Allah, Tengri, Science, or Something Else?: Alternative Spirituality, Religion, and Nation-building in Perestroika and the Post-Soviet Era

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel explores the role of alternative spirituality in the religious and national movements of perestroika and the post-Soviet era. Religious and spiritual revival, esoterica, New Age spirituality, and paranormal ideas were quintessential elements of late socialist and post-socialist culture. Recent scholarship examines the origins of these phenomena in the Soviet Union and their significance for understanding Soviet ideology and science institutions, the culture of late socialism, and the nature of Soviet collapse, often with a focus on Russia. These three papers examine the phenomenon elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, emphasizing its role in religious and national revivals from the 1980s-2010s. The first paper examines the role of Tengrism and alternative spirituality in print media during Kazakh nation-building. The second paper traces the transition from a unified “Soviet New Age” that persisted past Soviet collapse into distinct national spiritual cultures informed by national and post-imperial politics. Finally, the third paper analyzes the embrace and incorporation of esoteric and New Age ideas by Muslim thinkers in post-Soviet Tatarstan. Together, these papers illustrate the changing religious-cultural landscape under the loosening group of Soviet atheism and into newly independent states and institutions.

Sub Unit

• History: Since 1990

Chair

• Anna Bisikalo, Harvard U

Papers

• The Myth of Tengri in the Imagination of Perestroika - Abigail Frances Scripka, ZZF Potsdam (Germany) / Central European U Vienna (Austria)

• The National Turn in the Soviet New Age, 1989-2000 - Emma Carol Friedlander, Harvard U

• Neopaganism in Tatarstan: A Path to Islam? - Agnes Neylufer Kefeli, Arizona State U

Discussant

• Joseph Kellner, U of Georgia