Nations and Nationalism 14 (2), 2008, 283301.

Alternative identity, alternative

religion? Neo-paganism and the Aryan
myth in contemporary Russia
MARLE`NE LARUELLE
Central Asia and Caucasus Institute (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University,
Washington, DC, USA

ABSTRACT. As in all post-Soviet states, the Russian intelligentsia has been

preoccupied with the construction of a new national identity since the beginning of
the 1990s. Although the place of Orthodox religion in Russia is well documented, the
subject of neo-paganism and its consequent assertion of an Aryan identity for Russians
remains little known. Yet specialists observing the political and intellectual life of
contemporary Russia have begun to notice that the development of references to
Slavic paganism and to Russias Aryan origin can be found in the public speeches of
some politicians and intellectual gures. This article will attempt, in its rst section, to
depict the historical depth of these movements by examining the existence of neopagan and/or Aryan referents in Soviet culture, and focusing on how these discourses
developed in different spheres of post-Soviet Russian society, such as those of religion,
historiography, and politics.
KEYWORDS: national ideology; nationalism; neo-paganism; religion; revival;
Russia.

As in the other post-Soviet states, the intelligentsia in Russia has been

preoccupied with the construction of a new national identity since the
beginning of the 1990s. As a result, many ideological trends have been
competing to dene this new national identity according to different linguistic,
historical, religious, or geopolitical criteria. The elaboration of this national
imaginative world is part of the re-composition of the former Soviet space
and goes alongside the speed of the political, economic, and social changes
that the population has experienced over the last twenty years.
Religion quite naturally represents one of the ideological matrices of these
re-compositions. Although the place of the Orthodox religion in Russia is well
documented, the subject of neo-paganism, and its consequent assertion of an
Aryan identity for Russians, remains little known. Yet specialists who observe
the political and intellectual life of contemporary Russia have begun to notice
that the development of references to Slavic paganism and to the Aryan
origin of Russia can be found in the public speeches of some politicians or
intellectual gures. Even if the neo-pagan movement cannot be considered a
r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

284

Marle`ne Laruelle

mass phenomenon, such speeches occupy a signicant portion of the editorial

spectrum of the country. Thus the movement constitutes a relevant subject of
study, particularly as it is part of a global modernity that is partly dened by
its invention of traditions (Hobsbawn and Ranger 1983).
Like other European nations, many new religious movements inspired by
the New Age and interest in Oriental religions have been developing in Russia.
However, the movements that claim to represent paganism or Slavic Vedism
are often much more politicised than other movements of ethnic faith. They
often consider themselves nationalists, are openly anti-Semitic, and routinely
call for an authoritarian political regime. Many of their doctrinal elements
have been appropriated from the theories of the French and German New
Right, and advocate the awareness of the Aryan identity among European
peoples. The fall of the Soviet Union and the failure of communism are
understood as events that reveal a global crisis in the consciousness of
mankind, which necessitates a thorough skepticism about European culture
and its Christian foundation. This conjunction between New Age and the
New Right, although not specic to Russia, seems to represent a much more
important phenomenon there than in other countries. These Russian movements combine racialist conceptions from the Western far right, the quest for
new harmony between man and nature inspired by the nineteenth-century
romantic Naturphilosophie, and ideological left-wing references borrowed
from alter-globalisation.1
This phenomenon was not born of the collapse of the regime in 1991, but is
deeply rooted in the Soviet past and different searches for identity within
intellectual circles, whether they were tied to the Communist Party or to
dissidents. This article will thus attempt, in its rst section, to depict the
historical depth of these movements by evoking the existence of neo-pagan
and/or Aryan referents in Soviet culture. After this historical reminder, I will
focus on how these discourses developed in different spheres of post-Soviet
Russian society. At the religious level, one witnesses a profusion of movements advocating a return to the ancient paganism of the Slavs; at the
historiographic level, one may notice the emergence of scholarly or pseudoscholarly movements trying to demonstrate the glorious Aryan past of Russia;
at the political level, one observes that these neo-pagan and Aryan allusions,
once limited to small, far-right nationalist groups, now can sometimes be
found inside parliamentary institutions and more moderate political factions.

The Soviet era, or the matrix of Neo-paganism and Aryanism?

Russian Slavophile movements have been borrowing the particularly Germanic idea of the prestigious Aryan origin of the European peoples since the
nineteenth century. The father of Slavophilism, Alexander Khomiakov (1804
60), and several of his disciples, such as Alexander Hilferding (183172),
Dmitri Ilovaiskii (18321920), and Ivan Zabelin (18201908), did not hesitate
r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

Neo-paganism and the Aryan myth in Russia

285

to make the claim that Russians constituted one of the most important
branches of the Aryan family, if not its most direct representatives. However,
this Russian Aryan myth did not have a neo-pagan orientation and Orthodoxy remained the primary religious inuence for these nationalist
intellectuals. Many of them did entertain hopes of combining their Orthodox
sensibilities with their desire for an Aryan identity. They claimed that
Byzantium had received the Christian message directly from the Asian cradle
of the Aryan peoples, located in Central Asia or Iran, depending on the
author. The maintenance of a biblical reference allowed them to dissociate
Aryanity and anti-Semitism. Unlike their German colleagues, criticism of the
Jewish world or questioning of the links unifying Christianity and Judaism did
not accompany Slavophile claims of Aryan identity (Laruelle 2005).
None of the far-right movements that emerged in Russia after the 1905
revolution sought to rehabilitate a national pre-Christian faith, as the
Germanic Ariosophy movements advocated at that same time (Mosse 1978,
1981). It was not until the emigration of the interwar years that skepticism
regarding the primacy of Christianity emerged in Russian nationalist circles.
These groups searched for an ancient text that would provide concrete
justication for this return to origins. In the newspaper Zhar-Ptitsa,
published in the 1950s in San Francisco, several such authors were interested
in a so-called manuscript dating from the rst centuries BCE, the book of Vles
(Vlesova kniga). An ofcer of the White Army, F. A. Izenbek, supposedly
discovered this book during the Civil War, but the original wooden boards on
which the text would have been written were lost during World War II;
however, one of Izenbeks friends, Iurii Miroliubov, would have had time to
study and copy them. Miroliubov, as the probable forger of this manuscript,
was the rst to use the word Vedism to describe this Russian neo-paganism
and to enrich it by appropriating the prestigious Indian liation of the Vedas
(Kaganskaya 1986). As early as the 1960s, the book of Vles was considered an
authentic manuscript not only by nationalist Russian emigres, but also by
some exiled Ukrainians, particularly those who closely followed Sergei
Lesnoi, another great propagandist of neo-paganism. Despite the absence
of an original manuscript for this text, the neo-pagan sympathisers present the
book of Vles as an unquestionable historical source of Slavic antiquity, as well
as a book of prayers and hymns to ancient gods that could be put into
practice.
It also seems that in the Soviet Union itself the rebirth of Russian
nationalism, supported by Stalin from the second half of the 1930s, may
have made the consolidation of neo-pagan discourses possible. Indeed, Stalin
took a keen interest in the research carried out on Slavic antiquity and hoped
that such research would help him demonstrate the primeval communism of
Russians. Some researchers, including the academician and former head of
the Institute of Archaeology Boris Rybakov (19082001), then provided the
rst scientic arguments for the neo-pagan doctrine. They promoted a vision
of the pre-Christian religion that favored a communitarian conception of
r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

