Letters from Heaven: Popular Religion in Russia and Ukraine by John-Paul Himka , Andriy Zayarnyuk (review)

Abstract

178 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 200g district by district basis. The statistical analysis employed in this chapter reveals that the longer a district, inspired by the effortsof its local clergy, resisted the secularizing pressures of theCommunist regime themore likely it was to support the parties of the right inpost-Communist elections. This study, therefore, has an importance both for political scientists interested inpost-Communist politics inHungary and forhistorians interested in Hungary under the Communist regime. Moreover, the complex and shifting nature of church-state relations revealed by this study and the Christian churches' enduring influence on party affiliations are not exclusive lyHungarian phenomena. Scholars of other Communist/post-Communist regimes will also find this study essential reading. Department of History TomLorman UniversityofCincinnati Himka, John-Paul and Zayarnyuk, Andriy (eds). Letters fromHeaven: Popular Religion in Russia and Ukraine. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Buffalo, NY and London, 2006. ix+ 277 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $60.00: ?40.00. The editors of this excellent book begin with a careful definition ofwhat they mean by 'popular religion'. 'Even before Peter [theGreat], it isby no means clear that thepractices historians call popular were restricted to laymen or the lower orders of society' (p. 7, pp. 146-47). 'The term "popular religion" does not necessarily imply that there is a unified whole (popular religion), juxtapos ing itselfagainst another such whole (officialreligion). [However], the investi gation of cultural forms as practised in contemporary cultural studies can stilluse the term "popular" meaningfully and usefully without constructing some kind of dichotomy between "popular" and "elite" or "low-brow" and "high-brow"', if it focuses on 'consumption versus production ... tactics versus strategy' and 'usage and appropriation', and 'maintain [s] its connections with the lower classes and history from "below"' (p. 8). 'Popular' does not necessarily imply subaltern resistance, as in the Grams cian paradigm, as popular culture also transmits cultural and social reproduc tion. Ukrainian peasants celebrated Sunday as Ne-delia ('no work'). Andriy Zayarnyuk describes how the nineteenth-century national-populist elite was irritated by popular 'superstition' when itwas trying to compete with Polish high culture, whereas in fact 'the letters [fromHeaven, simple apocrypha beloved by Galician peasants] were their Bible, a substitute for the real one, towhich theyhad no access' (p. 186).They gave peasants an alternative route to the same divine message as literacy-privileged priests, or even the Pope, whom Hutsuls believed 'received letters fromGod every Sunday' (p. 187).On the other hand, John-Paul Himka is sceptical of the idea that in eighteenth-century icons of theLast Judgment, hell is reserved for thosewho have done the peasants wrong. Sin was not a class concept. Vera Shevzov considers that akqfisty(hymns tomiracle-working icons) helped bridge social divides 'by speaking in the collective we' (p. 268). REVIEWS 179 The book develops recent scepticism about dvoeverie. Although many peasant traditionswere derived and developed from the pagan past, itwasn't that peasants remained quasi-pagan; their world outlook was essentially Christian. In fact, itwas often precisely because it centred on God and 'the Mount ofOlives, Rome, orJerusalem' (p. 190), rather thanKyiv orMoscow, that peasant 'superstition' was opposed by modern secular nationalisms. Chris tine Worobec stresses that peasants' elaborate death rituals were entirely in keeping with Christian teaching on immortality. Peasant beliefs also made sense in terms of their everyday lives. The idea that one should not over-grieve the loss of children under the age of seven, as they would serve as angels in Heaven, was some solace in societies where infant deaths were all too common. Readers looking for embryonic 'Ukrainian' and 'Russian' popular religions will find some limited evidence. Ukraine popular religion was to an extent distinct from a 'Russian' institutional Church, but so was everyday practice inRussia often enough (p. 14).But most 'popular' practices ignored putative national boundaries, or were specific to particular regions. Certainly, there were no general packages that could be labelled 'popular Ukrainian' and 'popular Russian'. However, peasant society often provided services that the institutional Church could not. Chernichky(devout spinsters) oversaw funeral preparations and ritual; literate peasants read the psalter, although the clergy disapproved of wailers, who were on the wane by the late nineteenth century. Much of what...