1. GARME, f. R-836, op. 1, d. 11a, 1. 144 (Minutes of a workers assembly in the shoe factory, Joshkar-Ola, August 15, 1960). For more on the context of this archival file, see chapter 3.
2. For critical discussions of the so-called secularization thesis, see Bruce 1992; Smith 2003. But compare Brown 2001 and Pollack 2003 for evidence of the overall decline of religious commitments in twentieth-century Europe, West as well as East.
3. In anthropology, the work of Talal Asad (2003, 2006) has been of seminal influence, spawning works on secularism in the Middle East (Mahmood 2005, 2006) and Western Europe (Keane 2009; Scott 2007). For more detailed explorations of the varieties of liberal secularism, compare the work of Charles Taylor (2007) on the Anglo-Saxon world, and Jean Baubérot (2004) and John Bowen (2008) on France.
4. For a comparative argument about empires as polities built around the governance of difference, see Burbank and Cooper 2010. For studies of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, and of British colonial approaches to religious diversity in India, see Barkey 2008; Burbank 2006; van der Veer 1994.
5. Suggesting the potential for comparative research across socialist and nonsocialist secularisms, Yang (2008) develops an argument about secularism as part of a postcolonial state-building project in Maoist China, and Buturovic (2007) presents a discussion of socialist (in this case, Yugoslav) atheism in an edited volume largely devoted to South Asia.
6. This charge was popularized by prominent Russian and continental European émigrés before and after the Second World War, often in the context of arguments for the essential similarity of the “totalitarian” movements of Bolshevism, fascism, and Nazism (Berdyaev 1932; Gurian 1952; Voegelin 1993 [1938]).
7. E.g., Pivovarov 1976: 4. This definition of religion can be traced to nineteenth-century evolutionist theorists such as Edward Burnett Tylor. On Tylor’s approach to religion and its Durkheimian critiques, see Stringer 1999.
8. E.g., GARF, f. A-561, op. 1, d. 400 (Transcript of a theoretical conference on “The causes of the vitality of religious survivals in the USSR,” Moscow, January 18–21, 1960).
9. Antonina Aleksandrova, Priglashaem k razgovoru, April 23, 1972, Mari Republican Radio sound archives, Joshkar-Ola, tape 810.
10. These percentages are on the low end of Russia-wide averages. In the surveys conducted by a Russian-Finnish team under Dmitrij Furman and Kimmo Kääriäinen, the combined categories of unbelievers and atheists made up 42 percent of the Russian population in 1991, 35 percent in 1993, and 20 percent in 2004 (Furman and Kääriäinen 2006: 48).
11. Literally, “pure Mari”—a Mari term denoting unbaptized people that some adherents of the Mari rituals claim for themselves. When speaking Russian, most use the term jazychestvo (Paganism), others prefer to speak of the “traditional Mari religion” (traditsionnaja marijskaja religija).
1. See, for example, Baubérot 2004 on France, Bhargava 1998 on India, Buturovic 2007 on Yugoslavia, Özyürek 2006 on Turkey, and Yang 2008 on China.
2. Particularly well known among Soviet authors were Marx’s dictum on religion as “the opium of the people” (1957 [1844]: 378) and Engels’s critique of the religiously sanctified patriarchal family as an archetype of social inequality (Engels 1962b [1884]).
3. Linguistic convergences between the (genetically unrelated) Slavic, Finno-Ugric, and Turkic languages of the Volga region furnished some of the material for the concept of the “language alliance” as elaborated by Nikolaj Trubetskoj and Roman Jakobson (Jakobson 1931; Sériot 1999). For linguistic and folkloric data on mutual borrowings between Finno-Ugric and Turkic speakers, see Akhmet'ianov 1981, 1989; Suleymanova 1996. On shared religious sites, see Frank 1988.
4. Although I visited the Lutheran congregation in Ljupersola on several occasions in 2005, I was not present at this council meeting. My account of the speeches is based on a tape recording provided by one of the Lutheran clergy present. Although a building permit was eventually granted, the official designation of the building remained in flux at the time of my last visit in 2008. In an effort to avoid being seen as exerting pressure in the matter, I made no attempt to contact the district administration or village officials to hear the story from their perspective.
5. V chuzhoj monastyr' so svoim ustavom ne khodjat. This proverb is roughly equivalent to the English “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” and can be used to make a point about proper behavior in unfamiliar settings not connected to religion. But given the religious metaphor, it is not surprising that it often came up in conversations about interactions between people of different faiths.