286

Marle`ne Laruelle

society and denounced Christianity for accepting justications for class

division (Moroz 1993). The authorities validated the particularly important
role Rybakov played in this rehabilitation of ancient paganism, in so far as he
received the Stalin prize for his book Craft Industry in Ancient Russia
(Remeslo drevnei Rusi) in 1949. Moreover, the Aryan or Indo-European set
of themes never completely disappeared from the Soviet scientic discourse.
The Japhetic theories of Nicholas Marr (18641934) dominated parts of
Soviet linguistic and archaeological research in the 1930s and 1940s before
Stalin denounced them (Seriot 2005). Again in the 1970s, the linguists V. V.
Ivanov and T. V. Gamkrelidze contributed to the revival of the debate on the
proto-homeland of the Indo-Europeans, with many of their Soviet colleagues
locating it between the Black and Caspian Seas.
In the 1960s, the renewal of atheist activism organised by Nikita Khrushchev also presupposed a rereading of certain pre-Christian or pre-Islamic
traditions. After the plenary session of the CPSU Central Committee in June
1963, which called for a reinforcement of the struggle against faith, the partys
ideological commission encouraged the creation of new, non-religious rituals
using the ancient cults of nature (Shnirelman 2004: 229). Many ideologists
from the party, as well as various researchers specialising in the folklore of the
USSRs different populations, took part in this movement. Thus, the TurkicIranian feast of spring, Noruz, which had been condemned in the 1930s
during the struggle against Islam, was rehabilitated as a pre-Islamic tradition.
The same can be said of the Russian feast of the summer solstice during the
night of 23/24 June, in addition to several other animistic or pagan rites.
Furthermore, some state and party organs pursued a discreet attempt during
the second half of the 1960s to rehabilitate the Black Hundreds and the
Russian anti-Semitism of the beginning of the century. The Central Committee of the Komsomol, the Union of Soviet Writers, a group gathered around
Alexander Shelepin, and the Russian Society of Protection of History and
Culture (VOOPIIK) all took part in this fusion of Soviet ideology and
Russian nationalism (Mitrokhin 2003).
Within this movement, which originated in the Central Committee of the
Komsomol, one must note the important role of V. D. Zakharchenko (1915
99). He ran the newspaper Tekhnika-molodezhi and published one of the rst
articles on the question of the Aryan identity of the Russians, written by
Valerii Skurlatov, as early as 1978. A trained physicist and a researcher at the
Institute of Scientic Information in the Human Sciences (INION, Moscow),
Skurlatov acquired his knowledge of the Germanic discourses of the interwar
years while doing his doctoral research. These ideological re-compositions of
the 1970s seem to have enjoyed the support of the KGB, which was searching
for new doctrines that would allow it to keep its hold over Soviet society at a
time when the legacy of Stalinist terror had dwindled (Korey 1995). According to Victor Shnirelman, the rst manifesto of Russian neo-paganism was
the letter Critical remarks by a Russian man on the patriotic newspaper
Veche (Kriticheskie zametki russkogo cheloveka o patrioticheskom zhurnale
r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

Neo-paganism and the Aryan myth in Russia

287

Veche), published anonymously in 1973 by Valerii Emelianov, an expert on

the Middle East who was close to Khrushchev. As a result of this letter, Veche
closed in 1974 and its editor, the famous Orthodox dissident V. N. Osipov,
was arrested (Shnirelman 2004: 231). In this text, Emelianov explicitly
expressed the idea that Christianity was nothing more than the expression
of Jewish domination and that it only served the interests of Zionism, an
analysis which was highly disparaged in the Soviet propaganda of the time.
He utilised these same arguments in his famous pamphlet Dezionisation
(Desionizatsiia), which was published rst in Arabic in a Syrian newspaper
in 1979, then later again in Paris. After publication, many copies of the text
began to circulate unofcially in the USSR.
At the beginning of the 1970s in Moscow, the poet Evgenii Golovin and the
specialist of occult literature Iurii Mamleev oversaw the birth of a clandestine
circle that pretentiously tried to present itself as the SS Black Order of the
Soviet Union. This dissident circle recognised itself neither in Slavophilism
and Orthodox monarchist nostalgia, nor in the liberal experience of the
Western countries. Instead they identied closely with the occultism of the
beginning of the century (Goodrick-Clarcke 1992; Rosenthal 1997). Through
their collective readings they were able to rediscover the theosophy of Helene
Blavatsky (183191) and the Germanic ariosophy of the beginning of the
century, particularly that of Guido von List (18481919) and the famous
Orientalist Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels (18741954). The SS Black Order of the
Soviet Union wished to recreate a so-called Aryan world, destroyed by
Judaism and Christianity in the name of egalitarianism. It was in this
intellectual atmosphere that a young Alexander Dugin (1962), now an en
vogue theoretician of a romantic form of fascism and of neo-Eurasianist
postulates, formulated many of his ideas (Laruelle 2006). Nevertheless, with
the exception of Dugin, neither Eurasianist theorists in the 1920s, nor other
neo-Eurasianists sought to link Eurasianism to neo-paganism.
The Pamiat movement, which emerged at the very beginning of the 1980s as
an association of amateurs linked to the Metropolitan Moscow Palace of
Culture, also constituted one of the meeting places of personalities attracted to
neo-paganism. After his departure from the psychiatric hospital, Emelianov
joined this movement. In Pamiat he also encountered Skurlatov, who had just
published a violently anti-Semitic book, Zionism and Apartheid (Sionizm i
Aparteid). On the heels of this publication, Skurlatov taught a course on The
criticism of the ideology of Zionism at Patrice Lumumba Peoples Friendship
University. In 1982, Vladimir Chivilikhin (192884), the author of the famous
novel Memory (Pamiat), from which the nationalist organisation had taken its
name, explicitly proclaimed that Russians are the ones, and not the Germans,
who should be considered Aryans. (Chivilikhin 1982: 11) In 1983, Pamiat
organised a session devoted to the book of Vles headed by Skurlatov. It was not
until 198485, with the arrival of the new leader Dmitrii Vasiliev, a disciple of
the nationalist painter Ilia Glazunov, that the association would essentially come
under the control of more traditional monarchist circles (Pribylovskii 1992).
r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

