Popular Religion in Russia

'Double Belief' and the Making of an Academic Myth

Bibliographic Data

ID19901979
AuthorsStella Rock (The Open University, corresponding author)
Year2007
Pages234
Publication date2007-09-10
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenuePopular Religion in Russia (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.4324/9780203592281
OpenAlexW4249381261
Open LibraryOL29047459M
ISBN9780203592281
GOOGLE_BOOK_IDIfJ4Y-k5pxQC
LanguageEN
Citations received10

This book dispels the widely-held view that paganism survived in Russia alongside Orthodox Christianity, demonstrating that 'double belief', dvoeverie, is in fact an academic myth. Scholars, citing the medieval origins of the term, have often portrayed Russian Christianity as uniquely muddied by paganism, with 'double-believing' Christians consciously or unconsciously preserving pagan traditions even into the twentieth century. This volume shows how the concept of dvoeverie arose with nineteenth-century scholars obsessed with the Russian 'folk' and was perpetuated as a propaganda tool in the Soviet period, colouring our perception of both popular faith in Russian and medieval Russian culture for over a century. It surveys the wide variety of uses of the term from the eleventh to the seventeenth century, and contrasts them to its use in modern historiography, concluding that our modern interpretation of dvoeverie would not have been recognized by medieval clerics, and that 'double-belief' is a modern academic construct. Furthermore, it offers a brief foray into medieval Orthodoxy via the mind of the believer, through the language and literature of the period

Political science · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices · History · Old Believers · Raskolniki · Religion · religious · Russia · Social life and customs · Soviet Union · Special Interest · Travel

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