Slavic Neopaganism

The Slavic Native Faith, commonly known as Rodnovery
* bg, Родноверие, translit=Rоdnoverie
* bs, Rodnovjerje
* mk, Родноверие, translit=Rodnoverie
* cz, Rodnověří
* hr, Rodnovjerje
* pl, Rodzimowierstwo; Rodzima Wiara
* russian: Родноверие, translit=Rodnoverie
* sk, Rodnoverie
* sl, Rodnoverstvo
* sr, Родноверје, translit=Rodnoverje
* uk, Рідновірство; Рідновір'я, translit=''Ridnovirstvo''; ''Ridnovirya''

From some variations of the term, the English adaptations "Rodnovery" and its adjective "Rodnover(s)" have taken foothold in English-language literature, supported and used by Rodnovers themselves. and sometimes as Slavic Neopaganism, is a modern Pagan religion. Classified as a new religious movement, its practitioners hark back to the historical belief systems of the Slavic peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, though the movement is inclusive of external influences and hosts a variety of currents. "Rodnovery" is a widely accepted self-descriptor within the community, although there are Rodnover organisations which further characterise the religion as Vedism, Orthodoxy, and Old Belief.

Many Rodnovers regard their religion as a faithful continuation of the ancient beliefs that survived as a folk religion or a conscious "double belief" following the Christianisation of the Slavs in the Middle Ages. Rodnovery draws upon surviving historical and archaeological sources and folk religion, often integrating them with non-Slavic sources such as Hinduism (because they are believed to come from the same Proto-Indo-European source). Rodnover theology and cosmology may be described as pantheism and polytheism—worship of the supreme God of the universe and worship of the multiple gods, the ancestors and the spirits of nature who are identified in Slavic culture. Adherents of Rodnovery usually meet in groups in order to perform religious ceremonies. These ceremonies typically entail the invocation of gods, the offering of sacrifices and the pouring of libations, dances and communal meals.

Rodnover ethical thinking emphasises the good of the collective over the rights of the individual. The religion is patriarchal, and attitudes towards sex and gender are generally conservative. Rodnovery has developed distinctive strains of political and identitary philosophy. Rodnover organisations often characterise themselves as ethnic religions, emphasising their belief that the religion is bound to Slavic ethnicity. This belief often manifests itself in forms of nationalism, opposition to miscegenation and the belief that fundamental differences exist between racial groups. Rodnovers often glorify Slavic history, criticising the impact of Christianity on Slavic countries and arguing that these nations will play a central role in the world's future. Rodnovers share the strong feeling that their religion represents a paradigmatic shift which will overcome the mental constraints which were imposed by feudalism and by what they call "mono-ideologies".

The contemporary organised Rodnovery movement arose from a multiplicity of sources and charismatic leaders just on the brink of the collapse of the Soviet Union and it spread rapidly during the mid-1990s and 2000s. Antecedents of Rodnovery existed in late 18th- and 19th-century Slavic Romanticism, which glorified the pre-Christian beliefs of Slavic societies. Active religious practitioners who were devoted to establishing the Slavic Native Faith appeared in Poland and Ukraine during the 1930s and 1940s, while the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin promoted research into the ancient Slavic religion. Following the Second World War and the establishment of communist states throughout the Eastern Bloc, new variants of Rodnovery were established by Slavic emigrants who lived in Western countries, later, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they were introduced into Central and Eastern European countries. In recent times, the movement has been increasingly studied by academic scholars.

Overview

Scholars of religion regard Slavic Native Faith as a modern Pagan religion. They also characterise it as a new religious movement. The movement has no overarching structure, or accepted religious authority, and contains much diversity in terms of belief and practice. The sociologist of religion Kaarina Aitamurto has suggested that Rodnovery is sufficiently heterogeneous that it could be regarded not as a singular religion but as "an umbrella term that gathers together various forms of religiosity". The historian Marlène Laruelle has described Rodnovery as "more inclusive than just adherence to a pantheon of pre-Christian gods".

The scholar of religion Alexey Gaidukov has described "Slavic Neopaganism" as a term pertaining to "all quasi-religious, political, ideological and philosophical systems which are based on the reconstruction and construction of pre-Christian Slavic traditions". The scholar of religion Adrian Ivakhiv has defined Rodnovery as a movement which "harkens back to the pre-Christian beliefs and practices of ancient Slavic peoples", while according to the historian and ethnologist Victor A. Shnirelman, Rodnovers present themselves as "followers of some genuine pre-Christian Slavic, Russian or Slavic-Aryan Paganism".

Some involved in the movement avoid calling their belief system either "paganism" or "religion". Many Rodnovers refer to their belief system as an "ethnic religion", and Rodnover groups were involved in establishing the European Congress of Ethnic Religions" (''dukhovnost''), "wisdom" (''mudrost''), or a "philosophy" or "worldview" (''mirovozzrenie'').