288

Marle`ne Laruelle

Ofcial forms of the neo-pagan sensibility could also be found in some

Soviet academic circles. In 198082, the organisation of the 600th anniversary
of the Battle of Kulikovo, feverishly prepared by the Soviet authorities,
allowed many Russian nationalists to express their ideas under the guise of
putting some of the partys directives into practice (Brudny 2000). According
to the dominant historiographic discourse, the victory of Dmitri Donskoi was
possible only through the Orthodox faith, which gave the nation the necessary
moral strength to throw off the Mongol yoke. However, a few discordant
voices drew attention to themselves. A few years later in 1988, Apollon
Kuzmin (19282004), leader of the neo-Slavophile historiography, claimed in
The Fall of Perun (Padenie Peruna) that the true Russian national faith was
paganism and that Orthodoxy had led to a policy of subjection by the
Mongols. Discourses on the rehabilitation of paganism can also be found in
the later books of Boris Rybakov in particular in The Paganism of
the Ancient Slavs (Iazychestvo drevnikh slavian), published in 1981, and The
Paganism of Ancient Russia (Iazychestvo drevnei Rusi), published in
1988 and in the literary writings of several important gures of village
prose (derevenshchiki) such as the writer Petr Proskurin and the poet Iurii
Kuznetsov.

A new religious movement?

The neo-pagan movements that emerged from the era of perestroika and
developed during the course of the 1990s are quite numerous. A complete
inventory of them is very difcult, in so far as many groups do not belong to
any central structure and exist only locally. Furthermore, most of these
groups pretend to be under the statute of a cultural association and not under
that of a religious association, particularly since the legislation towards the
latter has become harsher. Thus, the Ministry of Justice registered only about
forty neo-pagan movements in 2003, whereas there are probably several
hundred of them in existence (Ferlat 2003). During the celebration of the
summer solstice in 1999 in Moscow, several dozen associations were present.
Some provincial towns have been particularly active, particularly Riazan,
which is the publication site of three neo-pagan newspapers, welcomes
seminars on the subject, and is one of the great centers of neo-pagan festivals.
In addition, the town of Omsk is attempting to become the primary
destination for neo-pagan pilgrimage in Siberia.
The rst institutionalised neo-pagan religious movement during perestroika came in 1988 with the Society of the Magi, based in Leningrad and
headed by Vladimir Bezverkhii. A teacher in one of the naval schools in
Leningrad, Bezverkhii has been clandestinely trying to keep this movement
alive since 1979. His extremely politicised association admits that its aims
were to obtain white racial domination and partial extermination of the Jews.
In the second half of the 1980s, Bezverkhii was kept under the close
r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

Neo-paganism and the Aryan myth in Russia

289

surveillance by the KGB, who had become concerned about his openly
national-socialist insults, and he was indicted for publishing a version of
Mein Kampf in Russian. In 1990, the Society of the Magi became the Union
of the Veneds,2 which later split into three groups, the white, the black and
the golden Veneds. Today, this movement still constitutes the most structured
and best-known neo-pagan trend (Moroz 2001). Besides the Union of the
Veneds, four other groups have become important. This is either due to the
number of their followers (several thousand each), their specic doctrines, or
their capacity to occupy the public stage in the 1990s. These groups are
the spiritual Union Thesaurus of Dr. S. P. Semionov, the group Religion
of the Russian People headed by the hypnotist D. V. Kandyba, the Church of
Nav, founded by Ilia Lazarenko, and the Union of the Slavic Communities
of Dobroslav.
Like Bezverkhiis association, some of these neo-pagan movements are
quite politicised. Such is the case with the Church of Nav, founded on 20 April
1996, on Hitlers birthday, and of the Union of the Slavic communities of
Dobroslav (Pribylovskii 1999). Others remain less committed, in particular
the Thesaurus, which mainly recruits among physicians and teachers, and
organises collective sessions of meditation on ecology or the struggle against
mass consumerism. In order to nance their existence, many groups organise
commercial activities to supplement membership dues. Thus, the Ingling
Church of Orthodox Old Believers, headed by Alexander Khinevich in Omsk,
proposes paranormal activities and also provides consulting services (Iashin
2001: 59). Some groups, especially among the most politicised, offer private
security services to local businessmen in exchange for their nancial support.
The term the neo-pagans themselves use most often to designate their faith
is Vedism, followed by Paganism (of course, without the particle neo-).
Their religious references are highly eclectic, drawing the bulk of their
inspiration from the oriental religions of Buddha, Zarathustra and Mani, as
well as many Hindu divinities and the holy text of the Krishnas, the BhagavadGita. Also within these movements the reading of Sri Aurobindo (18721950)
and Carlos Castaneda (193198), both translated into Russian in the 1990s, is
widespread, particularly in the Thesaurus. Energy healing, Asian medicine,
martial arts and diverse versions of yoga are integral parts of the Orientalist
neo-pagan rhetoric. All these movements share the same interest in the ideas
of bio-energy, karma, reincarnation, telepathy, astrological power, stories
about UFOs and the mysteries of the cosmos. Although certain groups are
close to new oriental religions, such as those being practiced in Western
countries, others directly insist on strict Russian or Slavic specicities.
The most politicised movements inspired by Western neo-paganism utilise
the works of Blavatsky, and of the German and Austrian Ariosophers of the
beginning of the century. They mainly refer to ancient Germanic gods such as
Thor and Odin. Some of these radical groups pray to the symbol of the
swastika as a representation of the sun. Furthermore, the Russian pantheon,
referenced by all the neo-pagan movements, is not unied. Several gods from
r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

