Editor’s Introduction: New and Old Religious Movements: Christian and Judaic Diversity in Eurasia

Abstract

Official Russian Orthodoxy recently memorialized the centenary of the assassinations of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his Romanov family in Ekaterinburg, with Patriarch Kirill leading thousands of mourning Orthodox believers in a solemn icon-carrying procession for 21 kilometers. It was a well-publicized, vivid manifestation of how the official church has attempted to revitalize itself, even as competition from “usual suspect” Protestant Evangelicals and less familiar sources has flourished throughout Eurasia. This issue explores some of the more obscure yet fascinating dynamics of religious fermentation and competition, on the peripheries of Russian religious practice and in one of its cultural centers, St. Petersburg. In the post-Soviet period, from Transcarpathia in the mountains of Ukraine to Far Eastern Mongolia, and everywhere in between, new thirst for spirituality in diverse contexts has led to politically meaningful ritual reform as well as textual reinterpretations emerging out of the biblical traditions of Russian Orthodoxy and other Christianities. In some cases, this has resulted in new creative versions of Judaism, while in others it has linked with world trends vaguely termed “New Age” spirituality. Such processes are characterized under the rubric of “desecularization” by the talented researchers of Russia who study it. Our lead article is by Julia Andreeva, a field-based, deeply immersed researcher of a burgeoning new religious movement called “Anastasia” for its striking female prophet, or more conventionally called “Ringing Anthropology & Archeology of Eurasia, vol. 57, no. 2, 2018, pp. 83–87. © 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1061-1959 (print)/1558-092X (online) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10611959.2018.1506211