6. By 2005, a Chimarij organization under changed leadership was beginning to see some success with a new strategy of registration. Instead of first seeking registration at the level of the republic, they were registering organizations in individual districts where Chimarij rituals had a strong presence. By the end of 2005, they had achieved registration in two districts. A staff member of the Mari Cultural Center was optimistic about the chances for republic-wide registration once a few more districts were added.
7. In fact, the woman in charge of teaching Quranic reading at the mosque in Joshkar-Ola, who was often invited to recite passages from the Quran at funerals, frequently complained about how many Tatars were following what she considered to be “Russian” customs of holding funeral and commemorative feasts at gravesites.
8. Russia is not the only place where Protestant conversion poses problems for participation in ritual commemorations of the dead. For cases from southeastern Africa and Indonesia, see Bond 1987; Keane 2007.
9. Note his wavering between the more colloquial “faith” (vera) and the official “religion” (religija), his frequent false starts and tautological word choices (to be “faithful” to one’s “faith”), as well as the absence of stock official phrases, such as “freedom of religious confession” (svoboda veroispovedanija), which he replaces by saying that in Finland “everything is permitted” (vse razresheno).
10. All instances of “his own” in this quote are translations of the Mari shkezhe, a third-person reflexive possessive pronoun that, like all Mari pronouns, is gender-neutral and could also be understood as “her own.” I thank Veronika Semënova for assisting me in translating the Mari passages on the tape.
11. On the shifting scales of us-them distinctions in multiethnic Russia, see Lemon 2000: 211–214. More generally on the relationship between linguistic distinctions (and indistinctions) and political identification, see Gal and Woolard 2001.
12. Commitment to this discourse includes a policy of nonconfrontation with other religions recognized as “traditional” to particular regions and ethnic groups, such as Islam in the Volga region and Central Asia (Filatov 2002; Mitrokhin 2004: 451–455).
13. For example, when Patriarch Aleksij II visited Marij El in 1993 for the installation of the first bishop in Russia’s youngest diocese, he stressed the Orthodox Church’s intention not to oppose the “traditional Mari faith,” but to live in “harmonious coexistence, mutual understanding” (Marijskaja Pravda, July 27, 1993, p. 1).
14. As listed in a draft copy of the letter provided to me by its author, these violations included: the meeting’s agenda had not been announced in advance, the presence of a quorum of village residents had not been ascertained, the vote had been by open ballot without giving people the option of first voting to keep it secret, the presence of representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church violated the separation of church and state, and some statements made by the district head contradicted the federal law on freedom of conscience—for instance, the assertion that converts would not be buried in the village graveyard and the claim that only some religions were appropriate for residents of the republic.
15. For a searing exploration of the ways in which everyday neighborly relations and intercommunal violence fold into each other, see Das 2007; on troubled coexistence in Russia’s North Caucasus, see Tishkov 2001.
16. In the Khanate, only Muslims were part of the tax-collecting nobility, to the exclusion of nobles and chiefs of the non-Muslim subject peoples (Bakhtin 1998: 41). In Muscovy, unbaptized peasants paid tribute (jasak) in kind instead of monetary taxes until the early eighteenth century (Kappeler 1982: 259).
17. The Udmurts are a group of Finno-Ugric speakers living to the north of the Mari. In 2005–2006, I heard Russian residents and Orthodox clergy perpetuate similar rumors about human sacrifice at Chimarij rituals, possibly as a result of reading about this incident, which is known as the Multan case. A middle-aged Russian woman who had grown up in an ethnically mixed railroad settlement also warned me that Maris were skilled at sorcery, making it dangerous to accept food in their villages.
18. Like many days on which Mari villagers commemorate their dead, this date is a borrowing from the Orthodox Christian calendar. Since at least the nineteenth century, Mari ceremonies have been timed to coincide with Orthodox feast days in many villages (Kalinina 2003).
19. GARME, f. R-118, op. 1, d. 23, 1. 220 (Presentation by the chairman of the Mari organization of the League of the Militant Godless, Radajkin, at a seminar of Komsomol propagandists, December 20, 1940). The recommended replacement was a simple white or flowered headscarf, folded into a triangular shape and tied either under the chin or behind the neck, which became part of the generic image of the Soviet kolkhoznitsa and is still widely worn by rural women.