290

Marle`ne Laruelle

the ancient Slavic mythology like Svarog, Vles, Perun, Dajbog or Khors
compete with one another, each movement having its preference for one or the
other. Several groups, particularly the Organisation of the Pan-International
Charter, think that the Cyrillic alphabet, in particular the liturgical, ancient
Slavonic, is endowed with a transcendent reality. Certain Slavic letters could
be keys to the cosmos or to extra-terrestrial civilisation, or could be endowed
with supernatural powers that initiates can utilise. It is difcult to determine
whether the neo-pagan followers think of their faith in monotheist or
polytheist terms. Some of them assert the existence of a unique superior
principle, while others advocate the existence of multiple gods with dissociated functions. The neo-pagans are also divided about the nature of their
movement. Those who claim that Vedism is not conducive to any ritual since
it would have been originally a form of wisdom, and not a form of religion,
represent the majority, as opposed to those who are trying to rehabilitate
precise rites and erect places of worship.
Neo-pagan religious precepts are based on the idea of a trinity, whereby
Iav (the visible world), Nav (the world of beyond), and Prav (the world of
laws) represent different levels of reality. Eschatological patterns are recurrent
and all followers think that mankind is on the road to ruin because it denies
religious values for material benet. Many of these people claim that the
transformation of the pagan faith into Russias ofcial religion will be
possible only in the aftermath of world cataclysms, whether they be political
or ecological. The movements that are the most attached to the supernatural
try to develop the extra-sensorial capacities of their members and hope for the
birth of a community of super-men, which in the most politicised groups can
become the one superior, white race destined to rule the world. All the neopagans emphasise the need for a pure lifestyle in harmony with nature, and
accuse Christianity of being anthropocentric, leading mankind to its current
ecological dead-end. Some appropriate ancient Russian cult traditions of the
earth mother by claiming that the Slavs, children of the forest, will be the rst
to rediscover harmony with nature (Ivakhiv 2005).
The neo-pagan movements are divided on their relation to Orthodoxy.
Some of them believe that the Patriarch of Moscow is but one element in the
Judeo-Christian mechanism destined to weaken Russia, and they refuse any
negotiation with it. Others claim that Orthodoxy cannot be so simply likened
to other Western Christian denominations. On the contrary, they think
that it played an important part in the preservation of a specic Russian
identity. Such is the case of the Ingling Church of the Orthodox Old Believers.
Thus, certain groups have tried to develop relations with the Old Believer
movements by borrowing ancient Orthodox rituals from them, and have
invited them to convert to neo-paganism. They have also rehabilitated some
warrior codes inspired from the Cossack traditions. As early as the 1970s,
the great names of Russian nationalism resuscitated this syncretic rhetoric
and claimed that Orthodoxy had maintained close links with ancient paganism and Hinduism. The Orthodox cross, representing for them the Slavic
r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

Neo-paganism and the Aryan myth in Russia

291

version of the swastika, would then be the symbol of the intimate kinship of
these religions and of the fundamentally national, not universal, nature
of Orthodoxy.
Such a development is not one-sided though. This ambiguous attitude can
also be found within the Orthodox Church. Some Orthodox nationalist
newspapers advocate that the Orthodox Church move closer to the neopagans, presenting them as stray brothers whose principles, like the one of a
defense of the Russian nation against the West, are common to theirs.
Newspapers such as Nashe otechestvo, Russkii vestnik or Kolokol have
admittedly begun to take an interest in such neo-pagan theories as the idea
of a Russian god that one nds in Dostoyevskys works. The painter Ilia
Glazunov, who maintains very conservative and Orthodox positions, also
draws his inspiration from Aryanism by re-using the historical argument of
the neo-pagans in his paintings (Glazunov 1996). The Moscow Patriarchate
has long excluded the neo-pagan movements from its denitions of a sect.
In the lists of the totalitarian sects proposed by the Patriarchate, one only
nds the Union of the Slavic communities of Dobroslav and the Church of
Nav, but no other neo-pagan movement (Kuraev 2001). More directly, since
2000, the deacon Andrei Kuraev, a specialist in the denunciation of Protestantism, Theosophism and pseudo-oriental religions, began publicly criticising neo-pagans.

Rewriting the narrative of the nation

Neo-paganism and the Aryan myth that is intrinsically linked to it do not
simply occupy a part of the religious spectrum. They also constitute an
intellectual current which occupies a sizeable place in contemporary Russian
publications. Since the end of the Soviet Union, numerous meta-historical
publications have ooded bookstore shelves. The data provided by archaeology and ancient history are no longer used solely by academic specialists,
but are vulgarised in fanciful, essentially nationalist books. Such texts are far
from being marginal, as several hundred thousand copies are published, thus
representing the basis for a certain kind of popular knowledge of ancient
history. The new nationalist doctrinarians working on the Aryan idea are
often members of the institutes of geopolitics or the literary academies that
emerged in the 1990s. They rarely have training in history or other social
sciences, belonging instead, due their professional training, to the exact
sciences or engineering professions.
Disciples of the book of Vles do not rely solely on this manuscript as
historical evidence of the pre-Christian faith of the Russians. Other false
manuscripts such as The Songs of the Bird Gamayon, Koliadas Book of Stars,
The Song of the Victory on the Jewish Khazaria of Sviatoslav the Brave or The
Rigveda of Kiev play a similar role, even if on a smaller scale. Like the Eddas
in their time, these texts assert that the national heritage this time Slavic and
r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

292

Marle`ne Laruelle

not Germanic will be found in the preservation of an Aryan identity and

neo-pagan faith in Europe. All neo-pagan texts present the Christianisation of
the Kievian Rus by Prince Vladimir in 988 as the beginning of decadence. The
subsequent millennium of Russian history, then, is presented as 1,000 years of
slow domination of Jews over the Russian people, and the enslavement of
Russia for the service of foreign interests. Christianity would have supported
the reinforcement of the royal power and theologically justied serfdom, and
validated the forced westernisation of Russia under the Romanovs. According to the authors, the 1917 Revolution and the atheism of the Soviet regime
are presented either as the outcome of this submission to the Jews or as the
beginning of the liberation of the Russian people from the Jewish invader.
As in the Slavophile discourses of the rst half of the nineteenth century,
the neo-pagan books systematically present the Slavs as the rst people of
humanity, existing for several thousand, if not tens of thousands of years
(Petukhov 2005). According to this discourse, the lack of knowledge of this
reality within the realm of classical historiography can be explained by
conspiracy theories: since antiquity, the West has been attempting to deny
the value of the Slavic civilisation and to dissimulate it under a diverse
terminology (Popova 2004). Thus, the Sumerians, Hittites, Etruscans, and
Egyptians are retrospectively considered to be Slavs; the Russians would have
played the central, but until now unknown, role in the fulllment of the great
ancient civilisations of the Mediterranean Basin. Among the main propagators of this historical mythology, one notes the writer V. I. Shcherbakov,
president of the Muscovite Club of Secrets; the philosopher V. N. Demin, a
reserve lieutenant colonel from Omsk; and the journalist A. I. Asov (his real
name is A. I. Barashkov), a trained geophysicist. The latter has been working
since the Soviet era on the book of Vles and now publishes many books on
what he calls the Slavic Vedic knowledge, an eclectic combination of tales,
legends, popular songs, and false manuscripts by which he re-constructs the
pantheon of the Russian gods.
The issue of the original Aryan homeland divides the Russian neo-pagans
as it had divided, in its time, German Aryans, and Europeans more generally
(Mallory 1989). Two main theses oppose each other. The rst advocates the
existence of an Aryan homeland in the steppes of Southern Russia; the other
prefers to look for this very cradle in the Arctic regions. The southern theory
took over the discourses of the nineteenth-century Slavophile historical
school. They argued that the rst Aryans, and therefore future Russians,
would have created powerful civilisations in the steppe area stretching
between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea (Asov 2000), if not in central
Siberia, as Chivilikhin claims in Memory. The reference to the Scythians then
constitutes the matrix element of this retroactive identication (Galkina
2002). The German model more directly inspires the Nordic theory, since it
was almost non-existent in Slavophile movements. In this version, the Aryan
homeland was in ancient Atlantis, a bygone Nordic country whose descendants managed to migrate to Russia. The Hyberborea that is so sought-after
r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

