Birgit Menzel
Early twentieth century Russia witnessed ambivalence about the new world and the uncertainty of all human knowledge. Many people who concluded that neither scientific nor legal experts nor the churches could resolve the vagaries of modernity embraced new occult doctrines. In contrast, Soviet rule, especially in Stalin’s time, attempted to eliminate all metaphysical thought. Most people who engaged in occult or esoteric practices had to go underground or were sent to forced labor camps. However, the end of the Soviet Union has brought a reconsideration of the boundaries and paradigms of rationality.
Soviet Repression of the Occult and Its Popular Resurgence
Soviet civilization defined itself as a purely rational society, based on work, science, and empirical knowledge, yet its cult of the rational was taken to such an extreme that one could speak in terms of a “rationalistic religion.” Since the 1960s and the 1970s, there has been a marked reaction against this “cult of the rational,” and countervailing concepts became popular in both artistic practice and everyday life. Expressions of reaction against “Soviet-speak” included a rediscovery of eastern religious concepts and philosophy, and experiments with drugs and transcendental practices.
The marked return of religion since the fall of communism has included a fast immersion in the occult and esoteric phenomena. Many Western scholars of contemporary Russia have encountered this prevalence of occult and esoteric ideas in postSoviet culture through its vast published literature amply evident through browsing bookstores and street kiosks. It is almost impossible to understand contemporary Russian literature without being equipped with an encyclopedia of the occult. In the 1990s no less than 36 percent of all non-fiction publications in the humanities dealt with occultesoteric topics. Some former Soviet thick journals, such as Literaturnoe obozrenie and Nauka i religiia, have adopted a whole new profile with extensive coverage of the occult.
Academic Interest in the Occult
In post-Soviet Russia fascination with esoteric, supernatural, non-Orthodox spirituality, and utopian and pagan folk traditions can be found at all levels of intellectual and artistic life, including the sciences and politics. One cannot help but note the increasing number of conferences, research projects, university course offerings, and college textbooks on paranormal powers (from bioenergy theories to so-called “torsionic” fields to UFOs and cosmic consciousness) produced by scientists at the highest academic ranks. In 2000 the Russian Humanitarian University in Moscow introduced a course on the history of esotericism (to use Russian academic parlance) in its department of religious studies. The Russian Academy of Sciences found these developments so disturbing that in 2002 it established a commission whose purpose was to warn against the spread of “obscure pseudoscience.”
Today’s occult revival should be seen, first of all, as a result of seven decades of the forceful suppression of metaphysical thought in Russia. The spiritual vacuum caused by the downfall of communism helps explain the impact of belief systems outside the established religions. As literary theorist Mikhail Epstein writes, “Many more people now exit atheism than enter the churches. They exit atheism without arriving; they stay somewhere at the crossroads” (Na granitsakh kul’tur. RossiiskoeAmerikanskoe-Sovetskoe [New York: Slovo-Word, 1995], 315).
Blurred Borders between Traditional Religions and the Occult
How have the borders between established religions, such as Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Shamanism (along with other esoteric beliefs) shifted in the post-Soviet turn to religion? In Russia, the borders between science, religion, and the occult have differed from those in the West for several reasons. Russian Orthodox Christianity, rooted in the Eastern Byzantine tradition, has always been open to mystic experience and esoteric knowledge. In one Russian survey, of those who declared themselves Orthodox, 35 percent also believed in magic and 30 percent in fortune telling (Iurii Sinel’nikov, Izmenie religioznosti naseleniia Rossii. Pravoslavnye, musal’mane, suevernye, povedenie Rossiian [Moscow: Nauka, 2000]). Mystical, utopian, and pagan roots in religious and intellectual belief systems, and more generally in Russian folk culture, have been stronger in Russia than in Western societies and have had a pervasive influence throughout the twentieth century. Asian philosophy and religions, including indigenous Shamanism and Sufism, have been especially strong in Siberia, Buriatia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.
Edited excerpts reprinted with permission from Birgit Menzel, “Introduction” in The New Age of Russia; Occult and Esoteric Dimensions, ed. by Birgit Menzel, Michael Hagemeister, and Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (Munich: Otto Sagner, 2012): pp. 11-28.
Birgit Menzel is professor of Slavic literature and culture at Mainz University, Germersheim,