Slavic Native Faith

• 1. Introduction

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  Slavic Native Faith, known to its practitioners as Rodnovery, carries a word at its heart that resists clean translation. The root rod means "indigenous", "ancestral", "native", but also "genus", "generation", "kin", and "birth". The root vera means "faith". Put them together and you get something the movement's scholars say cannot be translated without losing most of what it means. The most common slogan among Rodnovers is blunt: "We are the children of the gods, not the servants of God."

  Rodnovery is a modern Pagan religion that arose just before the collapse of the Soviet Union and spread rapidly through the mid-1990s and 2000s. Its practitioners look to the pre-Christian beliefs of the Slavic peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, but scholars of religion describe what they find as something more complex than a simple restoration. Historian Victor A. Schnirelmann put it plainly: Rodnovery was "built up artificially by urbanised intellectuals who use fragments of early pre-Christian local beliefs and rites in order to restore national spirituality".

  The religion has no overarching authority, no single accepted text, and no unified pantheon. Sociologist Kaarina Aitamurto has suggested it may be better understood not as a singular religion but as "an umbrella term that gathers together various forms of religiosity". Historian Marlene Laruelle has called it an "open-source religion" that "emphasises individual participation and doctrinal evolution".

  What pulls these questions together is the word Rodnovery itself. Given an entry in the second edition of the academic Historical Dictionary of the Russian Federation, published in 2019, it entered English scholarship just as the movement it names was drawing increasing academic attention. Who built this religion, and from what? What does it actually teach, and to whom does it appeal? What does its theology do with the old Slavic gods, and what does its politics do with the idea of ancestry?

• 2. An Invented Tradition

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  Textual evidence for the historical Slavic religion is scarce, and almost all of it comes from Christian writers who were hostile to what they described. This gap sits at the center of Rodnovery's ongoing identity crisis. Folklorist Mariya Lesiv put the outcome plainly: through a syncretic process drawing on multiple traditions, "a new religion is being created on the basis of the synthesis of elements from various traditions".

  Practitioners draw on primary sources about ancient Slavic religion but also on later Slavic folklore, popular Christian belief, and religious systems from outside Slavic culture entirely. Foreign influences include Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Germanic Heathenry, and Siberian shamanism, alongside ideas from various forms of esotericism. The Book of Veles, which claims to document authentic pre-Christian Slavic religion, is treated by many Rodnovers as a holy text; academics, however, recognise it as a later composition, a fact that has only added to its appeal within the movement.

  Scott Simpson observed, writing about Poland specifically, that unlike historical Slavic beliefs, which were woven into the everyday fabric of their society, modern Slavic Native Faith practitioners must build entirely new forms of social organisation that set them apart from the surrounding culture.

  Not all Rodnovers acknowledge the syncretic nature of the religion. Some maintain an explicitly anti-syncretic stance, insisting on the "purity" and "authenticity" of what they practice. Others are fully aware that reconstruction requires innovation, given how fragmented the historical record is. Polish Rodnover Maciej Czarnowski went further, actively endorsing the term "Neopaganism" because it distinguished his practices from those of the pre-Christian societies, which he considered hindered by superstition and unnecessary rituals such as animal sacrifice.

• 3. The Gods and the Cosmos

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  Helmold's Chronica Slavorum, compiled in 1168-1169, records the ancient Slavic conception of their deities as emanations of a supreme god: "obeying the duties assigned to them, the deities have sprung from his blood and enjoy distinction in proportion to their nearness to the god of the gods." Modern Rodnovers have built an elaborate theological superstructure on this foundation.

  The supreme principle is most commonly named Rod, also known as Sud ("Judge") and Prabog ("Pre-God", "First God") among South Slavs. The publication Izvednik, a compilation of the cosmological views of multiple Rodnover organisations, described the rest of the gods as "only his faces, noumena, incarnations, hypostases". Rod is also understood as "Time", scanned by the cycle of the Sun, and expressed in the turning of hours, days, months, seasons, and years. The negative form of the root, urod, means anything wretched, deformed, or "outside" the spiritual community of Rod.