Neo-paganism and the Aryan myth in Russia

293

by German Aryanists would thus be located in the north of Russia, a thesis

which allows its propagators to highlight the folkloric richness of this region
(Demin 2002). The theoreticians of this second hypothesis are often more
radical than their opponents in racial terms. The Arctic myth is intrinsically
linked to the idea of the superiority of the original white race, of which the
Russians would be the purest representatives. Thus, Russia would be destined
to create a Fourth Reich, a new Aryan empire of worldwide dimensions
(Danilov 2000).
This national mythology seems to be particularly popular in Siberia, as it
promotes the incorporation of the small homeland (malaia rodina) in the
development of Russian civilisation. The Institute for Vedic culture, founded
rst in Tiumen, then in Ekaterinburg, popularises this vision of Siberia as the
geographical heart of the Aryan continent. Likewise, in 1997 a Hyberborea
mission went to the Kola Peninsula in search of this primeval civilisation of
white men. These mystic movements often benet from the support of the
administrations of Northern or Siberian cities such as Murmansk or Tomsk.
Such cities attempt to develop a regionalist sentiment and hope that they will
be able to demonstrate the legitimacy of Russians against the demands of the
small autochthonous peoples. These Aryanist publications must not
be taken as a mere parallel historiography coming from non-academic circles
with no link to university groups. On the contrary, some personalities from
the post-Soviet academic milieu play an important role in spreading such
discourses. Such is the case, for instance, of the Indianist N. P. Guseva, who
attempts to demonstrate how the close proximity of the spiritual representations of the ancient Indians and of the ancient Slavs is evidence of their
Aryanity, and who simultaneously supports the thesis of an Arctic homeland
(Guseva 2002). Guseva and her disciples have even managed to publish
articles in important newspapers such as the Izvestiia or in the journal of the
Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Etnogracheskoe obozrenie.
One of the most important meetings between academic science and a
nationalist imaginary world was the discovery of the Arkaim site. In 1987,
an archaeological team discovered a fortied village dating from the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries BCE in the Cheliabinsk region. Such fortications
had been long known in Central Asia, but it was the rst time that a
construction of that scale was discovered in Russia itself. As the site happened
to be on the location of a future dam, the local scientic community hoped it
could save it from destruction by insisting on its unique nature. Very quickly,
the nationalist circles seized this event and presented Arkaim as the capital of
the ancient Russo-Aryan civilisation, some even going as far as pretending that
Zarathustra had lived there. This nationalist use of an archaeological discovery
was more or less validated by a portion of the scientic community (Guseva
2003), which not only justied, but also increased, this process of vulgarisation.
Some local researchers, just like the regional political authorities and respectable journals such as Rodina, have even played an ambiguous role in spreading
such a myth. For example, regionalist movements used the idea of Arkaim as
r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

294

Marle`ne Laruelle

the Aryan homeland during their attempts to create a Ural Republic

independent from the Muscovite center in 1993 (Shnirelman 2001b).
In the rst years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the neo-pagan and
Aryan followers invested in several widely circulated newspapers of scientic
vulgarisation, such as Istoki, Nauka i religiia, Chudesa i prikliucheniia, and
Svet. Priroda i chelovek. In November 1997, the Moskoviia channel, known
for its conservative position, broadcast a program devoted to the book of
Vles. In literature, hundreds of thousands of works with Vedic references by
the rst doctrinarians, like Miroliubov or Lesnoi, as well as those of their
contemporary disciples, are in circulation. Russian Vedism even has an
ofcial painter, Konstantin Vasiliev, whose museum regularly co-ordinates
different neo-pagan cultural activities. In Moscow, there is also the Museum
of Russo-Etruscan Culture, which asserts the Slavic nature of the Etruscans,
and the so-called Museum of Prince Igors Chronicle, which does not conceal
its Aryan conceptions of Russian history. In the late 1990s, references to the
book of Vles could even be found in certain so-called liberal newspapers such
as Nezavisimaia gazeta or Moskovskii komsomolets (Shnirelman 2004).
Today, many popular Aryanist series like The Secrets of the Russian
Land or The Real History of the Russian People are available not only in
noteworthy bookstores of the capital but also in the stalls of Orthodox
churches and on the shelves of university and town libraries. Several teachers,
mainly in the provinces, proclaim commitment to Vedic theories. Some are
known for their links with the radical right, others participate in presenting
the book of Vles as an authentic manuscript or take part in historiographic
praising of the prestigious Aryan past of the Russians (Moroz 2005: 278).
Indeed, because of the interest of the general public in Slavic prehistory, neopagan doctrinarians are able to become involved in this historiographic sphere
rather discreetly. Thus, V. I. Shcherbakov has published several books on
ancient Russia intended for young people (Shcherbakov 1995). Likewise, in a
well-known collection of childrens books published in 2002, one can nd a
book devoted to the Aryans, the principal author being none other than A. I.
Asov (Asov and Konovalov 2002).
A course based on Vedic knowledge was even taught in some schools in
Tiumen from 1993 to 1995, and then again in Ekaterinburg in 1997. Although
it was written by the Institute for Vedic culture, the local assessment council of
the Board of National Education also approved the text for this course.
Several history handbooks have also garnered attention because of their
Aryan and/or neo-pagan references. Such was the case for an experimental
handbook for high school classes, The History of Russia Until Peter the Great,
written in 1996 by A. P. Bogdanov, a contributor at the Institute of National
History (Bogdanov 1996); The Slavic Mythology, a book intended for highschool students and written by G. S. Beliakova, the former head of the
Museum of Prince Igors Chronicle (Beliakova 1995); the handbook Russia
Throughout Time, which was recognised by the National Academy for the
Development of National Education and recommended by different schools
r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

Neo-paganism and the Aryan myth in Russia

295

(Storozhev and Storozhev 1997); and several university handbooks on

culturology (Laruelle 2004). References to the Book of Vles can also be found
in the journal Prepodavanie istorii v shkole, published by the state education
system and intended for history teachers. In Ukraine, the Book of Vles is
recognised by the Ministry of Education as being an integral part of the
Ancient Ukrainian literature curriculum and is thus taught throughout the
entire Ukrainian school system (Shnirelman 2001a).

