the various tones and shades of such nationcenteredness and that the historical backgrounds provide some insight as to why they are adopted by whom. In Chapter 7, Gatis Ozoliņš calls attention to the concept of cultural self-sufficiency. With this simple phrase, he suggests that there is no need to accept an unmanaged deluge of foreign culture and ways of thought because nearly all of the needed solutions are already waiting in the home country’s own traditional cultural toolkit. The same way of thinking is apparent throughout the whole of CEE modern Paganism. And not just in Central and Eastern Europe, because in many ways the position of the Latvian Dievturi expresses a perennial response to globalization which is shared by many quite diverse people around the globe.

It is a great privilege to edit a book that genuinely contributes to a field. In CEE countries, Pagan studies is a relatively new academic field that is only slowly coalescing from a scattered range of separate studies. Before this volume was conceived, there were already some conferences and seminars, such as the Re-Dial conference in Szeged in 2008, and conferences in Krakow in 2008, 2009, and 2011, which had provided an opportunity for scholars who are studying the topic to network and which highlighted the need for such projects. Many scholars have felt relatively alone in their own countries, a feeling conveyed well by Anna-Marie Dostálová in Chapter 11. In consequence, it has often seemed that the individual scholars have had to reinvent the wheel on a regular basis. The divisions have been twofold. As in the English-speaking world, internally, the scholarship has been strongly divided by traditional academic divisions, so that political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and scholars of religion have done their separate studies which could profit from a greater degree of interdisciplinary synthesis. Central and Eastern Europe is also linguistically fragmented. Ironically, it has often been easier for CEE scholars to compare their observations to those Anglo-American movements described in the published English-language scholarly discourse than it has been to compare them with neighbors a few hundred kilometers away. In addition, even when scholarly publications exist, many of those studies have been published in small university presses with very limited distribution, and that has further limited their accessibility for those abroad.

This publication is not going to solve those problems, but we trust that the collection of viewpoints represented herein will lay some grounds for increased discussion and comparison. At the very least, it can serve as a reminder that these movements exist across the region and as an invitation for future scholars to undertake more studies. We are also hopeful that it will contribute toward the construction of theories and paradigms that are appropriate for the CEE region, perhaps even participate in the global discussion of what contemporary Paganism as a whole might be. Here we would like to express our deepest gratitude to James R. Lewis, who recognized that such a volume was needed, who encouraged us to undertake the project, and who helped it along the publishing process significantly. We would also like to thank Chas Clifton and Nikki Bado-Fralick for their help in editing the volume for publication.

The book begins with some overview articles to orient the reader to the phenomena discussed, and which present some of the central themes in Pagan and Native Faith movements in CEE countries. Chapter 2 is written by Piotr Wiench, who is one of the pioneers in the study of contemporary Paganism in Central Europe, conducting field research for almost twenty years. Wiench not only describes common characteristics of these movements in different countries but also addresses the approaches applied in the study of the phenomenon. In examining discussions about postcolonialism in the context of ex-socialist countries, he suggests that the concept of postcolonialism has significant explanatory power in the study of CEE Paganism as well. However, as Wiench points out, in many countries of Central Europe, the colonial experience goes back much earlier than twentieth- century communist rule, a theme taken up later by Agnieszka Gajda.

The discussion about the specific features of the religiosity or worldview at hand is continued by Mariusz Filip and Scott Simpson’s chapter on terminology. At this point it is perhaps appropriate to explain that the lengthy title of this book was in a way unavoidable; there is no single agreed-upon word for our topic that can be used without excluding or insulting some of the believers. This is not made any easier by the knowledge that many Englishlanguage readers of this book from outside of CEE will also have their established positions on the most accurate, or most polite, label. In almost all of the languages in CEE, a cognate of “Neopagan” has been an established term for some time now, but at the same time many followers of the local ethnic traditions reject any form of the word “Pagan.” Our use of “Modern Pagan” in the title is largely a bow to English-language sensibilities. The terminology used by the believers in different countries not only varies but is subject to constant re-negotiation. In Slavic-language countries, “Native Faith” (the second part of our title) has come to be the dominant term among adherents at the start of the twenty-first century. At the same time, the scholars studying the topic apply numerous terminologies, including importing nonlocal labels as well as inventing completely new terms that they can define for themselves. We have not enforced any particular nomenclature or definition on the individual contributors. Some readers may find this variety awkward, but we believe that it is the only honest representation of the variety of views expressed by those words.

