On The Good Faith PDF
On The Good Faith PDF
On The Good Faith PDF
Anna Tessmann
Anna Tessmann
Södertörns högskola
SE-141 89 Huddinge
[email protected]
www.sh.se/publications
On the Good Faith
Anna Tessmann
www.sh.se/publications
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................... ix
Av Avestan
AShA Avestan School of Astrology
Mp Middle Persian
Np New Persian, Farsi
NRM New religious movement
Oldp Old Persian
ROC Russian Orthodox Church
RuNet Russian-language Internet
Vd Vidēvdād
Y Yasna
Yt Yasht
Note: for abbreviated and latinized titles of electronic news papers used in this
thesis see the list of selected materials to Chapter 4 in the Appendix.
vii
Acknowledgements
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
Parts of my thesis were regularly presented and discussed within the cycle of
the religionsvetenskap research seminar at Södertörns Högskola. The active
participation and comments of the doctoral co-students and colleagues there
during the writing process helped me to consider my work from other
perspectives. I am very grateful to all of you: Aysha Özkan, Susanne Olsson,
Simon Sorgenfrei, Hans-Geir Aasmundsen, Göran Ståhle, Willy Pfändtner,
Staffan Nilsson, Ann Af Burén, Anne Ross Solberg, Ingela Visuri, and also my
opponents at these seminars, Olle Sundström (Umeå University), Jenny
Berglund and, finally, the highly committed Jessica Moberg who thoroughly
commented on chapter drafts although she has been busy with her own Ph.D.
research and teaching. I am happy to have met Pieter Holtrop, Gunilla Gunner,
and Björn Skogar who always showed their sympathy to me and were
indispensable in creating a superb atmosphere at the department. I would also
like to thank a few students of the study of religions who have participated in our
research seminars and have given their feedback.
I must also list the names of my good friends and colleagues, each of whom
immediately took part in expressing their opinions towards my work by
improving its content, proofreading its form, and sharing their knowledge with
me: Vytautas Petronis (Marburg), Sabira Ståhlberg (Helsinki/Varna), Khanna
Omarkhali (Göttingen), Iulia Gradskova (Stockholm), Ekaterina Shirovatova
(Mannheim), Jurate Stanaityte (Stockholm), Tayebe Rafii-Sa’adi, Elvira Bijedic,
and Antje Constantinescu (all Heidelberg). I am also grateful to Iulia and her
family for their hospitality and kindness throughout the years. Harold Morris,
Clark Woodward, and Marat Bird were helpful with the correction and translation
of some passages at different stages of the text. I must also mention Renata von
Maydell and Mikhail Bezrodnyĭ (both from Heidelberg University)—two inspired
scholars who helped me with their sound advice and mindful considerations at
the end of my research.
It was exciting to learn that in Russia there are young colleagues who are also
studying Zoroastrianism concurrently with me. Our mutual work interests and
interchanges of ideas and sources made my research more complete. I am deeply
indebted to Igor’ Krupnik (Lomonosov University Moscow) who is an excellent
discussion partner and friend in both the virtual and real world who is always
willing to help with Zoroastrian literature and Iulia Kuznetsova (Perm) whose
passionate relationship to Zoroastrian studies is admirable. I am also grateful to
Valentin Shkoda (St. Petersburg) who was very kind to give me an interview and
share some books. Additionally, I am grateful to my old friends and former
fellow students at St. Petersburg State University in the study of religions who
have assisted me in a panoply of matters regarding this research: Tat’iana
Shchipkova (Moscow), Aleksandr Zel’nitskiĭ, and Ol’ga Mikhel’son (both St.
x
Petersburg). Also, special thanks to Tania Mikhel’son whom I sincerely thank
for her cordiality, helpfulness, and love.
Dace Lagerborg from Södertörn University was an extraordinary professional
librarian who cared for the printed materials used in my study that were not easy
to acquire. I am impressed by her brightness, positivity, and openness to all
cultures and languages and I thoroughly enjoyed our discussions. At BEEGS I
would like to express my gratitude to Nina Cajhamre, Ewa Rogström, Karin
Lindebrandt, Lena Andersson, and Lena Arvidson. They were always on my side
and helped immensely with the organization of my study and financial matters. I
have also retained good memories of the BEEGS introductory course lead by
Irina Sandomirskaia and Thomas Lundén, which showcased valuable insights
into the range of studies and implied theories in the Baltic and East European
region that became a good starting point for me.
My special thanks go to Russian Zoroastrians Konstantin Starostin (St.
Petersburg), Oleg Lushnikov (Perm), Galina Sokolova (St. Petersburg), Dmitriĭ
Amosov (now Moscow), Michail Chistiakov (St. Petersburg), Ivan Titkov
(Moscow), and many others who shared their knowledge and primary materials
with me and were responsive, attentive, and pleasant interlocutors in both online
and offline communications. I am also indebted to journalist and producer
Varvara Kal’pidi for permission to use some materials from the film The Secrets
of Perm: On the Search of Zarathushtra (2005).
For their inherent creativity and ideas in painting and graphics that
inspired the design of this thesis I say my thanks to Marina Volkova, Martin
Schulte, Ali Yadegar-Youssefi, Boian Soloviov, Odysseĭ Tessmann, Arthur
Soloviov, and Ali Madjfar (for using one of his photographs). Jonathan Robson
(Södertörn University) was very helpful and did a great job for the layout and
the final touches of the cover as it is.
The formal and linguistic side of the thesis has benefited from Kyle Miller’s
corrections and wise refinements of the original text that were crystallized
during his accurate and prompt work. I am very grateful to Kyle’s valuable
suggestions, his friendly style, and his readiness to help every time I needed his
assistance (a very rare virtue at all times). He also provided unexpected insights
into religion and the lives of ethnic minorities in America.
My sincere thanks go to my parents Ida and Anatol, my sister Ada, and my
family, especially Valeria Rupp, for their abundant love that kept me strong
during these studies across different countries and over the course of many
years. Boian Soloviov earns great respect and the most cheerful spasiBo on my
part for his open mind, multi-tasking, and reliability during this time.
The research for my study was financially supported by the Baltic Foundation
and the Baltic East European Graduate School which provided necessary resources
xi
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
and made possible the collecting of a greater part of printed material. They also
were indispensable for financical maintenance of my field work in Russia.
Anna Tessmann
xii
Chapter 1: Introduction
There has been for some years a Zoroastrian community (община) in St.
Petersburg. In 1994, it was officially registered and at the moment is the only
organisation confessing Zarathushtra’s religion in St. Petersburg. The founder
and leader (настоятель) of the community is a hereditary mobad, P.P. Globa.
The community has been conducting regular religious activity, has studied
1
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
and spread Mazda’s religion. We would like to hear from [other] fellow
believers (единоверцы) around the world (Post 1997:24).
Indeed, this email received some feedback from foreign Zoroastrians. Two
replies translated from English into Russian were documented one year later on
the pages of the Russian Zoroastrian magazine Mitra published by the St.
Petersburg community. A Parsi Zoroastrian from California, apart from giving
instruction in theology and rituals, gave his short biography:
The second email came from Stockholm. Similarly to the Parsi American, a
Swedish Zoroastrian wished to be more informed about the activities and
doctrinal concepts of Russian Zoroastrians. Both messages sounded friendly; the
first ended with an expression referring to Ahura Mazdā’s blessings and the
second with a neo-Zoroastrian farewell “ushta (te).” Both generally implied that
St. Petersburg Zoroastrians can count on new friends in faith from abroad.
Moreover, the messages also articulated firstly, that contemporary
Zoroastrianism had adherents scattered throughout Western countries and,
secondly, that the religion was practiced by some living in the diaspora who
regarded themselves as traditional Zoroastrians as well as by others who were
depicted slightly pejoratively as “converts” and “proselytes.” There was a third
aspect that said rather more about the character of the St. Petersburg community
itself and might determine possible interrelations with the outside, namely: they
had their own Zoroastrian lineage of religious authority, “the hereditary mobad
P.P.Globa.” Obviously, this positive feedback from abroad was deliberately
selected by Mitra’s editorial board. Any voices of Zoroastrians from India or
Iran, from the so-called “traditional” centers of this ancient, well-known, and
still living religion, were not quoted here. Did the Russian Zoroastrians not
receive any replies from them? Were Indian and Iranian Zoroastrians ignorant?
If they were not, would the Parsi and Iranian dastūrs and mōbeds (i.e. priests) be
sympathetic towards a foreign, recently founded Zoroastrian group and accept
“non-ethnic” believers, i.e. those not “born into the Zoroastrian religion”? Or,
put differently, perhaps it was the St. Petersburg Zoroastrians themselves who
were not necessarily interested in recognition by foreign Zoroastrian religious
authorities, since they had their own accepted leader? Even if such hypothetical
questions cannot give us any simple answers, they clearly show the complexity of
2
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
3
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
4
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
5
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
groups which continue to be loosely connected with their parental (Iranian and
Indian) communities.
According to John Hinnells (b. 1941) the modern Zoroastrian diaspora
comprises groups that came into being through two main phases of migration
that occurred in the mid-19th century and then almost a century later:
The first, which might be termed the older Zoroastrian diaspora, was to China,
Sind, East Africa, and Britain; the second was to Britain again (in the 1960s) and
to the New World of Canada, USA and Australia. The second phase involved
more ‘sending countries’, Pakistan, East Africa and Iran, whereas the first had
been just from India. There have been two groups of ‘twice migrants’, people
from Pakistan and East Africa—indeed, if one includes the migration to India one
can speak of some Parsis from Bombay as ‘thrice migrants’ (Hinnells 2005:699).
However, Hinnells himself admits that this division remains a conventional one
because there were multiple further migrations to other Western countries by
some Zoroastrian individuals (Hinnells 2005:699). The role of the Zoroastrian
diasporas for “the development of the community and the religion in the old
country,” namely India, was crucial (Hinnells 2005:1). Michael Stausberg (b.
1966), in an earlier published counterpart to Hinnells’s work that even contains
information on some regions neglected by Hinnells, has analyzed in detail how
practicing Zoroastrianism beyond its earlier settlements has led to the
transformation of certain Zoroastrian theological and ritual elements and also
added others (Stausberg 2002:5f). Both authors point to structural differences
within the two major “traditional” Zoroastrian areas: the urban and rural
environments have produced different “forms of religion or religiosity”
(Stausberg 2002:10). Moreover, there are some further differences between
Zoroastrian groups within each country of the Zoroastrian diaspora (Hinnells
2005:715). Russia has never been a target country for Parsi and Iranian
Zoroastrians. Logically, this also led to the fact that this theme was not studied.
More recently, the migration of Parsi and Iranian Zoroastrians to post-Soviet
areas was demographically less significant than to Western countries. As a result
there are no known ethnic communities that have retained their religion, except
for the few migrations of certain Parsi individuals to cities in the former Soviet
Union, e.g. to Moscow or Kiev.
Given these migration processes from Central and South Asia to Western
countries, accompanied by the demographic decline of traditional communities
in India and Iran, some new reinterpretations of the Zoroastrianism began to
appear. Despite the fact that Zoroastrianism remained in many diasporic
contexts an ethnic community, the growth of interest in that religion among
Iranian refugees and some West Europeans and Americans with diverse
6
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1
Apart from some brief references to the interest in Zoroastrianism and the building of
Zoroastrian groups in this region (Rafiy 1999, Boyce 2003, Stausberg 2002, Hinnells 2005,
Tessmann 2005, Steblin-Kamenskiĭ 2009) there are still no academic studies which would
shed light upon them. The only sources of information are occasional articles in the
Zoroastrian diaspora’s periodicals such as the WZO magazine Hamazor (approx. 1982–), the
journal of Zoroastrian Associations of North America FEZANA (1988–), the oldest liberal
Parsi magazine Parsiana (1964–) or the reports of Parsi lady Dr Meher Master-Moos on the
website of the Zoroastrian College. See for instance, <http://mazorcol.org/> (accessed 20
October 2011).
2
However, most translations into Uzbek, Tajik, and Azerbaijan were made from Persian
(Farsi) translations and not from Avestan original texts.
7
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
3
According to Colin Campbell (2002:23), the cultic milieu is “the sum of unorthodox and
deviant belief systems together with their practices, institutions, and personnel and constitutes
a unity by virtue of a common consciousness of deviant status, a receptive and syncretistic
orientation, and an interpretative communication structure. In addition, the cultic milieu is
united and identified by the existence of an ideology of seekership and by seekership
institutions. Both the culture and the organizational structure of this milieu represent deviant
forms of the prevailing religious and scientific orthodoxies in combination with both
instrumental and expressive orientations. Two important elements within the milieu are the
religious tradition of mysticism and the personal service practices of healing and divination.”
8
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Soviet Union)4 throughout the first decades of the 20th century. To this
exchange of doctrinal ideas between Zoroastrianism in its occult and Western
esoteric versions as “Zarathustra’s teaching” and the new religions, perhaps we
should add publications of other contemporary transnational religious
movements such as the Grail Movement founded and developed after World
War II in Austria by Oskar Ernst Bernhardt (1875–1941). Similarly to
anthroposophical and theosophical sources, Bernhardt’s esoteric works also
adopted the figure of the prophet “Zara-Tustra” and interpreted Zarathustra’s
doctrine in a theosophical light as one of the spiritual masters of mankind.5
Another arbitrary example, among many, is the Church Universal and
Triumphant (CUT) founded and originally run by Mark (1918–1973) and
Elizabeth Clare Prophet (b. 1939) in the late 1950s and 1960s in the USA, which
became a rapidly expanding international New Age organization in the mid-
1990s. Zarathustra, in the CUT’s view, is also the highest adept in the hierarchy
of the Great White Brotherhood, the keeper of “spiritual and bodily” fire, the
head of the Order of Melkhisedek, and master in the education of the soul on its
way to further stages of spiritual development. In India, apart from the Ilm-i
Khshnum movement (Stausberg 2002:118ff), diverse “transreligious” groups
such as the “Lovers” of Meher Baba (Stausberg 2002:97) or the cult of Shri
Gururani Nagkanya (Yogini) and Shri Jimmy Yogiraj (Keul & Stausberg 2010,
also Hinnells 2005:113) originated in the Parsi milieu and then acquired a large
number of non-Parsi followers. In my M.A. thesis I tried to present another
example of imaginative Zoroastrianism cultivated within post-Soviet astrological
Zoroastrian groups in the early 2000s as an example of an indigenous reaction to
or interest in esotericism and oriental religions, hence as a sort of New Age
movement that originated in the late decades of the Soviet Union (Tessmann
2005:156f). Since the 1990s, through contacts with other Zoroastrian
institutional bodies and individuals, these groups have attempted to integrate
into the Zoroastrian diaspora.
To summarize, these three models set the framework for post-Soviet and, in
the narrow sense, contemporary Russian Zoroastrianism as religious practice.
However, they are insufficient for exploring the development of that movement
in detail. Generally speaking, the examination of Russian Zoroastrianism might
4
The possible connection of the Mazdaznan movement to Russia can be seen in the (self-
constructed) biography of the Mazdaznan teacher Ottoman Zar-Adusht Hanish (1844–1936)
(Stausberg 2002:392ff) and the works of the Russian émigré Iuriĭ Terapiano (1892–1980) who
wrote about Mazdeism from the theosophical perspective (see also Chapter 5). As far I know
there are still no studies to the Mazdaznan movement in Russia.
5
One of the Grail texts was dedicated to Zarathustra: [Abd-Ru-Shin], Zoroaster: Life and
Work of the Forerunner in Persia (Forerunner Book Series). Stuttgart (?): Grail Foundation
Press, 1996.
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
10
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
With the help of the abovementioned questions I will try to test the hypotheses
that I had at the beginning of my research that should be mentioned here briefly:
To begin with, I expected different media to portray different images of
11
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
6
Some results from my first research trips at the beginning of the 2000s, financed by the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft within the project Zoroastrian Rituals in Changing
Cultural Contexts (2001–2004), are documented in a brief sub-chapter of Michael Stausberg’s
second volume of Religion of Zarathushtra: History-Present-Rituals (Die Religion
Zarathushtras: Geschichte-Gegenwart-Rituale) (Stausberg 2002:332–334) and are included in
my unpublished master’s thesis Astrozoroastrianism in Modern Russia and Belarus
(Astrozoroastrismus in modernen Russland and Belarus) (Tessmann 2005).
7
I counted three of my texts and two of my photographs in different issues of Mitra. All texts,
with only one exception, were published without any approval and further usual formalities
on my part. Of course, I would have wished to have been notified and asked in advance.
However, I have learned that this style of communication is the natural one for my
respondents. So I made no attempts to change it. See for instance, Religion 2002: 72–77.
12
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
8
Here one can make the distinction between emic and etic levels of perception or points of
view, terms which are characteristic since the 1970s within psychological and anthropological
research.
13
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
intensify the level of analysis for the structure of Zoroastrian discourse because
they sometimes refer to, try to be uncritical to, or even identical to constructions
of Zoroastrianism by believers. Subsequently, Chapter 6 will present my findings
in a comparative light and contextualize them in a discussion on methods used
in the study of religions.
9
I am very indebted to Mikhail Bezrodnyĭ for the reference to a special Russian mass media
data base Integrum World Wide that makes possible other quantitative and qualitative designs
of scholarly research.
14
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
primary and secondary sources such as journals and books appear in translated,
italicized English, with their Russian, German, and Persian original titles in
Cyrillic and Latin in parentheses. Names of cities, states, and individuals familiar
to international English readership are not transliterated and used according
to the Oxford Russian-English dictionary. All others are reproduced according
to the Library of Congress transliteration system. The titles of periodicals
within this study appear in transliterated Russian with their English
translations in parentheses.
In the context of this study, I mean by Russia the territory of the Russian
Federation when referring to recent history. When I use Russia as a retrospective
geopolitical term, it implies a broader understanding such as the Soviet Union
and even earlier, the Russian Empire.
One of the terminological problems in all studies on Russia is the
distinction between the words русский and российский, both of which may
be translated into English as Russian. The former refers to the ethnic group
and, at the same time, is used as a cultural marker e.g. Russian language,
culture, politics, and RuNet as well. The second adjective is rather a civic
designation that has been officially used since the 1990s and does not
distinguish between ethnic differences. Hence, the inhabitants of modern
Russia are not only ethnic Russians but also other Rossiane (россияне), the
people of various other ethnicities living in that territory. It is not easy to mark
this difference in the course of the text. However, I try to express it precisely
when referring to Russian as an ethnonym; in all other cases, I mean Russian
in the civic sense of this term.
Middle Asia refers in this thesis to the region defined according to the
terminology of Soviet geography; it includes the five former Soviet Middle Asian
republics inhabited by the Turkic and Iranian peoples: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, whereas the term Central Asia
additionally includes some historically, culturally, and linguistically coherent
regions surrounding the contemporary Islamic Republic of Iran.
Zoroastrian names and terms i.e. their Avestan, Old, Middle, and New
Persian etymology, are given in my study according to the materials and
diacritics published in Encyclopaedia Iranica (1982–), the most reliable source
for the religious, political, social, and cultural history of the Iranian peoples.
Since 2009 it is available online (www.iranicaonline.org).
All translations from Russian and German into English are my own unless
otherwise noted.
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
10
The view of political change and religion in the Soviet Union requires a more accurate and
differentiated approach, incorporating the idea of complexity and original cultural diversity of
the vast range of peoples united politically during that time. It has been argued many times,
that Soviet political and economic policies led to attempts to build a dominant, Soviet “goal
culture” (Johnson 1970:25), which in spite of its strong orientation towards the Communist
16
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
utopia was unable to control the presence of other cultural voices. Thus, as generally
understood, the ‘atheization of people’ was based on the local alternatives of diverse peoples,
who did not necessarily share the ideological goals of the Soviet government and were driven
by other, mostly ethnic or religious traditions.
17
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
18
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
organizations perceived as rivals, and the wish to become “a moral and patriotic
standard of Russian life” (Basil 2005:153). This restrictive tendency in the
legislation from the mid-1990s, also in the Russian regions, resulted in the
passing of the law On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations (1997),
which has been widely discussed in Russian and Western scholarly literature
(Shterin 2007a:201ff, Shterin & Richardson 2000:249, Richardson & Shterin
2008:258f, Lewis 2000:235ff). According to this law, acquiring the status of a
juridical organization requires “confirmation, provided by a local
administration, of its existence in the given territory for a period of no fewer
than fifteen years, or confirmation of its membership in the structure of a
centralized religious organization of the same religious confession, provided by
said organization” (cited by Richardson & Shterin 2008:258). In addition, the
law recognized the historical importance of major “traditional” religions, above
all the Russian Orthodox Church, and three others: Islam, Buddhism, and
Judaism. In the meantime, this was regarded as a “compromise” after anti-cult
debates and a number of regional anti-mission laws were passed (Shterin
2007a:197ff). Some scholars viewed the law of 1997 positively by arguing that the
registration launched a new phase in the relationship between the state and
religious groups, which was characterized by “civil peace among religious
communities” (Balagushkin 1999:229), but most studies on small groups
witnessed catastrophic economic and political disadvantages for so-called “non-
traditional” religions as a result of the law (Shterin 2007a:203).
Russian sociologists, in cooperation with Finnish scholars, have documented
changes in religious and social values in post-Soviet Russia based on six surveys
conducted in 1991, 1993, 1996, 1999, 2002, and 2005 (Kääriäinen & Furman
2007, see also Daniel 2007). These studies have shown that Russian society went
through great structural transformations in an extremely short period of time. In
sum, since 1991 Russian interest in religion has increased markedly. In contrast
to the previous statistics compiled by Soviet sociologists, which depicted the
total domination of the atheistic worldview at the beginning of perestroika, from
the mid-1980s until 1991, public opinion polls conducted immediately after the
disintegration of the Soviet Union identified a rapid rejection of Communist
values, such as atheism, materialism, collectivism, and a strong growth in
attraction towards religion. In the opinion of these scholars, this abrupt change
in behavior (from atheism to a religious pattern) occurred in two groups of the
population: the young and the elderly. They explained that the first group (“the
children of perestroika”) sought in religion a rebellious counterpart to
everything associated with the past, whereas elderly groups comprised people
who had already been committed believers during the Soviet era. Dmitriĭ
Furman found that despite immense interest in Christianity, there was also a
19
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
20
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
to receive it through a “folk, partly pagan culture that easily absorbs the
amorphous, astrological-occult common idea of spirituality and the
gastronomic as well as ritual aspects of Orthodox Christianity” (Lunkin
2010:66). Perhaps the image of three more or less confessed Orthodox
presidents (Yeltsin, Putin and Medvedev) adds a certain prestige to the
Russian Orthodox Church among the Russian ethnic population, but
geopolitical notions—due to the Russian Federation being a polyethnic and
multi-religious land—have compelled them to be cautious about making
statements that postulate the superiority of the ROC and hence, of ethnic
Russians (Basil 2005:158,160). Generally speaking, the public
(“demonstrative”) religious image of politicians (also in the case of some
Muslim representatives) continues to have negative connotations (Dubov
2001:92). The scholarly prognoses of a closer political alliance between the
Russian state and the ROC over a longer period are rather unrealistic
(Kääriäinen & Furman 2007:87). The failure of the “Orthodox Christian state”
model for Russia has been ascribed above all to the inability of the ROC to
tolerate other religions and hence the absence of civil religion which is
necessary for democratic societies (Balagushkin 1999:234ff). Above all, Russian
Orthodoxy is a highly conservative institution and needs internal reforms
(such as the introduction of church services in modern Russian) that have also
been emphasized by believers themselves (Knox 2005:91ff). According to
opinion polls in 2001, the idea of an Orthodox clerical state was supported by
just 5% of Orthodox people (Mchedlov et al. 2002:17). Also the ethnic
heterogeneity of Russian society is one of the principle reasons why it appears
to be impossible to consolidate all peoples under the banner of Orthodox
Christian faith as the state religion. Clearly, the present-day policy in Russia
reproduces the “religio-national symbiosis” of the previous Soviet policy of
“functional ambivalence” (Ramet 1987:53f), where the connection between
religious and national identities has been handed down by the simultaneous
disapproval of that relation.
However, Orthodox Christianity is not and never has been the only religion
in Russia, and Russia has never been homogeneously Orthodox either
(Plaggenborg 1997:289). Since the 1990s, certain descriptive sociological field
studies have portrayed extreme religious diversity and diffusion as being the
principal features of the Russian religious landscape (Mchedlov et al. 2002;
Filatov 2002; Bourdeaux & Filatov 2004). According to the law of 1997, Judaism,
Islam, and Buddhism belong to the major “indigenous” (традиционные)
religions of Russia. Islam and Buddhism have great regional significance, unlike
the ROC. Thus, statistically, Islam the former has a predominant position in six
administrative provinces. Islam is also culturally and ethnically diverse; if we
21
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
22
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
One of the hot topics in the study of religions in Russia are NRMs or new
religions (Buriakovskiĭ 1991; Kanterov 2001; Balagushkin 1999; 2002, Grigor’eva
1994 1999, 2002; Shterin 2007b, 2001, 2004). Scholars, in particular sociologists
of religion, have conducted many studies on the statistics, dynamics, and
typology of NRMs, including indigenous Russian groups. The contemporary
“foreign” NRMs in Russia, which means those currents whose practices have
been imported, are rooted in three decisive historical periods and were imported
from the USA and Europe. They comprise the majority of the contemporary
Russian NRMs. Religious organizations such as the Hare Krishna movement or
Jehovah's Witnesses already appeared during the Soviet era (Antic 1993:252ff).
Since the 1990s, the most rapidly expanding NRMs are the Christian groups
such as the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the New Apostolic Church, and the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (in total 351 registered communities).
The establishment of a Russian cultic milieu as part of the urban scene of the
late Soviet era coincided with, or has been an expression of the “period of crisis
of the Soviet system,” e.g. the time of preparation for the appearance of NRMs in
Russia began in the early 1970s (Shterin 2001:40f). The diffusion of NRMs had
been obvious to everyone since the late 1980s (Balagushkin 1999:15). The 1990s
were the years when, apart from the resurgence of major “traditional” religions
and missions by foreign innovators, certain indigenous NRMs began their
activity (Filatov 1999; Balagushkin 2002; Grigor’eva 1999; 2002; Shterin 2001b;
Bourdeaux and Filatov 2004). The largest among them were the Great White
Brotherhood (Jusmalos), the Mother of God Centre, and the Last Testament
Church (Vissarion). According to some studies, the total number of “full”
members of the “new” NRMs in Russia never exceeded about 40,000, i.e. 0.03%
of the Russian population (Shterin 2001:143f). The total figure of all “new” and
“old” NRMs including charismatic churches is allegedly no higher than 300,000
(about 0.2% of the population) (Shterin 2007b:160). In the 2000s, the indigenous
NRMs did not necessarily remain a local phenomenon; their development also
showed tendencies towards transnational dissemination, particularly towards
Western Europe (Shterin 2007b:158; Rademacher 2003:588f).
As in the USA and Western European countries the establishment of these
small groups was soon accompanied by xenophobic tendencies among the
established Christian Orthodox organizations, and there was an organized
campaign by a ROC-inspired Russian counter-cult movement fighting against
NRMs and inspired by similar organizations in Western countries such as the
USA and Germany (Shterin & Richardson 2000:257ff). The situation had
become especially strained by the mid-1990s. In a national survey conducted in
1997, the statements of the respondents indicated some hostility towards new
religious groups: they fully acknowledged the general principle of freedom of
23
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
personal choice of belief (96%), but disagreed that every religious organization
should have equal juridical status (40%) (Krindatsch 2004:135). However, with
further restrictions introduced by laws of religion in the 2000s, the anti-cultist
lobby lost its strong original agenda.
During the post-Soviet era there have also been attempts to initiate religious
education (mostly Christian), considered to be quite different from how it is
practiced in Western democracies: “Overall, the church-state developments in
this period have not followed any consistent pattern in state or private education
or in higher or lower education” (Glanzer & Petrenko 2007:57). The discussion
throughout the 2000s about the introduction of the obligatory course The Basics
of Orthodox Culture into state schools, suggested by the Moscow Patriarchate,
has been the most controversial educational theme in the Russian media.
Although the law On Education passed in 1992 stressed the secular character of
the primary and secondary educational levels in state schools, the Ministry of
Education has promoted the idea since 2002 of “integration of the non-
confessional religious subject, ‘Orthodox culture,’ into the curricula of state
schools, which did not produce the desired results in the majority of Russia’s
regions” (Kozyrev 2008:279). This was the case in the few central regions
which introduced The Basics of Orthodox Culture, either as a voluntary or as a
compulsory subject. In 2010, however, after much criticism on the part of
other religious authorities and scholars, the ROC and the three other
“traditional religions” mentioned in the 1997 law (Islam, Buddhism, and
Judaism) were nevertheless granted by the Russian government and president
Medvedev the right to teach their religions to the fourth and fifth grades at the
national level, i.e. in the 19 regions of the Russian Federation. For all other
students, who did not belong to these religious denominations, a course in
secular ethics became the alternative option.
This general picture of the contemporary religious scene in Russia is
necessary for understanding the subject of my study. As the next step, I will give
a broad outline of the history of Zoroastrian groups in Russia that will be
discussed in more detail in Chapter 2. Broadly speaking, because of the relatively
small representation of their communities on the recent Russian religious
landscape, Zoroastrian groups or individuals seem to be somehow peripheral to
the major public discourses on religion e.g. on Russian Orthodox Christianity
and Islam. Irrespective of this, Zoroastrianism shares many features with other
religious innovations in Russia that became visible in the 1990s.11 I believe the
11
My interest in Zoroastrianism arose during my study of history of religions at the State
University of St. Petersburg in the mid-1990s. Yet despite the great commitment to the history
of ancient forms of Zoroastrianism and Iranian languages, I must admit that I could find only
a few sources that shed light on modern Zoroastrianism and its “surviving” believers. In
addition, contact with Zoroastrians in other countries was not possible for me, chiefly due to
24
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
the “time of economic troubles” and also recent Russian history, which was also, as for many
friends and relatives, a part of my reality. Besides, according to a commonly accepted
scholarly view there, new religions were not put on the agenda of serious academic research.
They have been not accepted as “true.” Now, at the beginning of the 2010s, that position
seems to be one of the oddities of the past: modern religiosity has gradually moved to the
forefront of scholarly research in Western as well as Eastern European countries (see also
Chapter 3).
25
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
12
As indicated earlier, the answer as to whether Russian Zoroastrians are recognized by
“orthodox” Zoroastrians, despite the broad polemics in mass media, becomes more obscured
with the passing of time and thus makes the distinction between “established” and “non-
established” Zoroastrianism thin. The change in the strongly negative positions of “orthodox”
Parsis and Iranian Zoroastrians towards the mission among other ethnicities could be
observed even during the recent visits of Zoroastrian priests to Russia or of some Russian
Zoroastrians to Iran and India, to places where such interests have been tolerated (see Chapter 2).
26
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
traditions, or “styles” of research within the social sciences (Wetherell & Taylor
& Yates 2006:382). Two definitions upon which my own understanding of
discourse is based closely are: (1) linguistic or socio-linguistic constructionist
theories, which see a discourse as a “language in use” or “as a particular way of
talking about and understanding the world (or an aspect of the world)”
(Jørgensen & Phillips 2002:1), and (2) sociological research that explains
discourse as a set of “communicative processes of maintenance and change of
societally relevant themes and forms” (Knoblauch 2001:207).
The discursive approach to religion, though it is gradually becoming more
popular, seems to be rarely used and has still not established itself among
students of religion in spite of the arbitrary and theoretically unreflected
appearance of the term “discourse” in some works in the study of religions since
the 1970s (Engler 2006:516). In general, it remains one of the desiderata of
historical discursive research at all (Landwehr 2008:162). In the following, I will
briefly mention some, in my view, well-founded contributions to that field. One
of the first scholars of religion to focus on a discursive understanding of the
nature of religious doctrines and practices arising within religious groups was
the American sociologist Robert Wuthnow (b. 1946). In his work Communities
of Discourse: Ideology and Social Structure in the Reformation, the Enlightenment,
and European Socialism (1989), Wuthnow examined three periods in the history
of European civilization, during which ideological (and also religious-political)
battles could be shown to be products of crucial changes in political, economic,
and social life. Wuthnow formulated discourse in its simple form as speech acts
which articulate social positions (Keller 2007:41). He argued that discourses are
constructed through speech interactions between social actors who constitute
“communities of discourse.” In Wuthnow’s view, these communities are
therefore necessary for the existence of discourse. He described them as
“communities of competing producers, of interpreters and critics, of audiences
and consumers, and of patrons and other significant actors who become the
subjects of discourse itself” (Wuthnow 1989:16). According to Wuthnow
(1989:ibid), discourse is a sum of different sorts of cultural production, namely
“the written as well as the verbal, the formal as well as the informal, the gestural
or ritual as well as the conceptual.” However, he insists that the central
theoretical task of historical studies is the contextualization of a discourse—or its
“close articulation.” Such contextualization allows the scholar to analyze the
connections between a social movement (“temporally associated form of
ideology”) and its cultural contexts (Wuthnow 1989:9). Therefore, the researcher
has to analyze and interpret the mutual processes between ideology and
contexts. These processes can be described through three modes: production,
selection, and institutionalization (Wuthnow 1989:10). Wuthnow’s approach
27
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
28
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
29
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
empirical data would be a loss to the study of religion (Kippenberg & von
Stuckrad 2003; von Stuckrad 2003a). The two scholars argued that “[...] there are
the objects [of study] which make up a scientific discipline and not any
preconceived theories and terms [...]. New theories are rather the result of the
societal formulation of questions and objects that have changed” (Kippenberg &
von Stuckrad 2003:8). In another article von Stuckrad discusses how the
problem of meta-theory can be solved by means of a discursive understanding of
religious processes. He seeks to explain this by introducing a new approach, a
different theoretical turn within the study of religions. Hence, like other
humanities, the study of religions has undergone three stages of transformation,
which he pinpoints as the following: “First, the linguistic turn moved the issue of
religion from its place in the transcendent and numinous into the realm of
language and text. Next, the pragmatic turn questioned the focus on merely
semantic approaches to religion. That is, through analyses of written sources,
scholars emphasized the contexts and pragmatic options that are necessary to
really understand what a text is all about. Finally, the writing of culture debate
demolished academic confidence in the scholar’s neutral role as an objective
observer and placed his or her work in a cultural process of constructing
meaning that produces only narratives” (von Stuckrad 2003a:255). These crucial
and objective changes in the rethinking of scholarly research demonstrated the
deficits of the study of religions to such an extent that the basis of the discipline
itself was put into question. Kippenberg and von Stuckrad in their program for
restructuring the study of religions went so far as to state that object-oriented
study would lead to the blurring of the boundaries between Religionswissenschaft
and the other humanities: having access to multiple methods, the study of
religions becomes just one of many perspectives within cultural studies. By
taking such a stance, the “highly elusive” term religion is justified but not
defined, because a discursive approach has to be concentrated on phenomena
crossing several spheres and acquiring different meanings. Religion is reduced in
this direct way to a communicative process. The scholars suggested thinking of
religion as a discourse (“that is more as an exchange of opinions”) acting on the
discursive field “where identities (including the scientific) have been built,
boundaries have been drawn and power spaces have been occupied”
(Kippenberg & von Stuckrad 2003:14). According to von Stuckrad, such a
discursive approach transforms the study of religions into a new way of
understanding religious phenomena occurring with the two following
perspectives. On the one hand, he appealed for the “integration” of “polyfocal
analysis” where many approaches would shed light on the dynamic of the
religion in the culture. On the other hand, the discursive approach carries a
“shift of attention” so that religion is observed communicatively, which
30
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
31
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
32
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
33
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
came into being. The idea of CDA, therefore, implies the dialectical and semiotic
character of interpretations associated with a religion in the context of the entire
cultural production that also includes other spheres of social life, i.e. those
traditionally understood as being “outside” of religious domains, for instance,
mass media or politics. Discourse is a form of language and other semiotic
(including visual) expressions. It can be understood in a threefold sense: as part
of acting, representing, and being (Fairclough 2001:231). Discourse “may be
more or less important and salient in one practice or set of practices than in
another, and may change in importance over time” (Fairclough 2001:231).
