Aitamurto, K. and Simpson, S. (2013) Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe. Acumen. - 352 p.

The movements to which the articles in this collection are devoted, and which are sometimes referred to as "neo-pagan", are one of the most striking manifestations of cultural constructivism caused by the reaction to Modernity. This is a complex, convoluted reaction that has a long pedigree, manifested in several waves-romantic, nativist, pastoralist movements-that have constantly accompanied the relentless advance of rationalist, urban Modernity. The authors of the book are aware of the depth of this genealogy, but they focus mainly on the last wave of pagan revival - the one that gave rise to the "counterculture" in Europe in the second half of the twentieth century; and, as its main predecessor, they return to the legacy of the previous wave that followed the First World War. In both cases, we see this response, reactive, protective impulse: protection of the small - from the general, the private - from the pretentiously universal, the rural - from the urban, the natural-from the artificial, the tribal - ethnic-from the national, and the national-from the global. Editors rightly see such movements as an age-old response to Globalization (with a capital letter and in all its manifestations).

In addition, the genealogy of" modern pagan " sensibility goes back, as the editors of the book suggest, to the individualistic Romanticism of the nineteenth century, to the "Byronic romantic models" for which "the individual free man is natural and the state unnatural", with all the resulting tensions and conflicts (p.3).

The development of this initial romantic impulse went along two main lines, although the authors caution that there is a "risk of simplification" in this division: "left" and "right" (leaf-leaning and right-leaning). What does this mean? The" left "trend was precisely this individualistic protest of the" Byronic " type, and it manifested itself once again with the emergence of the counterculture of the 1960s, strongly linked to tender and libertarian politics; this trend is characteristic of British and North American neo-paganism. On the contrary, the" right " direction was associated with collectivist, ethno-national sentiments-

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for which " the tribe is natural, but the breaking of tribal ties is unnatural "(ibid.). This second type of neo-paganism is rooted in what the editors call the "national-martyr Romantic model", and this model places the central role of nation and ethnicity, which is typical of the "neo-paganism" of Eastern Europe. For the first time, movements of this type developed in the 1920s and 1930s, which, in one way or another, correlated with the formation of right - wing regimes of that period. This model was revived in the 1990s as a possible response to post-communist cultural entropy.

The materials included in this volume fall across the entire scale between these two ideal types - libertarian nativism, which is dominant in the West ("left bias"), and ethnic, tribal nationalism, which is dominant in Central and Eastern Europe ("right bias") - of course, with great variations from country to country.

I also think it is important to pay attention to the review of Piotr Wiench, who attempts to examine pagan / rodnovercheskie cultures using the "postcolonial key". He takes up the comment made by the editors in the Introduction about the" eternal answer to globalization " that lies behind these movements and develops it to a higher degree of generalization, arguing that they demonstrate a common cultural resistance to modernity combined with the invention, in Eric Hobsbawm's terms, of an alternative identity. They are, in fact, an attempt at a postcolonial "breakthrough" to the alternative Self, and this "breakthrough" seems to take various forms in Eastern and Western Europe (p. 15). Elsewhere, Viench characterizes neo-paganism as a kind of refuge against "liquid modernity", as defined by Zygmunt Bauman, that is, in fact, as an attempt to somehow consolidate and fix this flow of identities (p.20). While each of these explanations of Viencha looks plausible, they do not fit together very smoothly: a channel of protest against colonization from the outsideModernity; reaction against "fluid modernity"; balance on the West-East scale - all these are not exactly the same judgments.

Viench correctly writes that these groups and movements "clearly failed to impose serious religious polemics" in order to have any serious impact on politics, and they ended up

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by filling only small, compact niches in all societies (pp. 12-13). Based on this conclusion, Viench tends to deny any religious significance of neo-pagan movements, saying that they almost completely lack their own religious characteristics; proving the correctness of this judgment, Viench refers to the lack of both a developed theology and an interest in questions of morality and the meaning of life (pp. 13-14). This reasoning seems strange to me. All this makes it seem as if he is using a rather narrow definition of the term "religious", which I cannot agree with: the lack of theology and moral discourse cannot be the only criterion; we must still take into account the presence of a pantheon of deities, some elaborate rituals, and certain worldviews among members of these movements.

What follows is a chapter by Scott Simpson and Mariusz Filip, who reflect on the terms used to describe movements in different languages and societies. The list of terms they make helps us get closer to the "field" and thus adds a sense of authenticity. In their opinion, it is very significant in which cases adherents call themselves "pagans", or "neo-pagans", or belonging to the" native faith "(in various Slavic variations, such as the Russian" rodnoverie"); and then they refer to a more neutral, although also not very accurate term coined for the "native faith". for academic convenience, "ethnic religion"; this latter, like the term" reconstructionism", according to the authors, is sometimes used incorrectly. All these distinctions are useful and help to decipher the double title of the book, which includes both "modern paganism" and "rodnoverie".

In addition to these introductory, introductory chapters outlining the thematic and conceptual space, we have a number of country profiles that cover Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Armenia; however, the central chapters are those related to Poland and Russia. Four chapters are devoted to Polish materials (including a chapter on the history of movements of the XIX century) and four works are devoted to Russian material (including the special case of the Republic of Mari El). Poland and Russia seem to be two central objects, since, in fact, they are essentially comparable: two Slavic peoples; two cultural reactions to 19th-century Romanticism; partly similar dilemmas of Europeanization; a long drama

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confrontations: an oppressive empire versus an oppressed nation, Orthodoxy versus Catholicism. In general, two destinies that are closely intertwined and inexorably alienated from each other.