  Rod expresses itself as Prav (literally "Right" or "Order") in primordial undeterminacy, through a dual dynamism represented by Belobog ("White God") and Chernobog ("Black God"). These forces of waxing and waning then give rise to the world in three qualities: Prav-Yav-Nav, meaning "right"-"manifested"-"unmanifested". This tripartite scheme has parallels in the Perun-Veles duality, where Perun represents martiality and Veles represents mystical philosophy.

  Russian volkhv Velimir (Nikolay Speransky) emphasises an eternal dualistic struggle between white gods and black gods. In his view, the black gods do not represent absolute evil; they become evil only when acting out of agreement with the older, stronger white gods. The Union of Slavic Native Faith Communities, founded by Vadim Kazakov, recognises a pantheon of over thirty deities emanated by Rod, including Slavicised Hindu deities such as Vyshen (Vishnu) and Intra (Indra), Iranian deities such as Simargl and Khors, and figures from Slavic folk tales such as the wizard Koschei.

• 4. Double Belief and Folk Roots

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  A. E. Musin, an academic and deacon of the Russian Orthodox Church, published an article in 1991 on what he called the "problem of double belief" in Russian spiritual history. The concept of double belief, or dvoeverie, holds that pre-Christian practices survived alongside Christianity through conscious preservation. Rodnovers use this argument to claim that folk culture provides a living bridge to ancient Slavic religion.

  The scholar of Russian folk religion Linda J. Ivanits reported ethnographic studies showing that in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia, entire villages maintained indigenous religious beliefs, whether in pure form or under the cover of a superficial Christianity. Russia, she argued, is exceptional compared to western Europe because it did not experience the intellectual upheavals of the Renaissance, the Reformation, or the other movements that severely weakened folk spirituality elsewhere.

  According to Adrian Ivakhiv, despite intense efforts by Christian authorities, the Christianisation of the Slavs was very slow and produced "a thorough synthesis of Pagan and Christian elements". Examples include the refashioning of gods as Christian saints: Perun became Saint Elias, Veles became Saint Blasius, and Yarilo became Saint George. Christian festivals were overlaid on Pagan ones.

  The movement of the Old Believers, a form of folk Orthodoxy combining Pagan, Gnostic and unofficial Orthodox currents, seceded from the Russian Orthodox Church by the mid-seventeenth century in what is known as the Raskol, or Schism. Rodnovers tend to view Old Believers more sympathetically than the mainstream Russian Orthodox Church, seeing them as preserving elements closer to the Slavic Native Faith. The oft-cited Russian dictum captures this attitude: "although Russia was baptised, it was never Christianised".

• 5. Symbols and Sacred Language

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  The most widely used religious symbol in Rodnovery is the kolovrat, meaning "spinning wheel", a variant of the swastika (Sanskrit: "wellbeing"). Boris Rybakov's studies traced whirl and wheel symbols, including the hexafoil and the "thunder wheel", as representations of the thunder god Perun or the supreme God Rod, expressing the power of birth and reproduction. These symbols were still being carved in folk traditions of the Russian North as recently as the nineteenth century.

  The contemporary design of the kolovrat as an eight-spoked wheel appeared in woodcuts produced in the 1920s by the Polish artist Stanislaw Jakubowski, under the name sloneczko, meaning "little sun". Laruelle reports that for Rodnovers the symbol signifies "accession to the upper world". Practitioners generally present their symbols in high-contrast colour combinations, most often red and black or red and yellow.

  The choice of words to describe the religion carries political weight. Rodnovers widely reject the Slavic term poganstvo (equivalent to "paganism"), finding it derogatory, and many prefer yazychnik, which derives from yazyk, meaning "tongue". The term is more accurately translated as "Gentile", meaning "pertaining to the kin", and carries fewer negative connotations. Czech Rodnover groups coined Jazycnictvi and Slovak Rodnovers coined Jazycnictvo from the same root.