When applying these notions to the subject of my thesis—the discourse on
Zoroastrianism in modern Russia—we can detect that Zoroastrianism is: first, a
social activity of the Russian Zoroastrians as a group within modern Russian
society; second, the cultural production of new representations of that religion,
which include both self-reflections and outsider-perceptions of the Russian
Zoroastrians and their practices; and finally, third, the process through which
Zoroastrian identities are constructed in a local context. Therefore, despite the
frequently expressed imperative for an instrumental definition, it is not
necessary, from the discourse analytic perspective, to define religion in a general
sense because its character is understood here as functionalist and “anti-
essentialist” (Otterbeck 2010:156). Even though religion may be regarded as a
category, it remains a “co-dependent, portable discursive marker” (McCutcheon
2007:197). What is important is to bring together in the textual analysis the
interplay of meanings and their contextual dependence. Perceived in this way,
religion is close to discourse itself: religion is also a manner of acting,
representing, and constructing identity. Thus, Zoroastrianism may be
constructed by actors whose chief purpose is their own interests and who can
decide for themselves whether religion is a matter of practice and ideas, a leisure
activity or lifestyle choice, a historical abstraction, a component of the material
and spiritual culture of ancient and modern peoples, a source of controversy at
the (inter)national level, or one of many basic inspirational models for visual
and textual art. Also, for this same reason, modern religions are multi-
representative—which means that, depending upon the contexts, religions
contain both similar and different features for those individuals who are
interested in or involved in the production and consummation of religious
knowledge. The producers and consumers of the public image of religions are
not necessarily religious specialists and practitioners, but also people who have
for some reason interpreted religion, such as scholars, journalists, artists, writers,
and others. Moreover, one of the hypotheses of this thesis is that the material I
analyze in each type of discourse can offer its own understanding of religion
within the aforementioned fields and their specific practices. Hence, the (above
34
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
all) spatial categories of science, mass media, and literature are also understood
as representing ideal types of discourse and hence reveal “ideal” discursive values
that usefully serve analytical purposes, in a similar vein to religion. This notion
allows one to describe discourses on Zoroastrianism on the move, with its key
themes and discursive transfers. For instance, to give an illustration of this
notion, Zoroastrianism portrayed in fictional literature as a theme constitutes
one side of a specific literary discourse developed to describe a given religion.
35
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
36
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
religious, scholarly, media, and literary fields relate to each other and invent
Zoroastrianism as a symbolic representation. Moreover, in this study, I have no
reason to drop the term Zoroastrianism (and invent something new, or use
“Russian Neo-Zoroastrianism” or “new Mazdayasna religion” as might perhaps be
expected) for the variable set of religious practices that have their counterparts in
other countries yet appear to be something quite different. Sometimes I prefer to
designate it as Russian Zoroastrianism in the sense of a modus operandi when
discussing religious practice in the Russian territory. This designation serves
merely as a point of orientation or a way of determining religious and secular
actors, who treat it according to their own ideas about Zoroastrianism, which is
obviously not the same religion that was practiced long ago in the regions of
origin. Also the lack of any ethnic connections to mother countries such as Iran
and India with regard to Zoroastrian groups in Russia is rather an argument
against the use of the term “Neo-Zoroastrianism” in the sense of a “new wave”
evoked by migration processes.13 To summarize, I have imagined Zoroastrianism
as a topos related to life in modern Russian society in contrast to the religious field
presupposed by regular or occasional ritual practice.
Finally, I should mention that I have used as a basis for my research the
procedures of qualitative content or data analysis (Mayring 2000) supported by a
special type of software for qualitative research: ATLAS.ti. This program (as well
as many other programs for text and linguistic analysis) provides immediate
insights into the contents of sources (from texts to multimedia) and helps to
identify certain categories by highlighting separate terms grouped around
precisely formulated themes. Such computer assistance allows the researcher to
verify a vast range of written and visual materials, essential to my collection and
study of four voluminous text corpora. Texts and other collected visual materials
were read and codified, meaning that all sequences, utterances, or parts of
materials were assigned to one or more corresponding categories (or keywords).
During the process of working through the data, they were connected with each
other, contrasted, interpreted, and evaluated. Such computer assisted research
does not replace scholarly work in analysis of data but provides rather a
necessary auxiliary tool in “making easier the steps of text analysis on screen”
(Mayring 2000). Therefore, I used it as a tool that helps to test, control, and
reduce errors in the research process because “[t]he computer will expose errors
and suggest corrections; it will apply rules indefatigably, and it will continue to
tell us largely what we already know” and “[t]hey are able to apply sophisticated
models to indefinitely large stretches of text and they are getting better and
better at it” (Sinclair 2004:12). Additionally, ATLAS.ti allows simple quantitative
13
While the latter would fit the Russian Anjoman, it would not be true of astrological
Zoroastrian groups that have a different point of departure.
37
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
38
Chapter 2: Zoroastrianism in the frame of
religious practice
39
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
1
The price of the one-day crash course in Avestan Astrology (taking about 5 hours) for one
person in September 2011 was 1500 RUB (about 36 EUR) (News Globa 2011). According to
the price list on globainstitut.ru in 2008 astrological services offered by the Globa’s institute
staff varied between 75 and 350 EUR, whereas the Globa’s own “VIP-services” on
pavelgloba.ru in 2011 cost between 1350 and 2500 EUR (also with his personal participation in
some events such as weddings, birthday and collective meetings, presentations and concerts).
2
Tamara Globa still seems to be a practicing astrologer who has strayed from the system of
Avestan astrology and its method. It looks like Globa’s specialization is mostly print and
online women magazines, for which she produces astrological prognoses. See also her web
site: <www.tamara-globa.ru> (accessed 16 March 2012).
40
CHAPTER 2: ZOROASTRIANISM IN THE FRAME
3
This re-registration was made possible as a result of the decision of the Constitutional court
in 1999 that religious organizations registered before 1997 have the right to maintain their
juridical status (Shterin 2000:204f).
4
The Russian abbreviation of this name is spelled “Asha” (АША i.e. Авестийская школа
астрологии, also in plural) that has a Zoroastrian connotation linked to the Avestan ethical
concept of asha (literally: “truth” or “order”). See Globa T 1993:4.
41
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
According to one informant, there have been about 48 AShAs in the post-Soviet
area during the last two decades (Personal communication 2006). Currently
about 20 of them are still in operation. The five largest and most active are in
Moscow, St. Petersburg, Perm (Russia), Minsk (Belarus), and Kiev (Ukraine).
The Perm AShA, founded in 1993 (Lushnikov 2000:30), has been responsible for
the organization of the annual tour (тур-фестиваль) On the Path of Zarathustra
(Путём Заратуштры, 1996–), open for a fee to anyone interested in Zoroastrian
“holy” and other tourist places in the southern Urals and Eastern Siberia. These
tours also invite non-Zoroastrians. Globa’s original astrological system adopted
by the AShAs played an important role in the spread of interest in astrology
during the post-Soviet era. His concept became a stimulus for other astrological
offshoots and original systems such as the “classical Western” branch of post-
Soviet astrology grouped around the Centre for Astrological Research and the
Astrological Academy in Moscow. In fact, almost every current post-Soviet
astrologer in her/his 40s or 50s was Globa’s former student or was influenced by
Avestan astrology and Globa’s publications.
The AShAs guaranteed the circulation of Globa’s teachings among a
considerable number of people who also gradually spread Zoroastrian texts to
broad Russian audiences. Since the mid-1990s RuNet has been the most
important medium distributing astrological books and information about
meetings and lectures. The organizational structure of the AShAs has often been
unstable, which has led to a high rate of people leaving the organization. In the
2000s the AShAs membership numbers became diminished. For instance one of
the large AShAs—the Avestan Association of Republic Belarus (ARBA, later also
Astra), according to its own assessment, experienced in one decade a downward
swing: from about 1,000 regular students on astrological courses in 1991 to only
about 100 adherents in 2002 (Tessmann 2005:143). According to one informant,
the overall number of people who attended astrological courses in organizations
applying Globa’s system (between 1989 and 2006) is approximately 30,000 but
only about 6.6% of these people (i.e. 2000 active members) have continued to
learn or practice Avestan astrology (and in that way remain affirmative towards
Zoroastrianism) up to the present. My personal impression is that these figures
are an overestimate and the number of interested persons attending the AShAs
nowadays, in the best-case scenario, amounts to about 1000 people. The AShAs
are designed as small commercial organizations and, as a rule, are based on
demand from anyone who is able to pay for courses or seminars. The active core
of the AShAs teaches (so-called certified) astrological courses, produces and sells
astrological literature, and organizes Globa’s lectures, meetings, and feasts. The
established network of the AShAs throughout the post-Soviet area is also
maintained through the organization of so-called International Practical-
42
CHAPTER 2: ZOROASTRIANISM IN THE FRAME
Scientific Conferences on Avestan astrology since 2002 that are likewise attended
by their leader Globa.
Within this astrological milieu there have always been a few people who have
wanted to see a sort of business or hobby in Globa’s system rather than an
alternative “scientific” discipline. Some interviews with adherents in the early
2000s testified that Globa sometimes conducted quasi-Zoroastrian initiations in
a private atmosphere, as well as immediately after his public lectures on stage
(Tessmann 2005:63). Contrary to known Parsi and Iranian Zoroastrian
initiations (called navjote or sadrepushi), the initiates received only a kusti (in
both conventional variations—a worn white girdle) without any sudre (a special
white shirt) necessary for this Zoroastrian ritual. In addition, Globa’s girdles
have been not white but tricolored—yellow, red, and blue—and symbolize the
three colors of the god Zervan. Globa ties the girdles around his students’ waists,
knotting them at the front one after another and recites certain manthras. In
addition to these student initiations into Zervanism or Zoroastrianism, Globa
has also chosen certain devoted pupils (both male and female). By means of
special khorbad (ervad or herbad/herbed in the Parsi and Iranian terminology
correspondingly) initiations equivalent to a lower priest qualification, he has
allowed his assistants to conduct as priests yasna liturgies and to initiate laymen
independently. The initiates regarded themselves as believers or Zoroastrians
(зороастрийцы) and were actually separated from the remaining Astrologers
(астрологи), although the former continued their education in or teaching of
Avestan astrology. Moreover, in 2000 in St. Petersburg, a special Zoroastrian
Congress was launched originally intended to be an annual meeting of Russian
Zoroastrians, including some Zoroastrian foreign guests, but due to financial
difficulties it has since been disbanded.
The mixed “astrological Zoroastrian” profile of the AShAs gave rise to events
in the early 2000s when a further discourse on Russian Zoroastrianism with a
newly constructed discursive community appeared. This community set itself
apart from Pavel Globa and the AShAs. The new (and to some extent separatist)
direction was caused by the wish of some students to be initiated by original
Zoroastrian authorities (“bearers of the tradition”) and to be acknowledged by
foreign Zoroastrians. The search for “proper” Zoroastrianism is historically
traceable: it already began in 1999 when one of the former AShA-students in
Minsk created the website avesta.org.ru.5 Through this he established many
contacts with Zoroastrians around the world, especially with those living in
Western countries. He also received private funding from some foreign
Zoroastrians for hosting his website. Even though in the Commonwealth of
5
Even though the first Russian website dedicated to Zoroastrianism avesta.isatr.org appeared
in December 1998 (lastly accessed 18 April 2011).
43
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
Independent States (CIS) at that time no one had been born or initiated into
Zoroastrianism (with the exception of those initiated by Globa), the website was
intended as a project that would help to launch a “religious center for the
consolidation of Zarathushti in the CIS“ (Tessmann 2005:145). One year after
that, through the mediation of an Iranian immigrant in Minsk who was
travelling to Sweden for a Zoroastrian congress organized by the Zoroastrian
Universal Community6, a group of Globa’s students closely involved in the
publication of his books and the Zoroastrian calendar established contact with
the Swedish mōbed of Iranian descent Kamran Jamshidi. As result, Jamshidi,
who lived in Gothenburg and was responsible for many conversions to
Zoroastrianism among Iranian immigrants and Europeans in Western European
countries, arrived in Minsk and conducted the sadrepushi ritual for two male
and three females (Stausberg 2002:332; Tessmann 2005:146). Shortly afterwards,
the Minsk group that had been intending to become part of the Zoroastrian
Universal Community dispersed and the majority returned to the Minsk AShA.
The website continued to be moderated until 2003 and was then shut down. The
moderator of avesta.org.ru, Iuriĭ Lukashevich (b. 1977) blessed and guided by
Jamshidi, found other people interested in Zoroastrianism in Moscow who had
no connection with the AShAs and astrology and who wished to cooperate in the
founding of a center for a Zoroastrian association of all CIS countries. This led,
in 2005, to the further initiation of five male and one female in Moscow
conducted by Jamshidi.7 Formally, this was the starting point of the Russian
Anjoman. With its website blagoverie.org, it has exerted a great influence on the
post-Soviet Zoroastrian discourse on the Internet and in special Zoroastrian
forums such as avesta_ru on LiveJournal (Живой журнал). The new Moscow
converts see themselves as an organization representing all (converted)
Zoroastrians in the former Soviet Union and insist on keeping in contact with
the Iranian Mobed Council (Np. Anjoman-e Moghān-e Irān) that seems to have
accepted the proselytizing character of Zoroastrianism and the appearance of
new Russian or post-Soviet Zoroastrians in general. Although the public activity
of the Russian Anjoman concentrates to a large extent on communication within
RuNet, one of the members of the Russian Anjoman, namely Konstantin Krylov
(b. 1967), is known widely as a prominent political figure. He is an active
blogger, journalist, philosopher, and figure of great importance among Russian
nationalists. Qualified in information technology and philosophy, he is also the
current editor-in-chief of the online periodical The Agency of Political News
6
This Zoroastrian organization was founded in 1992 in Gothenburg (Stausberg 2002:329). For
further information about Zoroastrian groups in Sweden see also Stausberg 2008c.
7
Apart from information spread by the Russian Anjoman there are some reports by the
Zoroastrian Universal Community. See e.g. <http://vcn.bc.ca/oshihan/Pages/RussiaE.htm>
(accessed 21 March 2012).
44
CHAPTER 2: ZOROASTRIANISM IN THE FRAME
(Агенство Политических Новостей (АПН)). Since 2007 Krylov works for The
Institute of National Strategy (Институт национальной стратегии) and since
2010 edits the journal The Problems of Nationalism (Вопросы национализма);
he is also one of the founders of the “national democratic” Russian Voluntary
Organization (Русское общественное движение (РОД)). Since the late 1990s,
Krylov has also published, apart from a vast number of philosophical and
publicist essays, literary works in two other genres: fantasy and poetry, under
pseudonyms (two of them he later revealed as Mikhail Kharitonov and Iudik
Sherman). However, in his political activity, the theme of Zoroastrianism is
confined to his individual religion. With some minor exceptions, he does not
touch or even discuss it publicly. Since its foundation, this discursive community
has sometimes identified itself in opposition to the astrological discourse of
Globa’s adherents, although the members of both communities have met and
cooperated in the organization of lectures given by Iranian mōbeds since the
mid-2000s. In one of the latest events (before the publication of this study), there
was an attempt to consolidate people in Moscow interested in Zoroastrianism—
both from the astrological milieu and the Russian Anjoman in August 2011, and
the founding of the group Zoroastrian Community in Moscow on Facebook
(Personal communication 2011).
Apart from these astrological and conversion discourses on Zoroastrianism
there are certain intersections and key actors and events without which the
picture of Zoroastrianism in Russian would be incomplete. Two major
influences on Russian Zoroastrianism have come from India and Iran as well as
from the Parsi diaspora. One of the strongest and most continuous is the activity
of the Indian Zoroastrian College and its envoy Dr Meher Master-Moos who has
tried to foster relations with the Russian Zoroastrians. The Zoroastrian College in
Bombay is an offspring-institution of the Parsi esoteric movement Mazdayasnie
Monasterie belonging to the Ilm-i Khshnum’s heritage. Dr Meher Master-Moos,
its active leader, a woman from the Parsi upper class who was educated in
England (Rafiy 1999:256ff; Kreyenbroek & Munshi 2001:231ff; Stausberg
2002:125ff; Hinnells 2005:105ff), organized bilateral visits to a few groups in
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in the early 1990s. Through this, she tried to motivate
people who were interested in old Tajik culture to learn about Zoroastrianism
via her philological projects (e.g. translations of Khorde Avesta into Tajik).
Together with two Parsi priests, she also organized a series of initiation rituals in
Middle Asia. The exchange with the Zoroastrian College was also realized
through cultural events and meetings (such as conferences in alternative
medicine), in which some St. Petersburg Zoroastrians took part. For her own
part Master-Moos and other adherents also visited some of Globa’s AShAs in the
45
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
2000s (the last documented visit took place in summer 2008) and also gave
public lectures organized by the Russian Anjoman.
Linked to the activity of the St. Petersburg Zoroastrian Community and the
Russian Anjoman, certain recent tendencies in the establishment of
Zoroastrianism in post-Soviet territories came into being because of selected
Iranian Zoroastrian reformist groups. In 2007 activists of the Zoroastrian
community (literally “parish”) of St. Petersburg invited a mōbedyār
(Zoroastrian lay priest of non-priest Zoroastrian parentage) from Yazd, named
Kamran Loryan, to Moscow and St. Petersburg; this visit was financially
supported by a businessman from England. Loryan conducted new sadrepushi
ceremonies with the white kusti for the people initiated by Globa many years
ago. Globa did not mind; moreover, he met Loryan and they held a religious
meeting. Loryan made known to the public that he is planning to learn Globa’s
astrology. In July 2008 he took part in the tour in the Urals and performed
sadrepushi for various interested people. Thanks to his mediation, Russian
Zoroastrians who are Globa’s adherents now have contacts with Iranian
Zoroastrian reformist priests and with the head of the Iranian Mōbed Concil,
Ardeshir Khorshedyan, who visited St. Petersburg and Moscow in July 2009.
Such contacts allowed the visits of Russian Zoroastrians in Teheran and Yazd
in 2006 and 2011 as well as the conducting of the Zoroastrian marriage
ceremony for a Russian couple from Moscow in 2008.
The number of Russian Zoroastrians initiated by different religious
authorities from abroad during the 2000s gradually grew. According to a
concerned informant there have been about 100 kushtivans (initiated
Zoroastrians with a kus(h)ti cord) throughout the overall post-Soviet area
(Personal communication 2006). Also, according to information from the
Russian Anjoman about 100 people became Zoroastrians in the post-Soviet area
(Anjoman 2007). These people underwent sadrepushi or navjote initiations
conducted by several different authorities, among them Globa, Kamran
Jamshedi, Iuriĭ Lukashevich, Meher Master-Moos together with the Parsi ervads
Faramroz Mirza and Khushroo Madon, Kamran Loryan, and the khorbads of the
St. Petersburg community.
The previous intersections and actors briefly described above were now directly
linked to groups of Russian Zoroastrians who originally came from conventional
Zoroastrian contexts. However, alongside the latter there were also marginal
discussions, which included and reinterpreted Zoroastrianism in the wider context
of post-Soviet esotericism. Here, Zoroastrianism appears as one of many elements
building other religious ideologies or structures—for instance, within some
neopagan groups, politically active groups, or the Kosmoenergetika movement.
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Since the 1970s and 1980s, Russian neopaganism, which has religious
philosophical roots from tsarist times, has developed into a well-known and self-
contained phenomenon of the Russian religious and political scene (Shnirelman
1998, 2005:58; Pribylovskiĭ 1999:123ff). Perhaps because their sources of
inspiration similarly lie in late Soviet New Age culture, Globa’s groups and
neopagan groups share many ideas and ritual practices (Tessmann 2007:4ff).
This relationship can be described as a sort of exchange between the two
currents. Obviously, they also share the common environment that was formed
in the late Soviet underground which articulated anti-Christian views. For
instance, one of the prominent figures of Russian patriotic samizdat and
neopagan ideology since the 1970s, Anatoliĭ Ivanov (Skuratov) (b. 1935), has
presented his religious philosophical views as “Zoroastrian,” “Avestan,” or
“Indo-Iranian” mainly referring to the Nietzschean philosophical understanding
of Zarathustra rather than the religion of Zarathustra in its modern context
(Verkhovskiĭ & Mikhaĭlovskaia & Pribylovskiĭ 1999:39; Pribylovskiĭ 2002). In
1981, Ivanov also created an anti-Christian text titled Zarathustra [sic] Did Not
Speak Thus (The Basics of the Aryan Worldview) (Заратустра говорил не так
(Основы арийского мировоззрения)) where following philosophical and
historic-social observations of Hinduism and Buddhism, he suggested that
Mazdeism should become a new paradigm for humankind. Roughly quoting a
passage of one of the Avestan hymns (Yt. 19:89), Ivanov predicted, in a clearly
expressed millenarian style that a Saoshyant (Спаситель) would open a new
epoch (Ivanov (Skuratov) (2003)1981). Perhaps his ideas and other deliberations
within nationalist cycles can explain why Zoroastrianism is the permanent
discussion topic within the neopagan milieu. One might also add that many
publications, e.g. The Union of the Veneds published in St. Petersburg and The
Bazhov’s Academy of Secret Knowledge in the Urals (Lunkin & Filatov
2000:145) have been influenced by certain ideas of Russian Astro-
Zoroastrianism which emphasizes its differences from other contemporary
Zoroastrian groups operating abroad.
Another example of the incorporation of Zoroastrianism into one’s own
worldview is the Cosmic Energy movement (Kosmoenergetika). Kosmoenergetika’s
spiritual practices and healing methods, known since the late 1990s, aim to heal the
modern human being through Yoga and other Eastern (Jain, Buddhist, and
Zoroastrian) spiritual “recovery” practices. Zoroastrian mystical experiences have
been conducted by Parsi ervad Dr Ramyar P. Karanjia, principal of the Parsi priestly
school in Mumbai, The Athornan Boarding Madressa (Dadar Athornan Institute).
Since 2004, together with the Russian activists of Kosmoenergetika, he takes part in
common prayers claimed by the participants to be “initiations in the energetic power
of the Zoroastrian faith” and the “purification of mental channels by reciting
47
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
8
Until 2010, this information appeared on his old website:
<http://www.globa.ru/biography.asp> (accessed 21 March 2012). See the newer version:
<http://www.globa.ru/astrologicheskie-programmy-i-publikacii> (accessed 04 April 2011).
9
Despite the economic crisis of the 1990s, all three publishers survived but with changed
profiles: whereas Vagrius specializes in “memoirs, fiction, biographies and historical novels,
selected works and adventures, encyclopedias and artistic albums,” Iauza produces socio-
political works (with some tinge of patriotism), historical literature (particularly military or
war history), and fiction. At that time Lan’ concentrated on literature for high school and
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run of The Living Fire amounted to 50,000 copies that suggests the orientation of
the publishing houses towards the general public. The second edition appeared
twelve years later in two Moscow-based publishing houses, Eksmo and Iauza.10
If we compare the circulation of both editions, the difference is striking: the
immense number published in 1996 (50,000 copies) is approximately eight times
more than the modest number published in 2008 (6,000 copies). Similarly, the
second release of The Living Fire as another of Globa’s compendiums, a “twin-
book” entitled The Teaching of the Ancient Aryans (2007), which also belongs to
the rubric of programmatic texts in my classification, had a print-run of 6,000
copies. When compared visually these two publications are strikingly similar and
the contents of both works overlap on the major thematic areas of astrology and
Zoroastrianism. In The Teaching, there are also numerous paraphrases
reminiscent of the contents of The Living Fire in both of its editions.
Crucial changes in publishing politics indirectly reveal, apart from the
increasing differentiation processes within that business, a new segmentation of
the readership of this genre. Hence the second edition with its more expensive
design, but even the poor paper quality and high price, tends to attract an audience
narrowly interested in the history and religion of its own country, namely in the
pre-Slavic past. This correlates clearly with the annotation on the back cover. Even
when aimed only at this one target group, public acceptance is broader than one
might expect from a work “explaining solely the Zoroastrian religion.”
If one tries to contextualize The Living Fire with other publications that
appeared in 1996 or more generally in the 1990s, a twofold picture emerges.
Firstly, the book is a good example of the “new,” i.e. original and untranslated,
literature appearing after the collapse of the Soviet Union (Stephens 1997:357f).
The general theme varies between popular astrological knowledge and oriental
religious symbolism, which have been in fashion at least in the popular
syncretistic projects of the Theosophical Society since the 19th century. In this,
we can see a generic affinity with such older esoteric compendia as The Secret
Doctrine by Helena Blavatsky or The Living Ethics by Helena Rerikh, reprinted
many times in post-Soviet Russia. Secondly, the stylistic, structural, and formal
features of The Living Fire link it to the genre accepted in the former Soviet
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
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Various.
In this group of texts, I would include Globa’s articles, interviews, speeches
documented in the Zoroastrian magazine Mitra, and other media such as
websites. The websites reproduce Globa’s texts and lectures, and serve as
advertisements for his websites such as the already closed globa.love.ru and
others. The most recent one, globa.ru created in 2003, is not constructed like a
personal page, but rather aims to present his astrological enterprise. Other
Russian websites of the AShAs (asha.ru; arba.bl; perm-asha.chat.ru) also have
practical goals in mind, because RuNet is the most accessible medium for
spreading information about arranged meetings and lectures as well as for
selling and distributing astrological and religious literature.
Although Globa’s speeches also play a significant role, I have chosen for the
purposes of my discourse analysis the work most associated by his adherents
with a certain system of their doctrine—The Living Fire. It is his most popular
book that, as expressed in an advertisement, “explains the basics of the teaching
of the ancient Aryans in an easy and accessible form.” Besides, this book is
regularly referred to (cited and paraphrased) in many publications in
Zoroastrian periodicals (e.g. Mitra and Tiri) as well as in purely Avestan
astrological publications such as the Messenger of Avestan astrology. Conducting
a diachronic textual study on the basis of the two editions of The Living Fire
(1996, 2008) can unveil many interesting changes within the astrological strand
of Zoroastrian religious discourse over time.
2.2.2. Group activity: The St. Petersburg magazine Mitra and the
community messenger Tiri
In addition to the aforementioned Pavel Globa’s corpus, there is another of similar
importance, namely the corpus of material published by various authors in
Russian Zoroastrian periodicals. For this analysis, I have chosen two periodicals
produced by the St. Petersburg Zoroastrian community. These are the Zoroastrian
magazine Mitra and the community messenger Tiri, both of which also produced
online editions (mitra-piter.narod.ru and tishtriya.narod.ru respectively).
The history of the Zoroastrian magazine Mitra, which is published annually,
developed alongside the history of the St. Petersburg Zoroastrian community
following its official establishment in 1994. It is the only periodical of
Zoroastrianism in the post-Soviet area orientated towards external readers.11
11
Although at different times there have been many other print periodicals which combine
the material of Zoroastrianism and Astrology such as The Way of Arta (Путь Арты, 1999
(only one issue) or The Messenger of Avestan Astrology (Вестник Авестийской астрологии,
2008–).
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
12
See <http://mitra-piter.narod.ru> (accessed on 21 March 2012). It contains the contents of
all issues published until 2011. Two of these, (2(6).2000 and 9(13).2007) can be accessed on
RuNet for free.
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The formal structure of each issue, starting from the sixth (1(5).2000) coincides
with the magazine’s new series, which seeks to reflect the contents of the
legendary ‘original’ Avesta, in fact a collection of Zoroastrian texts that until
the time of the Sasanian empire should have included 21 parts (the so called
nask), which allegedly correspond to the 21 words of the Ahunvar prayer. A
precise description of the nasks can be found in the eighth chapter of the
middle Persian religious text Dēnkard (Religious acts), which was hitherto not
translated into Russian.13 However, Mitra orients towards another source,
namely the Persian Rivāyats published in English by Parsi ervad Bamanji
Nusserwanji Dhabhar (1869–1952) in 1932, and republished in the same issue
of Mitra (1(5).2000), translated from English into Russian. The Rivāyats
comprise a collection of explanatory religious letters from Iranian Zoroastrian
priests to their colleagues in India during the 15th and 16th centuries. The
abovementioned issue included the Russian translation by Iuriĭ Lukashevich,
who used the online publication on the website of the American convert
Joseph Peterson (Hinnells 2005:636). Thus, each rubric of the magazine is
presented as one of the Avesta’s 21 nasks. From a practical point of view, the
format of the magazine allows for the inclusion of every rubric, and for that
reason each issue includes a reduced number of them. Each subchapter
concludes with a short depiction of the contents (e.g. “the 6th nask of the
Avesta—Nadar// The explanation of the interpretation of the world of stars,
planets, and constellations”).
13
Cf. Kellens 1989. A number of chapters were prepared for publication by St. Petersburg
Iranologist Aliĭ Kolesnikov at the Institute of Oriental Studies.
55
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
14
This version is also represented in the article about Zoroastrianism in the Russian part of
Wikipedia edited by one of the activists of the Russian Anjoman. Cf. <http://ru.wikipedia.org>
(accessed 05 May 2011).
15
According to Zoroastrians of the Russian Anjoman the term Good belief or good-believing
(благоверие) is also another Russianized name for Zoroastrianism that was in fact reinvented
by the activists of that community. On the one hand, the word can be seen as demonstrating a
semantic shift from Orthodox Christian use, which, in older Russian, means “true faith, piety”
(Sorokin Iu 1985:32), and also “orthodox faith, Russian orthodoxy” (Avanesov 1988:172), and
has been in use since the 17th century together with благоверствие and благоверство. Such
Christian connotations can still be observed in present usage among Orthodox Christians on
the Internet, see for instance: <http://blagoverie.narod.ru> (accessed 14 January 2010). On the
other hand, it is evidently a translation of the middle Persian weh-dēn and the modern Farsi
din-e beh (both: "the good religion") into Russian, one of the autonyms of the Zoroastrian
religion. The members of the Russian Anjoman also actively use the derivative good-believer
(благоверный) in singular and plural as a substitute for the word Zoroastrian/s.
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
Illustrations 1-2. The book front covers of The Living Fire by Pavel Globa from 1996 and 2008
(originally colored, differently sized). Photo: ©P. Globa; ©Vagrius; ©Iauza; ©Eksmo.
This, however, is the central place in the space and hence important: the
reproduction corresponds to the idea of legacy. The image of the investiture
relief is therefore another kind of “investiture,” an “analogon” of reality (Barthes
1977:17 cit. Kress & Leeuwen 1996:24) transmitted through a modern medium.
Besides the Persian connotation, it also has a Zoroastrian connotation: the
narrative inside the book attempts to be rooted in the time of the Sasanian
dynasty. Decorative double swastikas are used in both covers.
The internet presence of Globa also possesses a certain symbolism that refers
to Zoroastrianism. Globa’s former website accessed in 2007 was entitled
“Avestan astrology of Pavel Globa.” Immediately below this caption, there is a
colored panel. The colored faravahar with a man turned to the left is placed
inside a horizontally stretching hexagram figure with a light brown background.
The orange circles lead to a fragment of a picture of an anthropomorphic bull,
the so-called “guardian man-bull” (as portrayed on the gate of Xerxes in
Persepolis “the gate of all nations”). Meanwhile, on the right, after a space we see
a Zoroastrian afarganyu (fire vase) with seven tongues of flame. Close to the last,
there is a black-and-white picture of Globa, where he raises the index finger of
his right hand in a warning (or even in a ritual) gesture. The background is
comprised of horoscopic discs with the numeration of houses and signs of
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
the St. Petersburg Zoroastrian community zoroastrian.ru (since March 2009) has
changed that tendency. In the upper panel one is struck by the golden head of
Zarathushtra in the center of the frame, a diluted Palace bridge to the left
(associated with the tourist image of romantic St. Petersburg), and a golden
faravahar to the right. There are additional references to the past, i.e. ancient
artifacts such as stone reliefs of the Persian kings and fragments of Avestan texts
in original script, which are included for both authentic and decorative reasons.
In respect to the text body of The Living Fire (1996) does not include any
photos or pictures; the text contains 12 numbered chapters without any
subchapters.16 The titles of the chapters are relatively short (from two to six
words). Within the text they are marked in bold. At the beginning of the book
there is an “Introduction” and at the end there are three additional chapters
(“Q&A”, “Conclusion” and “Bibliography”). In the “Contents,” the number of
pages for these additional chapters is not mentioned. Each separate chapter
consists of between 2295 and 11766 words: the shortest is Chapter 9 (“The
attitude towards poverty and wealth”) and the longest is Chapter 7 (“Astrology
as a key to world understanding”). The last chapter as well as chapter three (“The
teaching of good and evil,” consisting of 9246 words) constitute the most
voluminous textual parts of the whole work. Additionally, three other chapters
(4, 8 and 10) are twice as long as the sum of other individual chapters. The
“Conclusion” is extremely short (264 words), but is still slightly larger than the
“Bibliography”. The chapters are mostly well structured and divided into
similar-sized paragraphs usually comprised of about 7–10 sentences.
One observes a clear tendency in the text to make enumerations and
classifications of things, beings, and ethical categories. Beginning from Chapter 1
the author tries to construct some word oppositions and play on contrasts,
which rhetorically tends towards an epideictic style, where appealing to feelings
and experiences is given more weight than logos. The text body of The Living
Fire (2008) has been altered in many places. It is also a more voluminous,
imposing work in hardcover with a format of 17x24 cm (and about 380 pages).
However, the quality of paper is poor because it is the sort used for newspapers
and paperbacks. Although the formal “Contents” shows minimal changes, the
previous work has been substantially extended and lengthy new parts have been
inserted into the old structure of the text without any mention in the “Contents”.
16
The chapter titles are as follows: [0] Introduction; 1. What are they, the ancient Aryans?; 2.
The Heritage of the Aryans; 3. The teaching about good and evil; 4. Why does man come into
this world?; 5. The main moral-ethic principles; 6. The defilement of good beings and human
sins; 7. Astrology as a key to world understanding; 8. Men, women, children; 9. The attitude
towards poverty and wealth; 10. Calendar, feasts, fasting days; 11. The chosenness and the
high destiny of man; 12. Cosmos, the Earth, people; [13] Q&A; [14] Conclusion; [15]
References.
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17
Here is a small synopsis of those texts compared to the old structure of The Living Fire
(1996). (Chapter 1. The Heritage of Aryans): The Origin of Zoroastrianism (37–41); The early
period of the Indo-Iranian community (42–46); The historical predecessors of the Persian
empire (47–51); Cyrus the Great [is] founder of Achaemenid imperium (51–55);
Zoroastrianism without Zarathushtra [is] a phenomenon of the Achaemenids (55–64);
Christianity and Zoroastrianism (64–68); Zarathushtra’s prediction of Christ’s birth (68–74);
The Persian religion of Mitra [is] a forerunner of Christianity (74–87); (Chapter 7. Astrology
[is] a key to world’s understanding): Astrology [is] a compass for everyday life (175–216); The
Watchers of Time (217–224); The Watcher of the Past [is] Shatavaesh (224–229); Sexuality
[is] Shatavaesh’s energy (229–234); (Chapter 8. Men, women, children): the ancestors’ cult in
the life of the Indo-Europeans (235–239); Fravashi [are] guardian spirits of the descendants
(239–246); the wedding ritual and the ancestors’ cult (247–251); the influence of the seven
generations on the fates of the descendants (251–256); the genetic bond of the generations
(257–287);(Chapter 11. The highest destiny of man): Khaoma [is] a replenishment of Khvarna
(335–338); Khaoma [is] a tree of all seeds (338–345); the Moon and the calendar (345–350);
The goddess of the Moon within the Avestan tradition (350–355); (Chapter 12. Cosmos, Earth,
people): The age of Aquarius [is] period for the distinction between good and evil (365–373).
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
The structure of headers in The Living Fire (1996 and 2008) is clear and
unambiguous for the reader. The author often uses enumerations (e.g. “Cosmos,
Earth, people”), or explicative constructions (e.g. “Astrology is a key for the
world’s understanding”), that sometimes tend towards clichés or conventional
expressions for an unprofessional audience. This resembles the basics of formal
logic and underlines again the interpretative-speculative character of the work.
The textual structure of The Living Fire (1996) is clear-cut, while The Living Fire
(2008) is quite intricate due to its excessive size and volume. This forced the
author to divide extensive parts of the text by adding 22 subheadings. These
subheadings are not spatially inclusive or comprehensive and obviously present
a technical stopgap solution for a text flux that is not manageable by any other
means. Also both books are covering extremely different topics that tend to give
an opinion on every sphere of human and earthly life (starting with ethical and
moral values and ending with regulations of everyday life based on astrological
Zoroastrian teachings).
Both presented texts show perfectly well that Globa is an experienced orator.
They are written in a “living” manner implying the existence of a certain
“collective we” who establish direct contact with the (imaginary) audience.
However, that is also an imprint of Globa’s creative process from his public
lectures to his printed materials. For the formation of common ideas he also
utilizes generalizations for different purposes. Firstly, he ascribes an
unquestionable authority to primordial times and peoples (“Ancient Aryans,”
“ancient civilizations,” “ancient science” [astrology]). He speaks from the
perspective of “a critic of the idea of progress and of state of affairs in modern
science, politics and economics” (Globa 1996:2ff).18 Within every sphere of
contemporary life, he postulates an obvious “decline” and reasons that the
solution of the manifold problems of modernity lies in the human past. He
18
Throughout my thesis I am quoting Globa 1996 accoding to the print of the electronic
version that was available in 2008 on the webpage <http://ashavan.by.ru> (accessed 12
February 2008).
