Political Doctrines of Neo-Pagans: from the Community of Equals to the State of the Selected Fewy

Abstract

Since the emergence of the phenomenon of the Soviet (later Russian) new paganism, the ideologists of the movement set out to develop their own political programs, consisting of utopian projections aimed at the functioning of nativist religious groups in the reality of a hostile/neutral environment. These plans listed as their ultimate goals the raising of paganism to the level of the state ideology and even the complete reorganization of the Russian Federation into a new theocratic state headed by a formal cast of cult worshippers: magi and sacrifi cers. The purpose of this article is to examine the central political concepts of the leaders of the Russian pagan movement of the last third of the 20th — fi rst third of the 21st centuries. The experience of Dobroslav (A. A. Dobrovolsky), who laid the foundations of this worldview for decades to come, is taken as a biographical example of the pagan political development. Dobroslav’s concept received its further development, and underwent the transformation in the course of the quest of magus Velimir (N. N. Speransky) and subsequent ideologists of the Russian religious nativism. As a result of the research, the author of the article arrives at the conclusion about the continuity of the neo-pagan political doctrine and the constancy of the central strata. Those include the organization of “their own” space in the form of self-governing (veche) communities, independent of the “outside world” and aimed at the gradually expanding infl uence up to the complete seizure of power. This can be achieved either through the strengthening and development of diasporic pagan groups (a “peaceful” evolutionary option), or through the violent overthrow of an existing state institution (a “military” coup). Other goals include creating an ethnic hierarchical system subordinate to theocratic leaders as pagan leaders of the nation and strengthening contacts with representatives of the indigenous peoples of the Russian Federation, carriers of pre-Abrahamic beliefs and with “co-religionists” from abroad. In terms of the worldview, we can see a signifi cant infl uence of eschatological views and conspiracy theories; rejection of the off icial science, political and economic systems and reliance on the author’s constructs of community leaders and individual ideologists of the neo-pagan community. It should be noted that this “set” of neopagan constants is subject to modernization taking into account the current (topical) trends in the development of the political system in Russia and the world as a whole.