20. GARF, f. R-6991, op. 3, d. 570, 1. 151 (Report from Nabatov for the second quarter of 1951, July 10, 1951).
21. Ibid., d. 571, 11. 27–28 (Report from Nabatov for the second quarter of 1952, July 11, 1952). Nabatov added that the head of the district’s financial division had some success in his attempts to stop this practice when he started to tax the mullahs for the gifts.
22. Ibid., d. 570, 1. 26 (Report from Nabatov for the second quarter of 1949, July 16, 1949).
23. Ibid., d. 569, 1. 96 (Report from Nabatov for the second quarter of 1948, July 13, 1948).
24. In 1951, a Mari kart asked Nabatov why Tatars were allowed to celebrate sabantuj, while Maris were prohibited from celebrating semyk. Ibid., d. 570, 1. 151 (Report from Nabatov for the second quarter of 1951, July 10, 1951).
25. GARME, f. P-1, op. 26, d. 23, 1. 37 (Minutes of the bureau meeting of the regional party committee, April 28, 1965).
26. Examples include Navroz, a purportedly pre-Islamic New Year celebration of Caucasus mountaineers (Sadomskaya 1990: 249), and summer solstice celebrations such as the Latvian Ligo and Russian Ivan Kupala, promoted to reclaim the Christian feast of St. John the Baptist for atheist folk culture (Powell 1975: 69). The introduction of fir trees for New Year from 1935 onward was also justified with the argument that putting them up was a Pagan winter custom that had been appropriated by the church for Christmas (Petrone 2000: 86). For a more general discussion of the Soviet politics of finding Pagan survivals in folk religion, see Levin 1993.
27. See Clark 1995 on early Soviet experiments with mass outdoor spectacles and the hopes of social transformation attached to them.
28. GARME, f. P-14, op. 18, d. 5, 11. 5–6 (Resolution of the Novyj-Tor"jal district committee on the organization of the festival peledysh pajrem, May 12, 1965); Marijskaja Pravda, June 22, 1965, p. 1; Humphrey 1998: 380–381.
29. A search of the indexes in party, government, and KGB personnel files in Joshkar-Ola did not yield a file on Nabatov that provided information on his ethnicity, education, and prior residence and work experience. In his reports he occasionally refers to “us Maris” and quotes Mari terms, suggesting that he was an ethnic Mari and had at least some command of the language. GARF, f. R-6991, op. 3, d. 570, 1. 74 (Report from Nabatov on the fourth quarter of 1949, January 14, 1950); ibid., 1. 94 (Report from Nabatov on the second quarter of 1950, July 17, 1950). In terms of his professional training, his correspondence shows that he was also in charge of supervising logging operations in the republic. At one point, the council chairman reproached him that his reports were not at the level expected of a man of his “general and political erudition,” suggesting that he may have had some postsecondary education and/or a prior career in the party bureaucracy. Ibid., d. 569, 1. 71 (Letter from council chairman Poljanskij to Nabatov, November 26, 1947). As historians have observed, it was common for commissioners of religious affairs to be recruited either from the party bureaucracy or from the KGB (Chumachenko 2002: 24–25; Kolymagin 2004: 115).
30. GARF, f. R-6991, op. 3, d. 569, 1. 1 (Report by commissioner Nabatov to the council for the fourth quarter of 1945, received January 22, 1946).
31. Ibid., 1. 2.
32. Ibid., 11. 7–8 (Report of council member Fil'chenkov on a voyage of inspection to the Mari ASSR, March 6, 1946).
33. Examples of such petitions were attached to Fil'chenkov’s report and a later report from Nabatov. See ibid., 1. 16 (Petition from citizens of the village of Bol'shaja Orsha to commissioner Nabatov, November 30, 1945); ibid., d. 571, 11. 9–13 (Petitions and supporting documents from citizens of Pektubaevo district and Uspenka village to commissioner Nabatov, September 15 and October 19, 1951).
34. Ibid., d. 569, 1. 12.
35. Ibid., 1. 19 (Draft of a report from council chairman Poljanskij to the Central Committee, n.d.).
36. Ibid., 1. 23 (Letter from the vice chairmen of the Councils for the Affairs of Religious Cults and the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church to the commissioners, January 22, 1946).