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claims that people reflect the past. For instance, modern people should not
invent new solutions but search for them in ancient cultures and civilizations. In
this he makes use of common grammatical constructions such as “it is
considered,” and “the Ancient people believed that.” Secondly, he claims that
some common beliefs or ideas are correct because they have been shared by
many people. This modus operandi vindicates his approach towards normativity
everywhere (“homosexuality is pathological”). Thirdly, his appeal to genetics
research underpins a collective ego that often leads to paradoxical conclusions
(“Zoroastrians in Russia have Zoroastrian genes that have awakened after the
Soviet era”). He arbitrarily uses different vocabulary for the designation of his
own teaching (such as “the Cosmic Law,” “Avestan astrology,” “the teaching of
Ancient Aryans,” “Zoroastrianism,” “Zervanism,” and “astrology”) and does not
distinguish between these denotations explicitly. Such a strategy makes his ideas
accessible not only within the astrological Zoroastrian milieu but also to every
interested, sporadic, and potentially uneducated person. Even the style and set of
topics and examples discussed assume that the reader is inclined to follow
sensationalistic headlines like those about political decisions, war conflicts, and
natural catastrophes that are announced by mass media.
Globa’s text shows patterns that are typical for the argumentative strategy of
the author leading to contradictions: he provides an alternative to scientific
understanding of the world through astrology by criticizing science for failures
and simultaneously makes use of scientific facts and theories to reinforce his
arguments (Chapters 1 and 2). Between the lines of the book one could read the
ambition of setting a full philosophical interpretation of human life in the
contemporary world and with this certain recommendations for everyday
practice for non-Zoroastrians who nevertheless seek to live according to “cosmic
laws.” To summarize, thinking in analogies is a widespread strategy of esoteric
sources and provides a stable research basis for any esoteric discourse.
Like other charismatic people, Globa skillfully utilizes implications and
insinuations in his utterances. This was also my impression during my interview
with him and I assume that the strategy of making claims that are “irrefutable
because they are impossible to verify” plays a crucial psychological role for his
adherents. This approach repeatedly reinforces the identification of Russian
Zoroastrians as the roots of an astrological milieu through their teacher. The
information that remains concealed does not concern his private life, but rather
his authority as an esoteric specialist who has received a secret initiation into
astrological and Zervanite knowledge. In The Living Fire (1996 and 2008)
curiously there is no information about the genealogy of the author that is
articulated in the primary literature of his Zoroastrian students, e.g. in Mitra.
His position is expressed from the voice of a primary authority that nobody
65
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
Within the man who is created after God, Fire represents a spirit of the human,
his creative potential or a particle of divine light giving the possibility to grasp the
idea of the higher world without losing himself. Regarding the world structure
that is an inner fire, actually, [it] is not distinguishable from the other sorts of sole
Fire. The analogy of that term can be found in all traditions that embrace the
distinction between light and darkness” (Globa 1996:31).
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
speech like “let us see.” In this sense, he constitutes common language space and
gives the illusion of scientific evidence, which he vindicates, asserting his
authority as an educated historian.
According to Fairclough (2007:47), every text could entail “a set of voices
which are potentially relevant and potentially incorporated into the text.”
Although the search for those “voices” is sophisticated and not always successful,
the researcher should pose the question, “Through what mechanisms of
inclusion and exclusion and through which suppressions in the text do these
voices emerge?” Firstly, as I have already mentioned, the strong tendency of the
text to appear “scientific” implies many examples from different sciences. Globa
informs the reader about some facts from physics, mathematics, biology,
medicine, and history. Those examples should bolster the understanding of the
items he discusses in analogies forming a holistic view of the world. The
scientific voices breed intertextuality through the method of “indirect reporting”
of what was written or said. Globa makes no precise explanations of scientific
theories and facts, nor does he use quotations; he just describes (or even
reinterprets) them in his own way. Another example of the presence of such
textual anomalies is his direct reports or quotations from the New Testament.
Jesus Christ is the dominant voice that is quoted in this text. In the first edition
of the book, Jesus’ name is cited 27 times throughout the entire book whereas
Zarathushtra’s figure stays in the background with only 13 references. There are
no direct quotations from the Avesta at all; it is perpetually paraphrased without
giving any further references or footnotes. Quotations from political events are
strikingly extensive, e.g. the interview given by the former Russian president
Vladimir Putin for an Iranian TV-program during his visit to Iran in 2008
(Globa 2008:119ff), which is presented in Globa’s unabridged “Conclusion”
(Globa 2008:380). A straightforward comment after this quotation that leans
towards political authority (“even the president thinks that Zoroastrianism is a
‘mother-religion’ in our country”) concludes The Living Fire (2008) and
emphasizes again the populist and Russia-centered idea of the book.
One more aspect of Globa’s intertextuality—I would call it an obvious case
of religious intertextuality—reveals the syncretic (and even synthetic)
character of Globa’s teachings. By adopting non-Zoroastrian religious-
philosophical concepts such as karma or yin and yang, he blends them with
Zoroastrian theology without being confused. In a similar way he uses
vocabulary and hence also theological concepts of Russian Orthodox
Christianity (“God” (Господь), “sin” (грех), “blessing” (благословение), and
“penitence” (покаяние)) to explain Zoroastrian matters, names, and symbols.
Similarly, these rhetorical strategies take root within the astrological
Zoroastrian milieu. For instance, the practice of the Eucharist (причащение),
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carried out using pomegranate juice and milk after common prayers in the St.
Petersburg Zoroastrian community, is interpreted by means of vocabulary
commonly used within Christian ritual practices.
Perhaps the concept of Mitra’s structure, contents, and design can best be
illustrated by a brief description of two issues from 2000 and 2007 that are
accessible for free (in contrast to most other issues where one can just see the
titles) on Mitra’s website. Both cover special topics. A comment in the news
section explains why these issues were published online in full: the editor
decided on free access only in the case of issues dedicated to “internal
celebrations” more precisely to the first Zoroastrian Congress and the 10th
anniversary of Mitra. The following analysis focuses on the paper versions. The
first issue has 63 pages, including the inner covers used for texts and pictures,
with a print-run of 500 copies. The 2007 issue is four times thicker (253 pages
plus covers) with a print-run of 1000 copies. The first issue consists of texts and
visual materials devoted to materials and commentaries from the 2000 congress
held in St. Petersburg. The structure of that issue reflects the order of individual
speeches, recorded and slightly edited by the editor(s) and published as separate
articles. The “nask-structure” of Mitra’s regular issues is omitted here; the
longstanding rubrics outside this “nask-structure,” for instance, “Zoroastrian
cuisine,” are also missing. Instead, all contents are derived from the quasi-
planned and “extraordinary” congress speeches that take up most of the space,
final reports with corresponding documents in in a bureaucratic style, and
finally good feedback from the participants regarding the organization of the
congress, published in the rubric “Our post.” The next part, also signed by the
editor, consists of short replies to a questionnaire from a Ukrainian couple about
Zoroastrianism in their lives, and then the final words of the organizational
committee. After that there are a poem, a short article about time, post-congress
impressions, and then an article by the editor about the magazine Mitra itself
and its role in the development of Zoroastrianism in the post-Soviet area. The
issue concludes with a fragment from the Russian translation of the Pahlavi text
Shayast na shayast (The allowed and the non-allowed) written around the 9th
century CE and entitled “Zoroastrian commandments.”
The second issue was published on the 10th anniversary of Mitra, as is
mentioned in the preface (“Editoral article”). The issue consists of a large
number of texts with the ‘nask-structure’ as well as reports of the meeting
between Pavel Globa and Iranian mōbedyār (Zoroastrian lay priest) Kamran
Loryan in Moscow (4–30) in May 2007, documented with a lot of photographs,
one article by Globa, and culinary recipes. In the “annotation” on the website
written in five languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, English and Farsi), the
background is explained. Some texts, such as “The course on Zervan-
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
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CHAPTER 2: ZOROASTRIANISM IN THE FRAME
fertile for exploration, depending upon how variously and repetitiously the
answers to these questions within the religious discourse of Zoroastrianism are
given. The first of the regular binaries in the discussion of the role of
Zoroastrianism in the astrological milieu is the exclusive relationship between
religion and science. Globa’s views about science as a destructive power in human
history use rhetorical figures that betray the great impact of scientific language.
Thus, religion only can meet the needs of modern people and make the world
harmonious; correspondingly, human reality is constructed as “wholeness” (Globa
1996:3; Globa 2008:13). Starting with ancient history, Globa claims that
humankind knows very little about older periods and peoples, and in this sense,
the results of scientific studies are not self-evident. The same distrust of academic
efficiency, despite the apparent utilization of scientific theories, can be observed in
the texts of other discursive communities in the religious field as well.
In order to advance his arguments, Globa suggests an alternative history
based on interpretations that deviate from common scholarly interpretations of
the past. For instance, the Atlantis myth as well Avestan texts have been used as
sources to prove that the Aryans came to Earth from outer space. That long
tradition should legitimize, in Globa’s view, the contemporary Zoroastrianism
that he attempts to present in The Living Fire. Thus, the cosmic myth that
developed into an imaginative history of ancient Aryans and the idea of the five
races that formed the civilizations on Earth build one of the central concepts in
the astrological Zoroastrian doctrine. This theory originates from some
anthroposophical ideas and from The Living Ethics (also Agni Yoga) (re-
published several times from the 1920s to the 1990s) by Elena and Nikolay
Roerich, who were familiar with the Hyperborean legend of the seven root races
received through its theosophical interpretation by Helena Blavatsky. The
renowned occult concept about the Arctic as the home country of the Aryan
(consequently of Slavic and Russian) people, in combination with the scientific
discourse about the Eurasian proto-community and the migration of the Indo-
Iranians, has enjoyed its popularity in the 1990s by the Russian Neopagans and
has also inspired authors of many Slavic fantasy books (see Chapter 5).
According to Globa’s monistic concept, the essence of every religious world
teaching is the cosmic universal law that was brought to Earth from Ursa Major
by the white Aryan race many millions of years ago.19 He claims that in
Zoroastrianism, as opposed to other religions, the Universal law has been
absolutely preserved. The Aryans had initially founded a civilization in the
Arctic after landing, but due to the flood after the Ice Age, they moved to
Eurasia. In the south, between the Daiti River (the Ural River) and the lake
19
In his early lectures Globa also mentioned the exact time, dating it back eight and a half
million years ago. See e.g. Globa 1990:197.
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
Vourukarta (the Caspian Sea), they found a second home—a country named
Khairat. After that, Aryans gradually spread out to Europe, Iran, and India.
From this viewpoint the Aryan (=white, European) race is manifested as a
holder of the highest knowledge and the founder of a highly developed
civilization that should enrich other nations with its achievements; this is not
necessarily Globa’s original idea, since it is completely consistent with neopagan
ideas from the 1990s (Shnirel’man 2001a).
Even though in modern ethnic Zoroastrianism the highest adored deity is
Ahura Mazdā, Globa emphasizes that the teaching of Zervan as an absolute
principle is crucial for the attainment of secret Zoroastrian knowledge.
According to his view, Zervan manifests himself in two emanations: first as
Zervan Karana, a limited, terrestrial time, and then as Zervan Akarana, an
unlimited time or eternity. The latter Zervan is the father of entity and the
physical universe, who gave birth to two spirits Ahura Mazdā and Angra
Mainyu. That is why Zervan holds the central position and why Globa draws a
theosophical distinction between two main currents within Zoroastrianism: an
exoteric, underlying Zoroastrianism itself and a hidden, esoteric Zoroastrianism,
particularly Zervanism.20 He describes Zoroastrianism as the religion of his
pupils, who in contrast to him do not have an Iranian ancestry (Tessmann 2005).
However, he sees himself as the only “proper” Zervanite and magician21 in
Russia. Globa emphasizes that he is just one of many Zervan worshipers, and
that the others are believed to live “probably in Tajikistan.” The esoteric
tradition of Zervanism or the religion of the ancient Median mages provides, in
his opinion, particular canons and rituals, which are not implemented in the so-
called “orthodox” Zoroastrianism. Modern Zoroastrianism is what remained
after an old “concealed teaching” of antiquity called Zervanism. Although all
religions could be reduced to the same origin, Zoroastrianism (particularly, its
esoteric component) is extraordinary among others because of its “archaic”
form. One of the authors in Mitra tries to reconstruct the reasons why
Zervanism was excluded from the Zoroastrian mainstream religion:
20
The term Zervanism (usually Zurvānism, <Av. zruuān, "time") has been primarily applied in
the religious-historical secondary literature about religion(s) of ancient Iran and refers
probably to the alternative religious current at the time of Sasanian Persia. Whereas Mary
Boyce and her successors (Boyce 1982:231f) see in Zurvānism a “heresy“ opposing the
Sasanian state-Zoroastrianism, there is another view on it as a variation of the Zoroastrian
creation myth (see Stausberg 2001(1):245ff, 480).
21
See Tessmann 2005. Globa’s definition suggests an intensive reception of scientific literature
of this subject. In the foreground stand doubtlessly the works of R.C. Zaehner 1954 and 1955.
Perhaps, another example is a theory expressed by H. C. Nyberg (1966:388): „Er [sc.
Zervanismus] ist typische Priesterlehre und Priesterspekulation. Der Zervanismus ist die
besondere Ausgestaltung der alten medischen Religion der Magier vor der Ankunft des
Zoroastrismus; er ist die Religion der Magier.“ (Italics in the original). In Nyberg’s view,
Zervanism [sic] is much older than Zoroastrianism.
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It becomes clear that the conflict between Zervanites and orthodox Zoroastrians
was brewing. Zoroastrians, striving for order and clarity and worshiping the Sun
[sic] and fire, as well as fire temples, services and regulated life—can hardly
coexist with the impetuous, seeking for truth and freedom, free from all forms
and ideas Zervanites. Bright red-blue-yellow or white cords of Zoroastrians, and
black-gray-white cords of Zervanites emphasize an abyss as it would be between
day and night vision. Zervanism has been considered gloomy—the triad raven-
spider-grass-snake being sacred to Zervanites cast a trembling over the normal
people worshipping a bull, a camel and a dog. Accusations of witchcraft
[unclear—AT] could easily be attributed to Zervanites and became a cause for
deportations. "In emptiness there is no life but death"—this phrase could be a
verdict of guilty for the people owning the keys to their own consciousness
(Amosov 2007:206).
Zervan as a deity of time, on the one hand, and the Universal cosmic law on the
other, fulfill the basic concepts upon which the Avestan astrology, being an inner
part of Zervanism, has been based. In his wish to bridge primordial truth to
modern weltbild, Globa insists that astrological prognosis is understood as a
vehicle to research and change destiny on several mystical levels. From this point
of view, it is quite logical that the largest chapter of Globa’s primary work The
Living Fire in both editions is dedicated to applied esoteric knowledge—namely
to astrology (“Astrology as a key to the understanding of the world”). The
chapter explains the meaning of astrology to the modern man and some spatial
differentiations of astrology as well. Collocations of the words “Avestan” and
“astrology” within the chapter are quite seldom (from the total 134 just 14),
which shows the strong tendency by Globa to ascribe general validity to his own
method. Globa designates astrology as “Ancient,” “divine science,” “lost
science,” and he occasionally uses the term “astrological approach” (Globa
2008:37). Astrology in The Living Fire is defined as a “science,” but is often
accompanied by the constant attributive word “secret,” which also corresponds
to the idea that astrology is an ‘occupation for few’ (Globa 2008:25,35). Globa
explains that modern astrology has false interpreters and could degrade into a
fashion, as has been the case since “the beginning of democracy.” However, the
“proper” astrology is an esoteric one. Avestan astrology is a sort of pre-astrology
that has given birth to other astrological schools (European, Indian, and
Tibetan). In his texts, Globa appeals to scientific evidence and authorities (also
to so-called “Great personalities” [великие люди]: outstanding scholars, artists,
politicians) by cultivating the main aspects of many schools of astrology, the
ideas of correspondences, and resemblances, which can be reduced to the
hermetic formula “as above, so below” (36).
Avestan astrology is considered a part of the Aryan teachings. Globa inherited
Avestan astrology in its esoteric form from his grandfather, a circumstance that
73
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
is not mentioned in either editions of The Living Fire but is discussed in Mitra
and the Russian mass media (see Chapter 4). Globa explains that some
Zoroastrian elements do not differ from “agnostic,” “non-mythologized,”
contemporary European astrology. Globa also operates with commonly known
signs; he often gives explanations based on the Jungian psychological
understanding of a human and his strivings to change his own character. Globa
draws a great panorama of analyzing components (apart from the usual planets,
houses, and signs of the zodiac), including many new (fictional) planets (for
instance, Proserpina), meteors, or particular points on the lunar calendar (for
instance, the Black and the White Moons). As a rule, while Globa’s texts describe
his astrological approach, they lack any technical instruction of how to use this
knowledge practically.
Generally, Avestan astrology understands itself as a prognostic therapy
radiating the astrological chart as a state of good and evil potentials in the
private life of a human. Mostly such astrology gives many reasons for pessimistic
prognoses. According to this astrology, evil disturbs harmony in the world.
However, bad constellations should not make people into fatalists without any
hope to improve their conditions; it should give a great impulse to overcome fate
through the Zoroastrian imperative of good thoughts, good words, and good
deeds. Nevertheless, Globa, by integrating Avestan astrology into the Aryan myth
and the Zervanite or Zoroastrian religion when it comes to the presentation of
his astrological system, does not always articulate the religious or traditional
character of the symbiosis. It is typical for him to describe astrology as a
“science” and himself as an “astrologer” or a “historian” who made astrology his
main profession. The impression that Pavel Globa is a commercially successful
brand and not a private person is visible on his RuNet websites (also because of a
minimum of personal data and the overuse of a “professional image,” such as
Globa’s books, interviews, and TV-broadcasts). These websites, usually hosted
by an individual webmaster, offer a range of paid astrological consultations (e.g.
globa.ru, pavelgloba.ru). 22
22 Globa’s “official” biography (here globa.ru), which reads more like an advertisement,
contains descriptions of his astrological predictions and occupy most of the website’s space.
Cf: “Pavel Pavlovich Globa is a prominent astrologer and historian, rector of the Astrological
Institute, president // of the Association of Avestan astrology, author of about 40 scientific-
popular books. His astrological // knowledge he inherited from [his] ancestors whose roots
[sic] can be retraced many thousands of years ago to // the prophet Zarathushtra [sic]
predicting the coming of Jesus Christ. His prognoses for the future development of our //
Land and the situation in the World have been realised to have a probability of not less than
85 per cent. Here are some of [his] // prognoses: the collapse of the USSR, Chernobyl’s
average, the catastrophe of the ferry “Estonia,” the earthquake in // Armenia, the August
crisis, B.N. Yeltsin’s dismissal, V.V. Putin’s rise to power, the act of terrorism on the 11th of
September, // the [second – AT] Iraq war and and the enigmatic escape of Saddam Hussein.
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CHAPTER 2: ZOROASTRIANISM IN THE FRAME
The main metaphors for astrology in the texts are the idea that astrology
works like “medicine,” and that using astrology is like visiting lawyer in order to
get good advice. Astrology helps “to understand the laws of our world,” “to live
with life laws,” “to prevent,” and “to alleviate conflicts” (Globa 1996:36)
Astrology explains “cycles of universe” (Globa 1996:36) and “cosmic influence
on the Earth” (Globa 1996:36). Globa also briefly surveys astrology regarding its
fields. The main accent he provides to his astrology is personality. Thus,
astrology in everyday life “allows defining peculiarities of a character (innate and
learned), strong and weak sides of personality (including talents and
psychological complexes), true direction of development of personality..., define
the temptations of evil and the support of good forces (from where and when
one should expect them). His astrology also “explains the true causes of current
events, foretells several variations of future events that depend upon future
choices, corrects behavior (prompts what should be paid attention to), chooses
the optimal time to begin an affair, warns about dangerous and critical
situations, and a lot of other things” (Globa 1996:37). Another “astrological
approach” used by Globa is karmic astrology. In the common sense, astrology is
considered a tool “to predict the future” (Globa 1996:36f), but the main goal of
astrology is therapeutic and educational.
If we turn our gaze towards the milieu of the AShAs and analyze the
various sources about Zervanism within the text corpus of Mitra, we can
detect that Globa’s programmatic articles are the most voluminous sources
of information within them. His pupils often use his sentences without going
deeper into other possible sources, and if they do (e.g. with references to
some scholarly publications23) they try to interpret them in the same way as
Globa did it in his publications.
Affection towards popular philosophy and speculative history are the reasons
why Globa remains in his own way almost unreceptive towards modern forms of
[blank] // People who took heed of his warnings saved us from many misfortunes—in 1993
the first block of the Rovenskaia NPS, in March 95 [there was] extraordinary preventive
measures at // the Ignalinskaia NPS. [In] November 1994, a crash at the ammoniac industrial
complex in the city of // Ventspils was averted; that are just a few of the commonly
acknowledged facts. Annually he shares his // prognoses [with us] trying to warn the
humankind against fatal errors, to escape several catastrophes and to avoid // improper
political decisions. Now many political figures, big businessmen and // famous people consult
Pavel Globa. [We] hope that we will subsequently learn some names.[blank] // The main
direction of Pavel Globa’s work is an in-depth investigation of astrological science and // its
popularization, the systematization of knowledge and the education of professional
astrologers. Most of the // famous astrologers nowadays have studied astrology by Pavel
Globa, he occupies this position already // thirty years long. Some people are proud of this,
some people conceal it, but there is hardly any astrologer who was not reading // his books
and not studying [his] works.”
23
The most cited source is Zaehner 1955, also translated into Russian by Globa’s adherents.
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CHAPTER 2: ZOROASTRIANISM IN THE FRAME
Although some Russian Zoroastrians are still anxious to find Zervanites during
their travels throughout Iran (Malakhova 2007:147), that assertion—while
permanently contended by the Russian scholars (see Chapter 3)—has been
considered non-conclusive on selected pages of Mitra (but it has been indirectly
confirmed at least once [Path 2007:4ff]) by mōbedyār Loryan in 2007 (Loryan
2007:20). Loryan appeared on the magazine’s pages in 2007 during an attempt to
draw attention away from that topic and focus it to Gathic Zoroastrianism.
However, the main position of the Mitra supports the Zervanite myth as one
of the most important postulates of Globa’s teachings (Tarasova 2000:41;
Smirnov 2000:48f; Sokolova 2000:62). However, there is an opinion that apart
from astrology the Avestan teaching also consists of alchemy (Koroviak
2000:46f). Nevertheless, the junior-prior Chistiakov, while discussing the
establishment of a “canon” for Russian Zoroastrianism, distinguished between
“receivable” and “heretic” Zervanism that cannot be accepted among other
Zoroastrian texts. Chistiakov demanded the research on that topic (Chistiakov
2000:18) that had been fixed in the final document of the Congress (Document
2000:55) but had not been mentioned since. Globa also accredits a manuscript
that he calls Zervan Namag (the book of Zervan) to Zervanite texts that is still
mostly unknown to other people (Tessmann 2005:98f). This work has been used
by Globa to communicate some stories, maxims, etc. (Globa 2000a:8). Among all
students and colleagues, the astrologer Nikolaĭ Koroviak is the only other person
that circumstantially cites the Zervan Namag as well (Koroviak 2000:46).
Globa describes a peculiar Zervanite teaching that is linked to certain
ceremonies and feast observances in the pages of Mitra. There are about four
“main Zervanite festivals,” which can be distinguished through their strict
character and are “associated with the receiving of a personal revelation through
mantras and meditation”.24 Nonetheless the celebrations of one of the so-called
Zervan days during the tour near lake Turgoiak in the Urals has been similar to
ordinary celebrations within the astrological Zoroastrian milieu (Sokolova
2007:234). The beginning of the Persian New Year (Nouruz) on the 21st of
24
For instance, see [Feasts] 2007:66f: “1. Holiday of Zervan-king, Zervan-father and Zervan-
ruler. Zervan holiday in a shape of a Lion is celebrated on August 7–8th, when the sun is at 15°
Leo.// 2. Holiday of Zervan Akarana, the unlimited time, which is depicted in the form of a
golden spider web with a human head. Celebrated on November 22th at 30° Scorpio.// 3.
Holiday of Zervan, the Creator, Kirder’s holiday. Noted in our Yuletide—from the 4th to the
17th January, prevalently on January 4th, at 14° Capricorn.// 4. Holiday of Zervan Karana, the
limited time. It is celebrated on the day when the sun passes through the degree in the fall of
Saturn (21° Aries)—April 11th.”
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
March is also interpreted as the “point of Zervan,” when the Sun moves into the
border between Pisces and Aries and enters the terrestrial world (Volynkin
2007:104). This exact moment is important for the overall community, therefore
they gather each year on that day early in the morning.25
If Zervanism is being connected to the esoteric part of Zoroastrianism (as
Avestan astrology or also Avestan alchemy) as acknowledged by Globa and his
sympathizers in Mitra, then this is also a direct link to the concept of cosmic law
and Indo-Slavic culture (Kuchma 2000:38). Within the literature that is being
discussed here, the terms “Zervanism” and “Zoroastrianism” are often
reciprocally interchangeable.
Mitra reproduces other points of view that can be perceived from the main
ideas of Zoroastrianism as well, and therewith tries to harmonize its own pro-
Globa understanding of religion with the opinions of other religious specialists
both from Iran (Kamran Loryan, Ardeshir Khorshedyan) and from India
(Burzin Atashband, Meher Master-Moos) (see Atashband 2000:33f; Master-
Moos 2007:137ff). As a result, there is an obvious disinclination to articulate
different kinds of religious knowledge. Globa’s rhetoric has been transformed
into a kind of religious relativism. Thus, Zoroastrianism is considered to be a
“pluralistic” religion that potentially possesses many coexistent interpretations
of rituals; it is also a “less dogmatic” religion. However, it remains
“monotheistic.” Even though it is an ancient kings’ religion, Zoroastrianism is
considered inherent to the modern people.
For the Russian Anjoman this Zervanite doctrine, which is widely discussed
in the astrological Zoroastrian milieu, sounds rather obscure and hence, the
Anjoman’s activists criticize any connection to occult and esoteric sciences. They
insist on the linking of Russian Zoroastrianism to the Iranian tradition and
approve of contacts to Iranian (but not to Indian) religious authorities such as
the Iranian Mobed Council, acknowledged by them as “the highest authority
among the world Zoroastrian community,” which does not necessarily
correspond to reality. In the text that can be defined as the Anjoman’s creed, the
RuNet website’s welcome page states26:
25
In 2009, I took part in the Nouruz celebration that began about at 7 a.m.
26
This text has two editions in Russian and English, the former is much larger than the latter.
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allow them make [sic] their choise [sic] between Good and Evil.// We believe in
Ameshaspands (Beneficent Immortals), the seven divine steps/stages of
evolution.// We believe in “dâd o dahesh”// donation/contribution and helping
the needy.// We believe in the sanctity of earth, wind, water and fire, plants and
animals and in necessity of the environmental protection.// We believe in
“Frashkard” (constant rejuvenation) of the world.// Frashkard means
“positivism” and find [sic] always new ways in life to reach the common humane
objectives, destroy evil and fulfil people's desire of happiness and joy (original
English translation) (Anjoman Mazda Yasna 2007).
Similar to the concepts of Globa’s students, the “good faith” is in the Anjoman’s
view, a religion that is open to everyone in the world.
27
See the Russian translation of The Zoroastrians (Зороастрийцы: верования и обычаи,
1985) that includes not only a new preface and postscript, but also many comments and
additions such as an amended title to the Russian bibliography.
79
ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
1988:3), and this does not imply an exact location (see also Chapter 3).
Nevertheless, false references to or paraphrases of Boyce’s hypothesis have also
been used as irrefutable evidence and are found in almost all publications by
Globa and in Mitra.
In Globa’s eyes, the prophet Zarathushtra popularized the exoteric version of
Zoroastrianism, hiding Zervanite mysteries and knowledge from the non-adepts.
For the members of the Russian Anjoman, the “righteous” Zarathushtra is
understood as
the first and only prophet, who received the revelation of God and who was
chosen by Ahura Mazda for the prophetic path. Zarathushtra rejected the
immoral beliefs and proclaimed the Good Faith (Bekh Din). He showed the
people a path to the knowledge of God and perfection, approved religious laws
and established Anjoman of mobed preserving continuity and purity of the faith
to this day (Blagoverie 2007).
The idea that Zoroastrianism was the native religion of the Russian territories is
not unique within the astrological Zoroastrian strand. The Anjoman also started
an online-project about Zoroastrian elements that are present in Russian
heritage. This idea is embraced in some locations in the former Soviet republics,
especially by diverse ethnic minorities. This ad hoc approach uses linguistic or
ethnographic data to describe the post-Soviet area as “originally predisposed” to
Zoroastrianism. Apart from the awareness that Russian Zoroastrianism
represents a new religious community that has never been present in Central
Russia, the link to the historically grounded legitimization is important for both
discursive communities. The Russian Anjoman also states that “Zoroastrians
have always lived in this territory” (Russian Anjoman 2007).
However, the argumentation in the Mitra does not always aim to involve
scholarly materials. It understands itself in the same context of Aryan or
Hyperborean mythology, which implies uncountable parallels between the
language, myths, and cult practice of Slavs and Iranians (and in a narrower
sense, Zoroastrians). This leads to the fact that the terms “Aryan,” “Slavic,” and
“Zoroastrian” are not distinguishable from each other (e.g. Sokolova 2002:89).
Thus, an author states:
It is impossible to swim across the river and get to the opposite bank not pushing
off from the other side, the one on which we stand. What I mean? The opposite
bank for us is Zoroastrianism, and the bank, where we stand is the Holy Rus.
Here, in this area, such a tradition, I mean Zoroastrianism, has never existed in
fact. However, there has been a tradition, a culture being very similar, very akin to
Zoroastrianism. A unique culture, actually. To date, though, there is no such
clarity, consistency, logicality, which exists in Zoroastrianism. And we need you,
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by and large, pick up this culture, wash it, which was illegal, in general, forgotten
and flouted, indeed trampled down. Because our roots and origins [came] from it
(Kuchma 2000:37).
These views with a large spectrum of narratives are quite at home for many
Russian NRMs, such as theosophical and Roerikh’s groups, and different
neopagan communities as well.
Illustrations 3–4. The archeological site Arkaim in the Chelyabinsk Oblast and The White
Mountain or the Zarathushtra’s mountain on the cape Strelka where rivers Kama and
Chusovaya flow together. Photo: ©O. Lushnikov, ©Perm AshA.
As we know, the Iranians, Slavs and Indo-Aryans are the descendants of a sole
Aryan race that was thousands of years ago divided into three branches. The
Indian Vedas, the Slavic Vedas and the Avesta, in essence, have derived from a
single source—from the teachings of the ancient Aryans, who came to Earth in
the distant past from the stars of Ursa Major (Editoral board b 2000:98).
The center of the world or axis mundi in that heterogeneous, eclectic worldview
is Arkaim. Together with many Russian NRMs, Globa’s adherents devote great
attention to Arkaim—without any doubt a central point of their pilgrimage to
the “prehistorical Zoroastrian” sights. Arkaim is an archaeological site in the
southern Urals near Magnitogorsk. It is a kind of Russian Stonehenge and is
revered as an ecologically constructed ancient settlement and observatory. It was
discovered in 1987. In fact, Arkaim is only part of a big archaeological complex
(of the so-called “land of protopoleis”) comprising about 20 circular settlements,
which date from the 18th to 16th centuries BCE and are ascribed to the
archaeological culture of Sintashta.
Called by some the "navel of the earth" or the mystical Shambala, Arkaim also
takes a significant place in the eschatological constructions of some religious
groups (Lunkin & Filatov 2000:145). The role of Arkaim as a central esoteric
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
place for all of Russia was articulated by Tamara Globa in the early 1990s
(Shnirel’man 2001b). Like other archaeological enigmas of the prehistoric
periods, Arkaim has its esoteric religious dimension and is adored by many
people as a mystical place of revelation. According to statistics, Arkaim is visited
by about 5000 people annually, and 40% of them are adherents of various
parapsychological and religious groups. The wave of “esoteric tourism” flooded
the remote area because of mass media reports and some publications written by
Pavel Globa and his former wife Tamara. For both of them Arkaim has been a
place that contains huge spiritual energy that can influence people in a positive
way. With the building of many wells, stoves, ovens for metal, and a particular
sewage system, as well as multistage water filtration, the ancient settlement has
been proclaimed as the absolute ecological system that did not adversely affect
the environment. Arkaim is implemented in many different metaphors e.g. as a
fantastic “zone” reminiscent of the film Stalker (Сталкер, 1979) by Russian
filmmaker Andreĭ Tarkovskiĭ (Starostin 2003:148) and as a “land of Fravashi”
where the “Aryan ancestors” have lived in harmony with nature and the universe
(Starostin 2003:149).
Since the beginning of the 1990s, there were two routine patterns of
interpretation for Arkaim. According to the first, religious-esoteric
interpretation, Arkaim is the Vara of the Zoroastrian ancestor Yima (Zartoshti
2003:126), a “sacred capital of king Vishtaspa” (Lushnikov 2005), and “one of the
first Zoroastrian temples” (Gorshcharik 1999:50). From an astrological point of
view, it is considered to be an ancient observatory that had been built in
accordance with certain cosmic constellations. In the first case, the astrological
Zoroastrian publications refer to Young Avestan texts such as Vendidad
(Vidēvdāt) and Yasht (hymns), which speak about Aryanam Vaejğa land (<Av.
“Aryan length”) with the beautiful Datiya River, both of which are mentioned in
the Avestan text Vidēvdāt (Vd.1:1–2), but have not been localized by scholars yet
(Stausberg 2001:109). Other Avestan hymns say that Spitama Zarathushtra lived
in Aryanam Vajeğa near the Datiya, offering sacrifices to Ahura Mazdā
(Yt.5:104, 9:25, 17:45). Thus, this first group is confident that Aryanam Vaejğa
can be identified with the territory near Arkaim. It is connected to the
expectancy of Zarathustra’s prophecy that “the teaching will come back to [the
place] where it rose from” (Globa 2008:31).
The “good religion” is also interpreted as a religion that expresses a
“protected behavior towards the environment” and a “harmonic relationship
between human beings and nature” (Butakova 1997:32). This view also supports
the program of the tour On the Path of Zarathustra that takes place in the Urals
and assumes that participants with urban backgrounds will go on a pilgrimage to
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the “sacred places,” which are connected with the ancient Aryan (Lushnikov
2000:32) civilization and with the prophet Zarathustra (Lushnikov 2005).
Thus, a new mythological, Astro-Zoroastrian and sensu lato Aryan geography
has been created and a new prehistory has been redrafted for every tourist spot.
For instance, orthodox-Christian pilgrim places and shrines have been declared
places that perpetuate holy Zoroastrian traditions because they were built on
ancient Zoroastrian altars (Lushnikov 2005). Particular sacred energies have
been ascribed to such places and landscapes. They allegedly emanate positive
power, or khvarna (<Av. xᵛarənah, Zoroastrian type of charisma). The
pilgrimages have been symbolically understood as mysteries of overcoming of
the “cabals” of the Evil or Ahriman (Lushnikov 2005).
Illustrations 5-6. The emblem of the tour On the path of Zarathushtra (1996-2005), Perm
AShA (originally colored) and a sadrepushi or navjote ceremony lead by a St. Petersburg
khorbad in Arkaim. Photos: ©O. Lushnikov, ©Perm AshA.
Globa argues that this event is an indispensable Zoroastrian duty like the
pilgrimage of Muslims to Mecca or Jerusalem for the Jews (Globa 2004:88). The
touring festival has been organized from the AShA in Perm and usually lasts
about ten days. The number of participants increased from 16 in 1996 to around
100 in 2006. The program has been gradually extended: while in the first three
years there were few destinations, since 1997, 11 fixed ones have been chosen.
The most notable from them are Zarathustra’s Mountain or White Mountain
(Гора Заратуштры или Белая гора), the Treasury of Zem (Сокровища Зема) in
Kungur’s ice hole, Daena's Island (Остров Даэны/Веры) in the lake Turgoiak,
Arkaim and Vohumana's mountain, or visits to the Belogorodskiĭ monastery of
Holy Nikolay. The touring program includes important activities such as the
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
What can bring people being different by age, profession, and character together?