The entry of neo-paganism into politics

Although neo-pagan and Aryan theories constitute a very vivid trend of
alternative history within Russian academic circles, they also remain an active
part of the political domain. As one might expect, the neo-pagans have been
relatively successful at integrating their theories into the ideological structures
of several far-right parties that emerged in the 1990s. However, the real
strength of these movements has been their ability to inltrate more moderate
political bodies and institutions tied to the Duma.
Among the far-right movements that are the most radical and openly neopagan, the best known remains the Russian Party, founded in 1991 by Viktor
Korchagin, the head of the anti-Semitic publishing house Vitiaz. In 2004,
he was accused of inciting inter-ethnic hatred and was taken to court. His
newspaper, Russkie vedomosti, is full of anti-Semitic references, presenting
Christianity as one of the elements of Jewish world domination (Parland 2005:
1745). His ideas are shared by the leaders of the National Party of Great
Russian Power, created in 2001 with the hope of unifying all nationalists, and
headed by Stanislav Terekhov and Alexander Sevastianov. The latter is
known for his numerous neo-pagan publications and his so-called movement
of national-democrats, inspired by the racist discourses of apartheid-era
South Africa. The National Popular Party of A. Ivanov-Sukharevskii, which
advocated a so-called Russist ideology, was also close to the neo-pagan
movements. Its newspaper, Era Rossii, regularly published articles on this
subject (Verkhovskii, Pribylovskii and Mikhailovskaia 1998). Other far-right
groups that openly refer to neo-paganism include the Party of Freedom of
Iurii Beliaev, which is very close to Bezverkhiis Union of the Veneds and
skinhead movements, as well as the Social Popular Party of A. Andreev, and
the anti-Zionist Pamiat Front of Emelianov.
Among the primary neo-pagan newspapers, the best known remains Za
russkoe delo, based in St. Petersburg. As early as 1996, it published a
supplement, Potaennoe, devoted to research on the Arctic homeland of the
Slavs. In 1997, its two editors, O. Gusev and R. Perin, created a Russian
Party of Work that was denied registration by the Ministry of Justice. The
second famous neo-pagan newspaper is the organ of the Union of the Veneds
of St. Petersburg, Rodnye prostory. In 2000, its chief editor, V. A. Istarkhov
(a pseudonym) published The Assault of the Russian Gods (Udar russkikh bogov),
r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

296

Marle`ne Laruelle

an extremely anti-Semitic and anti-Christian book that has become famous in

Russian nationalist circles. Neo-pagan references can also be found among
skinheads, in particular the White Power group, which is inspired by similar
American groups, and the organisations Werwolf and Schultz-88 (Tarasov
2004), as well as the rock bands close to them, such as Kalinov most, Kolovrat,
Zolotoe koltso, Terror-National Front, and Korroziia metalla.
Many neo-pagan organisations openly draw their inspiration from the
German national-socialist experience of the interwar years. Thus, the newspaper Ataka purports to be the homonym of Goebels Der Angriff, while the
journal Nasledie predkov (The legacy of the ancestors) does not conceal its
afliation with the Nazi Ahnenerbe Stiftung, led by Hermann Wirth (1885
1981). In 2000, its main ideologist, Vladimir Avdeev, founded the racist
newspaper Atenei and the collection Library of the Racial Thought, which
has republished Russian and Western texts of racial anthropology dating
from the beginning of the twentieth century. Within the radical nationalist
movements that enjoyed a sure popularity in the 1990s, the Russian National
Unity of Alexander Barkashov was one of the only ones to exhibit openly
national-socialist references (Dunlop 1996; Simonsen 1996). Barkashov
regularly depicts Russians as the most direct descendants, genetically and
culturally, of the Aryans. On the religious level, he mentions Orthodoxy as
well as neo-paganism as the national religions of the Russian people.
On the political level, the neo-pagans are divided between the partisans of
capitalism and partisans of communism (Shnirelman 2007). Thus, V. Korchagin and V. Istarkhov advocate the defense of small and medium-sized
landowners against communism, considered by them to be a product of
Judaism since it supposedly denies the existence of a hierarchy between men.
Numerically, the socialist strand of neo-paganism seems more signicant. Its
main representative is Dobroslav, the leader of the Congress of Pagan
Communities and the founder of the so-called Movement for Russian Liberation. There also is a Party of Aryan Socialism run by Vladimir Danilov.
Communist movements seem to be particularly interested in neo-pagan theories
(Verkhovskii 1997). The Aryan idea is extolled in the newspaper Patriot
(formerly Sovetskii patriot), the organ of the National-Patriotic Union of
Russia, which is under the patronage of Ziuganovs Communist Party. Articles
published by former communist leader I. Polozkov, as well as by one of the
leaders of the parliamentary faction of the Communist Party, A. T. Uvarov,
claim that Judaism represents the rst enemy of the Russian Aryan civilisation
and that capitalism is serving Zionist objectives. Likewise, the president of the
Movement for the Support of the Army, V. Iliukhin, a member of the
Communist Party, drew attention to himself in 1998 by defending the use of
the swastika by neo-Nazis in the name of a so-called Russian tradition.
Neo-paganism indeed wavers between a symbolic world directly inspired
by the Third Reich and more strictly Russian references borrowed from the
tsar and Stalin. As early as the 1980s, Emelianov advocated the constitution
of a pagan national-communism inside the organs of the Soviet Union
r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