37. Ibid., 1. 19.
38. Ibid., 1. 22 (Draft of a letter from Nabatov to the district executive committees, ca. January 1946).
39. Ibid., 11. 8–9. During the fall sacrificial season of 1951, according to Nabatov’s reports, a number of collective farms did contribute calves and sheep from collective ownership. This may have been an unintended consequence of the reduction of privately owned livestock as a result of restrictive taxation during the last years of Stalin’s life. Ibid., d. 571, 1. 7 (Report from Nabatov on the fourth quarter of 1951, January 7, 1952).
40. Ibid., d. 569, 1. 52 (Report from Nabatov for the first quarter of 1947, April 21, 1947).
41. Ibid., 1. 52v
42. Ibid., d. 570, 1. 5 (Report from Nabatov for the fourth quarter of 1948, January 18, 1949).
43. Ibid., 1. 8.
44. Ibid., d. 571, 1. 41 (Report from Nabatov for the third quarter of 1952, October 7, 1952).
45. This term appears in a marginal note by a Moscow reader, written in red pencil on one of Nabatov’s reports, beside a paragraph referring to local authorities permitting sabantuj after the completion of the plowing of the fields for winter grain, and Mari sacrificial ceremonies in the fall after the fulfillment of the state’s grain delivery quotas. Ibid., d. 570, 1. 31 (Report from Nabatov for the second quarter of 1949, July 16, 1949).
46. Ibid., d. 569, 1. 97 (Report from Nabatov for the second quarter of 1948, July 13, 1948). This is the only mention of a horse as a sacrificial animal in Nabatov’s correspondence, although precollectivization sources mention horses as common sacrifices for high-ranking gods. The use of an old horse unfit for work seems to be a compromise with the economic and legal constraints of the post-collectivization era, since older ethnographic sources as well as late twentieth-century Chimarij writings emphasize that sacrificial animals should be young and without blemish (Popov and Tanygin 2003: 202–209; Sebeok and Ingemann 1956: 166–167).
47. GARF, f. R-6991, op. 3, d. 570, 11. 26–27 (Report from Nabatov for the second quarter of 1949, July 16, 1949).
48. Ibid., d. 569, 1. 52v (Report from Nabatov for the first quarter of 1947, April 21, 1947). The same village had gone to considerable lengths to forestall the closing of the mosque before the war: when an order came to close it and use the building as a school and rural council office, villagers built both a schoolhouse and a council hall. Ibid., 1. 27 (Report from Nabatov for the second quarter of 1946, July 5, 1946). Shortly before its closure in 1940, the mosque was one of only five functioning houses of worship in the republic. GARME, f. R-118, op. 1, d. 24, 1. 31 (Information on the uses of closed prayer buildings in districts of the republic, ca. 1940).
49. GARF, f. R-6991, op. 3, d. 569, 1. 75 (Report from Nabatov for the fourth quarter of 1947, January 19, 1948).
50. Ibid., 1. 79 (Letter from council chairman Poljanskij to Nabatov, February 24, 1948).
51. Ibid., d. 570, 1. 127 (Report from Nabatov on the fourth quarter of 1950, January 9, 1951).
52. Ibid., d. 571, 1. 39.
53. Nabatov’s discharge is documented ibid., d. 571, 1. 44 (Note on the margin of Nabatov’s report for the third quarter of 1952, October 7, 1952). A complete reconstruction of personnel arrangements for both councils during the following years is difficult, because most of the Khrushchev era records were still classified in the Russian state archives in Moscow during my research in 2005, and several files were missing in Marij El’s republican archives. Sometime between 1953 and 1960, Aleksej Grigor'evich Smirnov succeeded the first commissioner for Russian Orthodox Church affairs, Kuz'ma Alekseevich Shikin. Smirnov occasionally appears on lists of commissioners of religious cults for the Mari ASSR. See, for example, ibid., d. 1360, 1. 141 (List of commissioners of both councils invited to a meeting of both councils); ibid., d. 1387, 1. 80 (Mailing list for a presentation of council chairman Puzin, October 1962). From around 1963, Viktor Ivanovich Savel'ev served as the commissioner of Russian Orthodox Church affairs, becoming commissioner of the unified Council for Religious Affairs in 1965. Savel'ev was replaced in 1984 by Vasilij Aleksandrovich Isakov, who held the position until the council was disbanded in 1990. GARME, f. R-836, op. 1, d. 4, 11. 207–208 (Letter from Bishop Mikhail of Gor'kij to V. I. Savel'ev, May 10, 1963); interview with Isakov, July 2, 2003.