That is before all the righteous (праведная) religion. In this severe for our
country period—however, we believe Ukraine, Russia and Belarus are one
country, although being artificially disconnected—only the knowledge of our
roots and ancient traditions and the rebirth of the ancient Aryan culture can give
us the understanding and can revive our nations like the bird Phoenix
(Netrebovskiĭ, Smirnov & Khristenko 2000).
Contrary to Globa and Mitra, the topic of Arkaim is not popular among the
activists of the Russian Anjoman. One of them states in the forum:
Arkaim may have (but probably does not have) some relationship to the ancestors
of the Iranians [...] but it has nothing to do either with Zarathushtra, or with the
Good Faith (Bahman 2008).
Nevertheless, when discussing Putin’s speech on TV, the Russian Anjoman did
not disavow Putin’s statement that Zoroastrianism “has its origin in the
southern Urals,” as was the case with Globa and his students, but rather it tried
to draw attention to their community and their problems because of the forced
informal and non-juridical status:
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The Russian Anjoman perceived with satisfaction the words of the President
[sic]. For the first time in the history of modern Russia, Vladimir Putin, being
the first face of the state, has publicly announced during an official visit the
Good Faith as originally existing in the territory of Russia, and has elaborated
upon the role of Zoroastrianism in the forming of other world religions and the
cultural heritage of the folk of Russia. The President’s words give grounds to
hope for a positive change in relation to the community of the traditional
Zarathushti (Anjoman Media 2008).
The past (both imaginary and historical) and the history of Zoroastrianism and
other religious currents occupy an important place within Globa’s, Mitra’s, and
Russian Anjoman’s sub-discourses. All three see themselves in the middle of an
eschatological struggle between good and evil described in the Zoroastrian texts.
All three groups support the cosmological scheme of the Pahlavi Bundahishn
(the concept of three epochs in this struggle).
Krylov, answering in his LiveJournal the question whether in Zoroastrianism
there is an analogy to the Christian “holy history,” writes:
The entire history is a history of the struggle of the Creator and the people against
the Enemy [sic] and its creatures. Correspondingly, Zarathushtra’s times are, if one
is inclined to compare to something, the winter in 1941. This means, “the offensive
of the enemy is stopped, one prepares a breakthrough”.// But it is not necessarily so
that “everything important has happened before us”. We are still at war now and the
times are the same. What is going on now is not less important than what happened
thousands of years ago. Perhaps even more important (krylov 2010).
In an earlier text Krylov states that Russia and the Russians have an important
messianic mission for the entire Universe; the Russian people will be saved for
the Last Day (Krylov 2004). Because the “creation of the world was an act of
war” (i.e. a struggle of Ormazd against Ahriman), the answer to Evil should be
positive energy from humankind. He wrote,
The Universe is a missile, launched straight into the throat of the Enemy. Its
purpose is to hit and to explode. This implies the meaning and the inevitability of
the End of the World: The world will be destroyed, but its destruction will destroy
the enemy with its power too. That is why it has been created. Yet, it is perfectly
clear who in our world the warhead is: this is us, the Russians (Krylov 2004).
Besides this concept, Globa and his followers have appropriated the notion of
the beginning of the Aquarian era after the period of pollution and catastrophes.
In this context, Zoroastrianism is essential for the solving of ecological problems
in Russia. In Globa’s vision, the future of humankind has been sketched rather
pessimistically. In The Living Fire II his pessimistic insights conform to Samuel
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
P. Huntington’s idea of a “clash” between two parts of the world—the East and
the West—expressed in his controversial work The Clash of Civilizations (1996).
According to Globa, the outcome of this intercultural fight is guaranteed to favor
the Eastern civilizations. He ascribes a particular role in the “end of history” to
Russia and the Slavic peoples (Globa 2007c:736f).
If we abstract from the Zoroastrian theological concepts of time, we can
observe that the Russian Zoroastrians share the common fears and hopes of
secularized postmodern thought. Therewith, the Zoroastrian terms and concepts
are in a certain sense metaphors for the interpretation of post-Soviet reality. In
particular, they are linked to post-perestroika trauma and feelings of personal
and common social instability.
While in the 1990s the AShAs have had only one authority in religious
questions, namely Pavel Globa, the 2000s have been rich on contact with foreign
Zoroastrians and authorities, which brought new themes and discourses. The
new challenges of communication have sensitized the idea of the role of the
Russian Zoroastrians at the global level and the grade of their embodiment.
Thus, the contacts of the St. Petersburg Zoroastrian Community with the Iranian
mōbedyār Loryan since 2007 have been stigmatized through a series of new
discursive events, which open a new possibility for Globa’s adherents to
experience or adopt other forms of Zoroastrianism. A recently initiated convert
and longstanding author reported in Mitra:
Both Loryan and his mentor Khorshedyan who visited Russia made attempts to
persuade Globa’s adherents to refuse esotericism in their beliefs. Does it mean
that the new behdins felt ready to reject Avestan astrology? Apparently, that was
not the case. The above citation and two further issues address identical
discussion topics such as Avestan astrology and Zervanite philosophy in Globa’s
presentation, prognoses, reports on Arkaim, etc., and show the solidity of the
esoteric Zoroastrian discursive frameworks that were developed earlier. If the
turn to “traditionalist” Zoroastrianism was observed as a chance to find a
common language with the Russian Anjoman, Globa’s leadership and the
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CHAPTER 2: ZOROASTRIANISM IN THE FRAME
esoteric practices of his students can be perceived as the most disturbing factors.
Perhaps it makes sense to look back at a vision that Globa sketched for his
adherents at the first Zoroastrian Congress in 2000:
Once again, I would like to remind you that we are creating now a kind of a basis,
a foundation. We have the prospect of a temple. In order to do this we need,
firstly, to launch the process so that everything in the future would go
independently from us. Secondly, the temple can be erected only with the
involvement and with the help of the people who already are the bearers of the
tradition, of the teaching. This is possible only on the condition that we will enter
the common, unified system of the Zoroastrian teaching. We must not be
separated from them. Otherwise, we would be a sect. If Zoroastrianism provides
for better opportunities in different directions, we will use them. Moreover, why
[should not we do] the same thing? I understand that the Indian current of
Zoroastrianism is somewhat different from the Iranian. Likewise, we will
distinguish ourselves from the one and from the other, and that is good. I think
this question can be asked when we will have established an indissoluble union
with our valued guests, and not only with India, but with Iran and so forth. Over
the next 20 years, we will do it; then we will build the temple. Jupiter and Saturn
are now in Taurus, and the month of Taurus is connected with Asha-Vahishta,
i.e. with the Ized who is coincidentally the keeper of the fire (Globa 2000:56).
Globa suggested the strategy of the “golden mean” for the Russian Zoroastrians
in his speech. This meant the acceptance of other, “traditionalist” authorities
that could also help to improve the distinctive features of their beliefs, perhaps as
descents of a “particular sort of Zoroastrianism,” Zervanism. The events of the
2000s with their controversies have still not provided a clear answer as to
whether or not this will be possible in the future.
The problem of the future is irrelevant to the Russian Anjoman that focus
primarily on the universal and not necessarily “Russian” character of
Zoroastrianism. For instance, to the direct question about Zoroastrianism in
Russia and its development, one of the members of the Russian Anjoman,
Krylov, behaves rather cautiously arguing his personal position as one of the
ordinary believers. To the question “What are the perspectives for the Good
Faith (Благоверия) in Russia and around the world?” he replies:
One more act of self-positioning in the religious space is the global perspective:
from this point of view, Russian Zoroastrianism is “one of many” branches in
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
the world that enjoy equal positions. On this point, Globa’s followers concur
with the ones from the Russian Anjoman.
[...] if a person has chosen Christianity, I think that's fine too, and in any case
better than no choice at all. But to combine religions—I consider simply a
reckless occupation: it is impossible to sail on two ships, because you will
inevitably drown. One must make a choice (Chistiakov 1998:36f).
Globa’s discourse gives at least three main variations of the Zoroastrian identity,
which, in his opinion, can take place in Russia: by birth, by conversion, and in
general by something that can be depicted as a “genetic” belonging. Particularly,
the first case is a considerably rare one. It borders with the exclusivity that Globa
ascribes to himself as a “hereditary Zervanite.” According to his
autobiographical sketches, utterances in many interviews, public presentations,
and short notices that are scattered in the publications under his name, he
became a Zoroastrian through the bloodline of his Iranian ancestors. His
students developed this type of presentation that one can label “Globa’s multi-
variable hagiography.” The second possibility to gain a Zoroastrian
legitimization by the St. Petersburg Zoroastrians is the initiation (navjote or
sadrepushi) by permanent learning. The initiation ceremony itself is a ritual that
has altered in the last two decades. Globa’s early publications and some oral
witnesses of his adherents, recount “Zervanite” initiations conducted by Globa
publically on the stage immediately after his astrological lectures. One of the
attributes of the ceremony is a tricolored cord handed to the initiands. The
28
In the first group interviews conducted in the St. Petersburg Zoroastrian Community in
2001, my position as agnostic was not welcomed warmly. In addition, childlessness seemed to
be another important point of criticism.
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colors are construed to be those of the deity Zervan. Since the registration of the
St. Petersburg Zoroastrian Community, no such initiations have been
documented. Despite the limited religious authorities of khorbads as religious
specialists, they were responsible for those rituals and carried them out using a
new style, namely with white ritual clothes that were given to St. Petersburg
females and males.29 As explained in an article:
We're not going to prove to anyone whether we exist, and whether we are genuine
Zoroastrians or not, and whether we can be Zoroastrians or cannot. We just live
within this tradition; our children have been born from Zoroastrian marriages.
This indicates that the Zoroastrian tradition is getting roots in our territory
(Sokolova 2002a:103).
We have heard about Zoroastrianism relatively recently, roughly 8–10 years ago,
when we came to P.P. Globa’s lectures. First, we were interested only in the
predictive aspects of astrology. But over time, when we got [more] information
about the Avesta as a moral and an ethical teaching and about the freedom of
choice between Good [sic] and evil, when we heard about the ancient Aryans,
most probably at this point appeared the genetic memory (Netrebovskiĭ &
Smirnov & Khristenko 2000:58).
Globa and regular Mitra articles dedicated to the ancient history explain the
Russian affiliation to Zoroastrianism through common Aryan heritage and the
“memory of territory”—an idiosyncratic idea to nationalist and other new
religious groups. The most acute evidence of “Zoroastrianess” is the production
of new mythology around the archaeological complex Arkaim in the Ural
steppes. In its context, Russian Zoroastrians are striving for a tautological self-
legitimization of their worldview based upon a chain of simplified analogies:
they consider themselves Zoroastrians because of Arkaim’s interpretation as an
Aryan settlement and hence, a Zoroastrian one. In reverse order, Arkaim is a
Zoroastrian settlement because ancient Russian territories were allegedly
inhabited by Aryans who were Zoroastrians.
29
According to my interviews in St. Petersburg during the 2000s, St. Petersburg khorbads
conducted a number of sadrepushi ceremonies in Kiev and Poltava.
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However, apart from the aforementioned scenarios there are other ethic
dimensions that distinguish a Zoroastrian person from others. Zoroastrians are
supposedly morally strong people (also primarily in the sense of Christian-
European values), which is one of the repeating motifs within Globa’s popular
astrological publications.
The Russian Anjoman does not articulate this idea explicitly but it regards the
presence of ethnic Persian blood favorably. They boldly assert that the ancient
heritage of Iranian peoples is dominant in the modern cultures that occupy
territories close to the former Persian Empire during the Sasanian dynasty’s
reign. Thus, Tajikis or Azerbaijanis are ipso facto bearers of Zoroastrianism. The
confirmation of such a position reflects the contemporary politics of Central
Asian republics in the ideological platform where pan-Persianism has been
utilized for the revision of historiography, aimed obviously at the obliteration of
the Soviet era from their historical-political maps, which can be detected in mass
media reports (see Chapter 4). Moreover, in an online project about present day
Zoroastrian rudiments the Russian Anjoman’s activists develop an ad hoc
approach that presents an in-depth analysis of folk religions of diverse
nationalities in the post-Soviet area and that uses linguistic and ethnographic
data to constitute the concept of the post-Soviet area as being “originally
predisposed for the Zoroastrian religion” (Russian Anjoman 2009).
The Russian Anjoman insists on certain rules for the conversion to
Zoroastrianism, which forbid any earlier sedrepushi or navjote rituals:
[…] the conversion to the Good Faith by the people who grew up outside of the
tradition should be conducted not earlier than the age of 25 or not earlier than
before the marriage and the childbirth. I.e. at the time of the conversion to the
Faith [sic] the person must have a formed personality, being able to make serious
decisions and bear full responsibility for them. Such qualification is not a
canonical rule. This is the result of our practice during the last 5 years (farnabag
2007a).
Although there are many different religions, Globa claims that God is one; he
seldom calls him Ahura Mazdā, however Ahura Mazdā is submissive to
Zervan, who is considered absolute Time. In the moral sense God is akin to
human conscience, which leads to the curious conclusion that to be a “moral
human being” is more important than to be a practicing believer. On that
point the notion that a human is close to God shows the proximity of Globa’s
teachings to New Age movements’ esoteric understandings of the relationship
between human beings and divine transcendence (Hanegraaff 1996:204ff;
Heelas 1996:18ff).
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
choice. In his LiveJournal blog, where he regularly writes since 2001, Krylov has
promised many times to define his position towards Zoroastrianism but has
constantly confined himself to only a few words. Here are examples from
LiveJournal in 2009 illustrating his brief style of reporting on Zoroastrianism:
Question: For what reason does a Russian become necessarily [Zoroastrian]/ [or]
need Zoroastrianism? //That is, above all, two questions, not only one.
Krylov: I consider the Good Faith [sic] a truth—or, at the minimum, the greatest
truth than all I am aware of. // [I] think, a true faith is a necessary thing. In
particular, for a Russian. To me, anyway, that has proved very useful (krylov 2009).
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The junior leader Chistiakov’s studies in Avestan began the entire series of
Avestan lectures, which were linked to the Zoroastrian liturgy in the St.
Petersburg Zoroastrian Community. Since then, Mitra published his explanations
for the other community members (0.1997:12f, 1.1997: 5ff, 3.1999: 10f,
1(5).2000: 27ff, 3(7).2001:6ff see also the explanation of Zoroastrian liturgy by
Chistiakov 1998:18ff). Chistiakov also translated Parsi literature from English,
such as The Khorde Avesta in 2005 and The 101 Names of Ahura Mazda in 2006,
which he introduced with special comments for the Russian readership.
According to Globa, Avestan and Pahlavi texts should be compulsory reading
for everyone in the community:
Naturally, I believe that the Avestan language should learned by all community
members. At least, they have to know what a mantra has been recited about, what
services are carried out. Though they do not thoroughly know [that], but in general,
they have to have certain skills in doing so. Also Pahlavi, because the great literature is
written in Pahlavi (Globa 1997b:2).
However, it is a fact that the majority of the Russian Zoroastrians cannot read
original Zoroastrian religious texts. Parallel with those languages, English and
Farsi have also become essential knowledge for translations of articles and
publications written in other Zoroastrian journals. Besides, they have become
urgent for gathering new contacts in the diaspora, Iran, and India. Language
education has been attempted within organized courses for community
members.30 Even the presentation of their own groups and publications on
RuNet required, in their opinion, a wider reception through translations into
English and Farsi. Thus, an annotation of Mitra 9(13) in 2007 on the Mitra
website has been translated into English, Farsi, Belarusian, and Ukrainian. The
two latter languages are official state languages of two post-Soviet countries,
where the most active AShAs (Minsk and Kiev) operate.
The same idea to translate foreign language texts into Russian occurred to the
moderator of the web-portal avesta.org.ru, Iuriĭ Lukashevich, in the late 1990s.
Sponsored by some diaspora Zoroastrians, he also translated the Gāthās directly
from the English edition of the Avesta by German Avestologist Karl Friedrich
Geldner (1852–1929) (Lukashevich 2004).31 The similar relationship between old
Avestan and Pahlavi texts as the “bearers of true spirit” of the Zoroastrian
religion can be seen in the strong trend of the Russian Anjoman to translate
works into Russian as much as possible since the mid-2000s. Thus, “[t]o
30
One such lesson in Farsi I observed during my fieldwork in St. Petersburg in March 2008.
31
I myself was involved in the preparation phase of this translation by donating the copy of
Geldner’s Avesta in 3 vols. (1896, 1891 and 1896) being conducted in the frame of the project
Zoroastrian rituals at University Heidelberg (see Chapter 1 and Lukashevich 2004:8).
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
Zoroastrians, the Avesta is not just an ancient text speaking of bygone eras, it is a
living book that carries the light of Truth, and is used in worship and prayer
[original quotation in English]” (Anjoman Avesta 2006). At another place,
Krylov explains how he understands the collection of Avestan texts by
highlighting the central role of the Gāthās:
The Avesta is not the "Bible" at all and certainly not the "Koran" of Zoroastrians. It is
closer, we say, to the Indian Vedas. // The Avesta itself is divided into hymns and
prayers, laws and the sacred history. The "prayers’" part consists of the Yasna (the
Gathas of Zarathushtra), the Vispered ("All the lords," appeals to yazata, that imeans
to higher powers which are worthy of worship), the Yasht (hymns to the Creator and
creations) and the so-called "little Avesta"—a collection of daily prayers. As some
Abrahamic “holy book” can be considered the Videvdat—"the rules against the devas".
Basically that is ritual requirements, such as those which can be found in, we say, the
Torah. // The [very] source of the teaching is the Gathas. The Zoroastrian doctrine is,
in general, a comment to the Gathas. // A very great role in Zoroastrianism plays
tradition. However, tradition plays a huge role in most living religions (krylov 2007).
How shall I put it? I think that to go to a Christian church and to visit some
Zoroastrian feasts [at the same time—AT] is, perhaps, still possible. However, if
we say, to be a full member of the community, and especially a priest—it is not
(Globa 1997b:2).
The vectors of exclusion by Globa and his students are directed towards two
major topics: modern world religions and so-called “heresies,” including their
ancient and contemporary forms. The first are necessary to underline the
32
Of course, apart from this, there are also some other controversial topics extensively
discussed in the astrological Zoroastrian milieu, such as homosexuality, cloning, abortion, and
surrogate mothership. Cf. Maksimenko 2001.
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In both sources, there are descriptions of the Last Judgment, the cosmic battle, the
comedown of the dragon to the earth. Apropos, the dragon is called Gochehar.
But in general, the symbolism is the same (also the both dragons have the same
color) (Globa 1997c:8).
33
Cf. Globa 1997c:5: “That is known for everyone that the Mages (волхвы), who came from
the East and blessed Jesus by calling him Saviour, were astrologers, the followers of the ancient
religion of Zarathushtra.”
34
Cf. Globa 1997b:3: “In Christendom, if you would read the Gospels and those
commandments announced by Christ but before you had read Avesta you would notice a
huge number of matches in the rites and the interpreting approach of the commandments.”
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ornamented with symbols of life and the sun, is a variation of the Aryan or
Zoroastrian kushti (Lushnikov 2007).
Buddha, who in Globa’s view seems to have been a pupil of Zervanite
mages, integrated Zoroastrian postulates into his philosophy. In particular, the
Buddhist teaching on the noble eightfold path and nirvana are nothing more
than an altered Avestan teaching about Zervan (Globa 2007c:107). A
publication in Mitra using these ideas also claims that Zervanism and Zen-
Buddhism have a close relationship (Amosov 2007:205). This might be obvious
to someone when comparing the basic techniques of spiritual practices of Zen
Buddhism such as “meditation and concentration” with the practices of
Zervanism (Amosov 2007:206).
Despite being one of the most discussed themes in mass media, Islam does
not attract any attention on the part of Globa and his students. Apart from some
brief references by Globa, who views Muslim rites (in Boyce’s sense) as a
variation of some Zoroastrian ritual sequences (Globa 1997a:15), there is no
discussion on Islam at all. The same tendency of avoiding any discussions about
the relation of Zoroastrianism to Islam is visible by one of the members of the
Russian Anjoman when he says “Islam and Zurvanism lie at one layer, being
orthogonal to Zoroastrianism” (farnabag lj 2007).
Almost each issue of Mitra tries to draw attention from the readership to a
Zoroastrian and Slavic synthesis (Sokolova 2002). Globa claims that ancient
Russian beliefs contained many features from the Zoroastrian and hence the
Aryan tradition. Calendar festivals such as the vernal (March c. 21st) and
autumnal equinoxes (September c. 21st) or the winter (December c. 21st) and
summer (June c. 21st) solstices refer to the course of the sun on the ecliptic and
are of cosmic importance (Globa 1996:3). In Mitra every festival has a Slavic
analogy and a second Russian designation. For instance, the celebration of Ivan
Kupala on the Summer solstice, one of the central festivals of Russian
Neopagans, has been celebrated by Globa’s adherents as the Rapitvin festival
with the jumping over fire and ceremonies similar to neopagan traditions. In the
publications of Mitra there are special columns dedicated programmatically to
find parallels between neopagan Slavs and Zoroastrians, where the old Slavic
symbols, clothing, or fables have been discussed (Starostin 2000). This fashion
seems to be mutual. Thus, more than an ethical or religious teacher, Zarathustra
[sic] is the key person in the sacral history of Russia, accomplishing the
connection between the Indo-Aryans and the Old-Slavs and serving as an
ideological legitimization of the leading status of the Russians over other
nations. Thus, Zarathustra, in the opinion many Neopagans, is an “old-Russian
prophet” (Shnirel’man 2001a), who began to preach in the Urals.
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35
Krylov (2005) wrote on the idea that behind the whole Jewish people as an entity there is a
spiritual power or a divine being: “This G-d [sic], undoubtedly, is existent. It is
understandable, that this being cannot be the Creator [sic]. However, that is not the Enemy
[sic] in person how many orthodox [people] think. That is a particular being belonging to
devas, a very ancient and powerful, and the main thing—a believing indeed that it would be
the Creator [sic]. This is “Ialdabaof” of the Gnostics—“madman,” “snake with a lion snout,”
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The sensible person cannot deny the influence of the Good Faith on the Abrahamic
currents in the Middle East. However, Zoroastrianism has never stated the position of
the absolute monotheism in the Abrahamic sense, understanding all of its immorality
and perversion.// Strictly speaking, there are two sorts of monotheism: the Aryan and
the Semitic. The latter is a distortion, the antipode of the former. The former is the
absolute top of abstract thought and moral consciousness, i.e. the extremely right-
wing ideology. The latter is paganism, in the worst sense of the word, brought to the
absolute, the extremely left ideology (farnabag 2007b).
Another convert of the sadrepushi in Moscow in 2005 also made clear how this
anti-Abrahamic position of the Russian Anjoman is rooted in the early 2000s.
She regarded herself as belonging to a group of the young “furious anti-Christian
nationalists,” who wanted to take part in the “fight against Yahweh.” Later these
nationalists went into three different directions “one part of the people left for
Satanism, another for Paganism.” She chose Zoroastrianism, where this
metaphysical struggle against Abrahamic monotheism looks like the following:
Ahura Mazdā is the leader of light powers in the world. All other good gods are
belonging either to the Amesha Spenta, or to the Yazata, because the Good is the same
everywhere: it is home, happy family and warm boots for the winter. [I am]
exaggerating of course, but the meaning is that. Yahweh—or Ahriman himself, or one
of its devas, perverts and putting himself at the service for the people—a creation of
Ahura Mazda, cleverly taking away power from the one whose name is unknown
(tishtar 2005).
“king of the archonts,” “Living Evil.” And the Jews are strictly connected to that through
“Skhina” playing the role of a “data bus” [a term from the computer sciences that means a
subsystem that upholds transfers – AT].
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2.5. Summary
As we observed in this Chapter, the religious discourse of Zoroastrianism is
heterogeneous; it constitutes many discursive strands and is being produced by
several communities with diverse interpretations of the world. Each of these
interpretations gives a unique perspective on the geographical, cultural, and
chronological orientations of Zoroastrianism. They present “partial, tentative,
and continually redrawn sketches of where we are, where we’ve been, and where
we’re going” (Tweed 2006:74). In this way, Zoroastrianism is able to maintain its
canonical body of information while simultaneously acknowledging the
changing nature of the discourse surrounding it.
The contexts in which Zoroastrianism has been discussed by some
individuals interested in Zoroastrianism as a religion and practitioners who
take part in rituals or religious activities in contemporary Russia are various.
The dominant strands here are presented as three groups that publish texts,
namely: those of astrologer and leader of AShAs Pavel Globa, astrological
Zoroastrian groups (being represented in my study through the Zoroastrian
magazine Mitra and the community messenger Tiri), and the Russian
Anjoman (blagoverie.org). Kosmoenergetika with its broader focus and other
NRMs (in the foreground neopagan) can be observed as marginal agents of the
Zoroastrian religious discourse.
The texts in which I tried to reconstruct Zoroastrian religious discourse are
spread by means of diverse media. So I analyzed books, periodicals, websites,
and blogs on RuNet as well. These texts have different functions—from the
clearly expressed normative (preaching) function by Globa to informative and
entertainment functions. I must insist that the print productions analyzed are
rooted in the cultural and historical realities of Russian (post)modernity while
the content deals with systematically presented eschatological, moral, and ethical
matters and further normative attempts to regulate the everyday practices of the
post-Soviet people.
Concerning its origin, one can observe four sub-discourses or strands. The
print and online productions ascribed to Pavel Globa form the most dominant
strand of discourse by sheer quantity. Globa can be identified both as the
charismatic leader of the Russian Zoroastrians with an Avestan astrological
background and as a prominent public figure, almost the sole authoritative
astrologer of the Russian mass media. Globa’s Aryan Zoroastrianism is quite
passive; I would say a latent form of a racial teaching shared with the
publications of Russian nationalists. The character of Globa’s multimedia
activity reveals a tendency to adjust to the aggressive competition on the
capitalist market. The publishing business with its prosperity displays Globa as a
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36
I am sure that further comparative studies of contemporary texts in that field can display
many other important intersections between Russian esotericists.
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publications and those of his adherents (due to the former having partial control
over the editing process), both strands cannot be considered as identical. That
depends upon their different purposes (such as, for instance, lectures by Globa
and community reports in the Zoroastrian magazine Mitra), expressed above all
in the genres of the publications.
Globa’s adherents give their belief a ritualistic dimension, by which they
have created their own original rituals and festivals. These were at first rooted
in the Soviet past, Orthodox Christianity, Slavic popular beliefs, and monistic
and holistic understandings of the world in the same sense as many Russian
NRMs. Only during the post-Soviet era did Astro-Zoroastrians establish
contact with Zoroastrian communities abroad and started combining their
practices with the practices of contemporary ethnic Zoroastrians and the new
Zoroastrian groups. The impact of the new communications lead to changes in
their beliefs that still have an open character and can be understood within
patriotic and neopagan discourses in Russia today. Both strands are to a great
extent heteroglossic and are able to harmonize many contradictions through
the authority of the spiritual teacher Globa.
The discursive community that stands in some opposition to the astrological
Zoroastrian sub-discourse is the Russian Anjoman with its intensive activity on
RuNet during the 2000s. The Anjoman’s original orientation on both
“traditional” and diasporic forms of Zoroastrianism (Neo-Zoroastrianism) led to
the understanding of their own group as one of many branches of foreign
religious organizations and not, as it was in the case of the St. Petersburg
Zoroastrians with their “authentic” Russian Zoroastrianism. Also other
representatives of the local cultic milieu, such as Kosmoenergetika, neopagan
groups, and diverse NRMs partly incorporate Zoroastrianism in the spirit of
ideas articulated by Globa.
The texts analyzed also give an idea how these strands of religious discourse
of Zoroastrianism have developed during the last two decades. For instance, if
we look at Globa’s The Living Fire in 1996 and then twelve years later, we can
notice a strong dependence on his representation of social and political events in
Russia, and his reflections on political decisions and figures (a number of
political activists, dissident singers, etc.). The second edition is about reality
transformed through political and social changes: many events lost their
immediate topicality and some figures were not used and discussed anymore.
The strategies of the Russian Anjoman expressed on their website reveal the
active use of new mass media for the collection of information about
Zoroastrianism and for the intensive search for contacts to ethnic Zoroastrians
in Iran and the diaspora. These changes in self-presentation—from isolation to
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Zoroastrianism showed that Globa and Mitra, although they share the common
idea of Zoroastrianism as a universal, over-ethnic religion, they still defined it in
the terms of an esoteric doctrine. In Globa’s eyes, Avestan astrology and
Zervanism are necessary components of Zoroastrianism. Their eclectic ways
allow the absorbtion of other cultural and religious artifacts as originally
Zoroastrian. In general, the negative utterances towards industrial society,
progress, technology, and Western technological advanced societies with
simultaneous involvement in practices of the free market reveal Globa’s
Zoroastrianism as a contradictory teaching full of antagonisms. On the one
hand, Globa calls for simplification of life and avoidance of scientific research,
but on the other hand, this is impossible without pro-Western trends and even
achievements of modern nature and the humanities.
The second topic with a controversial character is the relation between
Zoroastrianism and former Soviet territories within their past, present, and
future. Globa, Mitra, and the Russian Anjoman have elaborated a range of
strategies in order to present their ideas. However, if they tried to explain that
Russia was the origin of the Zoroastrian religion, they would all disagree about
the role of Arkaim. Globa, one of discoverers and active promoters of the mass
media picture of Arkaim, views it as the place where Zarathushtra was born and
lived to his death. He claims that the reality described in the Avesta resembles
the Ural steppes. This position is akin to the Kosmoenergetika worldview that
interprets Arkaim as a place of spiritual power; both models can also be
identified throughout many publications of other NRMs. The Russian Anjoman
conducted a special project of Zoroastrian elements in the folk cultures of the
former Soviet Union. However, they do refuse any connection of Zoroastrianism
to Arkaim. The Russian Anjoman including above all the members of Tajik or
Azerbaijani provenance seek to share the notion that the ancient heritage of
Iranian peoples is strong in modern cultures near the Persian Empire in the time
of the Sasanian dynasty. The Middle Asian peoples ergo are direct bearers of
Zoroastrianism. The confirmation of such a position reflects circumstantially the
contemporary politics of Central Asian republics in the ideological sphere where
pan-Persianism is used for revising historiography aimed obviously at escaping
the Soviet era of their existence.
What does it mean, being a Zoroastrian? The third topic deals with the self-
understanding of the practitioners, their religious identity as it is articulated to
the outside world. While Globa presents himself as an inherited priest (mōbed)
by claiming that his ancestors were Zoroastrians, his students can became
Zoroastrians only by choice. In general, there is also another interpreting model
circulating within the astrological Zoroastrian milieu that should explain the
integration into Zoroastrians groups—genetic inheritance. However, for
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105
Chapter 3: Zoroastrianism in the Russian
academic discourse
This chapter will cover Zoroastrianism in the Russian scholarly discourse, with a
particular focus on the 1990s and 2000s. By examining scholarly production, I
will introduce two perspectives of study on Zoroastrianism. The first one is a
historiographical macro-perspective with some general lines discussing a few
scholarly works mainly from linguistic and historic disciplines on
Zoroastrianism from the end of the 19th century until the 1990s. This is written
rather as a short annotated bibliography with a few elements of generalization.
The second perspective outlines a micro-structure of three chosen academic
articles and examines the way Zoroastrianism—particularly Russian
Zoroastrianism—was constructed throughout the scholarly studies of the 1990s
and 2000s in detail.
The historiographical aspect covered in the first part of the chapter drew
some inspiration from three works by Russian authors discussing the problem of
how Russian and Soviet science (in reality a number of different academic
disciplines) treated Zoroastrianism. Interestingly, this problem was not reflected
by Soviet and Russian scholars who wrote about Zoroastrianism over the last few
centuries, although, in fact they did not view itself outside the European
mainstream research. The three aforementioned Russian works were identified
during different stages of my study. Two of them were found on RuNet as parts
of two different M.A. theses in history; the third one was a doctoral dissertation
in history presented at Dagestan State University. Chronologically these three
works cover different periods: Kuznetsova examined Russian Zoroastrian studies
from the second part of the 19th century through the 1920s (Kuznetsova 2005);
Nugaev reviewed the period from the 1850s until the beginning of the 1990’s
(Nugaev 2005); Egorov summarized the results of the research during the middle
and late Soviet period, from the 1940s through the early 2000s (Egorov 2003).
The three authors employed different analytical strategies to their material.
While the works of Kuznetsova and Nugaev include non-scholarly genres for
their sources, Egorov thoroughly analyzes articles and monographs, strongly
sticking to the scholarly studies themselves. Egorov’s qualitative method allows
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1
As an example for the immense strength of Russian Iranian studies at its beginning Oranskiĭ
mentions the great number of Russian scholars among contributors in the groundwork
Grundriß der iranischen Philologie (1901–1904): Oransky 1967:5f.
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2
See in general with extensive bibliography and some illustrations of artefacts and maps until
the 1970s Frumkin 1970; also as more popular version Masson 1982.
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3
See polemics about the theory of Margiana as a homeland of Zoroastrianism articulated by
the archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi in a range of articles dedicated to Zoroastrianism in Central
Asia in the frame of two issues of journal The Bulletin of Ancient history (1.1989 and 2.1989).
See also Sarianidi 1998, 2010.
4
The excavations in Sogdiana began in the late 1940s. Archaeologist Boris Marshak (1933–
2006) and his team worked there until the middle of the 2000s. For his bibliography of
Sogdiana see e.g. Vseviov & Shkoda 2006:13ff.
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centuries BCE that are ascribed to the archaeological culture of Sintashta.5 The
Sintashta culture was seriously studied in the 1970s by Soviet archaeologists
under the direction of Vladimir Gening (1924–1993). Gening’s student and the
discoverer of Arkaim, archaeologist Gennady Zdanovich (b. 1938), saw
Sintashtan archaeological culture as an extension of the “wide “horizon of
fortifications” of the Eurasian steppe in the developed Bronze Age”,6 what
includes overall northern territories from the Don to the Irtysh rivers. Many
scholars tried to reread Avesta’s texts ‘through the prism of Arkaim’ in order to
connect the archaeological data to a few archaic layers within the entire Avestan
mythology. As such, there is a hypothesis that the Avestan var, a sort of
fortification of the first mythological king Yima depicted in Vidēvdād, could be a
prototype for Arkaim and other Eurasian circular fortified towns (Zdanovich
2002). Arkaim’s ideology and religion and its direct reflection in burial rituals
have been seen as an early stadium of the late Iranian Zoroastrianism since the
time of the Achaemenids (Malyutina 2002:165). Through sensational
excavations Arkaim became a sort of Russian Stonehenge, the enigmatic place
attracting many esoterically minded people, who have attempted to build
scholarly interpretations in their own worldviews (see Chapter 2) (Shnirelman
1998:37ff). That is why Arkaim seemed to be without a doubt the most discussed
topic connected to Russian Aryan history in the Russian mass media as well as
by Russian scholars of diverse disciplines.
While ethnographic research on the mountainous and urban regions of
Central Asia has been actively carried out, the modern day minorities inside
Iran, like groups of Zoroastrians, have not been investigated by Russian scholars.
Zoroastrian themes in the frameworks of history and comparative linguistics
were reflected in European science debates as a means of enriching the
international scholarly discussion through local research (e.g. ethnography,
linguistics, and archaeology) in Central Asia and in Transcaucasia. The culture
and religion of contemporary Zoroastrians in Iran and India were excluded from
the research and were first introduced in the 1980s with the acceptance of
Boyce's fieldwork among Zoroastrians in Yazd in the 1960s. In the following
subchapters I am going to discuss the main topics of Russian research on
Zoroastrianism that have been transmitted through Avesta translations into
Russian, critical translations of Pahlavi texts, and the socio-economic history of
Ancient Iran and Central Asia.
5
There are an extensive number of scholarly publications about Arkaim since 1987. See
<http://www.arkaim-center.ru/index.php?page=103&ver=1> (accessed 21 March 2012).
6
He mentioned a number of scholars. See Zdanovich 2002:xxiv.
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7
Some fragments of Avesta were translated into Russian in literary and poetic form also from
the known European translations.
8
See a detailed survey and bibliography of him Oldenburg 2009, also Reychman 1963:11f.
9
For more general information about his academic career with further bibliography see
Durkin-Meisterernst 2005.
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ancient world (Nikitina 1962; Abaev 1963), or during the Soviet era within
(Persian) Tajik literature. This inscribed the Avesta into the intellectual heritage
of the Central Asian republics (Bertel’s 1960; Braginskiĭ 1956, 1960). The most
involved interpreters who translated Avesta during the Soviet era were
Aleksandr Freĭman, Evgeiĭ Bertel’s,10 Vasiliĭ Abaev, and Iosif Braginskiĭ who
published Avestan fragments with comments in various Soviet periodicals.