  Demetria K. Green of the Johns Hopkins University argued that Rodnovery is strictly interwoven with the development of East Slavic languages, particularly Russian, which preserved embedded within its vocabulary ideas and terminology of ancient Slavic religion across the centuries, facilitating the modern revival.

• 6. Politics, Nationalism, Racism

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  Between 2008 and 2009, teenaged Rodnovers forming a group called the Slavic Separatists conducted at least ten murders and planted bombs across Moscow, targeting Muslims and non-ethnic Russians. This is an extreme edge of a movement whose political character Laruelle describes as fundamentally decentralised, ranging from pacifism to militarism, from anarchism to extreme right-wing nationalism.

  Kaarina Aitamurto identified three recurring themes in Russian Rodnover nationalism: that the Russian or Slavic people are a distinct group; that their heritage carries superior qualities; and that this heritage is now threatened and must be defended. Many groups admit only Slavs as members. Several currents espouse ideas akin to those of the French Nouvelle Droite, and many Russian Rodnovers have aligned themselves with Eurasianism.

  Antisemitic views are widespread within parts of the movement. Many Rodnovers present historical events as the product of conflict between "Aryans" and Jews. Valery Yemelyanov, identified as one of the founders of Russian neopaganism and author of the book Dezionization (written in the 1970s), described Jews as hybrids of criminals of different races. Vladimir Istarkhov and Konstantin Petrov went further, characterising Jews as "biorobots" created by ancient priests with a specific political goal.

  Not all Rodnovers embrace this ideology. The Russian Circle of Pagan Tradition characterises itself as "patriotic" rather than "nationalist", avoids ethnic nationalist ideas, and recognises Russia as a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural state. Aitamurto and Roman Shizhensky found that expressions of extreme nationalism were considered socially unacceptable at one of the largest Rodnover events in Russia, the Kupala festival outside Maloyaroslavets. Nevertheless, Schnirelmann noted that ethnic nationalist and racist views were present even among Rodnovers who did not identify with precise political ideologies.

• 7. Origins and Spread

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  Lev Sylenko, a Ukrainian emigree, established a mimeographed publication in Canada in 1964 titled Ridna Vira, meaning "Native Faith", in what scholars recognise as the earliest known use of this term. Sylenko's own movement, the Native Ukrainian National Faith (RUNVira, also called Sylenkoism), treated the religion as monotheistic and focused worship on a single god identified with Dazhbog, whom Sylenko characterised as "light, endlessness, gravitation, eternity, movement, action, the energy of unconscious and conscious being".

  From Ukraine, the terminology spread through other Slavic countries. In 1996 a Polish group, the Association of Native Faith (Zrzeszenie Rodzimej Wiary), adopted the non-compound form of the term. In 1997 the Russian Union of Slavic Native Belief Communities, led by Vadim Kazakov, followed. By 1999 the term Rodnoverie was being widely popularised in Russia by the volkhv Veleslav (Ilya G. Cherkasov). In 2002, six Russian Rodnover organisations issued the "Bittsa Appeal", in which they expressed the view that "Rodnovery" should be the foremost name of the religion.

  Precursors of the movement reach back further. Active religious practitioners devoted to establishing a Slavic Native Faith appeared in Poland and Ukraine during the 1930s and 1940s. The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin promoted research into ancient Slavic religion. After the Second World War and the establishment of communist states across the Eastern Bloc, new variants of Rodnovery were developed by Slavic emigrants living in Western countries, then introduced into Central and Eastern European countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

  Since 1992, the neopagan Kupchinsky Temple of Perun has been operating in St. Petersburg. In 1998, Alexander Belov's calendar designated July 23 as Gromovik, or Perun's Day. By the early 2000s, the term Rodnovery was widespread across Slavic countries, reflecting a degree of international solidarity despite the disagreements and power struggles that ran through the movement.