54. Literally, “birch tree,” this festival was created in the 1970s to replace Pentecost; see Paxson 2005: 335–337
55. See Bhargava 2007 for a discussion of the ways in which Indian secularism both drew on European models and altered them in response to the multireligious situation in India.
1. See, for instance, the debates at a 1963 conference devoted to a projected book on “the spiritual life of communist society.” GARF, f. R-9547, op. 1, d. 1314 (Transcript of the scholarly conference “Laws of formation and development of the spiritual life of communist society,” May 9–11, 1963); Stepanian 1966.
2. GARF, f. R-6991, op. 3, d. 570, 11. 23–23v (Council chairman Poljanskij to Nabatov, May 25, 1949); ibid., 1. 125 (Council chairman Poljanskij to Nabatov, January 9, 1951); GARF, f. R-9547, op. 1, d. 443, 1. 3 (Minutes of the Mari division of the Society for the Dissemination of Political and Scientific Knowledge, January 11, 1950); ibid., 1. 118 (Minutes of July 10, 1950).
3. Even in 1955, at the height of Khrushchev’s first call to renew atheist assaults on religion, only 6.3 percent of all lectures in the RSFSR were devoted to atheist topics, and this percentage fell to 3.5 the following year. GARF, f. A-561, op. 1, d. 375,1. 35 (Report on atheist propaganda conducted by regional organizations of the society, 1956). In 1969, just over one-fourth of all lectures devoted to the natural sciences—itself only one among many fields covered by the society—were classified as atheist propaganda. Ibid., d. 1294, 1. 1 (Resolution of the presidium of the All-Russian Knowledge Society, January 15, 1971).
4. On the society’s recruitment difficulties, see ibid., d. 65, 1. 190 (Transcript of the all-Russian seminar meeting of the chairpersons of the scientific atheist and natural scientific sections in the regional and ASSR divisions of the society, January 10–11, 1956); GARF, f. R-9547, op. 1, d. 1377, 11. 11–12 (Transcript of an all-union seminar on questions of aid to propaganda in rural areas, February 29, 1964).
5. GARF, f. A-561, op. 1, d. 65, 1. 168.
6. GARF, f. R-9547, op. 1, d. 1377, 1. 34.
7. GARF, f. A-561, op. 1, d. 65, 1. 116.
8. Ibid., 1. 116.
9. Ibid., 1. 82.
10. Ibid., 1. 96. On the promotion of corn during the Khrushchev era, see Medvedev 1987
11. GARME, f. R-737, op. 2, d. 115, 1. 64 (Lecture text by A. M. Gluzman, Joshkar-Ola, 1962).
12. Ibid., 11. 65–66.
13. GARF, f. A-561, op. 1, d. 283, 1. 91 (Transcript of a seminar for lecturers on scientific atheist topics, Moscow, June 15–16, 1959).
14. Ibid., d. 65, 1. 194.
15. Ibid., d. 283, 11. 27–28.
16. Ivanov is one of the most common Russian surnames, so the implication is that anyone can accomplish this feat.
17. GARME, f. R-737, op. 2, d. 161, 11. 3–4 (Report from secretary Chistjakov of the Knowledge Society to the chairman of the ideological department of the Mari regional committee of the CPSU, November 20, 1963); sound archives of Mari Republican Radio, tape 810 (Antonina Aleksandrova, Priglashaem k razgovoru, April 23, 1972).
18. GARF, f. A-561, op. 1, d. 283, 1. 62.
19. Scholars at the 1963 conference on the spiritual life of communism referred to the privileging of philosophy over empirical social sciences as a Stalinist legacy akin to those denounced by the Twentieth Party Congress (GARF, f. R-9547, op. 1, d. 1314, 11. 82, 156). They thus link Stalin’s “personality cult” not so much with mass irrationality but with a faulty understanding of the sources of rational understanding.
20. Ibid., d. 1312,1. 130 (Lecture by E. A. Adamov, “On the art of oratory,” held at the all-union seminar on problems of the moral code of the builder of communism, Moscow, February 20–23, 1963).
21. GARME, f. P-8, op. 7, d. 495, 1. 47 (Minutes of the bureau of the Joshkar-Ola city committee of the CPSU, December 2, 1960).
22. The phrase “carry knowledge to the people” (nesti znanija narodu) was the slogan of the Knowledge Society, with roots in the enlightenment ethos of prerevolutionary reformers.
