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Russia's Other Religions: Mystics, Sects, Pagans, and Esoteric Movements Beyond Orthodoxy
Paperback
Comparative ReligionReligion General
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ISBN13: 9798188819156
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 24 2026
Pages: 520
Weight: 1.97
Height: 1.05 Width: 7.00 Depth: 10.00
Language: English
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 24 2026
Pages: 520
Weight: 1.97
Height: 1.05 Width: 7.00 Depth: 10.00
Language: English
Very large format, hardcover edition.
Russia's Other Religions - Mystics, Sects, Pagans, and Esoteric Movements Beyond Orthodoxy explores the religious worlds that developed beside, beneath, and beyond official Russian Orthodoxy from the seventeenth century to the post-Soviet age. Beginning with the schism of 1666-1667 and continuing through the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the book follows communities, thinkers, and spiritual movements that challenged established authority or created alternative forms of belief.
Russia's Other Religions - Mystics, Sects, Pagans, and Esoteric Movements Beyond Orthodoxy explores the religious worlds that developed beside, beneath, and beyond official Russian Orthodoxy from the seventeenth century to the post-Soviet age. Beginning with the schism of 1666-1667 and continuing through the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the book follows communities, thinkers, and spiritual movements that challenged established authority or created alternative forms of belief.
Old Believers built disciplined counter-societies able to survive persecution and migration. Khlysty and Skoptsy pursued radical forms of ascetic purification, while Doukhobors, Molokans, Subbotniks, and other currents of Spiritual Christianity emphasized scripture, conscience, prophecy, communal worship, or inward revelation. Imperial law classified, restricted, exiled, and resettled these populations, turning Siberia, the Caucasus, and Transcaucasia into regions of punishment and new centres of religious life.
The study also examines the esoteric culture of educated society. Freemasonry, Spiritualism, Theosophy, occult periodicals, séances, and philosophical circles introduced ideas of initiation, invisible forces, communication with the dead, reincarnation, and spiritual evolution. Russian cosmism and religious philosophy extended these ambitions toward resurrection, immortality, cosmic expansion, divine-human creativity, and the transformation of nature.
After the Revolution of 1917, the Soviet decree separating Church and state in 1918 did not simply free minorities from Orthodox privilege. It created a new ideological order that gradually restricted every autonomous form of belief. Confiscation, propaganda, collectivization, surveillance, imprisonment, and institutional destruction forced religious life into households, clandestine meetings, oral teaching, hidden manuscripts, and informal networks. The book follows these traditions through the Stalinist terror, the Second World War, the antireligious campaigns of the Khrushchev era, and the underground cultures of the later Soviet decades.
Exile carried Russian religious ideas into Berlin, Prague, Paris, Belgrade, Harbin, Jerusalem, and North America. Philosophers, theologians, mystics, sectarian communities, and occult teachers preserved their inheritances while adapting them to new languages and audiences. After 1991, missionaries, healers, astrologers, charismatic leaders, revived confessions, and commercial spiritual movements entered a rapidly changing religious market. Rodnoverie and other forms of Slavic Native Faith then brought together ancestry, folklore, ecological spirituality, nationalism, historical reconstruction, and digital culture.
Written as a broad historical and interpretative study, Russia's Other Religions presents religious marginality as an essential part of Russian history. It shows how belief interacted with empire, law, science, revolution, migration, national identity, and political power across more than three centuries. About the Author
Roberto Minichini is an Italian writer, poet, and essayist, born in Mainz, Germany, in 1973, to an Italian father and a Croatian mother. He has lived in Gorizia, Italy, since 2000. His work ranges across philosophy, religious history, mysticism, esotericism, literature, cultural criticism, and the intellectual traditions of Russia, Iran, Europe, and the Islamic world. He is particularly interested in neglected thinkers, minority traditions, unofficial forms of belief, and the relationship between spiritual ideas, historical memory, and political authority. Alongside his historical and philosophical studies, he has published poetry and numerous works of fiction.
The study also examines the esoteric culture of educated society. Freemasonry, Spiritualism, Theosophy, occult periodicals, séances, and philosophical circles introduced ideas of initiation, invisible forces, communication with the dead, reincarnation, and spiritual evolution. Russian cosmism and religious philosophy extended these ambitions toward resurrection, immortality, cosmic expansion, divine-human creativity, and the transformation of nature.
After the Revolution of 1917, the Soviet decree separating Church and state in 1918 did not simply free minorities from Orthodox privilege. It created a new ideological order that gradually restricted every autonomous form of belief. Confiscation, propaganda, collectivization, surveillance, imprisonment, and institutional destruction forced religious life into households, clandestine meetings, oral teaching, hidden manuscripts, and informal networks. The book follows these traditions through the Stalinist terror, the Second World War, the antireligious campaigns of the Khrushchev era, and the underground cultures of the later Soviet decades.
Exile carried Russian religious ideas into Berlin, Prague, Paris, Belgrade, Harbin, Jerusalem, and North America. Philosophers, theologians, mystics, sectarian communities, and occult teachers preserved their inheritances while adapting them to new languages and audiences. After 1991, missionaries, healers, astrologers, charismatic leaders, revived confessions, and commercial spiritual movements entered a rapidly changing religious market. Rodnoverie and other forms of Slavic Native Faith then brought together ancestry, folklore, ecological spirituality, nationalism, historical reconstruction, and digital culture.
Written as a broad historical and interpretative study, Russia's Other Religions presents religious marginality as an essential part of Russian history. It shows how belief interacted with empire, law, science, revolution, migration, national identity, and political power across more than three centuries. About the Author
Roberto Minichini is an Italian writer, poet, and essayist, born in Mainz, Germany, in 1973, to an Italian father and a Croatian mother. He has lived in Gorizia, Italy, since 2000. His work ranges across philosophy, religious history, mysticism, esotericism, literature, cultural criticism, and the intellectual traditions of Russia, Iran, Europe, and the Islamic world. He is particularly interested in neglected thinkers, minority traditions, unofficial forms of belief, and the relationship between spiritual ideas, historical memory, and political authority. Alongside his historical and philosophical studies, he has published poetry and numerous works of fiction.
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