According to Shnirelman, it was the Soviet Union's official scientific atheism, which severely weakened the infrastructure of universalist religions, combined with anti-Westernism and the research of intellectuals into an ancient "Vedic" religion of Russia, that paved the way for the rise of Rodnovery and other modern Paganisms in Eastern Europe. After the Soviet Union, the pursuit of Rodnovery matured into the spiritual cultivation of organic folk communities (''ethnoi'') in the face of what Rodnovers consider the alien cosmopolitan forces which drive global assimilation (what they call " mono-ideologies"), chiefly represented by the Abrahamic religions. In the Russian intellectual milieu, Rodnovery usually presents itself as the ideology of "nativism" (''narodnichestvo''), which in Rodnovers' own historical analysis is destined to supplant the mono-ideologies whose final bankruptcy the world is now witnessing.

Rodnovery as a new synthesis

Shnirelman has stated that Rodnovery does not actually constitute the "restoration of any pre-Christian religion as such". Rather, he describes the movement as having been "built up artificially by urbanised intellectuals who use fragments of early pre-Christian local beliefs and rites in order to restore national spirituality". In this way, Slavic Native Faith has been understood—at least in part—as an invented tradition, or a form of ''Folklorismus''. Simpson has noted, speaking of the specific context of Poland, that unlike historical Slavic beliefs, which were integral to the everyday fabric of their society, modern Slavic Native Faith believers have to develop new forms of social organisation which set them apart from established society. Textual evidence for historical Slavic religion is scant, has been produced by Christian writers hostile to the systems being described and is usually open to multiple interpretations.

In developing Slavic Native Faith, practitioners draw upon the primary sources about the historical religion of Slavic peoples, as well as elements drawn from later Slavic folklore, official and popular Christian belief and from non-Slavic societies. Among these foreign influences have been beliefs and practices drawn from Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Germanic Heathenry, Siberian shamanism, as well as ideas drawn from various forms of esotericism. Other influences include documents like the ''Book of Veles'', which claim to be genuine accounts of historical Slavic religion but which academics recognise as later compositions. According to the folklorist Mariya Lesiv, through this syncretic process, "a new religion is being created on the basis of the synthesis of elements from various traditions".

Some Rodnovers do not acknowledge this practice of syncretism and instead profess an explicitly anti-syncretic attitude, emphasising the need to retain the "purity" of the religion and thus maintain its "authenticity". Other Rodnovers are conscious that the movement represents a synthesis of different sources, that what is known about ancient Slavic religion is very fragmented, and therefore the reconstruction requires innovation. Laruelle has thus defined Rodnovery as an "open-source religion", that is to say a religion which "emphasizes individual participation and doctrinal evolution, and calls for the personal creation of religious belief systems".

Slavic folk religion and double belief

A different perspective is offered by the historian Svetlana M. Chervonnaya, who has seen the return to folk beliefs among Slavs as part of a broader phenomenon that is happening to "the mass religious mind" not merely of Slavic or Eastern European peoples, but to peoples all over Asia, and that expresses itself in new mythologemes endorsed by national elites. The notion that modern Rodnovery is closely tied to the historical Slavic religion is a very strong one among practitioners.

In crafting their beliefs and practices, Rodnovers adopt elements from recorded folk culture, including from the ethnographic record of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Practitioners often legitimise the incorporation of elements from folk culture into Slavic Native Faith through the argument that Slavic folk practices have long reflected the so-called "double belief" (''dvoeverie''), a conscious preservation of pre-Christian beliefs and practices alongside Christianity. This is a concept that was especially popular among nineteenth-century ethnographers who were influenced by Romanticism and retains widespread popularity across Eastern Europe, but has come under criticism in more recent times. Slavic Christianity was influenced by indigenous beliefs and practices as it was established in the Middle Ages and these folk practices changed greatly over the intervening centuries; according to this, Rodnovers claim that they are just continuing living tradition.

The concept of double belief is especially significant in Russia and for the identity of the Russian Orthodox Church and the folk Orthodoxy of the Old Believers; in that country, it is an oft-cited dictum that "although Russia was baptised, it was never Christianised". The movement of the Old Believers is a form of "folk Orthodoxy", a coalescence of Pagan, Gnostic and unofficial Orthodox currents, that by the mid-seventeenth century seceded from the Russian Orthodox Church (the ''Raskol'', "Schism"), channelling the "mass religious dissent" of the Russian common people towards the Church, viewed as the religion of the central state and the aristocracy. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there has been a new wave of scholarly debate on the subject within Russia itself. A. E. Musin, an academic and deacon of the Russian Orthodox Church, published an article about the "problem of double belief" as recently as 1991. In this article he divides scholars between those who say that Russian Orthodoxy adapted to entrenched indigenous faith, continuing the Soviet idea of an "undefeated paganism", and those who say that Russian Orthodoxy is an out-and-out syncretic religion. Slavic Native Faith adherents, as far as they are concerned, believe that they can take traditional folk culture, remove the obviously Christian elements, and be left with something that authentically reflects the historical beliefs of the Slavic peoples.

