first time in decades, and a joyous yet tearful service was held in the Church
of the Annunciation in the Kremlin. Numerous scholarly conferences were
organized to commemorate the Millennium. Their published papers, includ-
ing some translated in this volume, gave a boost to the legitimacy of re-
search on religion, using both Marxist and non-Marxist perspectives. ⁸

The lead chapter here, by three St. Petersburg scholars, tackles the issue
of "Christianization" during the time of Vladimir by arguing that Vladimir
and his followers saw Orthodoxy through a pre-Christian, "pagan" prism.
Since conversion is rarely as definitive or abrupt as the word implies, the
narrative of I. Ia. Froianov, A. Iu. Dvornichenko, and Iu. V. Krivosheev is
plausible, albeit highly conjectural. The chapter provides glimpses into early
Slavic rituals, rationales, and reforms, gleaned from early Christian sources
that are themselves a mix of history and mythology. We see the pagan god
Perun literally dethroned, replaced with a miracle-making God perceived to
be nearly as utilitarian as Perun. ⁹

The second chapter expands traditional ideas about Christianization and
"dual faith" (dvoeverie) by focusing on the peasantry. The author, V. G.
Vlasov, argues that different social groups received and perceived Chris-
tianity in different ways, in various periods. The peasantry itself was not
monolithic, and was not thoroughly Christian for many centuries, despite an
Orthodox self-identity. Vlasov identifies consolidation of Christianity with
the first decades of the sixteenth century and the widespread adoption of the
church (Julian) calendar. Yet he maintains that popular "folk" Orthodoxy
remained quite different from official Orthodoxy.

The next chapter develops the idea of folk Orthodoxy still further. T. A.
Bernshtam rails against earlier academic conceptions of dvoeverie that de-
scribe it as a superficial, "formal" coexistence of two faiths--Christianity
and "paganism." Instead, she argues for the evolution of a "multifaith"
(mnogoverie) Russian culture, in which pagan-Christian syncretism was
both more profound and more varied than previously admitted. To illustrate
the significance of her thesis, Bernshtam delves into the complex history of
sectarianism, notably by reanalyzing the Old Believers' passionate fight
against the official Orthodoxy they saw as profane. ¹⁰

Two chapters on specific aspects of folk religion follow. N. N. Veletskaia
tackles the problem of deciphering pre-Christian beliefs. Her analysis is
more in the style of James Frazer than Karl Marx as she focuses on Old
Believer rituals that appear to be from sources deep in "pagan" antiquity.
She traces the important and highly controversial tradition of ritually
"dispatching" old people into the afterlife. Given that many peoples, both in
the North and in Indo-European tradition, had similar rituals but endowed
them with remarkably nuanced meanings, Veletskaia's theories on "genetic
roots" and her assumptions about "degeneration" of traditions may seem to
Western readers to be speculative and value-laden. But her descriptions are
worth reading because she identifies variations on the poignant theme of

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