In addition, the translation of Avestan texts forced the accumulation of
knowledge and systematization of educational material which could be
integrated into teaching at Russian universities. One of the first systematic
manuals for the Avestan language in the world was published in Russian by
Sergeĭ Sokolov in 1961. It was translated into English in 1967, but did not find
English scholarly readership. One should mention that during the Soviet era the
acceptance of contemporary Western translations and philological research in
Avestan was hampered and carried out exclusively within an academic
environment, which can be contrasted with the active development of studies of
ancient history and archaeology. Some Russian translations of the Avesta were
used by historians and archaeologists specializing in ancient times to highlight
religious, economic, and political aspects in ancient Persia and other pro-Iranian
cultures and societies.
Following the example set by Bertels’s paper (Bertel’s 1951) in which the
general progress of Avestan studies was examined, The Introduction to Iranian
Philology (1960) by Iosif Oranskiĭ summarized the achievements of Soviet
Avestan studies, including localization, time of codification, and lexicology of
the Avesta (Oranskiĭ 19882:74ff). Only thirty years later, in 1992, one of the most
brilliant historiographical works on the Avesta in European and American
Avestan studies, written by historian and professional restorer Leonid Lelekov,
was published posthumously. Curiously, Lelekov’s work was almost completely
ignored. His book was thought to be a doctoral dissertation, but for
organizational reasons it was not acknowledged as such (Raevskiĭ 1992:3).
Lelekov presented a comprehensive analysis of historiography within Avestology
(авестология)—the branch, he claimed, that dealt with Avestan texts and
handled problems and controversies until the beginning of the 1980s, having
analyzed a great deal of secondary European, American, and Russian
monographs and periodical articles. Lelekov also emphasizes problems with the
study of the Avesta and Zoroastrianism, going into detail about the secondary
literature in many languages. He also published articles with the same theme in
the 1970s and 1980s that became the most serious theoretical insights into
10
See his biography and bibliography Zand 1990. Apart from the work mentioned above,
Bertel’s has translated some Avestan passages and published them in periodicals. See e.g.
Bertel’s 1924.
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The teaching of Middle Persian as well as Old Persian became a firm part of
the basic education at faculties for Iranian studies. During the Soviet era legal
and economics texts were of higher priority, and religious texts were not in
demand (e.g. Dandamaev 1963; Perikhanian 1974, 1997). The ice was broken
toward the end of the 1980s with the publication of a series of translations by St.
Petersburg philologist Ol’ga Chunakova who published critical translations of
major Middle Persian treatises as follows: The Book of Deeds of Ardashir Son of
Papak (1987), To Know the Ways and Paths of the Righteous People: Pehlevi
Edifying Texts (1991), Zoroastrian Texts: Of Spirit of Wisdom (Dadestan-i
menog-i khrad). Primal Creation (Bundahishn) and Other Texts (1997), Pehlevi
Devine Comedy: The Book About the Righteous Viraz (Arda Viraz namag) and
Other Texts (2001). Chunakova also compiled the Pehlevi Dictionary of
Zoroastrian Terms, complete with mythological figures and mythological
symbols, also in Russian (Chunakova 2004). Although her translations were
very popular among interested Russian readership, they did not find a lot of
acknowledgment in the West possibly due to their shortcomings in critical
analysis and their focus on Russian audience (Weinreich 2001:252). From 2007
to 2009, another St. Petersburg scholar, Aliĭ Kolesnikov, was working with
similar subject matter in the project Late Zoroastrian texts from the XV–XVI
centuries (on the handwritings from the Institute of Oriental studies in St.
Petersburg and Paris National Library) (Kolesnikov 2008). In this way the
1990s were the years when the Pahlavi religious texts began to be translated
into Russian and as a result, they were received by Russian speaking recipients
like never before.
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culture. During the Soviet era this collection inspired many historic
publications by internationally renowned scholars like Igor Diakonov and
Mohammad Dandamaev, with special iconographical works by Vladimir
Lukonin and Kamilla Trever (Lukonin 1961, 1977, 1979; Trever 1939; Trever
& Lukonin 1987).
Beginning in the 19th century, the historical aspect of research on
Zoroastrianism in the Russian school was strong. Konstantin Inostrantsev
(1876-1941) was an influential figure because of his academic interest in Iranian
pre-Islamic history (Kolesnikov 2005). While his many short publications were
dedicated to ethnography and the literature of Iran and Middle Asia he became
famous through his doctoral thesis The Sasanian Sketches (Сасанидские этюды,
1909), presented at St. Petersburg University one year later and translated into
French afterward. He also worked with a great deal of Arabic sources that, he
believed, could explain the dark, not-yet-studied periods of Zoroastrian Iran. He
wrote several monographs on the history of Zoroastrianism including ancient
Iranian funeral rituals and funeral architectonic environments (Inostrantsev
1909) and the Zoroastrian migration to India (Inostrantsev 1915) as well.
In the Soviet era Zoroastrianism was integrated into the universal history
posited by Marxist philosophy of history. Soviet historians such as Boris Turaev
and his student, Soviet historian Vasiliĭ Struve (1889–1965) (Oranskiĭ 1974:116),
both stood at the beginning of the historical research of the Ancient East with a
very broad spectrum of analysis. Struve was a founder of the descriptive
historical concept including the idea of five chronological formations based on
Marx’s historical materialism. Turaev dealt with the reformation activity of
Zarathushtra and with religion in the Avesta and in the Rig-Veda (Turaev 1935),
whereas Struve discussed the problems of the origin of Zoroastrianism and its
foundations. Through the analysis of Achaemenid inscriptions, Struve came to
the conclusion that the Achaemenids were not adherents of the Zoroastrian
religion, contrary to what is presented in the Gāthās (Struve 19422, 1948, 1960).
However, the problem of religion and Persian dynasties had been central
throughout Soviet historical research.
The Khorezmian Central Asian expedition, the longest expedition that ever
took place during the Soviet era, raised the issue of which ideological and
religious fundamentals were part of ancient Central Asian cultures. The
founder and longstanding director of the expedition, ethnologist Sergeĭ
Tolstov (Tolstov 1948a, 1948b, 1962), assumed that Khorezm may be
identified as the legendary Avestan airyanəm vaējah (“the Aryan’s expanse”)
and the place where Zarathushtra was born (Tolstov 1948:88), which still
remains unconfirmed (Rapoport 1992). The ossuaries found in Khorezmian
settlements were built between the 5th–8th centuries CE and were used in the
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broad context of Central Asian beliefs and ceremonies. These ossuaries should
be traced back to the Zoroastrian funeral tradition that may have started as
early as 1000 BCE (Rapoport 1971).
In the 1950s and 1960s the problem of reconstructing Zoroastrian religious
history and its possible variations was being discussed by historian Igor’
D’iakonov. In his History of Media (1956), written as a work detailing the history
of “ancient Azerbaijan,” one can find long passages about the Avesta and
Zarathushtra in which D’iakonov drew extensive linguistic material to
substantiate the theory that the magi, one of the Median peoples, were the priests
and most ardent followers of Zarathushtra’s religion (also D’iakonov M &
Perikhanian 1961).
D’iakonov’s colleague, Mohammad Dandamaev, dedicated an enormous
number of articles and monographs to Ancient Iran, where Zoroastrianism was
one of most discussed topics because it had to be presented in the frame of
Soviet historiography as the ideological groundwork for this ancient culture
(Dandamaev & Lukonin 1980). Vasiliĭ Abaev, a philologist working on Ossetian
material, was another prominent researcher on Zoroastrianism that also wrote
articles about the history of Zoroastrianism. He claimed that Zarathushtra was at
first a “reformer” of an old cult that produced the ethic interpretation of
antagonism between Good and Evil in Zoroastrianism (Abaev 1990).
The new view on Zoroastrianism as an object independent from the interests
of general history was initiated with a book called The Avesta written by
historian of philosophy Aleksandr Makovelskiĭ, which was published in 1960 in
Baku. The book had a compilative character and was a description of the Avesta
that contained little insight into the philosophical and social teachings based on
the secondary literature analysis. Its superficial characteristics were mentioned
by the department of philosophy at the Academy of Sciences in Azerbaijan. A
‘scientific commission’ recommended the publication by emphasizing that the
book was “[…] a first attempt of Marxist-Leninist analysis of the main content of
the Avesta in whole [sic]” and it “does not pretend to be an all-round
investigation of this old cultural memorial.”
The 1960s were the years when Marxist-Leninist historical ideas were being
applied to the history of Persia and Central Asia. In the foreground, the religion
of Zoroastrianism served as the negative component of these “class societies.” As
a result of archaeological activities in Afghanistan and Tajikistan during the
1950s and 1960s, many general works in the history of ancient Persia appeared
(D’iakonov M 1961; Dandamaev 1963; Dandamaev & Lukonin 1980).
The first volume of the compendium The History of the Tadjik People, edited
by Bobodzhan Gafurov and Boris Litvinsky in 1963 placed the Avesta on one
line with archaeological findings as a major written source about cultural life in
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Central Asia and Iran in the 1st millennium BCE, particularly during the time of
the Achaemenids (from 600–400 BCE), but with certain reservations about
territorial diffusion.
Although Zoroastrianism was a religion that was included again and again
into later books in the history of religions, because of the dominance of three
main world religions (particularly Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism), it still
remained in background. One of the lucky early exceptions was the Soviet
classic, Religion in the History of the Peoples of the World, written by scholar of
comparative ethnographic studies Sergeĭ Tokarev (1899-1985).11 Tokarev
analyzed the “religion of Iran” (although he also called it Zoroastrianism, he
mostly used Mazdeism as describing a pre-Zarathushtrian period in the history
of Zoroastrianism) as a religion of high-stage development fixed during the
crisis of the slave-owning-formation. Together with Judaism and Hinduism,
he saw a “religion of the national-state” in opposition to the three
transnational world religions of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. Describing
short history, eschatology, and the rituals of Zoroastrianism, he emphasized
the “cosmopolitan” character of Zoroastrianism and its considerable
influences on other ancient and medieval religious movements. He also
mentioned that Zoroastrianism had been widespread until the beginning of the
20th century in Azerbaijan and that the contemporary Zoroastrians lived in
Iran and West India (Tokarev 1976:388).
The Zoroastrians in Iran (1982), a book by historian Elena Doroshenko, is a
compilative work based on the analysis of Western (particularly Boyce’s
research) and Russian/Soviet scientific literatures as well as some works by Parsi
writers. Doroshenko’s work is actually a survey of Zoroastrian studies and
presents “an attempt to handle a number of questions pertaining to the
Zoroastrian creed, to trace through the evolution of Zoroastrian parish [sic] in
Iran as a whole during the last centuries, to show mutual connections of Iranian
Zoroastrians to their co-religionists Parsis living in India, finally to display the
forms of Iranian Zoroastrians’ adaptation to modern conditions for the readers”
(Doroshenko 1982).
The Mythological Encyclopaedia of the World was published in the early
1990s. This two-volume reference book replete with rich iconographical
materials should be presented to students of religion as “a great event in the
scientific and cultural life of this country” (Shakhnovich 1993:71). Most articles
about Zoroastrianism, except the general article by Braginskiĭ and Lelekov
(1991:560f) and one article about the god Mazda by Toporov (Toporov
11
For detailed descriptions and criticisms on Soviet religious studies and particularly
Tokarev’s work see Thrower 1983:263ff.
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12
So far the translations of historical works on the Zoroastrian religion do not provoke any
astonishment from the natural science publications that were less expected. There has been
another sort of literature—namely, a book in the history of astronomy—that was translated
into Russian and had related Zoroastrianism (also Zurvanism) to the development of the
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exercised more possibilities. Usually the theories from the West were being
reflected in surveys with the goal to ‘denigrate the wrong ideas of a bourgeois
science.’ The common tendency in the humanities to criticize Western
authors, however, assumed that the original versions of those books should be
read and then analyzed in Russian publications. This practice allowed a fertile
exchange between Soviet and Western scholars in Iranian studies. In the 1970s
a number of popular-science books were translated (Fray 1972; Dresden 1977)
covering the history and mythology of ancient Zoroastrianism. Accordingly,
the Russian translations helped with the transfer of Western popular-science
literature making it accessible for many readers because of its high circulation.
The translation of foreign secondary literature on Zoroastrianism into Russian
was made not only from English, French, and German, but also from Eastern
European languages (Rypka 1970).
Undoubtedly, such discursive events were a significant step in the formation
of contemporary Zoroastrian communities in Russia and also led to some
researchers codifying the popular edition of Boyce’s Zoroastrians: Their Religious
Beliefs and Practices, which was translated into Russian by Ivan Steblin-
Kamenskiĭ in 1987. Boyce’s book, which had four editions, reached a large circle
of Russian readership. But this does not mean that Boyce’s other monumental
works such as History of Zoroastrianism were ignored. Her ideas and
interpretations were also criticized (e.g. Lelekov 1978:190; Abdullaev
1994:239ff). The Russian translation of Zoroastrians was revised four times in
1987, 1988, 1994, and 2003. The translator introduced some updated changes in
her editions as new research materials became available.
It seems that with the political and the social changes in the 1990s that the
original editions of scholarly Western literature should have found its way to
Russia. In fact, because of its costliness and the lack of foreign language
knowledge in Russia, such literature could not be distributed among non-
professionals as it had been done with earlier Russian critical translations. In the
natural sciences. I have no evidence of whether or not van der Waerden’s notions have spread
among historians of Iran. However, Pavel Globa tried to undermine his ‘Zervanism’ with
quotations from Science Awakening that was undertaken also by the scholar of religion Igor
Krupnik (see below). Science Awakening (Volume 2) by Bartel Leendert van der Waerden,
dealt with the genesis of current astronomy and was translated from Dutch into Russian in
1959 (The Dutch original was published firstly in 1950, then it was translated into English
(1954) and German (1956)). Van der Waerden tried to establish some relation between
astronomic-astrologic knowledge and forms of religions. According to him, astrology had
religious essence that he claimed to identify in connections “between Omen Astrology and
Old-Babylonian polytheism, between primitive zodiacal astrology and Zurvanism, the
fatalistic worship of Infinite Time, between horoscopic astrology and Zoroastrism [sic], the
religion of ZARATHUSHTRA [sic].” The aim of his investigation was to shed more light
upon the historical religious-astrological grounds of scientific astronomy. See van der
Waerden 1974:182.
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publishing business, which was not controlled by the scholarly elite (as it had been
practiced in the Soviet Union), other types of literature were demanded.
Nevertheless, the strong tendency to adapt of Western ideas could stimulate new
attempts to translate some scholarly works of popular science into Russian. It is
also worth pointing out that the emergence of the Internet has provided enormous
possibilities for sharing and obtaining new information at no cost at all.
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Kamenskiĭ’s work, I have to give some retrospection to the characters and the
background of Steblin-Kamenskiĭ text.
Born in a scholarly family (his father Mikhail Steblin-Kamenskiĭ was a
prominent Russian researcher of Scandinavian languages and old Icelandic
epics), Steblin-Kamenskiĭ began his scholarly career early: while he was still a
student he spent time as a Russian language teacher in the Pamir by the Wakhi
people, simultaneously gathering language materials that became the basis for
further research in that region. His fieldwork there lead to two academic
monographs about the Wakhi language which he defended in 1971 (about the
historical phonetics of the Wakhi language) and in 1984 (about the agricultural
lexis by the Pamir peoples from the historical-comparative perspective).
Beginning in 1981 he started to work as a professor, docent at the Eastern
Faculty of the Institute of Iranian studies at St. Petersburg State University, and
from 1995 through 2005 as a dean of the same faculty. In 2003 he was awarded
the title of Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the highest degree
of state recognition for one’s scientific work. Steblin-Kamenskiĭ produced an
extensive number of publications (about 150), including translations of
European language secondary literature and poetry.
It becomes apparent from his scholarly profile and research interests that
Steblin-Kamenskiĭ’s studies in Avestan were just one of many topics he worked
on. In addition to his Avestan studies, he wrote many articles in Russian and in
English, but he deserves to be mentioned through his publications of Avestan
texts as separate books in the style of poetic translations into Russian with small
portions of scholarly critical apparatus. Starting with the translation of the
Vidēvdād in his Avesta. Selected Hymns from Videvdat (1990), which soon
became a rarity among people interested in ancient literature, Steblin-Kamenskiĭ
began to concentrate his efforts on the Avestan Gāthās that were published
almost twenty years after the first (The Gāthās of Zarathushtra, 2009).
Steblin-Kamenskiĭ also provided translations for Western works, the most
notable being the translation of Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and
Practices by British Iranologist Mary Boyce written in 1979 (in Russian
Зороастрийцы: Верования и обычаи, 1985). Boyce’s Zoroastrians became one
of the most important discursive events in the contemporary discussion about
Zoroastrianism and one of the most respected sources for professionals and
amateurs alike. Zoroastrians was published four times (in 1985, 1988, 1993, and
2003) with more than 55,000 copies sold.
The translation of Boyce’s popular book was carried out with the
participation of Steblin-Kamenskiĭ’s mentors—a historian and longstanding
director of the Eastern section in Hermitage, Vladimir Lukonin, and after
Lukonin’s death, Iranologist Edvin Grantovskiĭ. For the Russian translation
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Boyce wrote a special preface in which she expressed her gratitude towards the
Russian team and claimed that the research on Zarathushtra should be
important for the Russian public because “[p]roceeding from the content and
the language of Zoroaster’s hymns how it now clear is that he really lived in
Asian steppes near to East of Volga” (Boyce 1988:3). Despite her historical
description of Zoroastrianism over the course of centuries, Boyce’s style was
criticized by many scholars; part of the problem was that Boyce provided her
own views about the character and future of Zoroastrianism in her work. In the
postscript to the 1st edition, Boyce opened discussion about the demographical
problems of Zoroastrianism: she saw the intake of new adherents from Central
Asia and claimed that “two peoples of Iranian descent—Yezidis from Iran and
Iraq and Tajikis from the former Soviet republic Tajikistan—announced that
their ancestors had been secret Zoroastrians and have been trying to get
recognition as believers by community leaders” (Boyce 2003:326). She felt a bit
skeptical about an affirmative answer from the Parsis, however, and stated that
some Zoroastrian clerics might use that situation in order to increase the
number of their adherents. Steblin-Kamenskiĭ’s comments about the “secret
Zoroastrians” were unambiguous “according to many years of observations of all
researchers, neither among valley dwellers of former Soviet Tajikistan nor
among mountain Tajiks had there been ‘secret’ Zoroastrians.”
Revised Russian translations of Boyce’s Zoroastrians, in particular the 2003
edition, became a peculiar subject of controversy between the translator and
Russian Zoroastrians (particularly Pavel Globa) who had gotten a great deal of
inspiration from that book for many years. For this reason I believe that The
Translator’s Afterword to the Fourth Edition follows one of the strongest
contemporary scholarly tendencies regarding Zoroastrianism that is
characteristic of the 1990s and 2000s: this revision reads like a diatribe.
The text to be analyzed takes up four incomplete pages and was placed within
the 4th Russian edition of Zoroastrians (2003) between Boyce’s Postscript to the
First Edition and Boyce’s short curriculum vitae at the end of the text’s main
body. This section of text represents an article written in polemic style and does
not contain any footnotes. The Translator’s Afterword is signed with the long
signature “slave of God Ioann, the nephew of father Ioann Steblin-Kamenskiĭ,
new Russian martyr, canonizing and praying for by the Russian Orthodox
Church on the 2nd of August after New Style” and dated “7th of May 2003” in
“Sankt-Petersburg” (Steblin-Kamenskiĭ 2003:331). If this text is compared to
other prefaces and postscripts within the book it leaves the same impression of
being standard text in this genre. But the content and bizarre signature are
anomalous; one might assume that the translator chose this kind of self-
expression in order to reach certain readership, namely, people calling
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these secret Zoroastrians had neither existed in the mountains of Central Asia,
nor Tajikistan, nor Afghanistan, nor Pakistan, nor China. The ancestors of the
young Zoroastrian should have been ordinary Muslims. His “Zoroastrian” name
was actually a pseudonym because his proper name had been of Muslim and
Arabian origin.13 According to Steblin-Kamenskiĭ there were “secretive Muslim
sects of Ismāʿīlītes” or some “pagan Kāfirs” in Nuristān and Chitrāl. The author
agreed that there were different beliefs and customs coming from
Zoroastrianism, but he thought that the strongest religious tendencies in Central
Asia were Buddhism and “some tribal cults with Aryan elements.”
Steblin-Kamenskiĭ also stated that since ancient times Zoroastrianism had
been widespread through Khorezm, Sogdiana, and Bactria, but the last
references to it were dated to the first centuries after the Islamic invasion. No
evidence of Zoroastrians appeared after the Mongols had emerged. In contrast,
the Central Asian Jews had not been seriously studied at all, while they preserved
many rituals and customs connected with Zoroastrianism than anybody else.
Just like gypsies in their language, the Bukharian Jews could be the living bearers
of the Aryan heritage.
Steblin-Kamenskiĭ felt positive that the idea of “secret” Zoroastrians in the
Badakhshan Mountains, in the Pamir, or in the upper reaches of
Zeravshan, was “misleading information through which one tries to gain
acceptance of the Zoroastrian parishes abroad.” The author referred to
Boyce by asserting that “by virtue of Parsis and Gabrs parishes’ historical
development, to become a Zoroastrian one could already be born as such”
(Steblin-Kamenskiĭ 2003:330).With that non-footnoted argument he also
‘duplicated’ one of the central topics within the modern Parsi controversy
about the conversion of foreigners.
Steblin-Kamenskiĭ mentioned the statements of Pavel Globa (“P.P. Globa”)
regarding his Zoroastrian descent. So, Globa’s first “writings” were supposed to
have been borrowed from Boyce’s Zoroastrians. Boyce’s book may have inspired
Tamara and Pavel Globa to “invent” their Avestan and Zoroastrian roots.
Steblin-Kamenskiĭ recalled too that Globa had called him the author as “non-
enlightened professor” in the past. Globa speculated about Zoroastrian ideas
publically, used Desatir (a forged document analyzed by Boyce in her book), and
made absurd errors in geographical designations. There were a huge number of
absurdities on the “neo-Zoroastrian websites on the Internet” (Steblin-
Kamenskiĭ 2003:331). The teachings of Globa are one example of “religious
communities which are becoming degraded.” To conclude the article the author
expressed his bitterness about those who had given up their faith in Christianity.
13
Allegedly he mentions an activist from Tajikistan, see for that Irandoust 2003:132.
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He also quoted the Orthodox Christian morning prayer “For the living [people]”
in its Slavic Church form.14
The presented text is considered a sharp criticism or rather, a pamphlet against
some groups of people calling themselves followers or descendants of secret
Zoroastrians from Central Asia. The author distinguished between two imitations
of Zoroastrianism: one appealing to ancient religious traditions in Tajikistan and
the other appearing as a new wave of pseudo-Zoroastrianism in Russia initiated by
Pavel Globa. Steblin-Kamenskiĭ’s knowledge of other manifestations of new
Zoroastrianism, for instance, the active politics of the Zoroastrian group Bozorg
Bazgasht, was limited, so he concentrated solely on Globa’s groups.
Steblin-Kamenskiĭ’s point of departure was the ethnic Zoroastrianism that he
viewed as the single possible way to perform Zoroastrianism. Otherwise the
author recognized his own role as a person stimulating conversation on
Zoroastrianism in the post-Soviet era through his translation of Boyce’s
Zoroastrians. But just like most of his fellow Russians, he denied other religions
and was pleased to recognize the religious norm in Russian Orthodox
Christianity. That position had been expressed not only in chosen lexica with a
distinct Christian connotation but also by complete skepticism about the false
religious “enlightenment” of the Russian people as an antithesis to Boyce’s words
about the high reading level of Russians (“how enlightened are your people”)
once expressed by her in a letter to Steblin-Kamenskiĭ. Moreover, Steblin-
Kamenskiĭ states that the “so-called civilized Europeans” themselves cannot be
objective in evaluating Russian spiritual degradation because they also lived in
an “unspiritual world” for a long time (Steblin-Kamenskiĭ 2003:328).
Contrasting Russia with a cultural Other, the “people in the West,” reminds
one of vastly nuanced conservative discourses, namely the traditional polemics
within Russian philosophy among Slavophils and Westernists and contemporary
debates within the ROC against “foreign influence” and new “sects.” Formally,
Steblin-Kamenskiĭ also uses an extensive, orthodox-colored signature that lets
people identify him as a strong orthodox believer. Being involved in academic
conversations and using such biased formalities creates an incredible dissonance
at the genre level in the text and calls the legitimacy of his academic agnosticism
but not his longstanding experience as a prominent Iranian studies scholar into
question. Additionally, in the text Steblin-Kamenskiĭ does not try to hide his
strict Orthodox Christian reflections regarding the religious situation in Russia.
In some instances his description of his opponents and his statements had an
ironic, even sarcastic, character. He assumed a clear critical position towards
new Zoroastrians (although the latter should rather propose the ‘Christian
14
See the exact passage from the orthodox prayer book (православный молитвослов)
online: <http://perevodmolitv.narod.ru/molitv-utr.html> (accessed 21 March 2012).
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Krupnik also stated that there is one aspect of Zoroastrian philosophy that is
not being actively researched. The author quotes some examples of a
“philosophical discourse” (Krupnik 2008b:26) in a work by Marina Wol’f Early
Greek Philosophy and Ancient Iran (2007), and expects there to be more interest
in Iranian (pre) Philosophy.
Krupnik discussed the tendency of reference, educational, and popular
science books to homogenize Zoroastrianism. He stated that there had not been
any mention, for instance, of Zurvanism in these books. In his opinion, in pre-
Islamic Iran there had been many different schools of Zoroastrianism. The
author quoted van der Waerden, the Dēnkard, and Yeznik of Kolb that all
mentioned several forms of Zoroastrianism.
Krupnik expressed his own position about the history of Zoroastrianism:
“until 700 CE Zoroastrianism had displayed not an undiluted phenomenon but a
“melting pot” in which completely heterogeneous religious tendencies of Indo-
Iranian, common Indo-European and Semitic provenance ‘had boiled’”
(Krupnik 2008:27). Just after the Islamization a “whole religious system that
aimed to unite the rest of its adherents” had been invented. It became “classical,
orthodox” Zoroastrianism, and later transformed into Parsism. This is the object
of research for the domestic school of research on Zoroastrianism, which ignores
other periods of history for Zoroastrianism.
Krupnik showed the polyphonic character of Zoroastrianism on one
simplified table and explained it in the following text. From the ancient,
amorphous religion of the Proto-Indo-Iranians three tendencies to worship god
surface: Mazdeism, Mithraism, and Anahitism. Mazdeism became the basis for
Zarathushtra’s religion, the Zoroastrianism of Gāthās. “Devil-worship” of an evil
spirit occurred simultaneously to Zoroastrianism, according to Krupnik. A third
religious movement, Zurvanism, should be considered evidence of the cultural
contact between Zoroastrianism and Mesopotamia (which occurred no earlier
than the second half of Achaemenid reign). As evidence of this cultural
exchange, Krupnik quoted three classical scholars in Zoroastrian studies: Walter
B. Henning, Robert C. Zaehner, and Henrik S. Nyberg. Some scholars also
identify a “Proto-Zurvanism,” but this theory merits a separate investigation.
Towards the end of the article Krupnik expressed hope that the post-
Soviet school of Oriental studies had great potential and the problems
surveyed in the presented article could be solved. The author directs his
criticism towards investigations that should be made by domestic researchers
studying Zoroastrianism.
The article claims to reveal some myths about Zoroastrianism that should
arouse the development of new knowledge. Krupnik criticized scholars in Oriental
studies for propagating two myths about Zoroastrianism. First, the author disputes
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3.3. Summary
The first, historiographical part of the presented chapter made explicit the
preferences for themes and subjects of research on Zoroastrianism since the
second part of the 19th century through the 1990s. An undisputed authority in
that research is one of the healthiest branches in Russian Oriental studies—
Iranian studies or Iranology, which covers a wide spectrum of disciplines
studying Iranian people, their written and oral culture, and their history. This
research has shed light on the written sources of ancient Iran. From the
interpretation of Achaemenid inscriptions to the exegesis of Pahlavi texts, it has
given explanations of Zoroastrianism in Ancient Persia and in Central Asia.
The main interests of scholarly work were Avestan and Pahlavi translations
and historical reconstructions of social-political relations in ancient Iran. The
intensive reception of Western scholarly production by translating many
European works into Russian and the strong tendency to notify foreign
colleagues about Russian projects and results, particularly archaeology in Central
Asia, are strategies that characterize pre-revolution and late Soviet Iranian
studies. During the Soviet era, Iranology served to construct the idea that
historical Central Asian regions were the bearers of Iranian culture, although
this concept has been mostly idealized. Iranologists have peddled this idealized
concept by exemplifying the cultural transfers between the ancient peoples of
Central Asia on the basis of longstanding excavations in Sogdiana, Bactria,
Margiana, and Ancient Persia.
In contrast to the other humanities, the state politics expressed in purposeful
atheistic propaganda has not prevailed in Iranology. Curiously, the commonly
acknowledged and shared Marxist-Leninist criticism on religion that it helped to
preserve social inequalities in ancient societies helped Zoroastrianism to be
positively evaluated as a folk ideology. Zarathushtra with his simple peasant
name seemed to be a reformer and progressive thinker. Zoroastrianism became
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the religion to investigate in ancient and contemporary life for the Iranian
peoples in Soviet Central Asia.
During the Soviet era the problems of ancient Zoroastrianism were discussed
most intensively. The exchange between Western and Eastern Iranian studies has
been productive, although its intensity has varied. In the beginning of the 1980s,
the tendency to take notice of contemporary Zoroastrianism in Iran increased, but
Russian mainstream research did not go in that direction at all. The 1990s
produced many popular science translations from Zoroastrian writings into
Russian, which apart from close critical attention to the texts symbolized a
standstill of polemics around Zoroastrianism in in contrast to high-grade works
from earlier decades. The separate publications of Vēndidād and Pahlavi texts
were still the main issues of scholars who have been hindered from publishing
translated religious texts in during the Soviet era. Nevertheless, Soviet works on
Zoroastrianism received a trustworthy citation status within Russian academia,
while plenty of Western scholarly works remained overlooked.
This isolationist situation around Zoroastrian studies in the 1990s and 2000s
could be explained through many factors, but the most of obvious is economic
collapse in the scientific sector in the late 1990s. Additionally, an objective crisis
of scholarly research on Zoroastrianism occurred because of the saturation in
the research of historical documents and hence, there were many attempts to
present Zoroastrianism as a stable religion apart from factual gaps, for instance,
evidence of Zarathushtra's historicity or clear distinctions in cult practice during
different historical periods.
The second part of the chapter concentrated on three particular scholarly
texts and tried to extract contemporary, post-Soviet controversies about modern
Zoroastrianism and its Russian appearances. Its scholarly perception changed
during the 2000s, which was not characteristic of research on Zoroastrianism in
the pre-revolution and Soviet eras. The controversy itself—whether
Zoroastrianism has a future in Russia and whether Russian Zoroastrians could
be perceived as equal to other believers from large denominations or small
traditional religious groups—raised new questions on religious research in study
of religions and other disciplines. The public appearance of Russian Zoroastrians
since the 1990s has changed the established tradition of research on
Zoroastrianism within Iranian studies as well.
The relationship between the specialists of Iranian culture with the Russian
converts to Zoroastrianism seems to vary from moderately negative to totally
negative. This was clearly signalled by some pejorative rhetoric used in the first
and second texts by Steblin-Kamenskiĭ and Kriukova and Shkoda, respectively.
“Grand” metaphors about new and revived religious life in the post-Soviet era
as an intensive "spiritual quest of people after the collapse of the communist
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regime" and a "religious vacuum in Soviet time" should serve to reveal the
“secular” character of modern Zoroastrians and their “non-religious goals.”
Steblin-Kamenskiĭ used the strict ethnic definition of Zoroastrianism (thereby
defining Russian Orthodox Christianity as an ethnic religion and
simultaneously a norm among post-Soviet people), which excluded the
possibility of studying the re-emergence of Zoroastrianism in Russian as one
of his academic enterprises.
The second text, apart from the criticism on the original ideas of Russian
Zoroastrians, moved partly in unison with the first. However, Kriukova and Shkoda
viewed Zoroastrian trends in the entire post-Soviet era at two levels: the individual
level (new pagan religion) and the communal level (politically-calculated ideology
of the Central Asian states, in order to escape Muslim pressure). Kriukova and
Shkoda regarded both tendencies expressed by Russian Zoroastrians to be
"speculating around the Aryan myth" through the intensive use of scholarly
literature for their own individual and collective goals in very selective way.
Still, a voice of positivity that takes the challenges faced by Russian
Zoroastrians for granted comes from scholars of religion. Scholars of religion
perceive Zoroastrianism as an evolving religion with its contradictory ancient
and contemporary developments. Study of religions in Russia has a blurry
critical approach to Russian Zoroastrianism and has not yet worked out how
Zoroastrian groups should be studied. However, Russian study of religions has
been impacted by Russian Iranologist traditions with an intent to reconstruct
ancient religious history. Its current issue is to correct the homogenous picture
of Zoroastrianism popularized by Iranian philologists through the criticism "of
'deadness' of Zoroastrianism, absence of philosophy in Zoroastrianism, linear
conception of the historical evolution of this religion." The patterns of
rethinking Zoroastrianism offered by Russian scholars of religion are diverse
and set into distinct historical contexts. That allows them to study the religions
of Ancient Persia and contemporary Zoroastrianism in Russia as equal among
other religions and historically changing entities, without any doubt about their
religious character. Russian Zoroastrianism has been understood as an autonym
and as such it should also be studied academically. This dynamic stance towards
the history of ancient and early medieval times gives rise to models of religious
interrelations that have been salient in study of religions but neglected in Iranian
studies during the 1990s and 2000s.
138
Chapter 4: Zoroastrianism within the
journalistic field
1
A medium is here narrowly understood as a system of more or less institutionalized relations
within the public communication rather than its general meaning in communication studies,
where it refers to language, a script, or a system of signs. See also Hasebrink 2006:10.
2
For the history and parameters of RuNet, see the study by Brunmeier 2005.
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CHAPTER 4: ZOROASTRIANISM WITHIN THE JOURNALISTIC FIELD
3
Perhaps one of few exceptions is a project initiated by some scholars of religion in Tubingen,
Germany: Islam in mass media (Medienprojekt 1994).
4
Although the theme of Islam and media could be dated back to polemics on colonialism and
the criticism of Edward Said (1935–2003) and his well-known book Covering Islam (1981),
where he argued that the Western usage of Islam reveals journalistic deficits because that term
“seems to mean one simple thing but in fact is part fiction, part ideological label, part minimal
designation of a religion called Islam.” Elsewhere he also continues: “Today Islam is peculiarly
traumatic news in the West. During the past few years, especially since events in Iran caught
European and American attention so strongly, the media have therefore covered Islam: they
have portrayed it, characterized it, analyzed it, given instant courses on it, and consequently
they have made it known. But this coverage is misleadingly full, and a great deal in this
energetic coverage is based on far from objective material. In many instances Islam has
licensed not only patent inaccuracy, but also expressions of unrestrained ethnocentrism,
cultural, and even racial hatred, deep yet paradoxically free-floating hostility” (Said 1981:x).
5
The representation of diverse religions in Tsarist or Soviet Russian mass media at large is a
less known terrain. An investigation in this field could lead to interesting discoveries, also in
regard Russian Zoroastrianism.
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
endanger society because journalistic products may have a long life by reception,
duplication, and agenda setting in public communication. Mass media may
easily become disseminators of stereotypes, concepts of (religious) “enemies”
([Der] Islam in den Medien: Mediennprojekt 1994), and bias instead of
following the journalistic goals of objectivity, accuracy, and fairness (Fedler &
Bender & Davenport & Drager 2005:135,138ff,234ff). ”Yellow journalism” is also
a source of open speculations or fabrications of some religious themes, for
example during the 1990s when complementary ”ghost cults” were invented by
some reporters (Borenstein 1999:452).
