eview of: Baidin V. V. Drevnerusskoe predkhristianstvo [Old Russian Prechristianity]. St.-Petersburg: Aleteyya, 2020. 352 p. ISBN 978-5-00165-070-6

Abstract

The concept of the specificity of Russian religiosity is a long-standing theme in scholarly research, which tends to look for echoes of archaic, pre-Christian beliefs in "folk Orthodoxy". The traditional approach is based on the claim that on Russian (and more widely, Slavonic) soil Christianity has absorbed some archaic elements, woven into the ritual form and reflected in the cultural symbolism and worldview of the people. The work of the Russian-born French cultural studies scholar and doctor of Slavic philology, Valeri Viktorovich Baidin, published by Aletheia in 2020, offers a fundamentally new reading of these issues.