Poland is presented first in Agnieszka Gaida's historical review, which illustrates the book's general hypothesis about the roots of Romanticism in modern neo-Paganism; the description of the 19th-century pagan lifestyle is fascinating, with only one caveat: it looks as if the Catholic Church is almost completely absent from the picture of the country's cultural landscape, which seems very strange! Another chapter on Poland is written by Maciej Strutinski and focuses on Jan Stacznyuk (1905-1963), a key figure for modern neo-Pagans, founder of the Zadruga movement of the 1930s, a staunch advocate of" culture " understood in collectivist, nationalist, and explicitly anti-Catholic terms, and a fighter against what he called wspakultura - from his point of view, a bizarre, dangerous combination of such terrible things as personalism, universal love, hedonism, moralism, etc.D. Another chapter on Poland, written by the aforementioned Scott Simpson, thoroughly explores reconstruction strategies in Rodnoverie, which are, in fact, strategies for finding a certain specific, legitimate place in Polish society. At the same time, Simpson also shows how Polish society itself perceives the Rodnover movement and its place in it. Maciej Witulski, in turn, introduces us to the twenty-first century and shows a completely different picture - the emergence of new forms of neo-paganism, which are imported from the West as the pro-Western cultural drift of post-Socialist Poland continues. These new forms have little in common with Slavic rodnoverie, even less with nationalism; on the contrary, they are eclectic, mostly virtual, and driven by a background fashion for everything European.

Russia stands out as a special case of predictably more radical, politicized, and nationalistic neo-paganism: this is how it looks in Viktor Shnirelman's chapter tracing the path "from ethnic religion to racial violence"; and this is perhaps the only chapter in the book where racism and violence become key concepts.1

1 See the review of Viktor Shnirelman's book " Russian Rodnoverie. Neo-Paganism and Nationalism in Modern Russia" (Moscow, BBI Publishing House, 2012) - in N 3-4 (2012) of our magazine.

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In their chapter, Kaarina Aitamurto and Alexey Gaidukov look at Russian material in a different way: they choose a promising, if risky, method of creating detailed portraits of six ordinary Russian neo-Pagans, who, in their opinion, represent different directions. The method gives, in my opinion, excellent results: we see a wide range of types-both susceptible to racism and violence, as shown in Schnirelman, and others that are very far from both violence and racism. In general, according to the authors, the dominant trope in the studied environment is the "cult of personality", and not the cult of the national collective. In another chapter on Russia, Haidukov explores how neo-paganism is represented on the Russian Internet; for example, he traces the intriguing rivalry between different interpretations of the term "paganism" in Wikipedia articles, as well as debates on these topics in virtual communities on social networks. Boris Knorre, author of the last chapter on Russia, refers to Mari El, which some call "the last pagan nation on earth": indeed, here we see more clearly than anywhere else how traditional rural paganism is combined with its invented forms inspired by new global connections.

Among other chapters, there are two that bear a striking resemblance to the last case of the Volga Republic: Maria Lesiv's chapter on Ukraine and Vladimir Dulov's on Bulgaria. In both cases, we see a similar dualism of the still very widespread, "residual" village or folk paganism (in fact, syncretism interspersed with a not very strict and not very Orthodox Orthodoxy) and the more organized, urban neo-paganism, which partially relies on the resources of the previous one. Dulov paints a very detailed and well-thought-out picture of how an "alternative spirituality" with an active "everyday mysticism" flourished in Bulgaria during the communist period, and how it is now difficult to distinguish old beliefs and practices from neo-pagan reconstructions.

Two chapters are devoted to long - standing and venerable Baltic groups: Ramuva in Lithuania and Dievturi in Latvia. There is also a text about the Czech Republic: here, due to historical reasons (the dominance of the national tradition of the Hussites, which is hardly compatible with paganism), the pagan movement practically did not exist until 1990, when a new Western influence began-

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a research project. In Slovenia, such groups were also extremely small. As for Armenia, Romania, and Hungary, pagan impulses are probably similar in nature: they are all "constructs" that are set in motion by the search for ancient ethnomiths aimed at strengthening national identity, but in all three cases they are opposed to the cultural mainstream. but for these three, it seems to be the most characteristic, the most prominent: in Armenia, it is a search for Indo - European antiquity (as opposed to the dominant Christian myth); in Romania, it is a search for some primordial "Dacianism" (as opposed to the dominant myth of Romanization); in Hungary, it is a search for primordial "Turanism" (as opposed to the dominant myth again on Christianization). In all these cases, the movements appear rather ideological, speculative, and more or less indifferent to ritual practices.

In general, the book provides rich and detailed information about the Rodnover movements in almost every corner of Central and Eastern Europe. This is the first such book that attempts to cover the entire region and deeply reveal the essence of the subject. The book not only examines post-socialist examples in detail, but also looks back to the past, to the last two centuries, revealing the romantic and folk roots of current movements; the book also embeds neo-paganism in a broader social context, in which, while remaining marginal in quantitative terms, it becomes relatively important as an important channel for alternative cultural expression.

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