23. Technically, St. Peter and Paul’s Day, in Mari Petro pajrem, in Russian Petrov den'. While this is a feast day of the Orthodox Christian calendar, Maris venerate St. Peter as Petro jumo (the god Peter).
24. Matthew 21:12–13; Luke 19:45–46.
25. Literally, “little father”—an affectionately respectful term of address for an Orthodox priest.
26. Dukhovnoe obrazovanie, i.e., the education given in a theological seminary or other ecclesiastical educational institution, as opposed to the term mirskoe obrazovanie, which I had used to ask about his secular, or literally “worldly education.”
27. Contemporary Russian Orthodox believers often refer to the nineteenth-century startsy as the perfect embodiment of this ideal of saintliness. Startsy were monks living in withdrawal from the world who attracted a large following of pilgrims and were often considered to have spiritual gifts such as second sight or the power to work miracles by their prayers (Treadgold 1978: 38). As charismatic figures, contemporary startsy can wield an influence that goes far beyond their formal standing in the church hierarchy, and they are sometimes viewed with suspicion by the leadership of the Orthodox Church (Mitrokhin 2004). But, at least in their conversations with me as a heterodox Christian, priests and lay believers referred to such saintly hermit monks and ascetic priests as evidence for the overall holiness of the Orthodox Church as a community.
28. See S. Coleman 2000 on the place of neo-Charismatic churches (a late twentieth-century movement often associated with a theology of prosperity) in the older Pentecostal movement.
29. GARME, f. P-8, op. 7, d. 506, 1. 107 (Information about a visit to the study circle on political economy, for the party bureau of the Maksim Gor'kij Polytechnical Institute, January 28, 1960).
30. Sunday Adelaja [Sandej Adeladzha], Lichnoe razvitie v liderakh [tape from a leadership seminar] (Kiev: Fares, April 2, 1999). Adelaja’s disdain notwithstanding, I saw the Russian translation of Hagin’s How to Be Led by the Spirit of God (1997 [1978]) on the bookshelves of several members of the Christian Center.
1. The figures of 110 enterprises and 17,000 employees come from the report of Commissioner Smirnov to the Council for Orthodox Church Affairs, September 1960 (GARME, f. R-836, op. 1, d. 3, 11. 240–243). The collected minutes of the meetings make up a file of 265 pages (ibid., d. 11a).
2. Ibid., 1. 237 (Excerpt from the minutes of the meeting of the Council for Russian Orthodox Church Affairs, November 19, 1960).
3. Pravda, January 10, 1960.
4. GARME, f. R-836, op. 1, d. 3, 1. 5 (Resolution of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Mari ASSR, April 6, 1944). See also Starikov and Levenshtein 2001: 19.
5. GARME, f. R-275, op. 1, d. 140, 1. 7 (Resolution of the Tsarevokokshajsk regional executive committee, January 16, 1919), published in Tarasova et al. 2004: 191.
6. GARME, f. R-836, op. 1, d. 3, 1. 246 (Report on the situation of churches in Joshkar-Ola, commissioner for Russian Orthodox Church affairs Smirnov, October 1960). A similar struggle over historical perspective between Orthodox believers and Soviet officials is apparent in correspondence from 1973, when citizens of Joshkar-Ola petitioned for permission to use “the former building of the Church of the Ascension, which is occupied by the beer brewery,” for divine services. In the negative response from the city government, the building was pointedly referred to not as a former church, but as “the industrial building of the factory for beer and nonalcoholic drinks.” GARME, f. R-836, op. 2, d. 18, 11. 13–14 (Families from the city of Joshkar-Ola to the chairman of the council of ministers of the USSR, January 7. 1973); ibid., 1. 27 (Joshkar-Ola city executive committee to E. A. Chemodanova, July 17, 1973).
7. GARME, f. P-1, op. 18, d. 149, 11. 153–154 (Resolution of the Mari regional committee of the CPSU, April 13, 1960), published in Tarasova et al. 2004: 292–293; on Khrushchev era housing policies, see Ruble 1993.
8. GARME, f. R-836, op. 1, d. 11a, 11. 204–205 (Minutes of the assembly of the committee for radio and television in the Council of Ministers of the Mari ASSR, August 18, 1960).
