Russian Folk Religious Imagination

ussian Orthodoxy has been the source of a great deal of speculation about the extent of dvoeverie (dual faith). Soviet scholars argued that the Russian Orthodox religion had a strong pre-Christian base, which allowed the Soviet government to assert that folk tradition was actually not religious at all and thereby should be preserved despite the atheist policies of the state. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, scholars have undertaken the study of folk religion in earnest, but there is as yet no comprehensive study of the interrelations between various folk genres in relation to religious belief. Typically folklorists study either oral literature (e.g., legends and songs), or folk ritual and iconography. This separation of genres inhibits a full understanding of the complexity of the complete religious belief system. Studying songs in their ritual context may lead to a significantly different understanding and interpretation than studying the songs in isolation. The person singing the song, the accompanying reactions and gestures, the songs sung before and after it, all may play an important role in interpreting an individual song and its text. Clearly, analysis of folk elements can be greatly enhanced by an understanding of the entire religious background of the population. The ritual texts themselves were informed by religious legends and folk iconography, which are essential to an understanding of the Russian religious mind.

We have assembled an international team of specialists in folklore and in digital applications in the humanities (based in Russia and in the United States) to produce an online multimedia critical edition entitled the Russian Folk Religious Imagination. With the support of a Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities we have begun to compile material and refine our aims. Russian folk religion has suffered from a paucity of research, due to the official state policy of atheism in the Soviet Union. The project resulting from this expertise will significantly increase the knowledge of and scholarly interest in Russian folk belief and religion.