According to Ivakhiv, despite the intense efforts of Christian authorities, the Christianisation of the Slavs, and especially of Russians, was very slow and resulted in a "thorough synthesis of Pagan and Christian elements", reflected for instance in the refashioning of gods as Christian saints (Perun as Saint Elias, Veles as Saint Blasius and Yarilo as Saint George) and in the overlapping of Christian festivals on Pagan ones. The scholar of Russian folk religion Linda J. Ivanits has reported ethnographic studies documenting that even in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia there were entire villages maintaining indigenous religious beliefs, whether in pure form or under the cover of a superficial Christianity. According to her, the case of Russia is exceptional compared to western Europe, because Russia neither lived the intellectual upheavals of the Renaissance, nor the Reformation, nor the other movements which severely weakened folk spirituality in Europe.

Symbolism

The most commonly used religious symbol within Rodnovery is the '' kolovrat'' ("spinning wheel", e.g. ), a variant of the ''swastika'' (Sanskrit: "wellbeing", "wellness"). As such, it represents wholeness, the ultimate source of renewal, the cosmic order and the four directions.

According to the studies of Boris Rybakov, whirl and wheel symbols, which also include patterns like the hexafoil, "six-petalled rose inside a circle" (e.g. ) and the "Perun's sign", or "thunder wheel" (e.g. ), represent the thunder god Perun or the supreme God ('' Rod''), expressing itself as power of birth and reproduction, in its various forms (whether Triglav, Svetovid, Perun and other gods) and were still carved in folk traditions of the Russian North up to the nineteenth century. The contemporary design of the ''kolovrat'' as an eight-spoked wheel was already present in woodcuts produced in the 1920s by the Polish artist Stanisław Jakubowski, under the name ''słoneczko'' ("little sun"). According to Laruelle, Rodnovers believe that it is a symbol of "accession to the upper world". For some Rodnovers, the Orthodox cross is another Slavic version of the ''swastika''. Rodnovers generally present their symbols in high-contrast colour combinations, usually red and black or red and yellow.

Terminology

"Rodnovery" (Native Faith)

The Anglicised term "Rodnovery", and its adjective "Rodnover(s)", have gained widespread usage in English and have been given an entry in the second edition (2019) of the academic ''Historical Dictionary of the Russian Federation''. It means "Native Faith" and it is the name used by the majority of the movement's adherents. The term is adapted from Slavic forms, and variations of it are used in different Slavic languages: for instance, in Ukrainian it is ''Ridnovirstvo'' or ''Ridnovirya'', in Russian ''Rodnoverie'', in Polish ''Rodzimowierstwo'', and in Czech ''Rodnovĕří''. The term derives from the Proto-Slavic roots *''rod'', which means anything "indigenous", "ancestral" and "native", also "genus", "generation", "kin", "race" (e.g. Russian ''rodnaya'' or ''rodnoy''); and *''vera'', which means "faith", "religion". Within the movement, it has also been used to define the community of Native Faith practitioners themselves as an elective group. The term has different histories and associations in each of the Slavic languages in which it appears. The suffix "-ism" is usually avoided in favour of others that describe the religion as if it were a practice or craft (which is the meaning of the Ukrainian and Russian suffix ''-stvo'', thus translatable with the English suffix " -ery, -ry").

Sometimes the term "Rodnovery" has also been interpreted as meaning "faith of Rod", a reference to an eponymous concept of supreme God, '' Rod'', found in ancient Russian and Ukrainian sources. Aitamurto stated that in addition to being the most used term, it is the most appropriate because of its meanings. It has deep senses related to its Slavic etymology, that would be lost through translation, which express the central concepts of the Slavic Native Faith. ''Rod'' is conceived as the absolute, primordial God, supreme ancestor of the universe, that begets all things, and at the same time as the kin, the lineage of generation which is the ancestral bond to the supreme source. ''Rodna'' or ''rodnaya'' is itself a concept which can denote the "nearest and dearest", and such impersonal community as one's native home or land. A variant of "Rodnovery" is "Rodianism" (''Rodianstvo''), which Laruelle also translates as "Ancestrism".

The earliest known usage of this term was by the Ukrainian emigree Lev Sylenko, who in 1964 established a mimeographed publication in Canada that was titled ''Ridna Vira'' ("Native Faith"). The portmanteau