“I Came not to Bring Peace, but a Sword”: The Politics of Religion after Socialism and the Precariousness of Religious Life in the Russian Arctic

• Main Author: VAGRAMENKO, Tatiana
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Russian; English
• Published: Eastern European Institute of Theology (EEIT) 2018
• Subjects: Evangelical mission; The Russian Arctic; Indigenous peoples of Siberia and the North; Post-Soviet politics of religion; Inter-confessional relations; Religious conflicts; Baptism; Pentecostalism; Евангельское миссионерство; Российская Артика; Коренные народы Сибири и Севера; Постсоветская религиозная политика; Межконфессиональные отношения; Религиозные конфликты; Баптизм; Пятидесятничество; Arctic; Yamal Peninsula; ural mountains; Арктика; Siberia
• Online Access: http://reflections.eeit-edu.info/article/view/126841; https://doi.org/10.29357/issn.2521-179X.2018.20.7

In the post-Soviet period, new opportunities have been created for cross-cultural interaction revealing a global religious marketplace. The Russian Arctic seemed to have become an attractive land for international Protestant missionary activities. Since the mid-1990s, scholars began to register the growing influence of evangelical movements among the indigenous population of Siberia and the Far North. Based on a case study of religious communities in the Polar Ural Mountains and the Yamal peninsula, the article addresses the transformation of postsocialist religious landscape into a “battlefield” of different missionary principles and strategies. The picture was also amplified with the persistence of Soviet atheistic discourse on “destructive foreign religious sects” and local authorities’ policy of putting pressure upon and intimidating Protestant religious associations. The endurance of Soviet anti-religious ideology and the issue of “destructive sects” dominated local public discourse and influenced the ways in which the local authorities reacted to recent religious rearrangements. This article explores the background of the emerging diverse and competitive religiosity in the Arctic and across post-Soviet Russia and describes the main tensions that determined religious activity in the Russian Arctic. В постсоветский период появились новые возможности для межкультурного взаимодействия, открывшие в том числе и мировой религиозный рынок. Российская Арктика стала привлекательным полем для международной протестантской миссионерской деятельности. Особенно заметным стало возрастающее влияние евангельских миссионерских движений среди коренного населения Сибири. На примере религиозных общин Полярного Урала и Ямала, в данной статье пойдет речь о том, как перестраивался религиозный ландшафт Сибири и Севера после социализма, превращаясь в “зону конфликта” различных миссионерских принципов и стратегий. При этом, устойчивость советской анти-сектантской идеологии и бинарное противопоставление “традиционных” и ...