According to some American mass media scholars, “religion has been, and
remains, a difficult and challenging subject matter for journalists and
journalism” (Hoover 2009:1190), even though religion is one of the
characteristic cultural parameters of societies, which is often discussed by
journalists. Compared to other fields that receive much more media coverage
such as politics or science, religion tends to fall into oblivion. The critics state
“[f]irst, that there simply is not enough of it, and second, that when journalists
have taken on the religion story, they have failed to do so with the same levels of
expertise and seriousness they devote to other, more ‘important’ beats” (Hoover
2009:1991). In Russia during the 1990s, mass media were a central place where
the public discourse on religion came into being after the fall of the Soviet Union
and where many themes such as religious quests, religious belongingness,
national identity, religious pluralism, and legislation have been discussed
intensively (Agadjanian 2000:252ff; Agadjanian 2001:352ff). Further studies on
religion(s) within the Russian mass media are needed, since the privatization of
many mass media by different political powers in the 2000s has profoundly
changed the media landscape. This may result in adopting the tendency to
obscure religious issues from the agenda of journalistic work or, on the contrary,
show some crucial changes or shifts in coverage on religious groups in Russia.
Such studies would be highly beneficial to the social sciences, despite the
statements of some Russian mass media experts who tend to highlight the
homogenizing role of mass media for “human culture of the 21st century” rather
than see something atypical appear in Russian mass media (Kratasjuk 2006:35).
For a content analysis of Zoroastrianism in mass media, I have used Russian
newspapers and journals from RuNet, based on recent statistical survey rankings
of the most distributed daily newspapers (Kharkina-Welke 2009:572).6 A few
6
If content analysis of a religion in cyberspace seems to be very attractive for social scientists,
the technical realization obviously remains an issue for future studies (Rössler & Wirth
2001:298). However, search engines with different systems of indexation, particularly popular
ones like Google, allow the access of information of every kind based on a keyword search. In
this way, one could roughly imagine from the point of view of explorative statistics how
knowledge of a certain religion, in this case Zoroastrianism, could be dispersed through the
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newspapers in the sample come from top websites in RuNet’s rankings that have
high visitor figures, like the tabloid newspaper Komsomol’skaya Pravda (The
Komsomol Truth) and two newspapers that specialize in politics and society—
Trud (The Labour) and Kommersant (The Businessman) (Kharkina-Welke
2009:578). Supposedly, the selected online newspapers will cover a considerable
part of Russian mass media segment. Free electronic versions of newspaper
articles can be accessed by RuNet users, but when they are compared with their
offline, printed versions in the archives, they provide incomplete coverage for
many reasons such as incompleteness of archives etc.
In a very time-consuming procedure I collected and examined about 300
texts from which I extracted 250. This sample includes results I obtained by a
plain keyword search on the website of each publication. The Internet is
becoming a very popular medium among Russian media consumers, and even
though it is often characterized as an elitist medium (Kratasjuk 2006:50),
electronic newspapers are quite influential and strong in reflecting and forming
public opinion, which means they are able to influence collective behavior.
According to statistics from 2006, about 34% of the entire (urban) population of
Russia over 18 years of age has access to the Internet, while in 2009 the audience
varied between 20.6% and 37.5% (Internet in Russia 2009:6). I have decided to
concentrate on many newspapers, which means employing vertical rather than
horizontal sample gathering, because of limited access to the archives of some
newspapers. The collected texts thereby present a “snapshot with a limited
meaningfulness” (Rössler & Wirth 2001:298) of the Russian press on RuNet
using the search term “Zoroastrianism.” It is worth mentioning that the first
stage of my investigation within Internet archives of Russian newspapers
detected a strong interest in religions other than Zoroastrianism.7 As mentioned
above, most journalistic publications prefer writing about dominant or
traditional religions in the region. This appears to apply to the entire Russian
Federation. With very few exceptions, Zoroastrianism in Russian mass media is
Internet. Thus, at the beginning of my study (March 2010), I used two search engines: Yandex
and Google. The results of a plain search indicated by the intensive use of term
“Zoroastrianism” within the Russian-speaking Internet space compared Google and Yandex
search efficacy. The results have shown an apparent difference between these search engines:
while Yandex had 251.000 hits (in Russian, on Russian servers), Google found seven times
less, 37.400 hits (in Russian). In the case of Google I have searched just for the Russian sites
with the extension “ru.”
7
Compared with the presence of other religions on RuNet, the Yandex search engine gives
about five times fewer hits for the keyword “Zoroastrianism” than for “Buddhism” and sixty
times fewer hits than “Orthodox Christianity” or “Islam.” I also compared the frequency of
appearances of “Zoroastrianism” via Google on Russian, Swedish, German, British, and
American Internet sites in their original languages. As a result, searching on Google only
among Russian web pages clearly showed that the word “Zoroastrianism” in the Russian-
language space on the Internet brought the largest number of hits.
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not linked to Russian NRMs. For that reason I cannot present any evidence as to
whether or not Zoroastrianism is a more significant theme compared with other
NRMs in Russia, such as the Anastasia movement or different pagan groups.
The first part of the study deals with quantitative data, illustrated with figures.
The results are based on techniques of simple content analysis such as means,
proportions, and frequency counts, namely: (a) analysis of publications during
the last two decades; (b) author; (c) genre. Afterwards the contents of the
material are presented covering the following aspects: (1) contexts, (2) media
events/media actors and (3) Zoroastrianism as a main topic or (4) its association
with other religions. In addition, journalistic attitudes are evaluated (positive-
neutral-negative) based on the expressed tones in the articles. The findings
discussed in those parts are summarized in the conclusion.
As mentioned above, the first step of content analysis entails the selection of
relevant journalistic sources. The media, news agencies, and newspaper websites
that had the greatest distribution record were preferred sources. This study
included news agencies and newspapers that in turn influenced regional media
that reinterpret and sometimes directly quote materials from the former. Two
findings have been made in a further reduction of the material. Firstly,
Zoroastrianism is a part of many discussions in Russian-language mass media
that originate in the territories of the former Soviet Union (including
Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) and other post-Soviet
countries. The analysis of these sources and their contents, mostly from Russian-
language news portals and newspapers, could further be developed as a separate
topic. Here, however, they have been only briefly touched upon. Secondly, an
immense portion of RuNet’s material about Zoroastrianism relates to esoteric
topics or is represented within the confessional press of large religious
denominations. So among the sources, there is an esoteric newspaper, The
Oracle (Оракул), that has been published since the early 1990s in addition to
confessional (Orthodox Christian, Islamic, Judaic) media or other texts of
religious journalism (Buddenbaum 2006:200ff). Such material will not be
discussed here. Instead, I will focus on journalistic production from the widely
distributed daily press, thus attempting to eliminate all confessional and esoteric
publications. I also have to note that different kinds of literary journals and
thematic magazines (business, fan, scholarly, or women’s) are further excluded
from the scope of this study.
In addition to Russian seven national newspapers,8 I examine several regional
newspapers such as Chelyabinskiĭ Rabochiĭ (The Chelyabinsk Worker) (society,
8
Namely Rossiiskaya Gazeta (state newspaper), Komsomol’skaya Pravda (boulevard, society,
politics), Moskovskiĭ Komsomolets (boulevard, society, politics), Novaya Gazeta (The New
Newspaper) (society, politics), Nezavisimaya Gazeta (The Independent Newspaper)
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(particularly, its special supplement for religions NG-Religii (The Supplement “Religions” of
the Independent Newspaper) (society, politics, religions), one of the most informative and
competent sources on religions in Russia and elsewhere, Trud (society, politics), Gazeta
(society, politics) and Kommersant (economics, politics, society).
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Middle Asian feast. Some journalists recognize that Nouruz is a Russian calendar
event because of active Nouruz festivals in a couple of Russian regions, namely
in Dagestan and Chuvashia. In general the articles portray this as a calm and
joyous affair, but sometimes disasters can occur as, for example, in 2010 when
“three hundred Iranians became victims of the feast of ‘adoration of fire’” or
čahāršanbe suri due to fires and accidents related to the negligent use of
pyrotechnics or even anti-government criticism during public celebrations (L
2010, NRu 2010, RG 2010).
With the Nouruz celebrations the contentious idea of a “Zoroastrian
calendar” enters the stage (T 2001, I 2002, NRu 2009, Reo 2009, VM 2009, NR2
2010). Forecasts from the “Zoroastrian calendar” occupied articles in the news
during the past decade. They are usually placed within astrological forecasts. In
fact, the “Zoroastrian calendar” has nothing to do with the religious Zoroastrian
solar calendar, but instead draws inspiration from the Avestan astrological
calendar practiced by Pavel Globa and his adherents (see Chapter 2). Other
names used by the press for this calendar system include the “calendar of the
Aryans” and the “Persian calendar.” According to Globa’s annual calendar
publications, the years from 2000 (the first year of the 32-year cycle) until 2010
have 10 of 32 animal names or "totems" (and, correspondingly, "anti-totems")
that are coupled with diverse colors for each year. Each year of the Avestan
astrological calendar begins with the spring equinox, that is, the first day of
Nouruz. So far, there have been the years of the Owl (2000), the Falcon (2001),
the Deer (2002), the Sheep (2003), the Mongoose (2004), the Wolf (2005), the
Stork (2006), the Spider (2007), the Snake (2008), the Beaver (2009), the Turtle
(2010), the Magpie (2011), and the Squirrel (2012). In my sample the
characteristics of three years (2001, 2009, and 2010) are mentioned, but it is
highly probable that an additional search may show an active reception of the
topic in the regional press, which readily reproduced articles published on the
national level. The recommendations for each year usually offer advice for
personal and public life, and they often use esoteric terminology. One journalist
explains that “according to traditions of Zoroastrianism,” in the year of Violet
Sheep (2003), “the windows of the other world will open and the ancestors could
be incarnated [sic].” In addition, a “karmic re-compensation” is said to occur in
the year of the Sheep. Such reports have been published not only on the pages of
the boulevard press, but also in national papers. The information portal Mir
Religii uncritically identified the Avestan astrological system as “Zoroastrian.”
Another theme connected with Zoroastrianism in Russia is Arkaim (about 13
entries with a direct reference). From cultural, political, and scholarly points of
view, Arkaim is a popular theme in mass media, but news reports that mention
Arkaim rarely, mention Zoroastrianism as well. Arkaim is considered to be the
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place where the prophet Zarathustra [sic] was born or preached. In connection
to Arkaim, Zoroastrianism has not always been portrayed in a positive manner.
In one article, the vivid esoteric scene surrounding Arkaim and its waves of
enthusiasm towards Zoroastrianism is pejoratively portrayed as a disturbance
for the archaeologists working there (ChR 2005).
Iran is a world power. Originally, its territory spread from the Near East to India.
Also a part of the ex-Soviet Union belonged to the territory of ancient Iran. Iran is
a land of a proto-religion, of Zoroastrianism. Thus, some specialists state that it
was a source of inspiration for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. However, there is
also evidence that Zoroastrianism arose on Russian soil—in the South Urals.
Then, in the course of the migration of peoples, the bearers of that religious
culture turned up in Iran, among other places. That means and I want to say that
the histories of our countries and interrelations between our cultures are of a
deeper character, and that they have deeper roots than it sometimes seems to be
the case according to the specialists [sic]. In this way, these relations instill
confidence that we will always succeed to reach an agreement on all problems
which could occur because we understand each other (Putin 2007).
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proper designation of this religion. The interview, which above all dealt with
many other economic and political topics, was broadcasted on Russian TV
channels. It was also published on the official website of the Russian president
and was discussed several times by the press including Putin’s references to
Zoroastrianism. Putin’s words regarding Zoroastrianism were used as a sort of
self-promotion on the websites of different groups of Russian Zoroastrians
(zoroastrian.ru and blagoverie.org) where the audio and print copies of the
interview were duplicated.
While Putin’s interview highlighted Zoroastrianism as a political metaphor in
the context of international and nationalist discourses, another media event
occurred which disclosed social antagonisms inside Russia. In 2008, when the
Moscow poet Vsevolod Emelin (b. 1959) published his 12 stanza poem entitled
The Moscow Zoroastrianism, it caused a vehement quarrel particularly among
Russian bloggers, and brought the word “Zoroastrianism” to the attention of the
public and the Russian press. The poem was a reaction to the incidents of setting
fire to private cars (most of them were imported from abroad) on the streets of
Moscow and other major cities like Perm, St. Petersburg, and Vladivostok in
June 2008. Emelin posted this poem to his LiveJournal blog, emelind, on June
4th. During the next couple of days, his blog post received dozens of comments.
It received much criticism from conservatives, who interpreted it as an appeal to
damage the property of innocent people, or, on the contrary, enthusiasm from
liberal bloggers who understood these actions as a revolutionary protest against
the “power of the rich” and the corruption of the contemporary apparatchiks.
Here, Zoroastrianism came into the picture because of its association with fire
worship (огнепоклонничество), and in this case the worship was indexically
identified with burning, which in turn was interpreted as a form of purifying
Russian society and restoring social justice. Emelin referred to the instigators of
these acts of terror as “avengers,” “Russian Zarathustras [sic],” and “Robin
Hoods from Butovo,” in his poem. The spelling of the name of the prophet, in
line with the provocative character of the poem, clearly alludes to Friedrich
Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra rather than to the prophetic figure of the
Zoroastrian religion. In the last stanza Emelin thanks the instigators for their
“vengeance” in the name of “starving” people. The radical tone of his poem led
to critical reactions in central newspapers. On June 6th Izvestia published an
article with the heading “Cars are burning across the whole land.” In this article
a journalist states that The Moscow Zoroastrianism, since it was incredibly
popular within the Russian blogosphere, is a direct appeal to “actions of an
extremist character” and should be punished in accordance with Russian
criminal law.. An editorial on June 8th in the Pskov newspaper, The New
Chronicles, called Izvestia’s article “a publication outstanding in its absurdity;”
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For instance, I went to India and adopted Zoroastrianism. My papa was an artist. He
had a place on a tour there. He became sick; I went instead of him. Later I was offered
to attend an expedition to the Pamir. I went there also. [I] excavated there an ancient
town. It turned out [it was] a Zoroastrian one! Now, in the Hermitage [museum],
there are all sorts of stuff that we excavated (VM 2002).
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Scholars and archaeologists are also media actors who play the role of
inventors and discoverers of Zoroastrianism in their works. Doubtless one of
them is Viktor Sarianidi (see Chapter 3), who is also called a “second
Schliemann” of our time and is one of the most successful Soviet-Russian
archaeologists of Greek descent. He appears in the press as a strong advocate for
the localization of the “proto-homeland of Zarathushtra” in Turkmenistan:
Here, on the border to the desert Karakum a unique, original, and prosperous
civilization blossomed, which in its splendour and glory was no less developed, if
compared with other ancient civilizations and culturally advanced centers of the
ancient world—Mesopotamia, India, Egypt, and China. At excavations of the palace-
temple complex Gonur-tepe (second millennium BCE), the richest material was
brought out, which allows us to assume that the ancient homeland of the first world
religion—Zoroastrianism—was the land Margush (Margiana), in the old delta of the
Murgab River (I 2006).
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[…] there was a Moscow nightclub called Avesta, which is the name of ancient
Zoroastrian scriptures. "We find that offensive and will probably have to
challenge them at some point."
He said offense is often caused because nobody thinks of Zoroastrianism as a real
religion. At a science fiction convention a few years ago, a member of Moscow
Anjoman met with the authors of "Bez Poschady" (No Mercy), a book about
future cosmic wars between Russia and Zoroastrians that live on other planets.
"The authors didn't want to offend anyone, and chose Zoroastrianism as a hostile
religion by thinking there were no Zoroastrians left," Titkov said (MT 2007).
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article states that “[t]here are between 100 and 200 people who went through the
Zoroastrian induction ceremony in Russia and the Commonwealth of
Independent States who are not of Persian descent.” Except for the details, such
as the Zoroastrian religious clothes or making prayers with the help of Google
reminders, the article also describes future plans for the Zoroastrians, including
their wish to rule Zoroastrian burials with local towers of silence.
Journalists are often involved in discussions about Zarathushtra’s birthplace,
and whether or not it was localized in Central Asia, the Urals, Arkaim, the
Chusovaya River, or on the Valday height (KP 2001). The Zoroastrianism also
enjoys journalistic attention from informative articles (KP 2006). Particularly,
Zoroastrian burials are one of the trademarks of Zoroastrianism in mass media
(NRu 2000, NG 2000, G 2006).
The sample articles contain three different spellings of the prophet’s name,
Zoroaster (Зороастр), Zarathustra, and Zarathushtra, which have been used
synonymously. The primary goal of scholarly publications is to debunk
misconceptions that associate Zarathushtra with an Aryan provenience. In
“Zarathushtra Did Not Speak Thus” (PD 2007), Steblin-Kamenskiĭ presented his
opinion of the latest problems in the discussion of Zoroastrianism that touch the
relationship between the historical Zarathushtra and the one of Nietzschean
interpretation, the Aryan hypothesis, the exact contents and moral imperatives
of the Avesta and finally, the problem of Russian Zoroastrians. These theses are
quite similar to Steblin-Kamenskiĭ’s preface to his Russian publication of the
Gāthās from 2010. The article also includes a black-and-white picture of Kamran
Loryan, an Iranian Zoroastrian mōbedyār together with his translator and the
editor of the Mitra, Galina Sokolova, in the background in Steblin-Kamenskiĭ’s
office. The last subchapter of the article is devoted to Russian Zoroastrians
insofar as he argues that someone cannot become a Zoroastrian by choice,
because it is a religion of ethnic belongingness and inheritance. In this respect,
Pavel Globa’s challenge to be the head of Zoroastrians in St. Petersburg and a
Zoroastrian priest seems to be an illegitimate act. However, after that Steblin-
Kamenskiĭ follows up with a more lenient statement:
All right, if one considers that Zarathushtra’s sermon appealed to the whole of
mankind, thus, perhaps, this ancient religion has its own right to renovation and
change bewaring of its essence: obtaining of “good thoughts, good words and good
deeds” (PD 2007).
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the enthusiasm of their faith. Zoroastrian figures such as Globa and Bard have
been fully recognized by journalists. In political news, only evaluations of
politicians were presented, without having any deeper reflections on the
complexity of the scholarly discussion about Zoroastrianism. The idea of the
polyphonic character of modern Zoroastrianism and information about
controversies between Indian Zoroastrians and other diaspora groups are
basically unknown to the press. The tensions between Russian Zoroastrians
and Parsis such as in the case of ‘Chistiakov’s controversy’9 in February 2010
remained unnoticed. The exception here are articles translated from English
and constantly reproduced articles about new ways to bury human corpses by
Parsis under new religious-cultural circumstances such as using solar batteries
for traditional Zoroastrian daḵma-burials.
90% of the sample material contains an unbiased evaluation of Zoroastrian-
ism. This can be interpreted on one hand as an idiosyncratic feature of
journalism to pay less attention to religious matters and on the other hand to
have less interest in particular minorities that do not hold major political sway in
Russia. While there are some negative tendencies that are creating an
antagonistic view towards Zoroastrianism articulated in the confessional press,
for instance in a few Muslim or Russian orthodox publications, this is
uncommon for non-confessional journalism in Russia.
4.7. Summary
Mass media has often been accused of supporting the ruling religious actors,
who in most Eastern and Western European countries are dominated by
different Christian churches. They also could have provided incorrect
information about the existing religious distribution in order to preserve the
cultural cohesion of society (Bantimaroudis 2007:220). However, the presented
study on Zoroastrianism in the Russian mass media gives distinct evidence that
journalists are able to take neutral and/or positive positions in their evaluation of
a religious minority. The notion, widely held by state leaders, that orthodoxy is
common ground in Russian culture with strong separation from other religions
has not always received support from the Russian mass media. For example, in
one interview president Putin indicated that 90% of Russians were religious
9
That controversy was received by the Parsi press right after the speculative attempt to
conduct the navar ceremony (the first grade or stage of the Zoroastrian priesthood) for a
Russian khorbad from St. Petersburg, Mikhail Chistiakov by Dr Meher Master-Moos and two
ervads in Mumbai February 19th 2010.
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162
Chapter 5: Zoroastrianism in contemporary
Russian fiction
1
This means that the primary position of literary criticism is that Russian classics are closely
related to Eastern orthodox Christianity. Among them, as expected, is Fyodor Dostoevsky as
the culmination point of ‘religious’ writing.. However, the picture is not as simple as it seems
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[T]he traditional hierarchical structure of domestic literature has given way for
different urban grounds’ building, where the writers are parting of the ways with each
other, or, if you wish, their own niches by orienting (consciously or unconsciously)
not on such conciliarist’s category as the Reader but on differing target audiences
(Chuprinin 2007b:331).
In fact, the saturation of the literature market since the 1990s—because literary
production is not conceivable anymore without any economic profit as it was
often in the Soviet economy—makes it impossible to display common features
and spectra of new literature. Moreover, the boundaries between mainstream
and mass literature has blurred. A new phenomenon, a “literary fashion,”
to be. See discussion about in Cassedy 2005:23f. There is also a narrowly-focused study on
Aleksandr Pushkin that also does not give a simple picture, see Raskol’nikov 2004.
2
In particular, within the continuously treated section Religion and Culture in the Russian
journal Study of Religions (Религиоведение) (2001–), there are articles about various literary
works of Russian and world literature.
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formed through considered public relations or even by chance, has added to the
literature conjuncture (Chuprinin 2007b:322f). Also worth mentioning is the
spatial aspect of contemporary Russian literature—the extreme geographic
diffusion of producers. Both writers and readers of Russian literature live in
various former Soviet countries. This is why the term “Russian literature”
implies works by Russian authors irrespective of their nationality and place of
residence. Globalization influences former national literature by offering a wider
range of themes and topics, which are now comprehensible to non-Russian
readers too. In addition, genres of Russian fiction are diversifying through “new
hybridization.” Apart from fiction, where religious themes are usually enacted
within secular contexts, modern Russian literature creates further syntheses and
innovations such as non-secular Orthodox (Chuprinin 2007b:445f) or Islamic
fictional literature, where fiction that is intended for a broad audience
consciously adopts conservative religious opinions. However, books published in
the religious genre are not subject to mass phenomena.
Beyond the receptive audiences that were categorized into two general
groups—high and mass literature—Chuprinin extrapolates a third group that he
calls middle literature (миддл-литература). He defines this as a “type of
literature (словесность) inheriting a stratum between the high [or] elitist and
the mass [or] entertainment literatures coming out from their dynamic
interaction, and as a matter of fact overcoming perpetual opposition between
them. To the middle class for the same reason may be ascribed either
“enlightening” variations of high literature, […] mastering of which does not
require particular spiritual and intellectual efforts by the readers, or, mass
literature’s forms, which differ in high performance quality and intend to be not
only amusing for the public” (Chuprinin 2007b:312). The parameters of middle
literature remain relative to each other, according to writer and publicist
Aleksandr Kabakov (b. 1943):
The stratification is the following: elitist culture, simple culture, mass culture. A
hundred years ago, there were Chekhov, Tolstoy and cheap print. That is all. Now
the space between high art and cheap print moved objectively apart and is filled
with an enormous amount of stages like an escalator—they are keeping a distance
but all together moving upwards (qtd. in Chuprinin 2007b:313f).
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interest in religion can transform the science fiction genre. Chekmaev, according
to some Russian critics, is known as the founder of Orthodox urban fantasy
(православное городское фэнтези). In one interview, he stated that religion
attracts great attention among Russian fantasy writers (Chekmaev 2005). Apart
from religion’s distant influence on Russian fantasy literature in the pre-Soviet
era (Raevich 1979), this influence is undoubtedly rooted in the 1960s, “when the
writers of the ‘new wave’ were thinking about the divine, the role of the church
in the future world, the strength and the weakness of contemporary religious
currents” (Chekmaev 2005). Modern fantasy continues this “quest for religion.”
Chekmaev defines the main issue of science fiction and fantasy literature as
“alarmist” rather than “entertaining,” i.e. that it places ethical problems on
society’s agenda. Hence, apocalyptic events in these genres reflect assumed
deficiencies within modern societies by projecting them into horrific scenarios.
In Chekmaev’s view, a watershed for such religious themes in fantasy literature
coincides with the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, when
“many writers became conscious about the perspectives for development of our
country: what is that new Way?” Thus, there have been some literary attempts to
imagine the future of Russia as Islamic dystopias (by Vladimir Mikhailov and
Iuriĭ Nikitin) or poly-denominational syntheses of Mongol-Chinese-Slavic
identities (by Holm van Zaichik, a pseudonym of Igor Alimov and Vyacheslav
Rybakov). Besides, Chekmaev mentions a large number of stylized fantasy works
as quasi-patriotic and “orthodox in a sort of cheap popular print” (лубочно-
православного толка). Orthodox faith in fiction is, as he puts it, “just a
comfortable screen that allows justifying of further brutal (literary: “tooth
crushing” зубодробительные) exploits of super-heroes” (Chekmaev 2005).
My study of contemporary Russian fiction focuses on the secular layer, and
all sorts of religious literature were excluded (for instance, works by orthodox
writers who are strictly writing within their religious paradigm, i.e. all sorts of
confessional literature). The sample was limited in direct references to
Zoroastrianism, but nevertheless, it was possible to build a corpus of some
published and online literature with references that treated Zoroastrianism from
many perspectives. The sample consists of text fragments from books and
magazines. Some texts are from self-published (самиздат) literature online, for
instance on the server of Moshkov’s library with special copyright literary
sections.3 In this way, the corpus (see Appendix) is heterogeneous: it includes
texts that develop the theme of Zoroastrianism, have it as a short sideshow, or
use it as a cursory metaphor. The gathered material allows the identification of
Zoroastrian narratives in different genres of Russian fiction with various
aesthetic qualities.
3
See: <http://zhurnal.lib.ru/> (accessed 28 September 2010).
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There are no academic studies that have analyzed how Zoroastrianism is used
within fictional and non-fictional literature in the past and present. However,
some reflections on the construction of ethnic identity and anxieties in Parsi
fictional works written in English have been attempted (e.g. Kapadia & Khan
1997). A survey on the use of Zoroastrianism in English literature published
between 1940 and 1990 was conducted by searching for the term
“Zoroastrianism” in the Religion and Literature Database. The search yielded 42
references to Zoroastrianism and Zoroastrian characters, mainly in the genre of
science fiction (Zoroastrians and Parsis in Science Fiction 2005).4 The resulting
synopsis showed that the prevailing pattern in that representative sample was a
brief and cursory mentioning of (1) the Zoroastrian religion, (2) the prophet
Zarathushtra and (3) some ritual and ethnic peculiarities of contemporary
Zoroastrian communities in India and Iran. There are also (4) Zoroastrian
names and terms. The latter are used rather loosely, for instance in H. Beam
Piper’s Fuzzy book series in the 1960s (The Complete Fuzzy, 1998), which
“take[s] place on a planet named ‘Zarathustra,’ but the novels have no
Zoroastrian characters and no references to the Zoroastrian religion”
(Zoroastrians and Parsis in Science Fiction 2005). In addition, John Brunner’s
Zarathustra trilogy (Polymath/Castaway’s World, 1963; Secret Agent of
Terra/The Avengers of Carrig, 1962; The Repairmen of Cyclops, 1965) refers to
the planet Zarathustra for its plot. Often the references take inspiration from
Friedrich Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra (including its musical
interpretation by Richard Strauss, which in turn is used in Stanley Kubrick’s film
2001: A Space Odyssey, from 1968).
13 of the literary references to Zoroastrianism are somewhat more elaborate,
including works from the following authors: Harry Harrison (Bill, the Galactic
Hero, 1965), John DeChance (The MagicNet, 1993), Robert Heinlein (The Moon
is a Harsh Mistress, 1966), Fritz Leiber ("Adept's Gambit" in Swords in the Mist
in The Three of Swords, 1947; The Wanderer, 1964; Our Lady of Darkness, 1977),
Larry Niven/Steven Barnes (Dream Park, 1981), Carl Sagan (Contact, 1985), Kim
Stanley Robinson (Green Mars, 1994), Neal Stephenson (The Diamond Age,
1995), and Philip K. Dick (The Divine Invasion, 1981 and Valis, 1981). The
anonymous author of this survey states that “the only science fiction novels we
are aware of with actual Zoroastrian characters are Harrison's Bill, the Galactic
Hero (in which the title character is considered to be a Zoroastrian), and
Stephenson's The Diamond Age (which sports a minor, unnamed Parsi banker)”
(Zoroastrians and Parsis in Science Fiction 2005). One example where there are
4
According to the investigator, “[t]his list is not comprehensive, but it does list all Hugo—and
Nebula-winning novels with Zoroastrian references” (Zoroastrians and Parsis in Science
Fiction 2005).
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many references to the original Zoroastrian dualistic model and its cosmogony is
Philip K. Dick’s novel The Cosmic Puppets (1957). The Cosmic Puppets uses the
names Ohrmazd and Ahriman for the two main powers in the cosmic struggle
that is occurring in a little town where the main character of the novel was born
and where he returns after his long absence. Dick also draws on the Zoroastrian
concepts of the eschatological struggle between two powers as well as good and
evil animals, which ally themselves with their patrons.
However, the anonymous author of this database synopsis believes that the
involvement of Zoroastrianism within English written fiction is very low when
compared with other religions. He speculates that:
5
The analysis of further references from media, film, and different kinds of artistic work is
itself a fertile theme of a separate study. Here I will briefly mention some of them. In
particular, Eastern Siberia and the Urals are the two most active regions with their great
interest in local archaeological sites and ancient history, which are financially better-
supported by local governments (see Chapter 2). In 2004 in Perm, a fantasy TV movie In the
Quest of Zarathushtra (Director: Varvara Kal’pidi) has been created, in 2005 it won a prize at
the The Golden Tambourine (Золотой бубен) festival in Khanty-Mansiysk. The film got a
great resonance among Russian Zoroastrians from the astrological milieu also because of the
consultation by Perm Zoroastrian Oleg Lushnikov and an preface by Pavel Globa. In 2005, on
the stage of the opera and ballet house in Ufa, the premiere of a “mystical” ballet Arkaim was
presented. Two years later another dance performance with the same name was staged in
Chelyabinsk. One can also regard the performances and texts of extreme artist and esoteric
philosopher and poet Andrey Yeliseyev aka AZsacra Zarathustra (b. 1960) to belong to
Zoroastrian discourses, which are amalgamated with re-interpretations of Nietzsche’s
Zarathustra and postmodernist philosophy. Both had certain examples of “Zoroastrian
symbolism.” Also in the visual arts in the 1990s–2000s, there were some examples of
reflections on the figure of Zarathushtra such as e.g. the digital art project Deisis
(Предстояние) in 2004–2009 (www.deisis.ru). In this, Zarathushtra [sic] is, among others, a
representative of “sacral history,” the prophet of the “the closest to the Christianity” teaching
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that attracted three “Abrahamic” world religions (Judaism, Islam and Christendom).
Moreover, the painter Lena Hades (Лена Хейдиз) (b. 1959) made 20 illustrations for the
recent publication of Thus Spoke Zarathustra in 2004. Her Zarathustra’s cycle exhibited at the
First Moscow Biennale of contemporary art in 2005 in a special project dedicated “against
ideologisation of Nietzsche, particularly against political radicalism that he allegedly appealed
for and against anti-Semitism, as if he suffered from” (Hades 2004).
6
See Steblin-Kamenskiĭ 2009:6. Thus, one of the first poetic reflections about Zarathushtra
goes back to the 18th century with the poem The image of Felitsa (Изображение Фелицы,
1789) written by Russian poet Gavriil Derzhavin (1743–1816), where the sculpture portrait of
Tsar Peter the Great stood in the chambers of the Catherina the Great (1729–1796) was called
a “Zoroastrian idol” (Зороастров истукан). See Zapadov 1957:388.
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legendary sage and powerful mage has been the greatest and the most persistent
of pattern for many centuries (Stausberg 2006:20ff).
In the 20th century, German classicist and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844–1900) wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, which
produced a contradictory image of Zarathushtra that had only an indirect
relation to the Persian prophet. Since the first translation into Russian, a
decade after the original publication (1898), Zarathustra became one of the
central, most widely discussed works of Western philosophy among Russian
intellectuals (see in general, Rosenthal 1986,1994). Nietzsche’s “influence
touched a deep chord in the Russian psyche that continued to reverberate long
after his initial reception” (Rosenthal 1994:17). The Russian reception of
Zarathustra experienced different periods of (dis)interest in Nietzsche’s
heritage and caused a de facto prohibition of his works in the Soviet era
between the late 1920s and the 1970s. However, some scholars in that period
see Nietzsche’s indirect influence as a philosophy of Nietzscheanism within
Bolshevik and Stalinist ideologies (Agursky 1994:256ff). Also Nietzsche’s
philosophy influenced writers such as Evgeny Zamiatin (1884–1937) and Boris
Pasternak (1890–1960) (Clowes 1994:313ff). After the 1970s and with the
publication of new translations of Zarathustra into Russian at the beginning of
the 1990s, a new wave of lively intellectual debate arose (Sineokaia 2004) and
we can observe an immense popularity of Nietzsche and his aphorismes in the
Russian mass media use (see Bezrodnyĭ 2006).
On one hand, Nietzsche stepped into the reign of Persian religious semantics,
but on the other hand, he continued the long European tradition of reinvention
and reinterpretation with his two philosophical concepts—the eternal recurrence
and the superhuman—by questioning the Christian grounds of European moral
order. Thereby the figure of Zarathustra became a subject for further
interpretations. In Russia (and perhaps in the rest of the world as well),
Zarathustra can be considered as a sort of contemporary prerequisite for interest
in the Zoroastrian religion and, as such, a part of the religious discourse on
Zoroastrianism. As noted elsewhere, Russian reception of Nietzsche was a
product of selective processes, which were transforming Russian cultural
discourses within (religious) philosophy, literature, music, art, and cinema
(Deppermann 1992, Rosenthal 1986, Moliteno 2001). Over time, Nietzsche’s
ideas began to fade. The central ideas of Zarathustra were vulgarized (Clowes
1986:315ff). Within Russian nationalist polemics Zarathustra has been
reinterpreted as a folk revolutionary and Nazi propagandist (Koschmal
2006:195) and then, in the 1970s, as an intellectual anti-Christian rebel. It is
undeniable that Nietzsche handed down Zarathustra as a moral teacher with a
new modernist imperative, and thus, he gave him prophetic charisma. Apart
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7
See Steblin-Kamenskiĭ 2009:7. For instance, in chapter 15 The Thousand and One Goals
(Von tausend und einem Ziele) Nietzsche paraphrases Herodotus’ report (1,131) that the sons
of the Persians are to be educated “in three things alone—to ride, to draw the bow, and to
speak the truth.” These statements was echoed by Nietzsche as followed: "[t]o speak truth, and
be skilful with bow and arrow"—(the entire passage: „Wahrheit reden und gut mit Bogen und
Pfeil verkehren“—so dünkte es jenem Volke zugleich lieb und schwer, aus dem mein Name
kommt—der Name, welcher mir zugleich lieb und schwer ist (Nietzsche 2008:61).
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art of the avant-garde” and “seeped by osmosis into the emerging mythology of
the new Soviet state” (Carlson 1994:122,123).
Furthermore, there is also another essential strand of contacts between
Zoroastrian texts and Russian literature. The epoch of the Silver Age also
produced a literary adaptation of Zoroastrian religious literature, in particular, a
poetic translation of Zarathushtra’s Gathas. Apart from the scholarly
translations, there also were poetic versifications of the Gathas’ fragments by
Briusov and Balmont, which were afterwards accepted by Russian scholars. The
primary translations of original Zoroastrian texts, the literary and philosophical
reception of Nietzschean Zarathustra,and the poetic treatment of Gathic texts all
occurred over the course of a few decades in Russian culture.
As mentioned above, in the Soviet era, Nietzschean Zarathustra discourse was
still present in Russian literature. However, this was not the only means of
transporting Zarathushtra’s name and character. The below quoted text is an
example of Soviet neo-romanticism with its interest in national roots and
“father’s faith” (Epshteĭn 2005:218f), which was another modus to transport
religious contents into Soviet culture. Zarathustra appears as an unexcelled
humanist in both the historical novel The Fires on the Barrows (Огни на
курганах, 1932) and the short story The Blue Jay of Zarathustra [sic] (Голубая
сойка Заратустры, 1945) by Vasiliĭ Yan (pseudonym of historical belletrist
Vasiliĭ Yanchevetskiĭ (1874–1954)), where the plot is set during the siege of
Baktra (Balkh) by Alexander the Great. Zarathushtra is a “great teacher of
nations” whose aphoristic sentences and moral lessons should survive for
centuries. In that parable, one can also see allusions to the discourse on national,
Central Asian identity. Balkh (an area in modern day Afghanistan) symbolizes
the entire region of Middle Asian Soviet republics that tried to withstand
Alexander’s army. According to Soviet critic Nemirovskiĭ, the prophetic
character in The Blue Jay of Zarathustra is “directed against Nietzsche’s pseudo-
Zoroaster, with its grimy sermon of individualistic freedom” (Nemirovskiĭ
1989:551). Indeed, in his story Yan presents Zarathushtra as an archetypal wise
man by neglecting the proper spelling of the name of the Persian prophet, which
again refers to the Nietzschean figure.