9. Ibid., 11. 54–56 (Minutes of the workforce assembly at the repair shop, August 15, 1960).
10. Ibid., 11. 206–208 (Minutes of the workforce assembly at the Mari publishing house, August 16, 1960).
11. Ibid., d. 3, 11. 240–243.
12. Ibid., d. 11a, 11. 189–194 (Minutes of the workforce assembly at the production and storage units of the Mari factory for civil machine construction, August 16, 1960).
13. Ibid., d. 3, 11. 283–285 (Believers from Joshkar-Ola to N. S. Khrushchev, December 30, 1960).
14. V. Alekseev, “Potasovka v khrame ‘bozh'em’,” Marijskaja Pravda, August 12, 1960, p. 3. The assembly of pensioners is mentioned in the minutes of the workers assembly at the vitamin factory, August 16, 1960 (GARME, f. R-836, op. 1, d. 11a, 11. 20–21).
15. Ibid., 1. 23 (Minutes of the assembly of dairy and cooling facility workers, August 16, 1960); ibid., 11. 36–37 (Minutes of the assembly of workshops 27 and 42, August 16, 1960).
16. Disturbance of the public order (narushenie obshchestvennogo porjadka) is referred to ibid., 11. 15–16 (Minutes of the general trade union assembly of pharmacy employees, August 15, 1960) and 11. 64–65 (Minutes of the assembly of the collective of the republican library of the Mari ASSR, August 15, 1960). Hooliganism is mentioned ibid., 11. 3–4 (Minutes of the assembly of the collective of the passenger transport facility, August 16, 1960) and 11. 36–37 (Minutes of the assembly of the workers and employees of the automatic telephone exchange, August 16, 1960).
17. V. Alekseev, “Potasovka v khrame ‘bozh'em’,” p. 3. On anti-hooliganism campaigns during the Khrushchev era, see LaPierre 2006.
18. “Propovedi i dela ottsov dukhovnykh,” cited in GARME, f. R-836, op. 1, d. 11a, 1. 66 (Resolution of the collective of the republican library of the Mari ASSR, August 15, 1960).
19. Ju. Kuprijanov and Ju. Nikolaev, “Kazanskie ottsy dukhovnye i ikh dela grekhovnye,” Marijskaja Pravda, May 11, 1960, p. 4; Ju. Kuprijanov and Ju. Nikolaev, “Jumyn engzhe-vlak da nunyn sulykan pashasht,” Marij Kommuna, May 11, 1960, p. 4. The Mari-language article is longer, probably an unabridged version of the original article from Sovetskaja Tatarija. The story of Archbishop Iov’s trial and deposition is told in “Sud zal gych: Arkhiepiskop Iovym razoblachatlyme,” Marij Kommuna, June 24, 1960, p. 4, also translated from Sovetskaja Tatarija. It is possible that the longer and more complete coverage of the matter in the Mari-language paper reflects the editors' perception that Mari speakers were more likely to hold religious sympathies, but it may also be that religious issues were not seen as important enough to take up much space in the Russian-language paper, which had the larger print run and wider distribution.
20. GARME, f. R-836, op. 1, d. 11a, 1. 52 (Minutes of the assembly of workers at the brick factory “12 years of October,” August 15, 1960); ibid., 11. 54–56.
21. Ju. Kuprijanov and Ju. Nikolaev, “Kazanskie ottsy dukhovnye i ikh dela grekhovnye,” Marijskaja Pravda, May 11, 1960, p. 4.
22. GARME, f. R-836, op. 1, d. 11a, 11. 54–56.
23. Ibid., d. 3, 11. 201–202 ([A named member of the congregation of Resurrection Church] to the commissioner in the house of soviets, April 4, 1960); ibid., 11. 229–234 (Believers of the city of Joshkar-Ola to the commissioner for church affairs of the Mari ASSR, June 27, 1960).
24. Ibid., 1. 279 (Orthodox Christians of the Resurrection Cathedral Joshkar-Ola to N. S. Khrushchev, December 22, 1960).
25. For instance, ibid., d. 11a, 1. 27 (Minutes of the meeting of workers of the state bank and construction bank, August 16, 1960).
26. For instance, one resolution calls for the building to be turned into a club. Ibid., 1. 30 (Minutes of the assembly at the asphalt-concrete works and garage of the city repair trust, August 16, 1960). Another also calls for stronger measures against Baptists. Ibid., 1. 57 (Minutes of the assembly at the Joshkar-Ola repair factory, August 15, 1960). Both points take up suggestions made in the recorded discussion.