Neo-paganism and the Aryan myth in Russia

297

Communist Party. If the gure of Hitler was often exhibited in the early
1990s, it now tends to be replaced by that of Stalin, who is a much more
conciliatory gure (Likhachev 2002). Thus, the Union of the Veneds, whose
leader Bezverkhii has drawn attention to himself by re-publishing Mein
Kampf, now presents Stalin as the greatest hero of the Aryan cause, and
has consequently moved closer to Ziuganovs Communist Party. One of the
most active neo-pagan movements in its willingness to combine Nazism and
Stalinism remains the Interior Preacher of the USSR (Vnutrennii predikator
SSSR) group. Founded in 1991 by some neo-pagans who felt nostalgia for
Stalinism, it claims to have subsidiaries in more than seventy towns in the
country (Moroz 2005). This movement stands out due to its occultist
approach to politics. Its members present themselves as the descendants of
ancient pagan priests and claim to be able to decipher the hidden meaning of
things, thus suggesting that they have been destined to perform the role of
predicting events for political authorities. Their texts invite the Kremlin to
shut down the country to any external inuence and build on the combined
experience of Nazism and Stalinism.
During the late 1990s their publications apparently circulated throughout
Russian political circles and the secret service. They were distributed by the
centrist Ivan Rybkin, then a spokesman of the Duma, to the leaders of the
parliamentary groups, and read to the members of the Federation Council in
1996. Several members of Ziuganovs Communist Party and of V. Zhirinovskiis Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia also mentioned it. Vladimir Putin
would have even read their text when he was head of the FSB (Soldatov and
Borogan 2004). Furthermore, in December 2003 the movement organised a
political party, Towards the Omnipotence of God, headed by General
Konstantin Petrov, that ran in that years legislative election under the
name Conceptual Union Party. The party did not receive a signicant
number of votes (1.3%), but some of its members, like Sergei Lissovskii, now
work as experts at the Parliamentary Committee for Security. Some disciples
of the Preacher also took part, in 2004, in the writing of the report Global
Processes: the Development Tendencies in the World and in Russia until 2020
(Globalnye protsessy: tendentsii razvitiia v mire i v Rossii do 2020). The
Scientic Institute of Systemic Research published this report for the
Federations Chamber of Parliament, whose president is none other than
Sergei Shakhrai, a former key gure of the liberalism of the Yeltsin years.
Thus, neo-pagan supporters seem to have dissociated themselves from their
original background, that of radical nationalism, to discreetly integrate
themselves into a more moderate part of the political spectrum.

Conclusion
The religious question has always divided nationalist movements into
different trends. Indeed, it is partly because of the universal nature of
r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

298

Marle`ne Laruelle

Christianity and its transnational impact that some nationalists are in search
of a specic, ethnic faith. Moreover, the historical and theological links
between Christianity and Judaism are unsuitable for movements that are
systematically driven by anti-Semitism. Russia is not the only country to see
the emergence of neo-pagan movements. In Western Europe, certain movements rediscovering the Celtic past have also advocated a return to the preChristian Druid religions. The political stronghold of this neo-paganism in
far-right circles can also be found in Western countries. The majority of the
French and German New Right advocate a conception of European unity
based on Aryan identity and the willingness to give up Christianity, which
is deemed responsible for two thousand years of identity aberrations. The
corollary of these discourses is the return to anti-Semitism. Indeed, the quest
for rediscovering a lost harmony between man and nature, or within a
community, can easily drift towards xenophobic theories if the conception of
this harmony is built on the exclusion of certain individuals or groups.
In Russia, the increasing demand for environmental and racial purity is
being facilitated by an abundance of publications throughout the country,
from left-wing environmentalist theories to publications dealing with the
doctrines of German national-socialism. Moreover, as early as the 1960s, an
environmental sensibility constituted one of the driving forces of the demands
coming from Russian nationalist circles, which were opposed to the Soviet
desire to subject nature to the industrial needs of the country. The neo-pagan
and Aryan movement has also proted from the more general need of the
Russian public to rediscover the national past and rehabilitate, on the cultural
level, regional folklore. This general need is expressed by a great public
interest in ancient Slavic history, popular oral traditions, regional cultural
specicities, and the rediscovery of old rites and peasant superstitions in
relation to the cult of the nourishing earth. Thus, the doctrinarians of neopaganism and Aryanism are able to successfully play on the need for a
comforting historical imagination that would conrm the national continuity
of the people and the state from time immemorial, permit them to internalise
the disappearance of the Soviet Union, and extol the existence of certain
irreducible cultural and religious elements of Russianness.
Russian neo-paganism is not destined to bring together many converts and,
as in other European countries, will probably remain a marginal religious
strand in comparison to the Orthodox Church. The majority of its followers
like the idea of a faith devoid of regular ritual practice and dogmatic
background, and very few are actually prepared to develop a new religion
that would directly confront Christianity on the theological level. However,
the strength of this movement lies elsewhere. Neo-paganism has managed,
within a decade, to diffuse historical themes that are fully compatible with the
Orthodox or agnostic sentiments of most Russian citizens. The idea of an
Aryan origin deeply penetrates a Russian society that clings to nationalist
theories that are understood to be historical fact. The lack of knowledge
regarding the ideological foundations of the Nazi regime, which is typical of
r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

Neo-paganism and the Aryan myth in Russia

299

Soviet discourses and primary education regarding World War II, here bears
unpleasant fruit. The ideological and political background of the Aryan myth
remains largely unknown by the general public. Moreover, the interest in
Slavic prehistory, and the trend toward alternative history, conspiracy
theories, and paranormal phenomena all contribute to creating a mystical
atmosphere, which is accompanied by a revival of culturalist theories that
analyse the essences of peoples, thereby contributing to a revival of old forms
of racism.

Notes
1 Alter-globalisation is to be distinguished from anti-globalisation. Anti-globalisation rejects
globalisation as such, upholds the political model of the nation-state and traditional nationalist
values, and seeks to purge inuences from foreign cultures. Alter-globalisation, in contrast,
rejects globalisation as they see it developing today, with its underlying economic liberalism. But it
is not opposed to the global village as such. It calls for a globalisation that would be more
concerned with human development, more respectful of the environment and the autonomy of
peoples, and synonymous with the search for a new balance between the Global North and the
Global South.
2 Vened is the name given by Germans to an ancient Slavic people that lived in Central Europe,
also called Wends. Subsequently, the term was applied to all Slavs.

References
Asov, A. I. 2000. Atlanty, Arii, Slaviane. Moscow: Grand.
Asov, A. I. and Konovalov, I. Yu 2002. Ot x tysiacheletii do nasAhei ery do x veka nashei ery.
Drevnie ariisty. Slaviane. Rus. Moscow: Veche.
Beliakova, G. S. 1995. Slavianskaia mifologiia. Kniga dlia uchashchikhsia. Moscow: Prosveshchenie.
Bogdanov, A. P. 1996. Istoriia Rossii do petrovskikh vremen. Kniga dlia 1011 klassov srednei
shkoly. Moscow: Drofa.
Brudny, I. M. 2000. Reinventing Russia. Russian nationalism and the Soviet State, 19531991.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Chivilikhin, V. 1982. Pamiat, Roman-gazeta, no. 17, republished, Pamiat. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1988.
Danilov, V. 2000. Ariiskaia imperiia. Gibel i vozrozhdenie. Moscow: Volia Rossii.
Demin, V. N. 2002. Rus giperboreiskaia. Moscow: Vetche.
Dunlop, J. B. 1996. Alexander Barkashov and the rise of National Socialism in Russia,
Demokratizatsiya 4: 51930.
Ferlat, A. 2003. Neopaganism and new age in Russia, Folklore, Tartu 8, 23: 408.
Galkina, E. S. 2002. Tainy russkogo kaganata. Moscow: Vetche.
Glazunov, I. S. 1996. Rossiia raspiataia. Moscow: Nash sovremmenik.
Goodrick-Clarcke, N. 1992. The Occult Roots of Nazism. Secret Aryan Cults and their Inuence on
Nazi Ideology. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Guseva, N. P. 2002. Slaviane i Ari. Put bogov i slov. Moscow: Grand.
Guseva, N. P. 2003. Russkii sever prarodina indo-slavov. Moscow: Veche.
Hobsbawn, E. J. and Ranger, T. [1983] 1995. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

