The article critically reviews a number of trends in the humanities, such as evolutionism and anti-evolutionism, structuralism and post-structuralism. It also delineates the author's methodological premises regarding present day research in the field of folklore and mythology. These premises are based on the assumption that all folklore traditions from around the world dispose of a limited set of composite elements of different levels, types and volume. Such elements, in turn, can be divided into subsets: semantic and morphological constants of verbal texts (including the plot-motif corpus and compositional-stylistic structures); the most common stereotypes of social practices; fixed ideas and images related to the “naïve” (mythological) picture of the world. Accordingly, all these traditions can be represented as a kind of topological space, a system of interconnected and grouped elements - whatever the reasons for their convergence and connection. Therefore it becomes possible to understand some “obscure” texts of folk culture (or their elements) by drawing on data borrowed from other traditions (including distant ones). Folklorists resort to such “semantic (~ typological) reconstructions” quite regularly. In some cases they are working not only with variants that partially preserve the hypothetical original form, but also with texts that are not genetically related to each other, but came into being as a result of the implementation of the same narrative model. In general, the universe of culture tends towards systematicness, both synchronically and diachronically. It is clearly governed by some kind of laws, although we have not yet been able to fully identify and describe them. However, we can hope that we are on the way to finding adequate analytical tools to do that.

The volume and value of information on the past that millions of published folkloric and mythological texts contain are comparable with the data provided by other historical disciplines. The source of this information is not the narratives’ content but the data on the area spread of ca. 3000 motifs that are selected at the moment. Analysis of these data is outside of the research interests of folklore studies sensu stricto, and the corresponding historic discipline has not yet acquired a recognized designation. The historic process depends on the development of ideas and on routes of information exchange between groups of people. Statistical processing of tens of thousands of narrative episodes and mythopoeic concepts helps to reveal interaction spheres that existed in different epochs and only partly overlapped with the spread of language families, empires and religions. Applying factor analysis, three models of transcontinental information exchange in Eurasia (with North Africa) are described. The first one is West vs. East, with the Caucasus and the Trans Caspian region being similar to Europe (cosmological and etiological motifs computed; the Roman time and earlier). The second model selects North vs. South (tales of magic and animal tales; Eastern Europe is similar to Siberia, transmission of stories also through literary texts in the South, A. D. 500-900 as terminus ante quem). The third model divides Eurasia along the line between the Christian and the Islamic plus the Great Steppe interaction spheres; tales of magic, realistic tales, anecdotes; the Caucasus is similar to Mongolia and the Near East; such a division fits best the cultural situation at ca. A. D. 1500.

The paper deals with theories of folklore presented in the works of Kirill Chistov and Boris Putilov, two eminent Russian folklorists of the late 20th century. In the 1980-90s, the study of folklore underwent a global crisis related to theoretical reflection and cultural criticism. The conceptual marginalization of the discipline, which occupied an intermediate position in relation to literary studies, anthropology and art history, made its methodology mainly empirical and generally ‘backward’ in comparison with other social sciences and humanities. The ‘substantialistic’ view of folklore as an autonomous and self-sufficient ‘superorganic’ system with its own laws, structure of genres, etc. was a significant obstacle to the evolution of folkloristic theory and methodology. Critical approaches to this ‘substantialism’ developed differently in various countries. In the late USSR and post-Soviet Russia, these developments were complicated not only by political and ideological prescriptions but also by the conceptual language of the social sciences in the late Soviet period. Chistov and Putilov, who tried to reconcile dogmatic substantialism with more up-to-date critical debates, faced in this context a number of deep methodological problems. At the same time, their theoretical works written in the 1970-90s contributed in many ways to the growth of methodological reflections in Russian folkloristics. The paper focuses on both their original theoretical findings and readings of Western research works on folklore.

The article considers theoretical and applied aspects of the development of Soviet ethnography and expertise on the “national question” in the USSR in the 1980s. The author observes that during Perestroika a number of ethnographers grew dissatisfied with the opportunism of expertise on the national question. M. V. Kryukov was the scholar who brought new momentum to discussions of the theory of ethnos in the 1980s. He was skeptical about the Marxist classification of ethnic groups (tribe - nationality - nation) and called for a revision of the theory of ethnos on the basis of the study of ethnic identity (self-consciousness). Approximately during the same period the theory of ethnos was attacked through a report to M. S. Gorbachev by a specialist in the theory of nation, M. I. Kulichenko, who called for abandoning the term ethnos. The politics of Glasnost led to the first uncensored debates on the state of interethnic relations among ethnographers and “national question” experts. Ethnographers were aware of the sorry state of these relations and suggested a slow dismantling of the system of “national republics”. They advocated a reform, which included equalizing the status of all ethnic territorial units, creation of cultural ethnic associations, and contemplated a transition to a regional administrative system as a mechanism for “depolitisation” of ethnicity. This approach was taken by both the theorist of ethnos Iu. V. Bromlei and his successor in the office of the director of the Institute of Ethnography, V. A. Tishkov, who adhered to the constructivist theory of ethnicity. This shows that the theory of ethnos in Bromlei’s version was not inherently nationalistic in its political application.