Another example that supports the idea of the continuous process of
Zarathushtra’s discourse in Russian fiction can be found in the works of exiled
Russian poet and publicist Iuriĭ Terapiano (1892–1980). His book entitled
Mazdeism: The Modern Followers of Zoroaster (Маздеизм. Современные
последователи Зороастра, 1968) describes Zoroaster as the bearer of a
sophisticated “Zoroastrian esoteric” tradition. Terapiano construed a
multifaceted picture of Zoroastrianism which is based upon the work Practical
Metaphysics of Zoroastrianism written by the Parsi writer Minocheher Hormasji
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Toot in 1937. The author writes that he documented the particularities of the
doctrine and the cult, drawing on his memories from conversations with an old
man at the Russian embassy in Teheran before World War I (1968:12,30ff). The
Zoroastrian teachings depicted in this book obviously refer to theosophical
concepts such as the five-race doctrine (1968:15). In addition, a special dietary
practice described by the author, foreign to the practices of modern
Zoroastrianism, instead resembles the dietary guidelines of Mazdaznan groups.
Similar to Uspensky, Terapiano was inspired by many esoteric currents of his
time (yoga, theosophy, Gurdjieff etc.) and was wanted create a new one in his
prosaic novels and poetry (Nevzorova 2009).8
After this brief introductory survey of literary references to Zarathushtra,
Zoroastrianism, and correspondent discourses that should perhaps be studied in
detail in future research, I will start to discuss some of the selected findings.
8
It is not clear and no research has been conducted in answering the question of whether
Terapiano’s book was avalible for Soviet intellectuals in the 1970s, although there are some
references by Ivanov (Skuratov) 1981. A paperback brochure (no reprint) from 1992 that was
published at a theosophical publishing house that was recommended for a course in the
history of religions at the State University of St. Petersburg, certainly played a big role for the
popularization of Zoroastrian ideas, in particular Russian Zoroastrians, as well as other people
interested in oriental religions.
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
Ormuzd was not just “another” god. He was the first god-mentor! The Avesta,
unlike all previous scriptures, included not only family and historical records of
cases occurred in the heaven, but the first attempts to regulate the earth’s affairs.
It is in the Avesta were introduced so-called ‘commandments’, the instructions of
God to man ... Never before the gods taught the people. Punished, encouraged,
ignored—but not instructed! The actions of pagan gods were deprived of any
edification... (Farb 2005:329f).
Therewith the text suggests that Zarathushtra’s dualistic “invention” and the
Avesta scripture served to systematize future monotheistic religions, especially
when compared to the chaos of paganism.
The third example of the occult European reception of Zarathushtra is found
in Boris Akunin’s (b. 1956) Leviathan (Левиафан, 2001). Being one of the
leading contemporary authors writing in the historical crime fiction genre that
belongs par excellence to Russian middle literature (Chuprinin 2007a:133),
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Akunin creates the atmosphere of an elitist society in the 1870s by using literary
language and playing with rhetorical clichés from that time. In Leviathan, the
instigator of a chain of unclear murders is Madame Renata Kléber, a cold-
blooded adventurist that exploited the idea of being a medium who was “lead by
Zarathustra’s [sic] voice” (Akunin 2011:115). This is an example of a time when
the figure of Zarathustra, similar to other mystical authorities of ancient history,
is introduced to esoteric, mesmerist, and spiritist cycles.
The second group in this sample gives an idea of how Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke
Zarathustra has been received by Russians in the past. This construed past,
however, consists of different ideas of Zoroastrianism. The first reference is a
crime novel, written by an epigone of Akunin’s style of historical crime, Anton
Chizh. The God’s Poison (Божественный яд, 2006) transfers the reader into the
Russian fin de siècle, while the second reference, the novel Thus Spoke
Zarathustra (Так говорил Заратустра, 1994), written by Iuriĭ Kuvaldin, (b.
1946) is about the Soviet era.
Chizh’s crime novel, similar to the Akunin’s, is stylized as a story from pre-
revolutionary Russia on the eve of the revolution of 1905. The atmosphere where
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra was a passionate object of reading by the Russian elite in
the beginning of the 20th century is transmitted through a quotation from Thus
Spoke Zarathustra as an epigraph at the beginning of the novel (Chizh 2009:5).
However, inside Chizh’s book one can also detect esoteric references to
Zoroastrianism that have been used as a literary expedient creating socio-
cultural settings or the intellectual atmosphere of the novel. Chizh describes the
Russian public of the fin de siècle’s passion for mystic and occult practices. The
novel begins with a scene in a public lecture with a bit of irony “The poster of the
famous capital lecture-hall invited to the lecture ‘The Avestan secrets.’ In the
spacious hall [...] there are merely about 10 persons” (Chizh 2009:8). One of the
protagonists and future victims of the novel, Prof. Serebriakov, lectures about a
“Persian book Avesta” and a “divine drink khaoma.” Indeed, Serebriakov
himself invented a green-colored drug (called “soma”). The Haoma drink (<Av.
haoma, Ved. sóma) that is predominantly used within the traditional
Zoroastrian ritual yasna, is described in the novel as a miraculous medicine that
transforms an ordinary human being into a “superman,” because it “makes
drank, gives health, power, feeling of joy and opens deep knowledge. Thanks to
khaoma’s power Zarathustra [sic] conquered death” (Chizh 2006:9). Indeed, this
passage is a witness of the merging of two Zarathus(h)tras: one is concerned with
the ideal of a “superman,” and the propagates khaoma for the acquisition of
eternal life. Both of these interpretations of Zarathus(h)tra are not identical to
the two originals a priori and are rather creations by the author.
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If Chizh’s use of Nietzsche is only cursory and touches merely the form and
historical background of that fictional reality, the next reference opens an
extensive discussion during the 1970s Soviet Union. Being fully rooted in the
Russian reception of Nietzsche, Kuvaldin’s philosophical-historical work Thus
Spoke Zarathustra provides the fictional biography of a Soviet man named
Nikolai Beliaev. The novel’s timespan covers 20 years (from 1963 until 1983) in
which Beliaev gradually develops his career as a Soviet apparatchik. The ironic
depiction of “Zarathustra” in the novel belongs to Beliaev’s father Aleksandr, an
ethnic Russian who is a Spanish translator and former political convict who lives
outside Soviet order as a desperate tramp and a drunkard. His adult son Nikolaĭ
is ashamed of his father’s lifestyle and behavior. Every attempt to set him on the
right path seems to be unsuccessful. His moral suffering becomes a sort of verbal
revolt against Soviet power during conversations with Nikolaĭ “The state is the
stickiest and the most miserable of all the cold monsters! It tells lies coldly—I am
the folk! The state lies about good in every language and all that it tells is lies and
all that it has is stolen” (Kuvaldin 2006:11).
Nikolaĭ’s father says that ruling powers use “own hypnosis: communism,
equality…” and hence he is an “egoist,” a “God for himself” that does not need
any prophets. Apart from anarchy, he advocates anti-Semitism (although
practically he can accept that his own son is a half-Jew) and conspiracy theories.
He also revolts against Christianity and believes that it is full of mistakes and lies.
On the contrary, Nietzsche with his philosophical individualism of Zarathustra
made him a free agnostic, “Then Zarathustra solved me of my lackey-shame!
[…] I overstepped my own genetic slavery!” Elderly Beliaev possesses no
practical skills and commercial quickness like his son. Through speculation with
public, socialistic property, which are not discounted as well as with the shade
business with cars, posts at the university etc. the latter becomes an
“underground millionaire.” Nevertheless, Nikolaĭ is not a primitive profit-seeker
running after wealth: at the same time he is a professor of civil engineering, a
well-read man with a large family that makes his career as a communist. He is a
new type of Soviet bureaucrat, a type who consciously moves to power in the
shade of Russian criminal capitalism. The totalitarian state regime, ideological
oppression, and numerous restrictions in everyday life do not cause any
difficulties for him as he skillfully navigates his career. In contrast with Beliaev
senior, he is also on the quest for God. Nikolaĭ concludes “it is necessary to
believe,” especially in Christ, the “god of Jews,” and to belong to an
institutionalized religion like the Orthodox Church because of its universal
character. After a strained conversation with his father, he says:
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I unconsciously feel that it is necessary to believe. That is a not bad tradition. One
must not name God and say his name, but it is impossible if one want not recognise
him […] All the rest zarathustras are a plagiarism! […] (Kuvaldin 2006:359).
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critic called Alkhutov’s work a “poststructuralist tractate” that tells the story of
Zarathustra in a world where there is no good and evil anymore (Zubarev
2008:7). The plot is the story of Zarathustra after he became 77 years old and
returned to his old cave. He observes a picture that serves as an allusion to
Europe after the rise of fascism: in front of his cave there is a cobbled area
“wiped off through kersey boots” and the stone tablets with his records he left to
the people earlier. The sentences written on these tablets are indistinct and were
written in blood. Zarathustra was able to discern the following four phrases:
“’God is dead’—runs the first // ‘Superman’—runs the second // ‘Smash old
annals!’—runs the third // ‘Thus spoke Zarathustra’—runs the fourth”
(Alkhutov 2008:8). Each of these words is plain absurdity in the eyes of the old
and experienced Zarathustra. The self-irony and bitter wisdom are just ways to
rethink what had happened at his home in Europe.
Then Zarathustra burst out laughing and by laughing, he spoke in that way: “God is
dead”? But whether the sentence “God is dead” itself did not become a God? //
“Superman”? I met him, but he associated with little tortoises and bats. Now they are
solving the world as if it needs to be solved // “Smash old annals?” For that you must
be not an elder but a mouse. But who of my pupils did acknowledge in himself a
mouse? // “Thus spoke Zarathustra?” However, Zarathustra does not tell this phrase
(Alkhutov 2008:8).
The elder left the cave and went away until he came to a modern city of “Wet
water” [an allusion to Moscow?]. Soon he is in the middle of urban human
rubbish and there he finds a pen and begins to write new laws. Nevertheless, he
writes not for himself; he is accompanied by a man who shelters him from the
people who dispute his new philosophy that champions relativism, pacifism, and
anti-racism. Zarathustra’s metaphors and pictures reveal fragments of
contemporary Russian reality, but their wisdom is universal. In the conclusion,
Zarathustra emerges from a subway with his host and then escapes in the middle
of a crowd. Dismayed, Zarathustra’s fellow begins to search for him, but then
gives up and finally summarizes:
‘Zarathustra was deep—and then, he did return in the depths of the human.
Zarathustra was lofty—and then, he did return to the tops of everyday man. Now, as
he has returned, I would tell you my own little knowledge // There are summits and
there are depths. However, life did not appear on the summits and all the living did
not appear in the depths. Indeed, the origin of life became shallow water, and life itself
is a puddle and muddy foam. However, the most beautiful of gods have arisen from
foam. He stood and then he sat down to the bench. The tunnel was taking up a train
for another and it was similar to a fathomless cave, and the platform was paved
with…but it was not a cobbled stone (Alkhutov 2008:63).
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This philosophical postmodernist parable ends with a sort of prayer that closes
its cyclic construction in a pacifist, anti-fascist manner (“May touch no soldier’s
boot this soil!” (Alkhutov 2008:63)).
Another connection between Nietzsche and the present moral and political
conditions in modern Russia is established by Anton Antonov (b. 1970). In
Antonov’s satirical novels The Ashes of our Fires (Пепел наших костров, 2001)
and Zarathushtra’s Sword (Меч Заратустры, 2002), he paints a fantastical
scenario in the genre of humorous science fiction, where Moscow is suddenly
transported to another planet. The inhabitants are forced to explore the territory
and search for survivors, which leads to unavoidable power conflicts between
different groups that utilize religious rhetoric. One of these groups of mazdai10 is
organized by “heretic № 21, who was to be searched, arrested and convicted in a
matter of priority” (Antonov 2001:242) with an amazing sword that reads
“good” or “evil” on either side of the blade (Antonov 2002:99). The mazdai
leader calls himself “Zarathushtra.” People do not know exactly who he is,
because he hides his true personality. As a result, numerous preachers with
swords in hand usurp that name by proclaiming “Thus spoke Zarathustra,”
which leads to each of them being considered the real Zarathushtra.
Occasionally, pretenders arrive in order to assume power over everyone. The
situation of common “disaster, famine, fear, rebellions, and riots, broken tread of
time and broken life” in alien Moscow generates an unbridled hysteria, where
everyone wants to be seen as a prophet. Zarathushtra is depicted as a warlike and
charismatic leader who also consolidated the sects called mazdai, demoniads,
adamits, Satanists, mitraists, albigoits, cabbalists, pagans, and even Christians.
The Christians “have carefully and thoroughly refuted all of these heresies in
their sermons and with that contributed to their proliferation.” Zarathustra is
considered to be a mixture of Zorro and a samurai. The interpretation of
Zarathushtra’s teaching is not mentioned, and for the author of this trashy satire,
is totally unimportant. For the Moscovites it does not matter “who and how
refers to Zarathustra’s words and reinterprets them in own way. It was
important that everyone literally did that.” Zarathustra himself symbolizes total
ambivalence and ethical relativism, because “he is one with two faces and he
serves as good as evil simultaneously understanding good and evil in his own
way” (Antonov 2002:99). These characteristics are the result of a fictional play
where the mission of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is to break up the dualism between
good and evil and make himself a superhuman; in the process of Zarathustra’s
10
One of the members of the Russian Anjoman remembers the early 2000s as a time of
religious self-definition among the ultra-radical nationalist groups (see Chapter 2), and
mentioned their mood as a high degree of ‘youthful’ nihilism “[everything] must die”.
Perhaps, the name of mazdai portrayed in Antonov’s novel has some allusion to this story.
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struggle for power, he falls victim to extreme relativism. Apart from this, both
books shed some light on religion in Moscow during the 1990s, when the
(traditional) Nietzschean reception and a quest for religion as a basic element of
national ideology could be distinguished.
The satirical figure of an ancient philosopher quite akin to the Nietzsche’s
Zarathustra can been found also in the debris of RuNet literature, where
parodies on Nietzsche and his invention of Zarathustra prevail. For instance, in
Ruslan Belov’s (b. 1951) Thus Zarathustra Talked Himself into Trouble (Так
договорился Заратустра, 2009), Belov paints Zarathustra as an elder sitting in a
cave and selling advice laced with pessimism to ordinary, hard-working for small
change. “Make your soul pure,” “Don’t be in hurry!” etc.—the people despair
and do not understand the depths of his wisdom at all. Finally, when Zarathustra
reasons about death and non-existence, a warrior (“a goner”) goes berserk and
cuts Zarathustra’s throat with a spear. Belov accentuates the total
misunderstanding between the philosopher selling abstract advice and the
ordinary people who do not want eternal truth but need tangible help. Perhaps
this situation of bargaining reflects capitalist consumerism, where everything is
for sale—even philosophy.
Another deconstructive stance towards Nietzsche’s Zarathustra that portrays
the prophet’s ideas as a commodity is reproduced in the third part of the trilogy
by Baian Shirianov (aka Kirill Vorob’ev) (b. 1964): High Pilotage (Высший
пилотаж, 2002) (see also Chuprinin 2007a:411f). In his trilogy, Shirianov
describes an alternative reality where the city of Moscow is under the siege of
drugs in the late 1980s. Shirianov enumerates literary titles of world literature
(from the stereotypical library of a Russian intellectual), which he molds into a
slang language used to take drugs; in the list of numerous titles, Shirianov
mentions Thus Spoke Zarathushtra. He links this title to eight variations of a
drug consumer’s levels of addiction. The first stage of drug use is called “Thus
boiled Zarathustra.” Eventually, drug users reach a period of abstinence called
“Thus made himself clean Zarathustra,” but then these users revert back to
“Thus has been turned on Zarathustra” (Shirianov 2002:47).
There are also references in the sample that include characters named
Zarathustra or Zarathushtra yet do not evoke either the Zoroastrian prophet or
Nietzsche’s character. Both of these references are allusions to Nietzsche,
however. Andreĭ Livadny’s Bridge over Abyss (Мост через бездну, 2008) and
Face of Reality (Грань реальности, 2008) continue the tradition of American
science fiction writers (see 5.1) and tell about a destroyed planet Zoroastra which
has been a ”center of the criminal activity of genetic engineering” where
scientists have created biological robots with a “dubious ethical sense.” The
second example uses the name Zarathustra in feminine form, which is a peculiar
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metaphor for the feminist writer and psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861–
1937), who was familiar with Nietzsche. In Andreas-Salomé’s biographical essay
Thus Spoke [she] Zarathustra (Так говорила Заратустра, 1999), Larisa Garmash
highlights the importance of the intellectual exchange between Salomé and
Nietzsche for the creation of his works.
To summarize, the figure of Zarathus(h)tra that appears in modern Russian
literature in most of my findings has a direct connection to the philosophical
work Thus Spoke Zarathustra that (albeit quite belatedly) was translated into
Russian at the end of the 19th century. During the following century, it has been
discussed intensively in philosophical, religious, and literary circles. Since the
1970s, Zarathushtra gained attention among Soviet intellectuals after a long
period of prohibition from the late 1920s to the 1960s (because the book was
deemed to promote Nazi ideology). However, the Nietzscheanism of the 1970s
was connected with some nationalist movements, a trend that lasted until the
2000s. Russian literary references to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra in the 2000s have
been transformed using a convenient philosophical-literary approach. The
conventional literary form of secular parables or even philosophical sermons,
and Nietzschean musical styles served as an example to follow for a large
number of his epigones. Although detailed philosophical implications are
certainly in use, Zarathushtra mostly remains symbolic of the depreciation of
values and anarchy.
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the characters in the novel, the mother of the deceased friend, explains Thus
Spoke Zarathustra in the context of the “proper,” authentic teaching of
Zarathustra [sic]:
In this book, Nietzsche caught a thing that God created human beings making them
like him—free and full of creativity; that man is able to rule over luminaries. However,
in those years, the teaching of Zarathustra has not been translated completely.
Certainly, Nietzsche has used the translations of ancient manuscripts, discovered by
the British archaeologists in the early 20th century. Therefore, the voluntary origin in
his work has prevailed. Some people took this as a call for permissiveness. Many have
fixed on the Aryan race, which has been a transmitter of Zarathustra’s ideas. In
particular, in the Hitler’s mind—who was inclined to the absolute, the part of the
teaching, which he understood and turned a blind eye to what was inaccessible to
him—cause and effect were substituted. He attributed to Aryans everything that
Zoroaster preached (Sanregrė 2007:250).
Zarathustra brought to the people a whole complex of doctrines. That are a belief in
one God (Ahura Mazda), a catechism of worship (how to communicate with God),
white magic (as opposed to the "devas"—the demons) and real knowledge. Also that
were the celestial map and astrology, which enables in making horoscopes and
looking deep into past and future, as well as Bundahishn (Primal creation) […]
(Sanregrė 2007:249).
Zoroastrianism does not differ from the teachings of Jesus Christ; they could
harmonically complete each other (Sanregrė 2007:250). Sanregrė explains a
gnostic model of reincarnation, a spiritual path of human souls that was
articulated by Zarathustra or in a Greek translation by Zoroaster. According to
this explanation, the soul is made of a special substance called farr (<Av.
xᵛarənah, Np. farr, Zoroastrian type of charisma) that has male and female
qualities. During the course of one’s life, the soul produces farr, and excess
amounts of farr are gathered by fravashi (“angels of the first level”) and then
passed from the archangels up to the Creator. Sanregrė explains that the creator
sends energy called khvarena (which is different to Sanregrė’s use of farr) back to
the people, and its quantity is measured on the last day of one’s life. The forces of
evil cannot give khvarena; they lure people with substitutes like money, fame, or
power, yet this does not mean that the luminous sell their souls to evil but rather
that the soul may begin to idle. Since he was a painter, Sanregrė visualized the
Zoroastrian mythological idea of souls being treated after death in one of his
illustrations. Generally, the teaching of Zarathustra is a secret oral knowledge
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replenished with rites and sacred songs in the Avestan language. In general, the
picture of Zoroastrianism and the prophet Zarathustra reveals Sanregrė’s
knowledge of Pahlavi Zoroastrian literature translated into Russian and of
Avestan astrology as it is explained by Pavel Globa.
Johns Cole (the pseudonym of Dmitriĭ Kolosov) in the second part of his
book from the series The Atlantes, The Warrior (Атланты. Воин, 1995) shows
how many discourses can intersect within one literary text: elements of
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra are combined with Zoroastrian Pahlavi theology and
some trickster narratives in his work. Cole deploys the panorama of the Ancient
world with heroes, cultures, and religions on the eve of the Greco-Persian wars
(first half of the 5th century BCE), mixing these events with fantastic parallel
realities. The book continues the history of the Atlantes, a highly developed alien
race from the planet Atlantis. Due to the destruction of their civilization by the
hostile Al’zils, the Atlantes were forced to leave their planet in order to find
another. In the four-volume sequel, The Warrior, the Atlantes continue a bloody
confrontation between themselves. The human race, with its diversity of cultures
and heroes, is just a tool in the hands of the Atlantes who created them. Rusiĭ,
one of the mighty Atlantes, seeks to conquer the Earth. With the help of “adept”
Zarathustra [sic], he strives to possess an “Aura of the East,” and then gain
power over the Cosmos. Rusiĭ is a “clot of cosmic energy,” and he creates a
“mono-idol” out of himself that becomes one of the “gods” whom the human
race believes in. The idea of a god is not an end in itself; it is considered to be a
sort of unifying force in the struggle for greater power.
Like his father, Rusiĭ has created mechanical bio-robots that look like demons
which serve as his helpers, such as the dragon Azhi Dakhaka (<Av. aži dahāka “a
dragon-like monster”). They are “ephemeral artifacts,” robots that are very
mobile, but simultaneously have an “unstable inner contour—energy multiplied
by deceit.” After the demon begin to riot, Rusiĭ seeks to restore his own reign
and subordinate the renegades. Rusiĭ hatches a plan to kill all of the demons he
created in by transforming himself into a god. However, this god simultaneously
plays two contradictory roles with two different masks of the “two brothers of
Time” by shifting from Ahuramazda to Ariman and back again:
The similarity between the gods was not only in growth. Those face-masks also
resemble one another—paralyzed, lifeless, and indifferent-impenetrable. While
Ariman’s mask was black, the mask of Ahuramazda had a pinkish hue. The cut of
clothes was the same. Similar rain coats, boots, trousers. The God of light has the
white. Ahuramazda's head was crowned with a massive pectoral in the form of the
solar discus; the sleek white arms were studded with rings (Cole 1995:62).
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For each god Rusiĭ sets certain rules: during the day, Ahuramazda appears, and
at night, Ariman broods over the world. In the novel we learn about another
character, namely Rusiĭ’s friend and adviser Gumiĭ, who in the human world is
known as the great mage Zarathustra. In the novel there are many descriptions
of this figure, which I would call a “prophet-trickster,” so at the beginning of the
story Gumiĭ-Zarathustra appears as a stranger:
The wanderer was an unremarkable man. If intruding in the crowds anyone hardly
would pay attention to a simple, wrinkled with years and wind face. An ordinary mage
like hundreds in Parsian cities. A filthy white robe, a cane stick, a rare old man's beard
on the cheeks and the chin. Just the eyes. The eyes were extraordinary. The huge,
penetrating, with the unnaturally blue, almost white pupils. They exuded intelligence,
authoritativeness, force. Those eyes could conquer, to impose its will; [they] could
make your heart keep a joyful trembling. If required, those eyes could kill (Cole
1995:17).
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into practice and starts reading it to his three daughters at a fortress on the
Persian Gulf. Burzoĭ thinks this aids the Gnostic separation of psyche and physis,
and because of this he would be able to create a spiritual “fundament” for a new
social order from his daughters. However, two daughters die. Through sacrifice
of the third he creates an artificial deity—called Ahura-Spenta (a fictional
compound from <Av. ahura, a “deity” and av. spənta “holy”), a “force” that is
able to complete his plan. He then commits suicide by imbibing poison. Then,
the deity melts into a strong, living Rite that forms the mystical footprint of the
Tower of Babel—a social utopia and “ideal society” is built. The fortress turns
into a special place, a “Thread of Time,” “the abode stitches through different
eras, keeping a constant place in space.” Repeating for eight centuries, the Rite is
a crucial ceremony in an alternative world during the European Middle Ages, in
a state called Henning. There the native-born aristocrats possess superhuman
abilities and rule over other countries, which are ordinary and have to protect
themselves with arms. Henning’s aristocrats, however, cannot achieve their
abilities without a relevant procedure of initiation—the “old Rite” created by the
grounder, the “first architect” of the Guild, Burzoĭ, and handed down by many
generations through the Guild of the Murderers. The Guild of the Murderers are
professionals that have access to the abode and are sure that they are keeping
guard of an ideal society, “…a world of prosperity and happiness”, where
“everyone knows his place, where the guards are fearless and powerful, but they
cannot raise a hand against their fellow citizens [...] And a huge mass of
populace worked honestly, in sweat, being glad with their fate without complaint
and rebellion. Because it can benefit from working, living in prosperity…”
(Oldie 2008:527). But when a certain monk speaks with the ghost of Burzoĭ, it
becomes clear that Burzoĭ made a mistake that gives him no peace. A double Rite
of a girl and a boy who love each other breaks the tradition and redeems Burzoĭ
and his daughter. Henning turns into a society of lords carrying arms and poor
peasants in which the Guild is abolished because it is no longer needed.
Andreĭ Basirin’s The Shadow of Alamut (Тень Аламута, 2006) in the genre of
“fighting magic,” also designated as “Arabian fantasy,” includes another fictional
Zoroastrian mage or “gebr” (Np. gabr, a xenonym of a Zoroastrian), Roshan
Farrokh, who lives in the 12th century in Syria. With self-irony, he is practically
a superhero who helps to defend his hometown of Manbidzh from devious
nobles. Roshan fights alongside the knights-templar against assassins. He is a
sort of superhero, a “giant in a striped robe and a Bukharian skullcap” with a
long staff; a seasoned traveller and virtuous warrior (Basirin 2006:64).
Intellectually, he is a polymath: physician, philosopher, skilled chess player. He
loves risk and danger and invests a lot of savvy into the art of transformation.
Thus, “Roshan practiced thirty varieties of lameness. He knew also how to
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slouch and to hunch in fourteen ways. Two of them have caused in others an
overpowering terror. This frightening stoop was the secret masters of the fight;
on it, they know each other” (Basirin 2006:163). Even the folk know him as a
“defender of the Towns” because he has not once offered his services to the
rulers and inhabitants of the states. Being a Zoroastrian, Roshan is far from the
figure of a pious Zoroastrian pundit—he is a Zoroastrian outsider. Someone in
the novel asks him:
Listen, Roshan. I heard that the fire-worshipers have a sort of powerful clerics—the
mages. Are you not one of them? //—No. The gebr felt bored.—Of the mages I was
kicked out. Because of drunkenness and debauchery (Basirin 2006:168).
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He came together with the cult of Simurgl, now declaring that he honours the Avesta,
with that also being a fire-worshiper? He turns something ... Though, we must say, fire
it doesn’t matter which—whether sacred, sacrificial or magic—obeys this Feram more
than anything. And even without the magic potions! He just says the necessary word
in a whisper—and the fire will flare up, and if he says another—the fire will fade [...]
OK, perhaps he would fit on anything; such lords of fire would always fetch a good
price! (Kuptsov 2000:76f).
Feramurz came to the Kiev Rus after the Arabs invaded Iran in order to garner
adherents to his evil Faith. In the plot, he intervenes in the ambivalence of Prince
Vladimir and tries to influence state politics towards adopting a new state
religion. The heroes find out that Feramurz is a black mage and betrayer of the
true faith of the Avesta who serves not Ahura Mazdā but Ahriman. Ahriman is
necessary for the existence of Good, because “if evil would escape, then there
would not be good, would it?” (Kuptsov 2000:79). After his mission with the
Slavs fails, his trail is lost in Constantinople, where he should have been
converted to Christianity (Kuptsov 2000:470).
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also celebrated in Russia.11 The protagonist understands that the host has
nothing to do with Kurban Bayram—it is not “their festival,” these sheep are
only his earnings for the year. The family itself is not Muslim; it belongs to a
Middle Asian minority:
Word for word it becomes clear that they are not Azerbaijanis, but Medes—an ancient
people, almost older than Persians, succeeded [sic] to Zoroastrians since the time of
the Achaemenids. They came from southern Azerbaijan. They are taken here as
Azerbaijanis, but they themselves speak Turkic only in presence of others. Modern
Iranian Zoroastrians—those are not genuine, because the proper are the Medes. The
Medes are mages. They have always been arguing with the Persians beginning from
the time of Darius. Mustaf is spelling in a strange way the name of King Darius: Dari
sakhum, with an emphasis on "i". Namely the Medes were able to keep a genuine
purity of thought and ritual which were commanded by Zoroaster. For instance, for
the ritual fire the Medes use petroleum, not wood (Ilichevskiĭ 2010:304f).
One of Mustaf’s daughters shows the protagonist a niche in the courtyard, where
ritual fire, a kind of “eternal fire,” burns nourished by petroleum. The hosts take
petroleum for a sort of wonderful medicine; they believe that such fire has
“something inexplicably inveigling, quite different than in the flame of a
rushlight or a candle. The difference between them is just as between fresh and
sea water” (Ilichevskiĭ 2010:305). In the middle of the courtyard, the narrator
notices a tower reminding him of a petroleum derrick. He asks about it, but the
girl becomes panicked and changes the subject. The narrator suddenly
understands that the derrick may be connected to a kind of fire ritual. But he
suppresses the questions and is left alone with the girl while the father brings a
pomegranate. The story develops from an enigmatic poetic fable into a terrible
nightmare. The narrator says goodbye to the friendly Mustaf, who, after all,
wants to thank him by stabbing a sheep. Horrified by this action, the narrator
rushes headlong into a raging blizzard, pursued by ghosts. A day later, he
desperately turns back towards Moscow. Before long, the narrator is found dead
near the outskirts of Moscow on a radio tower with a sheep's head in his hands.
Similar to Ilichevskiĭ who links Zoroastrianism to the history of Azerbaijan,
Lola Elistratova, an author who writes in the genre of “feminine prose,”
associates Zoroastrianism with Tajikistan. Her novella The Tower of Silence: A
Novel a la Tatu and Zarathushtra (Башня молчания: Роман в стиле Тату и
11
In Arabic this Muslim central festival is called ʿĪdal-Aḍḥā (with some variations ʿīdal-
ḳurbān or ʿīd al-naḥr), while in Turkish-speaking countries it is known under the name
Ḳurbān-bayrami̊. That means a “sacrificial feast” or al- ʿĪdal-Kabīr “the major festival”.
During this festival, beginning on the 10th of the month, Ḏh̲u 'l-Ḥid̲j̲d̲j̲a, the last month of the
Muslim lunar calendar, every Muslim should buy and sacrifice an animal (usually a sheep for
one person). See Mittwoch 1965.
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One day my father told me a story about a tower of silence. "Our ancestors, the
Persians,—said my father, buried the dead on the sites of the stone towers, where the
corpses were torn by birds of prey." My father was a Tajik, God knows, how he landed
in Moscow away from the sunny grapes of the Fergana valley and from the fat pilaw
with quince. He betrayed the land of his Zoroastrian ancestors, and then forgot his
daughter in the Moscow tower of silence. // Since that time the image of the House as
tower firmly entrenched in my mind. I knew that I was a resident of a terrible astodan,
living among dead people (Elistratova 2005:114).
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The Zoroastrian religion provides the main metaphor that serves to explain
contemporary culture. According to critic Tat’iana Morozova:
This is not just shocking fusion of the incompatible. This is—one of the explanations
of internal discord of the main character. A person, living in such a mishmash of
cultures, deprived of support and a reference point. The ancient words of the Avesta
[...] emerge out on the surface of life and what we mistakenly call modern culture. This
"culture" is like everlasting Indian soft mud, which covers the country for centuries,
but is perfectly safe for those who are accepted by this country (Morozova 2005:16f).
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Suleiman didn’t quite get it, at first: “What Zoroastrians?” And Shmyga says: “Those
effing Russian-Mazdeists”. Suleiman says: “Comrade General, which Mazdeists are
you talking about, exactly—the sixth or the third? You’re worried about those driving
“Mazdas,” aren’t you?” Now Shmyga, in turn, got all worked up: “I’m worried about
Russian fire worshippers, got it? What if they don’t like it that your barge is on fire and
sinking? What if it hurts their religious feelings?” Suleiman decided his arm was being
twisted for no good reason here […] (Pelevin 2009:140).
As the dialogue progresses, the reader may understand that religious groups
seem to be respectful subjects in society: “Then Shmyga replies him tiredly—you
could cheat me, Suleyman, but no Zoroastrians, no fucking way” (Pelevin
2009:139). Russian Muslims are also concerned about their public image to such
a degree that, according to Shmyga, they can abandon their own adherents
such as the Muslim Suleiman, who according to the plot shows his brutality in
public. However, Pelevin’s sarcasm implies the contrary. In fact, Russian
religious groups are not focused on respect. The themes of religious identity
and tolerance here are not serious; they are another kind of rhetorical
instrument that is used by the Russian mafia for criminal purposes. Generally,
Pelevin remains true to himself in his skepticism of post-Soviet reality as being
absurd, fantastic, and cruel.
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5.4.3. The future: star wars and love for the motherland
The sample also contains two models of fantasy fiction where Zoroastrianism is
placed in the future. The second part of Vladimir Sorokin’s (b. 1955)
scandalous12 postmodern novel The Light-Blue Lard(fat) (Голубое сало, 1999)
mentions “Siberian” Zoroastrianism. The first part of the novel is about a future
project by Russian scientists who clone famous Russian writers and poets such as
Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Andreĭ Platonov, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna
Akhmatova, etc. and get an eternal substance, a sort of light-blue lard, which is
made by the clones. Light-blue lard is produced as a side effect of writing literary
texts. But after successful production of the substance, the scientists are soon
shut down by the barbaric members of a sect called the Order of Russian
Earthfuckers who possess a time machine. The Earthfuckers send the captured
light-blue lard as a valuable gift (as a “greeting made from ice”) to the USSR
government in 1954 with the idea that, if used properly, it could change the
course of Russian history, perhaps to preserve the Soviet regime that later falls.
The head of the Soviet state, Joseph Stalin (1878–1953), and his lover (in the
story), Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971), use the lard for their own purposes.
Stalin and Khrushchev, together with German dictator Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)
and fascist reichsführer of the SS Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945), who in the
novel seem to have survived after World War II, try to find immortality through
the means of a lard-injection. That is a rough summary of the plot, although it is
more structurally complex than that. In the second part of the novel, Lavrentiĭ
Beria (1899–1953), chief of the Soviet secret police, explains the light-blue lard
and touches on the fictional history of the Russian Zoroastrians:
This is the so-called ice cone sent to us from the near future by the Order of Russian
Earthfuckers. The Order will be formed of many sects of Earthfuckers in 2012. In 2028
the members of the Order will settle down in East Siberia, upon the Bold Mountain,
where remains of a Siberian Zoroastrian settlement will be found in the
underground—descendants of a minor sect which… I think, at the end of the 6th
century BCE fled from the great Achaemenid Empire to the North. Gradually they
found themselves in taiga, in between the two Tunguskas and up the Bold Mountain,
which granite they were happily digging into for four centuries. Why that? In their
search for the so-called Subterranean Sun, which rays, according to their beliefs,
would wipe out the distinction between Good and Evil and bring the human race back
to its paradisiacal state. The Siberian Zoroastrians invented the time machine able to
12
In 2002 Sorokin was accused of distributing pornography in his novel by the young
organization The Walking Together, which is known with their support of the pro-Putin
politics: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2122713.stm> (accessed 21 March 2012).
Sorokin’s case was not initiated because he failed to appear in court.
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send small objects back in time. Here you can see one of those objects (Sorokin
2009:159).
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[…] we and the Clone are two false mirrors opposite each other. We are reflected in
them—they in us. Now both sides like to look at funny, even through crooked
pictures. But what if we get tired of this play? (Zorich 2009a:288).
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Illustrations 7–8. Two posters for the PC game The Tomorrow War (2008) based on the
trilogy by Aleksandr Zorich. The group of people in the left picture of the left and in the right
picture depict Concordians with their symbols of propaganda – a decapitated Lamassu bull
statue from Persepolis and the fire bowl in the opened hands. The space ships in the
background invoke associations with the Zoroastrian faravahar. Photo: ©A. Zorich.
