The formation of the concept of «religion» in Russia: between the normative and the deviant

Author(s):  I.Y. Vikulov, Vladimir State University named after Alexander and Nikolay Stoletov, Vladimir , Russia, ivan.vikulov@gmail.com

Issue:  Volume 43, № 4

Rubric:  Religion Studies and Sociology of Culture

Annotation:  The article is devoted to the stages of formation of the concept of «religion «in the history of Russia in the context of distinction on a scale consisting of three basic social and identification characteristics «normative –marginal – deviant». The semantic content of the concept of «religion» was largely determined by thecircumstances of the socio-political order, as well as the policy pursued by the authorities in relation to religion and, as a consequence, the models of normativity that dominated in the Russian society at one time or another period of its development. It is possible to describe this process in the form of four successive stages. The first of them falls on the beginning of the XVIII century, when the term «religion» begins to be used in some texts of domestic Russian authors. At this time the concept is interpreted as the designation of foreign varieties of legitimate Christian denominations, which differ from the normative Orthodoxy, or the «ancestral faith» and from deviant «schisms», «superstitions», «atheism» etc. In the XIX century and until the beginning of the XX century the term «religion» is fixed in dictionaries and begins to be perceived as the Russian word reflecting to «normative» or acceptable «piety», the natural «law of morality». The antitheses for this were «paganism», the so-called «savage beliefs « and atheism. The third stage is connected with the establishment of Soviet regime and with a radical change in the interpretation of the concept of «religion» that is now understood as a «marginal» or «deviant» socio-psychological phenomenon, opposed to «conscious», «scientific» and «progressive», which status was largely determined by the correspondence of the official Soviet ideology. Finally, in the years of Perestroika and in the post-Soviet period, the content of the word «religion» reflects to the variety of mutually concuring forms of belonging to the «true», «eternal», «wonderful» as opposed to the «secular», «scientific», «material».

Keywords:  religion, religiosity, confession, normative, marginal, deviant, identification characteristics

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