‘Myth as language' and ‘culture as text' metaphors were productive in the humanities for interpretation of mythological and religious traditions since the middle of the 20th century. In this milieu some attempts to apply basic assumptions of structuralism to the monuments of Egyptian religion and literature were undertaken by scholars in the 1960s and 1970s. However, they did not have a lasting effect, and structuralism was mostly rejected by Egyptology. This essay highlights the fact that the initiative of structural analysis emerged in Egyptology in marginal zones. Some of its proponents had a background in religious studies, some were graduates of universities with a strong structuralist tradition such as the University of Geneva and Charles University in Prague. We would say that structuralism was not accepted by mainstream or ‘normal' Egyptology where philological and anthropological approaches traditionally hold strong positions. Meanwhile, without a linguistic turn no textual turn occurred in Egyptology as well. Language and text did not become productive metaphors which could project a new interpretative framework for description and comparison not only of verbal but of visual and actional messages. However, this approach still can produce valuable results in the analysis of Egyptian mortuary literature, which was born in the interplay between myth and ritual and was highly sensitive to its architectural and decorative context.

This article is devoted to rethinking the legacy of Clifford Geertz in the modern context and to the possibility of applying his approaches to the study of Islam and Muslims in Russia. We considered the basic principles of his methodology, based on the concepts of ‘thick description' and interpretation of cultures. Then we identified the main areas of criticism of Geertz's approaches among anthropologists, sociologists and specialists on Islam. From the 1980s, specialists in a wide range of fields of knowledge drew attention to the gap with the orientalist textual research tradition, the weak explanatory potential of ‘thick description', as well as total disregard for the political context, which ultimately led to an incorrect or at least limited interpretation of results obtained in the field. A trigger for revising this methodology in Russia was the publication of Interpretation of Cultures in 2004, and in the West - the death of Сlifford Geertz in 2006. Today, the interdisciplinarity and maximum adaptability of his approaches are of particular importance, including for Muslim studies in Russia. Applying ‘thick description' and interpretation of cultures will make it possible to overcome the current trend toward the securitization of Islam and thereby to expand the research agenda for studying the various practices of Muslim communities in Russia.

The article deals with the problem of genre classification of oral reliable prose in connection with the change in theoretical attitudes in modern folklore studies. The new anthropological paradigm has led to an expansion of the subject field of folklore, so that the methods of this science began to be used to study not only traditional folklore genres, but also speech genres of everyday communication of tradition carriers (autobiographical narratives, descriptions of ritual practices, motivation of ritual actions, etc.), in fact, all verbal forms of tradition. At the same time, the texts are described through the use of a scientific terminology that was formed within the framework of the previous theoretical paradigm, one involving a different idea of the folklore text and of the boundaries of the concept of “folklore” and that was aimed at a different type texts. This leads to contradictions and overlaps, as may be is observed, in particular, in the terminology related to oral prose with modality of reliability. To solve the problem of consistent classification, it is proposed to use the parameter of the communicative situation - canonical (as in colloquial speech) and non-canonical - as a criterion for differentiating texts, and further genre division and description should be carried out within each group.

This article discusses the transfer of the Victorian euhemeristic theory of fairies as the memory of the indigenous population of the British Isles (called by its main protagonist, David MacRitchie the “fairy euhemerism”) to the Pagan Witchcraft religion Wicca. The sources in use are the writings of the most influential Wicca authors in Great Britain and the USA. ‘Fairy euhemerism’ was adopted from the books of Margaret Murray, but many Wiccan authors also used Victorian folklore books for the vindication of euhemeristic theory, since Romanticism that characterizes nineteenth-century science was very dear to them. For Wiccan authors, unconscious of the paradigm shift, the nineteenth century sources still look like valuable sources to which they could refer. British Wicca authors were following contemporary folklore studies in their ideas of fairies as the aborigines of the British Isles, but in the writings of American Wiccans this Victorian conception evolved: it ceased to be a purely scientific construct and became a part of a collective identity. Today’s Wiccans have stopped using this euhemeristic interpretation mostly because of criticism of Murray’s ideas and the loss of her scientific authority, but this negligence can be also explained using Tanya Luhrmann’s framework. She showed that continued participation in Wiccan activities and exposure to narratives and interpretations that emphasized magical explanations pushed practitioners to interpret more of their own experiences as magically caused. In such a paradigm of irrationality the very rational Victorian idea couldn’t last long. Still, it can be seen in initiation rituals of the “Feri tradition” as the symbolic pedigree from the “wee folk”.