Pushkin is right about the inevitability of war—the second and the third books
in the trilogy catalogue mutual hostilities in the struggle for resources and
political supremacy in space. Another crucial message of The War Tomorrow is
the idealistic image of a valiant officer acting according to a strict professional
code of honor; it does not matter which side he takes in the war. An Ashvan
(<Av. ashavan, “the follower of truth”) could be anyone. How did
Zoroastrianism become a driving force of Concordian ideology? As the reader
learns, the trend towards Zoroastrianism begins in 2357, during what the
Concordians call the “Primordial Hour”; when on their planet (named
Vertragna) 40,000 colonists have the same dream about the necessity to become
religious. The Concordians start to follow their teacher Zoroastrian “zaotar
Rimush” who was originally “an Armenian from Italy” (Zorich 2009c:411).
Rimush learned Persian within a week (Zorich 2009c:ibid). The cult of the “grey-
haired ascetic with radiant eyes” (Zorich 2009c:100) is part of the Concordian
ideology that brings courage to their solders, although Rimush died about 300
years ago. According to a Concordian woman named Rishi, one of Pushkin’s
friends, “the Resurgence of Tradition is a great wonder” (Zorich 2009c:411).
The Concordians have their own strict, “Zoroastrian” ethics that also inform
their ritualistic behavior, namely fire-worshipping on holy altars. Similar to the
Russian nation, they cultivate a strong patriotism to their planet. They conduct a
permanent struggle against impurity (what is explained to be almost maniacal)
and name themselves Ashvans. In order to observe their religion properly, the
Concordians build an institute of secret police called Asha that protect
religious properties within Concordia and purge their religion of the
“Manichean heresy” that occurs on the Planet Glagol (also called in
Corcondian Apaosha: <Av. apaoša, “demon of drought”). Ultimately, they
surpass every other Earth colony and distinguish between their former
partners, the Aners (<Mp. anērān, “non-Iran”), and the Drudzhvants, their
enemies. Thus, Russians are essentially Aners, while alien space races, like the
Chirogs, are considered enemies. However, trust towards Russians and
Concordians does not preclude tricking and killing for prosperity.
In the eyes of an Earthie, Concordian culture consists of plenty of symbolic
objects, which helps Earthies to imagine cultural differences easier. These
symbols serve to describe foreign cultures from the perspective of an outsider.
For example, Concordian space ships have Persian names derived from
Zoroastrian mythology, such as Vishtaspa (<Oldp. Vīštāspa, a Zoroastrian king
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[o]n the first place this science fiction is turned toward the present, toward us.
The main characters of the cycle are direct and noble people, proper patriots of
their motherland and human race at whole. Zorich does not try to re-consider
history or agitate for this or that political order. The Kolchak space-vehicle
launching site co-exists in his books with the respect for the Red Army and for
anti-totalitarian society. The most important is not the colour of flags and any
words of national anthem. The most important is keeping of trust about the great
future of own country and working for its good—hourly, at own place, whatever
it seems insignificant [sic]. Then we will go into space and put every enemy to
flight.// Is that right, tovarischi?” (Tiulenev 2005:73).
Zorich’s book contains one of the central motifs of post-Soviet science fiction—
the “loss of the Empire” (Menzel 2007a:328). Another characteristic Russian
issue articulated by Zorich is the messianic one—the Russian nation has to bring
salvation and prosperity to all of humanity, which corresponds with the position
of the astrological Zoroastrian strand (see Chapter 2).
5.5. Summary
This chapter has presented some examples of Russian fiction that adopt the
semantics of Zoroastrianism and how Zoroastrian figures, theology, and
historical narratives have been integrated in these stories. Thus, this study did
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not discuss the problem of distinguishing between sacred and secular contents
within a fiction work and reader perceptions. This study used a pragmatic
approach that focused on the use of Zoroastrian lexica and concepts by
producers of Russian fiction.
As mentioned earlier, Russian fiction in the 1990s experienced a change.
With the appearance of three principal tendencies in culture—liberalization,
commercialization, and globalization—genres and themes in Russian fiction
have gradually become hybridized. During the Soviet era, one could
distinguish between two canonical categories, high and mass literature, and in
the 1990s, another stage of literary production (called middle literature)
sprung up. Religion is treated as a topic of great cultural interest in many
fictional genres. In particular, speculative fiction (such as science fiction and
other types of entertainment literature) has used religious themes to create
new fictional realities.
One of the central points of discussion about Zarathus(h)tra and
Zoroastrianism in Russian literature during the 20th century can be traced to the
strong reception of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical work Thus Spoke
Zarathustra (1883–1885; Russian translation 1898). Zarathustra still draws a lot
of attention from Russian writers more than a century after its first Russian
publication. Some fictional texts from the Soviet era continue to transport pre-
Nietzschean discourses of Zarathus(h)tra mediated by European reception.
With various keywords such as Zarathushtra, Zoroastrianism, Zoroastrian,
Ahura Mazdā, Angra Mainyu, etc. and their possible variations, I have collected
31 texts written by 25 authors in my sample. My selection was also based on
different “degrees of involvement” with Zoroastrianism in the fictional texts. I
also highlighted texts that contained Zoroastrian lexica without any further
explanation. Hence, I was primarily interested in detailed passages or concepts
that involved Zoroastrianism.
Zoroastrianism, as an object of fiction, is a rare and insignificant topic when
compared to other religions, particularly Christianity and Islam. However, the
results of my study should signal a certain interest in Zoroastrianism in
Russian fiction during the 1990s and 2000s based on an extensive number of
references. If compared to the discussed synopsis from the Religion and
Literature Database, which contained a collection of references to
Zoroastrianism throughout English fiction during a period of 50 years, such a
great number of Zoroastrian references in Russian fiction (during the 1990s
and 2000s) seems to be an outstanding result.
More than half of the analyzed works in the sample were written in
speculative fiction genres such as science fiction, fantasy, and superhero fiction.
Other genres in the sample include contemporary Russian middle and mass
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The analysis has shown that genre styles have also influenced the modality of
representation: fantasy literature constructs Zoroastrianism per se as something
unrealistic or even nonexistent; it is a subject of the past and the future with
satirical and fantastical modes. Fantasy and science fiction intensively absorb
scholarly discourses of the ancient world and give them a psychological
dimension. In these genres, Zoroastrianism is viewed skeptically; it is described
through the prism of postmodernist and poststructuralist thinking as a narrow-
minded ideology (Zorich 2009a, 2009b, 2009c), a play, or even a manipulation
(Cole 1995). Other non-speculative genres, although they have some ideas about
geography of ancient Zoroastrianism, do not view it as one of the modern
institutionalized religions. Usually their knowledge rests in fragmentary
theological constructs such as the dualism between good and evil or the practice
of fire-worshipping that are borrowed from academic publications and
encyclopedic articles.
A small portion of the references picture Zoroastrianism as an esoteric
teaching that represents the “proper,” “genuine” Zoroastrianism (Ilichevskiĭ
2010a, Sanregrė 2007), which parallels the astrological strand of religious
discourse on Zoroastrianism (see Chapter 2). In fiction, this secret knowledge is
ascribed to chosen (and in any case “enigmatic”) peoples, like direct descendants
of the ancient Medes or a few Armenian clans. Only one author from the entire
sample develops his own interpretation of Zoroastrianism as a Gnostic system
that would perfectly be incorporated into other esoteric-philosopical systems
such as Sufism. To do this, Sanregrė uses additional concepts of Zoroastrianism,
for instance the distinction between visible and invisible worlds, fravashi
transformation, etc. (Sanregrė 2007).
One reason why Zoroastrian lexica have been used is the intensive
production of entertainment literature in genres adapting “exotic,” particularly
oriental themes for wider audiences. This exoticness is not transmitted directly
to the Russian cultural space but often through Western European mediation.
This is discernible in the use of names and terms. The typical example for this
notion is the name of the prophet Zoroaster (Зороастр), or the most salient
example in the sample, Zarathustra (Заратустра), instead of the conventional
Zarathushtra (Заратуштра).
Concerning the appearance of Zoroastrian symbols or special iconography
within the texts analyzed above I must state that my sample nearly ignores any
possible variations. The covers of science fiction, fantasy, and superhero novels
mostly represent space ships with heroes from the future or warriors from the
past. That means that the designers often deal with iconographical patterns and
visual canons developed within these genres. The central metaphor in
Elistratova’s novella, daḵma or tower of silence is not what is presented on the
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204
Chapter 6: Zoroastrianism in modern Russia:
studying discourses and transfers
With this concluding chapter I have reached the point where relations between
four discursive constructions of Zoroastrianism in Russia need to be discussed.
As claimed in the introduction, the four fields with their discourses of
Zoroastrianism are reconstructed on the basis of different textual corpora that
were collected and analyzed in a systematic way in preceding chapters according
to, respectively: (1) Russian Zoroastrians and other religious actors being
interested in Zoroastrianism; (2) scholars; (3) journalists; and (4) fiction writers.
One can study communicative interactions between different actors within these
chosen fields.
Unlike ethnological or anthropological studies of religion, my object of study
is religion documented in texts.1 I suggest a discursive way of looking at modern
religion that shifts the focus to local cultural contexts with their polyphonic
structure. According to the discursive analytical approach, the textual corpora
constitute collections of texts where human thoughts and actions, “traces” of
events and conflicts are easily accessible for scholarly research due to their public
articulation. This critical discursive approach made it possible to detect some
structural features of public representations of Zoroastrianism that had
accumulated in texts of different genres and styles.
The analysis of these textual corpora has shown that there are some content
relationships between religion, academic research, mass media, and fiction in
public communication. Hence I will conclude this study with some final
reflections on material I have presented in a threefold way as (1) a summarizing
discussion about the object of study and relationship between these four fields;
(2) considerations on strategies of description; and, last but not least, (3) some
reflections on the study of religions.
1
However, discourse analysis, in particular CDA, regards all constructed research on collected
materials and fixed words as a text (Fairclough 2003:21f). Hence, the application of CDA in
anthropological studies is possible.
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modern level of reflection. At the same time, astrology absorbs other kinds of
epistemological models, e.g. modern scientific views and mass media images.
From the sociological point of view this Zoroastrian community, especially in
its early period, can be understood as a New Age movement, particularly sensu
stricto (Hanegraaff 1996:97ff,518), if one considers Globa’s explicitly expressed
teachings on a new epoch or the Aquarian age, based on his astrological system.
While the Western application of the idea of the New Age is linked historically
to counter culture currents in Europe and the USA in the 1960s and 1970s,
having become less relevant since then, Globa’s adherents transferred their
expectations of individual and social transformation to the 2000s. The period of
change following the perestroika has been metaphorically understood by Globa’s
adherents as not only the beginning of the Age of Aquarius, but also as a time of
religious choice in the cosmic struggle between good and evil, and in the
Zoroastrian view, between Ormazd and Ahriman. This personal problem of
choice and necessity following the end of the Soviet era (constructed in Globa’s
lectures and publications as the “empire of the evil”) has been perhaps the most
urgent theme of dramatic economic, political, and social changes during the
1990s post-Soviet era. Spirituality and the consumption of esoteric knowledge,
however, are not the only significant points in the worldview of these Russian
Zoroastrians, who acknowledge Globa’s authority; his followers have also tried
to institutionalize their groups by creating religious organizations with legal
status. These are supposed to have a hierarchical structure that distinguishes
between priesthood and ordinary believers. However, this hierarchy is only
visible during collective activities such as liturgies or festivals and does not
stretch into the informal, everyday life of the community. Additional effects of
those officially acknowledged groups—both religious (the St. Petersburg
Zoroastrian community and the Moscow Zervanite-Zoroastrian community [that
was soon dissolved]) and astrological (the AShAs)—include a book publishing
business, astrological courses, and the organization of group travel outings
inside the former Soviet Union, India, and Iran. Just as in the Western New Age
movement or NRMs, most members of the groups that are engaged in astrology
and Zoroastrianism are female (e.g. Woodhead 2007:115, Hunt 2003:99f). The
Zoroastrian magazine Mitra constructs a world where the teacher’s authority,
secret knowledge, collective rituals, and travels to Arkaim, India, and Iran are
the key elements. Some policies in the group building exercises reflect the
perceived deficits of Russia’s socialist past. They also indicate social needs that
needed to be satisfied during the economic strains of the crisis period in the
1990s. On the one hand, “learning” to be religious in a group is a mechanism of
moral rehabilitation after bans against public religious activities during the
Soviet era. On the other hand, this is a sort of new, uncoerced, conscious
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collectivism that was commercially organized and is making some profit through
educational and publishing activities.
The “esoteric” models of Russian Zoroastrianism and Globa’s public activity
as an “inheritor of Zoroastrian genes” have obviously prepared grounds for the
idea of an authentic Russian Zoroastrianism. The appearance of the Russian
Anjoman in 2005, i.e. in quite different economic and political circumstances,
with its positive acknowledgement towards the conversion to Zoroastrianism in
Western countries as well as its diverse attempts to engage the Iranian
priesthood—all of this has challenged the esoteric components of Russian
Zoroastrianism during the 1990s. The main strategies adopted by the Russian
Anjoman include critical literary interpretations of Avestan and Pahlavi texts,
but in particular also include the Gathas and “globalized” or revised versions of
previous views on Zoroastrianism that they obtained through contacts to other
Zoroastrians worldwide. Lively discussions occurred on RuNet (also in some
non-Russian Zoroastrian forums), where comments and explanations on the
theological structure of Zoroastrian scriptures, according to the Anjoman, were
regularly produced. In contrast to Globa’s movement, the majority of the active
members of the Russian Anjoman are male, a few of them are of Middle Asian
descent, and all members have a high educational background. Apart from their
conceptualizations, the Russian Anjoman has also attracted the attention of the
“converted,” transnational Zoroastrianism that is active in several Western
countries. The website of the Russian Anjoman, blagoverie.org, underlines such
qualities as strict individualism in religious behavior and historical engagement
with Zoroastrian, and in particular, Gathic ethics. In critical and sometimes
extreme opinions towards the so-called “Abrahamic” religions, such as
Christianity and Judaism, that was expressed on RuNet’s forums, the Russian
Anjoman remains close to the position of radical nationalist groups. The
deliberate orientation of Iranian Zoroastrianism as the normative model of the
religion goes against any possible local religious authorities, such as Pavel Globa.
On the contrary, the Russian Anjoman is eager to accept Zoroastrian authorities,
mainly mōbeds from Iran and the Zoroastrian diaspora. Over time it has become
clear that the two Russian Zoroastrian communities will neither develop mutual
hostility, nor fight against each other; the most important issue for them is to
ensure cooperation between everyone interested in Zoroastrianism and to
actively participate in events outside of Russia. So behind the mutual criticism,
this dualistic view on religion has been tolerated; it is more important for both
parties to identify their own interests as the Russian Zoroastrians.
The quest for an ethnic Zoroastrianism and acceptance from the “bearers of
the Zoroastrian tradition,” which means ethnic Zoroastrians predominantly
from Iran and India and their authorities, and also apprehensions that are held
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in common with other NRMs—were all reasons why both groups attempted to
contact foreign Zoroastrians (e.g. according to the Mitra’s publications, the St.
Petersburg group has received many Zoroastrian visitors from different
countries since the late 1990s). The Russian Anjoman has been more selective in
its choice than Globa’s adherents. Thus, one of the most longstanding contacts
of the St. Petersburg Zoroastrian community was with the Indian esoteric
organization, the Zoroastrian College (led by Meher Master-Moos).The Parsi
religious authorities did not accept Russian Zoroastrians and henceforth such
contacts were dismissed. Although Globa initiated many of his students in the
1980s–1990s, a change in the strategy of self-presentation as a transnational
community led to the first conversions of the few post-Soviet and Russian
Zoroastrians by foreign religious specialists. In 2001 Swedish mobad Kamran
Jamshidi conducted the sadrepushi initiation for five persons in Minsk, Republic
of Belarus. After that, occasional group conversions occurred throughout post-
Soviet territories. Since the mid-2000s, Russian Zoroastrians hold the contacts to
some Iranian religious specialists (such as mōbedyār Loryan and mōbed
Khorshedyan), who have visited communities in St. Petersburg and Moscow and
were involved in conversions with members of both communities. Pavel Globa
also behaved responsively towards these visits and tried to succeed in gaining the
acceptance of Russian Zoroastrians by foreigners. It seems that Russian
Zoroastrians are generally quite open towards both main Zoroastrian
traditions—the Iranian and the Indian—and welcome new interpretations from
Western countries such as the USA and Sweden.
Even though they were originally antagonistic in regards to some doctrinal and
ritual forms, both communities endorse the idea of genuine involvement in
Zoroastrianism in Russian history and culture. This recurrent motif of
‘nativization’ is evident in Mitra’s research on Zoroastrian patterns in Slavic
folklore and in blagoveri.org’s project to uncover Zoroastrian heritage in many
smaller cultures of former Soviet territories. The emphasis on lexical and
customary similarities between Zoroastrianism and the Russian cultural heritage is
an argumentative strategy shared by both groups. The other parallels are their
claim of total compatibility of the scientific method with belief, but simultaneously
mistrust towards scholarly translations of Zoroastrian texts into Russian, which, in
their view, should be translated anew by the believers themselves.
The character of public activity among Russian Zoroastrians has steadily
changed. At The First Zoroastrian Congress in 2000, Globa remembered that his
students and colleagues had lived in a “shadow” period in the 1980s before the
perestroika; at that time, astrology and Zoroastrianism were practiced
underground. Since the beginning of the 1990s, they entered onto a large public
stage. There is also an increasing tendency from isolationist, astrological
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involved in the discussions within Zoroastrian studies. Their emphases still lie in
the translation of Avestan and Pahlavi texts into Russian, the social-economic
history of ancient Iran, and archaeological excavations in Middle Asia. This
lamentable situation in the humanities in the 1990s has led to the popularization
of science and the reproduction of old theories. Perhaps because of the politically
salient focus on Middle Asia, contemporary developments of Zoroastrianism in
Iran and India have been neglected. Only after the self-assertion of Russian
Zoroastrians have scholars tried to reflect on contemporary Zoroastrianism as
an object of study. In particular, only the scholars of the study of religions, who
have become increasingly reflexive towards NRMs, have endeavored to change
this situation by taking Russian Zoroastrian communities seriously.
As a further sphere of discussion on Zoroastrianism I have chosen the
journalistic production of around 250 small texts gathered from RuNet. The
contexts in which Zoroastrianism is represented and journalists’ knowledge on
Zoroastrianism are to be expected for the overall treatment of religion in mass
media. Thus, the most represented journalistic genres include the usual
categories: sensations and celebrations, where religion enjoys the marginal
position of being evaluated with and dependent upon the main content of
reports. In this study both categories supply something in between neutral and
quite positive evaluations. While the information about archaeological findings,
mostly in Central Asia, reveals rather romantic ideas about the “legendary” past,
the celebration of Nouruz in the first spring month, praised as the “Zoroastrian
New Year,” is often reported positively. Even if the abstract character of
Zoroastrianism and its marginal significance to journalists prevails in the
material I have analyzed, the focus of some reports on public actors and figures
(Pavel Globa), prominent businessmen, scholars, or less well-known believers
(the Russian Anjoman) indicates that this religion has the image of being a living
tradition. As a rule, journalistic reports produce non-critical understandings that
are reduced to simplified descriptions. Russian journalism covering foreign
religions tends to be fixed on sensations and attractive biographies that stand in
a reciprocal relation to the religious discourse of Russian Zoroastrians who
actively perpetuate the media stories about archaeological discoveries and
scholarly hypotheses to their own religious advantage. Therefore, the mass
media discourse also helps in legitimizing Zoroastrian communities.
Many articles are dedicated to the archaeological settlements around Arkaim
and the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex. In these articles, journalists
endorse the hypotheses that the prophet Zarathushtra was born in Russia or
Turkmenistan. They pay a lot of attention to scholarly production, but they have
a “loose,” fragmentary idea of Zoroastrianism. As a result, Zoroastrianism
remained rather abstract and blurred, with scant references to the contemporary
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state of affairs around the world. That leads to the situation that Zoroastrianism
is becoming the Other in a double sense—as spatially as chronologically. This
“abstract” conception of Zoroastrianism gains a positive-neutral rather than
negative connotation. In such a way, weak religious traces (often just
abstractions without any further explanation) of Zoroastrianism are founded in
reports about the Southern ex-Soviet republics and small ethnicities inside the
Russian Federation. Only in a few cases do these stories involve people who
believe in Zoroastrianism and tell their personal stories. Thus, the reports about
Russian Zoroastrians portray believers in an equivocal way. The rhetoric they
use covers a broad range of emotions: neutrality, irony, respect, and sympathy.
Criticism in their reports is hardly present. In the anti-cultist discourse which is
widely reproduced in the mass media and uses public blackmail on the NRMs,
one does not find any mention of Russian Zoroastrians as operating in “sects.”
Moreover, journalists try to find the original roots of Russian Zoroastrianism
and therewith contribute to the documentation of new religious groups that are
not yet an object of scholarly discourse.
While journalistic discourse aims to link Zoroastrianism with other ancient
and less discussed religions such as Yezidism and Manichaeism, Russian
Zoroastrians, particularly Globa’s adherents, endeavor a strategy to make
themselves distinct (and sometimes to become hostile toward other religions):
they carry out their own theology, organize disputes between their leader and
foreign guests, take part in some interreligious forums on RuNet, and write
programmatic articles in their journals. Due to this, journalistic activities
stimulate the exchange between other spheres of knowledge about the
Zoroastrian religion and also react to interrelations between other discourses.
Scholarly controversies (e.g. Zoroastrian authenticity of such settlements as
Arkaim and Gonur) that are not articulated at length within the scholarly
discourse have clearly been visible in journalistic representations; even through
in mass media Zoroastrianism has been treated in the context of regional
Russian politics. The routinized reports about Nouruz celebrations in the 2000s
may indicate a constant interest in the possibility to avoid the Islamic theme in
connection to the former Soviet republics and are valid as a sort of exertion of
new political power on that territory.
Mass media also acts as a channel in transferring Globa’s astrological
activities with its linkage to Zoroastrianism in mass consciousness. Therefore,
Globa’s representation of his “Zoroastrian calendar” unwillingly becomes a part
of the image of Zoroastrianism in Russia that is totally unknown for other
cultures and is per se an innovation in interpreting Zoroastrianism.
Chapter 5 explains how the fictionalization of Zoroastrianism has created an
image of this religion in mainstream literature. Literature is often characterized
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that should be seen over a longer period of time and on the basis of richer data.
Also, the interest or disinterest in certain themes or the stability of coherent
attention to Zoroastrianism during such a short period is not possible to detect,
although the analysis displays a number of old discourses on Zoroastrianism that
were inherited from earlier historical periods such as the Nietzschean
philosophy of Zarathustra. However, mass media is the sphere where such
measures make sense because of the intensity of the constant reproduction of a
limited number of contents that have few doctrinal and ritual features. Above all,
mass media are more effective in perpetuating the stereotypes about
Zoroastrianism and Zoroastrians. Thus, by the active use of some references to
Zoroastrianism that reveal it as an element of the national culture of ex-Soviet
Middle Asian countries since the mid-2000s, the Russian mass media also
pursues certain political aims: it articulates interest in an integrative idea for the
future of post-Soviet countries and yet again expresses the wish of political
power over the former republics and Russian neighbors in the South.
From the four corpora, only the first two offer explanation and a multi-
faceted view on Zoroastrianism (religious and scholarly fields); the others (mass
media and literature) simplify ideas or use selected symbols. Thus, modal
distinctions take place through two different strategies—interpretative and
nominal-designative—which are both adopted by practitioners and scholars on
the one hand, and by journalists and writers on the other. While discourses of
Zoroastrian communities seem to appear as constitutive and at some points
hybrid-innovative because they restrict established social rules and offer new
challenges, the scholarly field in the 1990s seemed to be mostly conservative.
Russian Zoroastrians offer multiple varieties of material density in their works,
whereas mass media tend to simplify and nominalize their ideas.
Regarding the intersections of theme and content, the four discursive spheres
bring to light some inter-discursive asymmetries, which also indicate dependent
and independent positions of different discourses. The Zoroastrianism of
practitioners is a dimension that is saturated with themes and nuances, and it
possesses an immense integrative ability that aims to subordinate certain non-
religious, secular contents. Hence, the entire media discourse on Zoroastrianism
could be completely integrated into the religious field without fear of
engendering any conflicts, except for some critiques on the factual failures of
journalists. Similarly, the use of scholarly hypotheses that deal with
Zoroastrianism is one of the most popular and most effective methods for
practitioners to validate their work. Fictional discourse in some cases appears to
conflict the most with religious discourse. This happens because the meaning
has been controlled through religious discourse with help of internal authorities
as well as through the corpus of doctrinal literature with its exegetic texts. Thus,
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fiction shapes figures such as Zarathustra by leaning against the literary tradition
that substantially draws on Friedrich Nietzsche, which is completely excluded by
Russian Zoroastrians.
However, all knowledge undergoes erosion, which can also be observed in the
mapping of Zoroastrianism. Practitioners even try to overcome the “vagueness”
of representation by creating some exclusionary mechanisms like “portraits of
the enemy” or ritual and food prescriptions (in particular, in Globa’s teachings).
Otherwise, the vagueness of discourses opens further possibilities of
interpretation for them in a holistic, esoteric manner, which is based on the
analogical, metaphorical, and fragmentary understanding of human life and the
world. In contrast, scholarly producers use successive exegetic methods in the
interpretation of texts and artifacts, which are controlled by verification
processes unique to the fields they are working in.
The qualitative (and to some degree) quantitative analysis of the four
discourses has shown that Zoroastrian concepts within each field have multiple
modes. Whereas some of them enrich each other with new themes and
discussions, there are also communication barriers between science, religious,
and journalistic layers. On the contrary, scientific and encyclopedic knowledge
of Zoroastrianism meets no conflicts in journalistic and practitioner discourses
where it is used more intensively than in fiction. Moreover, the increasing print
production of practitioner discourse and the mass character of journalistic
discourse supplant scholarly discourse from the market. Scholarly discourse
suffers from the lack of credibility within two more engaged disciplines—Iranian
studies and study of religions—and is also under pressure from new Russian
Zoroastrians, who try to legitimize their own groups in the eyes of mass media.
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219
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ANNA TESSMANN—ON THE GOOD FAITH
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APPENDIX
Appendix
Websites:
arctida.ru
ashavan.by.ru
asha-piter.ru
astrus.su
avesta.isatr.org
blagoverie.org
cosmoenergy.ru
globa.ru
globainstitut.ru
mitra-piter.narod.ru
natureman.ru
pavelgloba.ru
perm-asha.chat.ru
t-i-d.boom.ru
tishtriya.narod.ru
velesova-sloboda.org
zoroastrian.ru
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Södertörn Doctoral Dissertations
1. Jolanta Aidukaite, The Emergence of the Post-Socialist Welfare State: The case
of the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, 2004
2. Xavier Fraudet, Politique étrangère française en mer Baltique (1871–1914): de
l'exclusion à l'affirmation, 2005
3. Piotr Wawrzeniuk, Confessional Civilising in Ukraine: The Bishop Iosyf
Shumliansky and the Introduction of Reforms in the Diocese of Lviv 1668–
1708, 2005
4. Andrej Kotljarchuk, In the Shadows of Poland and Russia: The Grand
Duchy of Lithuania and Sweden in the European Crisis of the mid-17th
Century, 2006
5. Håkan Blomqvist, Nation, ras och civilisation i svensk arbetarrörelse före
nazismen, 2006
6. Karin S Lindelöf, Om vi nu ska bli som Europa: Könsskapande och normalitet
bland unga kvinnor i transitionens Polen, 2006
7. Andrew Stickley. On Interpersonal Violence in Russia in the Present and the
Past: A Sociological Study, 2006
8. Arne Ek, Att konstruera en uppslutning kring den enda vägen: Om
folkrörelsers modernisering i skuggan av det Östeuropeiska systemskiftet, 2006
9. Agnes Ers, I mänsklighetens namn: En etnologisk studie av ett svenskt
biståndsprojekt i Rumänien, 2006
10. Johnny Rodin, Rethinking Russian Federalism: The Politics of
Intergovernmental Relations and Federal Reforms at the Turn of the
Millennium, 2006
11. Kristian Petrov, Tillbaka till framtiden: Modernitet, postmodernitet och
generationsidentitet i Gorbačevs glasnost´ och perestrojka, 2006
12. Sophie Söderholm Werkö, Patient patients?: Achieving Patient
Empowerment through Active Participation, Increased Knowledge and
Organisation, 2008
13. Peter Bötker, Leviatan i arkipelagen: Staten, förvaltningen och samhället.
Fallet Estland, 2007
255
14. Matilda Dahl, States under scrutiny: International organizations,
transformation and the construction of progress, 2007
15. Margrethe B. Søvik, Support, resistance and pragmatism: An examination of
motivation in language policy in Kharkiv, Ukraine, 2007
16. Yulia Gradskova, Soviet People with female Bodies: Performing beauty and
maternity in Soviet Russia in the mid 1930–1960s, 2007
17. Renata Ingbrant, From Her Point of View: Woman's Anti-World in the
Poetry of Anna Świrszczyńska, 2007
18. Johan Eellend, Cultivating the Rural Citizen: Modernity, Agrarianism and
Citizenship in Late Tsarist Estonia, 2007
19. Petra Garberding, Musik och politik i skuggan av nazismen: Kurt Atterberg
och de svensk-tyska musikrelationerna, 2007
20. Aleksei Semenenko, Hamlet the Sign: Russian Translations of Hamlet and
Literary Canon Formation, 2007
21. Vytautas Petronis, Constructing Lithuania: Ethnic Mapping in the Tsarist
Russia, ca. 1800–1914, 2007
22. Akvile Motiejunaite, Female employment, gender roles, and attitudes: the
Baltic countries in a broader context, 2008
23. Tove Lindén, Explaining Civil Society Core Activism in Post-Soviet Latvia, 2008
24. Pelle Åberg, Translating Popular Education: Civil Society Cooperation
between Sweden and Estonia, 2008
25. Anders Nordström, The Interactive Dynamics of Regulation: Exploring the
Council of Europe’s monitoring of Ukraine, 2008
26. Fredrik Doeser, In Search of Security After the Collapse of the Soviet Union:
Foreign Policy Change in Denmark, Finland and Sweden, 1988–1993, 2008
27. Zhanna Kravchenko. Family (versus) Policy: Combining Work and Care in
Russia and Sweden, 2008
28. Rein Jüriado, Learning within and between public-private partnerships, 2008
29. Elin Boalt, Ecology and evolution of tolerance in two cruciferous species, 2008
30. Lars Forsberg, Genetic Aspects of Sexual Selection and Mate Choice in
Salmonids, 2008
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Governance in Lithuania after World War II, 2008
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Russian-Jewish press 1860–1900, 2008
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a post-Soviet context, 2009
256
34. Tommy Larsson Segerlind, Team Entrepreneurship: A process analysis of
the venture team and the venture team roles in relation to the innovation
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Regulation in the European Union, 2009
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Distribution, control and role in behavior, 2009
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flavivirus NS5 protein and PDZ proteins of the mammalian host, 2009
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Herzegovina: An Analysis of the Police Reform Negotiations, 2009
40. Charlotta Hillerdal, People in Between — Ethnicity and Material Identity: A
New Approach to Deconstructed Concepts, 2009
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Fisheries: A Context Approach, 2010
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elevpositioner i en multietnisk skola, 2010
44. Simon Larsson, Intelligensaristokrater och arkivmartyrer: Normerna för
vetenskaplig skicklighet i svensk historieforskning 1900–1945, 2010
45. Håkan Lättman, Studies on spatial and temporal distributions of epiphytic
lichens, 2010
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salmonids: The impact of cypermethrin, copper, and glyphosate, 2010
47. Michael Wigerius, Roles of mammalian Scribble in polarity signaling, virus
offense and cell-fate determination, 2010
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vid sekelskiftet 1900, 2010
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organisation under stormaktstiden, 2010
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neoclassical realist study of the use of power resources in U.S. policies towards
Poland, Ukraine and Belarus 1989–2008, 2010
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Möglichkeit des Utopischen in der negativen Dialektik Theodor W. Adornos, 2010
257
52. Carl Cederberg, Resaying the Human: Levinas Beyond Humanism and
Antihumanism, 2010
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och välfärdsstatens förvandling, 2011
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förenade Tyskland, 2011
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i Livland åren 1685–1709, 2011
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sociological study of residential differentiation in post-communist Poland, 2011
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hälften av 1800-talet, 2011
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study of the theory and practice of community-based management of natural
resources in Zanzibar, 2011
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ålder och åldrande i Sverige cirka 1875–1975, 2011
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Policing in Berlin, Stockholm, and Warsaw, 2011
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Republic of Moldova, 2011
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value of the landing site category in the Baltic Sea region, 2012
67. Anne Kaun, Civic Experiences and Public Connection: Media and Young
People in Estonia, 2012
68. Anna Tessmann, On the Good Faith: A Fourfold Discursive Construction of
Zoroastrianism in Contemporary Russia, 2012
258
Avhandlingar utgivna vid Institutionen för litteratur, idéhistoria och religion,
Göteborgs universitet
(Dissertations published by the Department of Literature, History of Ideas,
and Religion, University of Gothenburg)
1. Susanne Dodillet: Är sex arbete? Svensk och tysk prostitutionspolitik sedan 1970-talet.
(Disp. 21/2 2009).
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sakkunnigutlåtanden förändras i tre skilda discipliner. (Disp. 6/3 2009).
3. Tobias Hägerland: Jesus and the Forgiveness of Sins. An Aspect of His Prophetic
Mission. (Disp. 20/3 2009).
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svensk konstmuseal diskurs ca 1814–1845. (Disp. 28/3 2009).
5. Christian Mehrstam: Textteori för läsforskare. (Disp. 29/5 2009).
6. Christian Lenemark: Sanna lögner. Carina Rydberg, Stig Larsson och författarens
medialisering. (Disp. 9/10 2009).
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svenska 1990-talsromanen. (Disp. 27/11 2009).
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Modern Hindu Personalist. (Disp. 6/2 2010).
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Ninni Holmqvist, Hanne Ørstavik, Jon Fosse, Magnus Dahlström och Kirsten Hammann.
(Disp. 20/5 2010).
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New Testament Terminology of Crucifixion. (Disp. 21/5 2010).
11. Johan Alfredsson: ”Tro mig på min ort” – oöversättligheten som tematiskt komplex i
Bengt Emil Johnsons poesi 1973–1982. (Disp. 28/5 2010).
12. Nils Olsson: Konsten att sätta texter i verket. Gertrude Stein, Arne Sand och litteraturens
(o)befintliga specificitet. (Disp. 4/6 2010).
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Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity. (Disp. 5/6 2010).
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Vaticamus. (Disp. 8/6 2010).
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(Disp. 23/10 2010).
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Medieval Ecclesiastical Province of Uppsala, Sweden. (Disp. 11/11 2010).
17. Stina Otterberg: Klädd i sitt språk. Kritikern Olof Lagercrantz. (Disp. 12/11 2010).
259
18. Daniel Enstedt: Detta är min kropp. Kristen tro, sexualitet och samlevnad. (Disp.
29/1 2011).
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skolan. (Disp. 11/3 2011).
20. Eva Wahlström: Fria flickor före Pippi. Ester Blenda Nordström och Karin Michaëlis:
Astrid Lindgrens föregångare. (Disp. 27/5 2011).
21. Rikard Wingård: Att sluta från början. Tidigmodern läsning och folkbokens
receptionsestetik. (Disp. 31/5 2011).
22. Andrej Slavik: X. Tre etyder över ett tema av Iannis Xenakis. (1922–2011). (1)
Avhandling. – (2) Exposition, noter, bibliografi. (Disp. 14/10 2011).
23. Hans Leander: Discourses of Empire: The Gospel of Mark from a Postcolonial
Perspective. (Disp. 9/12 2011).
24. Helena Dahlberg: Vikten av kropp. Frågan om kött och människa i Maurice Merleau-
Pontys Le visible et l'invisible. (Disp. 16/12 2011).
25. Anna Tessmann: On the Good Faith: A Fourfold Discursive Construction of
Zoroastrianism in Contemporary Russia. (Disp. 16/5 2012).
260
On the Good Faith
Zoroastrianism is ascribed to the teachings of the legendary prophet
Zarathustra and originated in ancient times. It was developed within the
area populated by the Iranian peoples, and following the Arab conquest,
it formed into a diaspora. In modern Russia it has evolved since the end
of the Soviet era. It has become an attractive object of cultural produc-
tion due to its association with Oriental philosophies and religions and its
rearticulation since the modern era in Europe.
Anna Tessmann
Anna Tessmann
Södertörns högskola
SE-141 89 Huddinge
[email protected]
www.sh.se/publications