Although contemporary Pagan movements emerged in most of these countries only after the fall of the communism, some having links to similar activity at the beginning of the twentieth century, the phenomenon cannot be understood without discussing its roots in the Romanticism and nationalism of the nineteenth century. This intellectual heritage is examined in Agnieszka Gajda’s case study on the Pagan ideas that developed in Polish Romanticism. However, the relevance of the chapter extends far beyond Poland. First, the processes Gajda describes took place in virtually all of the areas discussed in this book, even though in their own historically situated ways and in somewhat different periods. Second, she gives an overview of the rise of Slavic ideology or nationalism that influenced in all Slavic countries and is still shared by Slavic Pagans in different countries. For instance, recently a Russian Pagan journal featured an article by a well-known Pagan leader, Vadim Kazakov, about the hymn “Hej, slováci,” written by a Slovak, Samuel Tomášik, in 1834 in Prague to the tune of a Polish mazurka, and which is discussed by Gajda in her chapter.⁴

The last overview chapter addresses the topics of nationalism and racism that as a rule first arise in the discussions about modern Pagans in Eastern Europe. Here (Chapter 5) Victor Shnirelman, a scholar of Paganism and racism in Russia, provides extensive, up-to-date information about violent and racist acts committed by some Russian Pagans as well as analysis of the ideological substrate that feeds such activity. Although the chapter focuses on the most radical segments and on only one country, it demonstrates well the most aggressive manifestations (and outcomes) of the nationalist ideology and rhetoric that is so common in many CEE countries.

Part II of the book is dedicated to articles focusing on individual CEE countries. Lithuania stands out as a country where an “ethnic religion” has managed to attain a relatively established position and widespread support. In Chapter 6, the main tenets of Lithuanian Romuva are outlined with rich material from interviews with members by Rasa Pranskevičiūtė. The chapter introduces the following case studies as well, because many of the viewpoints, arguments, and features of Romuva can also be found in the indigenous movements of other countries. An interesting partner for comparison to Romuva is the neighboring Latvian Dievturi, who have not been as success...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• 1. Introduction: Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe
• 2. A Postcolonial Key to Understanding Central and Eastern European Neopaganisms
• 3. Selected Words for Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe
• 4. Romanticism and the Rise of Neopaganism in Nineteenth-Century Central and Eastern Europe: The Polish Case
• 5. Russian Neopaganism: From Ethnic Religion to Racial Violence
• 6. Contemporary Paganism in Lithuanian Context: Principal Beliefs and Practices of Romuva
• 7. The Dievturi Movement in Latvia as Invention of Tradition
• 8. Polish Rodzimowierstwo: Strategies for (Re)Constructing a Movement
• 9. Ukrainian Paganism and Syncretism: “This is Indeed Ours!”
• 10. Russian Rodnoverie: Six Portraits of a Movement
• 11. Czech Neopagan Movements and Leaders
• 12. Neopaganism in Slovenia
• 13. Bulgarian Society and the Diversity of Pagan and Neopagan Themes
• 14. Romanian Ethno-Paganism: Discourses of Nationalistic Religion in Virtual Space
• 15. Neopaganism in Hungary: Under the Spell of Roots
• 16. Neopaganism in the Mari El Republic
• 17. A Neopagan Movement in Armenia: The Children of Ara
• 18. The Ideology of Jan Stachniuk and the Power of Creation
• 19. “Imported” Paganisms in Poland in the Twenty-First Century: A Sketch of the Developing Landscape
• 20. The Russian-Language Internet and Rodnoverie
• Bibliography
• Index