Research Team - NEWREL

New Religious
Movements
in the Russian North:
Competing Uses
of Religiosity
After Socialism

Research Team

The NEWREL research team consists of 9 PIs from 6 countries, some working independently, some working with their own research groups. Field sites stretch across the Russian North, from European Russia to the Russian Far East.

NEWREL field sites

Please click on the photos and then scroll down to view information about each project

Creating Belongingness: Neotraditionalism in the Multi-Religious Russian North

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Principal Investigator: Anna-Leena Siikala (Professor, University of Helsinki, Finland)
Researcher: Arno Survo (Dr., University of Helsinki, Finland)
Ph. D. student: Karina Lukin (University of Helsinki, Finland)

Co-researchers:

Oleg Ulyashev (senior researcher, C.Sc., Komi Research Centre, Syktyvkar, Komi Republic, Russia)

Irina Ilyina (senior researcher, C.Sc., Komi Research Centre, Syktyvkar, Komi Republic, Russia)

Vera Survo (Ph.D. student, University of Helsinki, Finland)

This project examines the (re)creation of religious practices and ideas among people speaking Uralic languages in the Russian North. The objective of this project will be to illuminate current strategies of creating “belongingness,” ethnic and otherwise, that draws on traditions of the (mythic) past, and manifests in local forms of neotraditionalism. The new uses of myth traditions open up possibilities for analysing the processes of reconstruction, recontextualisation and constant variation characteristic of mythic-historical discourse. This corresponds with communities who are active in determining the meanings and significance of ethnic cults and their sites. The research will pay special attention to local forms of neotraditionalism, such as popular practices of Orthodoxy and the use of ethnic religious traditions and sacred places in present day contexts. Due to the cultural multiplicity of North Russian communities, this study will evaluate the different ‘voices’ of minorities in culture-making processes. The field work will investigate private and public representations of ethnic beliefs and ritualism, and its interaction with popular and official forms of Orthodoxy in the Russian North. In addition to observing reactions by local groups to these institutions, this project will also study religious meanings of narratives and the role of the holy places in present day religious practices. The project’s main theoretical themes, neotraditionalism and the idea of belongingness, will be applied to the researchers’ approach in interpreting observations of political and cultural changes, recordings of rituals, interviews, discussions and other field materials. The results of the project will add to the knowledge of the ongoing socio-cultural processes of Northern Russia and contribute to the understanding of the local manifestations and counter-currencies of globalisation.

Discourse of Religions, Mentalities and Languages in the Russian North

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Principal Investigator: Art Leete (University of Tartu, Estonia)

Researchers:

Eva Toulouze (University of Tartu, Estonia)
Aimar Ventsel (Estonian Literary Museum)

Junior Investigators:

Laur Vallikivi (University of Tartu, Estonia)
Liivo Niglas (University of Tartu, Estonia)
Florian Siegl (University of Tartu, Estonia)
Kaur Mägi (University of Tartu, Estonia)

Associated Investigator:

Agrafena Pesikova-Sopochina

Our research examines Siberian indigenous peoples’ worldview, analyzing the long-lasting stability of mentalities (i.e. their adaptation to Orthodox religion and later to Communist ideology) in conjunction with the restoration of the Orthodox Church and intensive growth of Evangelical missions in the Arctic. Discourse of Religions, Mentalities and Languages in the Russian North evaluates the strategies of northern groups as part of an ‘in-between phenomenon’: the religious mainstream being negotiated between indigenous peoples themselves, religious contacts between indigenous groups and institutions, and with newcomers to this religious landscape. This is a multi-project study will investigate worldviews of peoples of Sakha Republic, Taimyr Peninsula, Western Siberia and the European part of the Russian North, and how these worldviews are altered by conversion strategies. The project will analyze the historical connections between Orthodoxy and folk religion, and investigate the Orthodox and Protestant missionaries’ strategies in the North in historical (Tsarist and early Soviet periods) and contemporary contexts, taking into account the complex historical relationships with atheistic ideology. The researchers will incorporate analysis of contemporary folklore, religious texts and narratives, recorded interviews, and documentary film. This project also will study the dialogue between religious institutions and local religious expressions, such as the revival of shamanism, with the aim of looking at changes in identity and world view, particularly among the youth. The general approach will be analytically interpretive, applying participant observation with different agencies (missionaries, priests, members of different religious communities). The aim is to develop a new view on religious change in post-Soviet northern areas and to analyze different strategies of indigenous religious survival.