300

Marle`ne Laruelle

Iashin, V. B. 2001. Tserkov pravoslavnykh staroverov-inglingov kak primer neoiazycheskogo

kulta, in V. Shnirelman (ed.), Neoiazychestvo na prostorakh Evrazii. Moscow: BibleiskoBogoslovskii institut.
Ivakhiv, A. 2005. Nature and ethnicity in East European paganism: an environmental ethic of the
religious right?, The Pomegranate 7, 2: 194225.
Kaganskaya, M. 1986. The book of Vlas: the saga of forgery, Jews and Jewish topics in Soviet
and East European Publications 4, Winter 19861987, 318.
Korey, W. 1995. Russian Antisemitism, Pamyat, and the Demonology of Zionism. Chur: Harwood
Academic Publishers.
Kuraev, A. 2001. Rossiia i novoe iazychestvo. Moscow: Sviato-Ioannovskii monastyr. Pravoslavnoe bratstvo sviatogo apostola Ioanna Bogoslova.
Laruelle, M. 2004. The discipline of culturology: a new Ready-made Thought for Russia?,
Diogenes 204: 2136.
Laruelle, M. 2005. Mythe aryen et reve imperial dans la Russie du xixe sie`cle. Paris: CNRSEditions.
Laruelle, M. 2006. Aleksandr Dugin: A Russian Version of the European Radical Right?, Kennan
Institute Occasional Papers, no. 294, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/OP294.pdf
Likhachev, V. 2002. Natsizm v Rossii. Moscow: Panorama.
Mallory, J. P. 1989. In search of the Indo-Europeans. Language, archeology and myth. Londres:
Thames & Hudson.
Mitrokhin, N. 2003. Russkaia partiia: dvizhenie russkikh natsionalistov v SSSR 19531985 gg.
Moscow: NLO.
Moroz, E. 1993. Le vedisme, version pa enne de lidee russe, Revue detudes comparatives
Est-Ouest 24, 34: 18397.
Moroz, E. 2001. Iazychniki v Sankt-Peterburge, in V. Shnirelman (ed.), Neoiazychestvo na
prostorakh Evrazii. Moscow: Bibleisko-Bogoslovskii institut.
Moroz, E. 2005. Istoriia Mertvoi vody ot strashnoi skazki k bolshoi politike. Politicheskoe
neoiazychestvo v postsovetskoi Rossii. Stuttgart: Ibidem.
Mosse, G. L. 1978. Toward the Final Solution. A History of European Racism. Londres: J. M. Dent
& Sons Ltd.
Mosse, G. L. 1981. The Crisis of German Ideology. Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich. New
York, NY: Schoken Books.
Petukhov, Yu. D. 2005. Sverkhevoliutsiia i Vysshii razum mirozdaniia. Superetnos rusov: ot
mutantov k bogochelovechestvu. Moscow: Metagalaktika.
Parland, T. 2004. The Extreme Nationalist Threat in Russia: The growing inuence of Western
Rightist ideas. London, New York: Routledge Curzon.
Popova, A. 2004. Ritmy istorii. Rus i slaviane v poiskakh prarodiny. Moscow: Iauza.
Pribylovskii, V. 1992. Pamiat, in R. Sh. Ganelin (ed.), Natsionalnaia pravaia prezhde i teper.
Petersburg: Institut sotsiologii RAN.
Pribylovskii, V. 1999. Russkoe neoiazychestvo kvazireligiia natsionalizma i ksenofobii, in A.
Verkhovskii, E. Mikhailovskaia and V. Pribylovskii (eds.), Politicheskaia ksenofobiia. Radikalnye gruppy. Predstavleniia liderov. Rol tserkvi. Moscow: Panorama.
Rosenthal, B. G. 1997. The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press.
Seriot, P. (ed.). 2005. Un paradigme perdu : la linguistique marriste, Cahiers de lilsl, Universite de
Lausanne, no. 20.
Shcherbakov, V. I. 1995. Veki troianovy. Kniga dlia uchashchikhsia starchikh klassov. Moscow:
Prosveshchenie.
Shnirelman, V. 1998. Russian Neo-Pagan Myths and Antisemitism, Acta Analysis of Current
Trends in Antisemitism. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Shnirelman, V. 2001a. Nazad k iazychestvu? Triumfalnoe shestvie neoiazychestva po prostoram
Evrazii, in V. Shnirelman (ed.), Neoiazychestvo v prostorakh Evrazii. Moscow: BibleiskoBogoslovskii institut.

r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008

Neo-paganism and the Aryan myth in Russia

301

Shnirelman, V. 2001b. Strasti po Arkaimu. Ariiskaia ideia i nationalism, in M. B. Olcott and I.

Semenov (eds.), Iazyk i etnicheskii konikt. Moscow: Tsentr Karnegi.
Shnirelman, V. 2004. Intellektualnye labirinty: ocherki ideologii v sovremennoi Rossii. Moscow:
Academia.
Shnirelman, V. 2007. Les nouveaux Aryens et lantisemitisme. Dun faux manuscrit au racisme
aryaniste, in M. Laruelle (ed.), Le rouge et le noir. Extreme droite et nationalisme en Russie.
Paris: CNRS-Editions.
Simonsen, S. G. 1996. Alexandr Barkashov and Russian National Unity: Blackshirt friends of the
nation, Nationalities Papers 24, 4: 62539.
Soldatov, A. and Borogan, I. 2004. Razliv Mertvoi vody, Moskovskie novosti, no. 10, http://
www.mn.ru/print.php?2004-1035
Storozhev, A. N. and Storozhev, V. N. 1997. Rossiia vo vremeni. 1. Drevniaia istoriia sibirskikh i
slavianskikh narodov. Moscow: Narodnaia shkola.
Tarasov, A. 2004. Natsi-skiny v sovremennoi Rossii, Report for the Moscow Bureau of Human
Rights, http://www.antirasizm.ru/publ_003.php
Verkhovskii, A., Pribylovskii, V. and Mihailovskaia, E. 1998. Natsionalizm i Ksenofobiia v
Rossiiskom Obshchestve. Moscow: Panorama.
Verkhovskii, A. (ed.), 1997. Levye v Rossii. Ot umerennykh do ekstremistov. Moscow: Institut
eksperimentalnoi sotsiologii.

r The author 2008. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008