While socio-cultural anthropology has always tended to move beyond its own boundaries, one can observe that this paper is prone to increasingly noticeable reevaluation of the place and role of “ethno-” in the methodology of non-human social research, particularly in the context of technics and infrastructure. The core concept is the “collective assemblage of enunciation” proposed by the French psychoanalyst F. Guattari in his late works: it may serve as a theoretical alternative to non-human subjectivity commonly synonymous to agency. Foremost, this schizoanalytic framework provokes the question of how subjectivity produces and thus highlights the non-representational affects of mutual interaction “human - machine”. Since the conventional ethnographic method seems to reduce the bio-industrial (between subject and technological regime) communication to constructionist representations whereas the anthropological paradigm of the ontological turn shifts the research focus to overcoming the modern/non-modern dichotomy, I refer to implications from cultural geography - namely, technography. Thinking not only about, but also with the machine (post-Soviet electric multiple unit or elektrichka, in my case) contributes to grasping the affective relationships between human and non-human entities in bio-industrial ontological space. The paper is based on technographical data collected during the field trip from Tyumen to Archangelsk on suburban trains which I undertook during July - August 2019.

The article analyzes the pastoral imagery in the first text on priesthood of the Christian tradition - Apology for His Flight by Gregory of Nazianzus. A philological analysis of a number of key fragments of this text is carried out. Consideration of or. 2.9. shows that St. Gregory combines allusions to both Plato’s The Republic and a number of poetic texts (Homer, Callimachus, Theocritus). Contextual reading allows us to offer a new interpretation of this paragraph compared to previous studies. It is shown that the author thinks of the position of the priest as one in a series of authorities. Subsequent analysis confirms the initial intuition. In or. 2.3-4 the reader sees that Gregory considers power in the Church in terms of a general ethical worldview, partly Christianized, of course. At the same time, analysis of rare word usage in or. 2.34 shows that the author, remaining within this framework, describes the priest as a new social role that combines elements already existing in the culture with Christian paradigms. Gregory also describes the historical continuity of this role with all the rulers of the Old and New Israel. Thus, the priest as a pastor becomes one with the generals, prophets, teachers, etc. - that is, all those who had a powerful position in society due to their involvement in the history of the salvation of humankind. The final paragraphs of the Apology, in which we find 12 occurrences of the word ποιμήν and its derivatives, show that one of the main goals of this text was to form the image of the priest as a shepherd. The combination of all the studied fragments and contexts shows that with the help of this image the author describes priesthood as one of authority, the unique position of which is set by its soteriological perspective.

Early Sufi saints are highly revered in Yezidism. Yezidi sacred hymns (qawls) and oral traditions, which are an important source for understanding the Yezidi religion, are dedicated to them: first and foremost, al-Ḥallāj, Rābi‘a and Dhu ‘l-Nūn al-Miṣrī. In the article we publish and analyze the Yezidi sacred hymn, “Qawlē Danūnē Misrī”, in Kurmanji, with an accompanying translation into Russian. This is the first publication of the full version of this qawl, with translation into another language (in this case - Russian) and commentary. Danūnē Misrī is the Yazidi version of the name of the famous Sufi saint Dhu‘l-Nūn al-Miṣrī. In the oral tradition of the Yezidis, the vesting of Dhu‘l-Nūn in the robe of the main Yezidi saint Sheikh ‘Adī, that is, his entry into Yezidism, is achieved through his refusal of love for the girl Khazal, who appears in the qawl as a righteous woman. The article demonstrates the Sufi aspects of the mystical love for God in the Yezidi religion. Despite the fact that the religious worldview of the Yezidis was formed gradually, largely taking into account historical circumstances in the conditions of mutual enmity with Muslims and distancing from them, the qawl presented here reveals elements that confirm the assumption that in the early period Yezidism was hardly distinguishable from Sufism.

Epistolary sources are among the most important texts for research in the field of Soviet history. They provide insights into individual and mass moods of religious believers. Letters to the authorities during the rule of Nikita Khrushchev are particularly important for understanding attitudes in this sphere. They reflect the situation of vernacular religiosity in the Soviet Union and are conditioned by the state’s religious policy during this period. The object of this study is a letter written at the beginning of 1954 in the Kama region (West Ural). The letter discusses the closing of an Orthodox church as a result of construction of a hydroelectric power plant. This text is very interesting for its combination of mythological, religious and secular (Soviet) features of believer’s consciousness. The goal of the article is to specify the social and individual factors that have played the lead role in the construction of Soviet and post-Soviet religious space. The research field of this paper includes both discursive strategies which took place in Soviet society and the portrait of the letter’s author which can be reconstructed trough analysis of the text. The article contains an archaeographic description of the text of the letter which allows us to clarity and restore the circumstances of its writing and the appearance of the author. The Soviet believer appears as a bearer of traditions, ready to defend them even in the face of a possible deterioration in personal life. This research case illustrates clearly the traumatic experience of the Soviet believer which was caused by the destruction of usual lifestyle. A new religiosity was transformed by ideological language but continued to exist as a base for personal and group identity and to determine the principles of adaptation to the regime and the social system.