New Religious Movements in Siberia: Contemporary Religious Praxis and Cultural Change

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Principal Investigator: Alexander Panchenko (Institute of Russian Literature, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia)
Co-PI: Sergei Shtyrkov (European University at St. Petersburg, Russia)
Research Assistant: Anna Minaeva

This project is a study of communities in the European Russian North founded by contemporary Russian new religious movements (NRMs) and their influence on religious practices and identities of local population. Most often, sociological approaches to the study of NRMs proceed from various theories of secularization, local responses resulting in either forms of adaptation or resistance. It appears, however, that autochthonous Russian NRMs, which arose in the early 1990s should be interpreted as specific “crisis cults” responding to the collapse of the USSR. The project presumes investigation of the internal structure and religious practices of the NRMs’ communities along with their interrelations with various religious, social and ethnic groups of the local population. The field research will include both the study of well-known communities (“The Last Testament Church” in Krasnoiarskii Krai) and research on other NRMs in the regions of Sakha-Yakutia and the Russian Far East. The second phase of the research will be dedicated to the search and study of unknown communities of contemporary Russian NRMs. The plan of the field research is based upon special program of interviews and observations, aided by a collection of detailed questionnaires. The focused interviews will cover topics of the internal organization, practices and teachings of a specific NRMs. The biographical interviews will document individuals’ involvement and experiences within the sect. A survey study of the local population of the particular NRM will serve as a general assessment of the movement and its members. Apart from interviewing, the plan of the field research includes participant observation of rituals and ceremonies, participation in collective work, recording of photographic and videographic data, analysis of publications about the NRMs in local mass media.

Kinship and Religious Praxis of Tungus-Manchurian Peoples

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Principal Investigator: Dr Tatiana D. Bulgakova (Professor, Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, The Institute of the Peoples of the North, St. Petersburg, Russia)
Research Assistant: Alexei Azinov

This project explores the significance of kinship and ethnic dynamics that underlie religious change and new religious praxis of Tungus-Manchurian peoples. Traditional Tungus-Manchurian shamanism was a religion practiced by patrilineal clan societies, and clan societies in their turn were mostly structured by their religious praxis. In today's situation, when new religions mix new religious ideas with old traditional ones, people who lost most of their traditionally elaborated social means to deal with religion have to face some problems. These contemporary problems are influenced by previous Soviet strategies that attempted to transform social and religious life in the region. The aim of the project is twofold: to investigate how social change influences readiness for religious change and how new religions affect social relations. This study is concerned with the hidden kinship/religious relationships which can manifest themselves in religious choices that native people are making as well as outside of religious praxis, mostly in the social domain. One of the projects’ objectives is to determine the outward reasons for new religious movements among Tungus-Manchurian peoples, whether the ethnic constituent is decisive in this process or is a part of a global phenomenon. My research will consist of ethnographic fieldwork which will include interviewing informants and sketching the topography of new religions in the region investigated, and working in local archives and libraries. The field research will be supported by long-term relationships, which I have established during my 25 years of field research among the Nanai, thus providing an important basis upon which to use an emic approach. The results of the project will add to the knowledge on socio-religious situation of Northern Russia, on how extra-religious (mostly, social and ethnic) factors influence religious choice among native peoples.

Missionaries, Humanitarian Aid, and Accompanying Ideologies in the Russian Far East

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Principal Investigator: Patty A. Gray (University of Alaska Fairbanks, U.S.)
Research Assistant: Alexandra Antohin (University of Alaska Fairbanks, U.S.)

This project investigates North American Christian evangelical activity in the Russian Far East (RFE), giving equal attention to the expectations of evangelical missionaries on the one hand, and the responses in the communities of those being evangelized on the other hand. North American Christian evangelical missionaries in the RFE often combined their proselytizing activities with the delivery of humanitarian aid in a variety of forms; moreover, they often included in their gospel message not only biblical information about salvation, but also economic information about the benefits of capitalism and a market economy. However, the few recent studies on Christian missionary activity in Russia have not explored this particular nexus of evangelism, humanitarian aid, and Western neoliberal economic ideology. In addition to investigating these issues, this study aims to focus on actual missionary encounters in local communities, evaluating how local economic practices might be changing as a result of encounters with this phenomenon of humanitarian aid-cum-evangelism. These micro-level issues will be explored through the connections between missionaries groups, primarily in Alaska, and their target communities in the RFE, primarily in Magadan Province. Both converts as well as those who stand outside of this process will be included, such as non-believers who eschew contact with missionaries or authorities who must regulate their activities. The methodology of ethnography will be rigorously employed, combining participant-observation within the communities under study; in-depth, open-ended interviewing; and comparative investigation of a wide variety of public cultural productions. The gospel message of evangelical missionaries will be analyzed to ethnographically verify both the presence of non-religious messages and the specific content of those messages; themes and variations in the messages will be documented.

New Religious Movements and Social Change in Situations of Contact

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Principal Investigator: Patrick Plattet (University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland / University of Alaska Fairbanks, U.S.)

This project aims at comparing contemporary religious phenomena in areas of the Northern Kamchatksii Krai (KK) where contacts between competing religious systems are historically either strong, or weak. The contemporary religious landscape will be examined through two communities, Lesnaia, a locality diversely concerned with hunting and Achaïvaiam, whose residents engage in reindeer herding. This study will focus on forms of domestic shamanism and will evaluate its connection with the following hypothesis: the maintenance of herding rituals with shamanic practices can be attributed to the relative lack of Christian activists (missionaries and priest), but it also supports the emergence of an “ecstatic” or “mystic” view of this religious phenomenon. The objectives of this project will consist in examining the elements which favour or disadvantage conversation and interaction between the ritualized practice of seal/bear/mountain sheep hunting and other forms of religiosities. The research will focus on the practices and representations of the currently mobilized spheres of religious influence in Lesnaia (hunting shamanism, Russian Orthodoxy and Christian evangelism) and comparatively apply this phenomenon to areas such as Achaïvaiam, where herding shamanism is converging with other forms of religiosity. The primary fieldwork methodology will consist of concerted interactions with local actors resulting from participant-observation as well as other ethnographic tools (semi-directive interviews with a large and diversified spectrum of actors; recording of photographic and videographic data; viewing and discussing the filmic data with local actors; collection of press articles; etc.). These techniques will allow accessing the various (and sometime competing) emic categories of religious knowledge. Although this comparative project centres primarily on two settlements (Achaïvaiam and Lesnaia), it will nevertheless be multi-sited insofar as the researcher will travel locally and regionally with the herders, hunters and others.

The Rise of Protestant Denominations in Chukotka After Socialism (North-eastern Siberian Arctic)

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Principal Investigator: Virginie Vaté (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany)

This study proposes to investigate the situation of Protestant churches in Chukotka, from the perspective of the missionaries, the converts, and the non-converts. This research seeks to understand why conversion to Protestantism has become a central issue for many indigenous people in the last decade. This research will focus on three main issues: missionary activities and strategies; religion and ethnicity; and religious interactions between shamanism-animism and Protestantism. The project will look at conversion as a strategy of empowerment, enabling converts to deal with problems such as alcoholism, and putting them in a more valued position both at the local level but also integrating them in international networks of believers. Central to this research is the concept of ‘interaction’, the objective being to stress people’s agency towards their religious practices. ‘Interaction’ stresses the dialogue existing at several levels in people’s religious practices; this can be expressed in the way some converts reinterpret their previous Chukchi religion in the light of Christianity or in the way some non-converts reactivate their ancestor’s practices in order to protect relatives from conversion. These ‘interactions’ will be considered not only in the strict areas of religious practices but on a wider social level. Research on Protestant denominations needs to be documented through classic anthropological methods, such as participant-observation. In addition to conversion testimonies, semi-directive interviews and informal discussions with missionaries, converts, non-converts and people who stopped being converts (if possible) from rural and urban contexts will be incorporated in this study. The results of this research aims to give a better understanding of rise of a religious movement totally new to the eastern part of the Russian North, particularly among Siberian indigenous peoples. This study will provide new insights into the field of anthropology of conversion, into the study of religious change, and into issues related to ethnicity and religion in a multicultural context.