The article offers a critical study of the concept of “secular martyrdom”, sporadically used today in academic research, philosophy, and journalism. Its purpose is (1) to understand what it means in the current usage and (2) whether or to what extent it is legitimate (3) to propose an original judgment on the existence, boundaries, and scope of this phenomenon. Concerning the first issue, the author scrutinizes the concept of a martyr’s “cause” (for which he or she allegedly suffered and died), observes its Christian theological roots, and proves that the identification of a certain “cause” and its subsequent labeling as “secular” is not an etic, but an emic position, which undermines the credibility of the research. To answer the second of these questions, the author proposes to distinguish two components in each case of martyrdom: its cause as understood “from within”, from the position of a martyr and their venerators, and its arrangement, the language of martyrdom. On the basis of an analysis of four cases labeled as “secular martyrdom” - E. Davison, J.-P. Marat, A. Lincoln, J. Brown - the author concludes that their religious component is too strong to consider their martyrdom secular. Finally, the author considers the ideology of revolutionaries in 19th century Russia and 20th century USSR and China, as supposed examples of “real” secular martyrdoms. He concludes that the secularization of martyrdom is achieved through the abolishment of the religious arrangement given a conditionally secular cause.

The article continues the authors' cycle of studies on the vocabulary of Russian imprecations. It is aimed at studying the linguistic and pragmatic features of imprecations that mention the names of evil spirits. Demonyms are the standard actors of imprecations, and imprecations in which appear are the archetype of an imprecation, as they appeal to the exemplary embodiment of the idea of evil. Despite this, imprecations with demonyms are not the most frequent, and the number of euphemistic substitutions in these texts is especially high. This is due to the fact that the author of an imprecation which mentions an evil spirit violates two taboos at once - he verbalizes a slander and calls the enemy of the human race by name: both of these actions are dangerous and obscene. To soften the perlocative effect of the speech act, a euphemism is used. The authors analyze the mechanisms of encryption of demonymy (for instance, the choice of such names of demons that appear to the speaker “softer” than their main names - leman instead of leshii ‘wood-goblin'; pronominal designations of the chert ‘devil' or the leshii ‘wood-goblin', etc.). The authors also provide a comparative analysis of the functioning of demonyms in the narrative and in the dialog modes of communication. For example, the dialog mode requires word-forming expression of demonyms, and vice versa, demonyms that have cajoling forms are less likely to get into expletive formulas; practically there are no such demonyms in imprecations that are formed from proper names (cf. uncle Misha ‘devil', Sysoy ‘wood-goblin'). The reasons for differences in such functioning are determined. The authors also study the non-synonymous meta-language verbs that name the act of imprecation (chertykhat'sia, leshakat'sia with their dialect and colloquial variants and derivatives, besykat', satanit', as well as verbs like kliast', proklinat').

We publish the transcript (with minor cuts) of materials from a roundtable held within the framework of the international conference “‘Big Theories' and ‘New Turns': Trajectories of Folklore Studies and Anthropology at the End of the 20th - Early 21st Century” (Moscow, December 2019). Anthropologists A. A. Panchenko (Institute of Russian Literature [Pushkinsky House] of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg / European University at St. Petersburg), Zh. V. Kormina (National Research University Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg), D. A. Oparin (Lomonosov Moscow State University), S. S. Alymov (Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow), and O. B. Khristoforova (Russian State University for the Humanities / The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Moscow) took part in a discussion concerning the use of basic concepts of anthropology and folklore studies in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Review of: Smolkin, V. (2021). Sviato mesto pusto ne byvaet: Istoriia sovetskogo ateizma [Trans from Smolkin, V. (2018). A sacred place is never empty: A history of Soviet atheism. Princeton Univ. Press] (O. B. Leont’eva, Trans., & M. Iu. Smirnov, Ed.). Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. (Studia religiosa). 552 p. (In Russian).

A review of: Downing, L. (2019). Selfish women. Routledge. 156 p.

The review presents the materials of the International Conference “‘Big Theories’ and ‘New Turns’: Trajectories of Folklore Studies and Anthropology at the End of the 20th - Early 21st Century”, held on December 13-14, 2020 in Moscow.