27. GARME, f. P-8, op. 7, d. 484, 1. 75 (Appendix 2, Minutes of the bureau of the city committee, March 3, 1960).
28. Chistjakov’s role in both organizations, and as a liaison between them, is documented ibid., d. 492, 11. 7–11 (Minutes of the bureau of the city committee, August 25, 1960), where he is named as a staff member of the department for propaganda and agitation responsible for atheist work, and GARME, f. R-737, op. 2, d. 69, 11. 9–11 (Minutes of the meeting of the section for scientific atheism of the Mari division of the Knowledge Society, November 3, 1960), where he participates as a member and reports on the above meeting of the city committee bureau.
29. GARME, f. R-836, op. 1, d. 11a, 1. 99 (Minutes of the assembly of workers in produce store no. 2, August 16, 1960). In Russian, the sentence reads “Professor Bogoslov pisal poslednee izdatel'stvo biblii, no on otrësja [sic] ot religii." The remainder of the minutes from this store is also full of orthographic and grammatical errors, indicating that the problem may have been more with the note taker than with the lecturer.
30. Ibid., 11. 206–208.
31. Ibid., 1. 32 (Minutes of the assembly of workers in the children’s hospital, August 15, 1960).
32. Ibid., 11. 10–11 (Minutes of the assembly of workers in the sewing workshop “Truzhenitsa,” August 16, 1960).
33. Ibid., 11. 39–40 (Minutes of the assembly of workers in workshop 26, August 16, 1960).
34. Ibid., 11. 39–40 (7 votes against, 330 in favor); ibid., 11. 144–145 (Minutes of the assembly of workers in the shoe factory, August 15, 1960 [2 votes against, 156 in favor]); ibid., 11. 171–171v (Minutes of the assembly of workers in the city hospital, n.d. [1 vote against, 1 abstention, 198 in favor]); ibid., 11. 177–178 (Minutes of the assembly of workers in workshop 8, n.d. [6 votes against, 176 in favor]); ibid., 11. 220–221 (Minutes of the assembly of workers at Joshkar-Ola station, August 17, 1960 [2 votes against, 7 abstentions, 63 in favor]).
35. Examples of methodological literature from the Mari republican library containing lecture titles are in Nekhoroshkov 1964: 52–54; Nekhoroshkov 1967a: 21–23. The latter work also contains sample “plans” of lectures and sample invitations to evenings of questions and answers; Novoselova 1959 contains plans for such evenings and the full text of a lecture by A. Krasnov, “The origin and essence of Mari religious cults.”
36. The 1958–1975 minutes of the meetings of the scientific methodical council on scientific atheism of the RSFSR division of the Knowledge Society, which I surveyed (GARF, f. A-561, op. 1, passim), most typically involved the discussion of one or two lecture texts that had been recommended for publication.
37. GARME, f. 737, op. 2, d. 69, 11. 89–92 (Exemplary topics for lectures on questions of scientific atheist propaganda for 1955).
38. GARF, f. A-561, op. 1, d. 284, 1. 1v (Primernaja tematika lektsij po nauchnomu ateizmu [Moscow: Znanie, 1959]).
39. A comparison between the number of recommended lecture titles and the number of brochures printed per year makes it very unlikely that full texts could have been available for all lectures. For 1958, for instance, the publication plan of the RSFSR division of the Knowledge Society included ten brochures on scientific atheism, when, as noted above, a year later there were seventy-one recommended lecture titles. Ibid., d. 183, 11. 3–4 (Transcript of a meeting in the office of the vice chairman of the society, March 22, 1958).
40. Ibid., d. 22, 1. 8 (Information on the state of scientific atheist propaganda for the year 1955, A. S. Vasil‘ev, director of the division for scientific atheist propaganda).
41. GARME, f. R-737, op. 2, d. 78, 11. 54–55 (Certificate of inspection of the work of the Zvenigovo district division of the Knowledge Society, June 19, 1960).
42. Ibid., d. 98,1. 166 (List of recommended lecture topics, Mari regional division of the Knowledge Society, 1961).
43. GARME, f. P-1, op. 18, d. 245, 1. 33 (Information on the state of party education as of the beginning of the 1959–1960 academic year, regional committee instructor Putilova, November 1959); GARME, f. P-22, op. 1, d. 33,11. 46–62 (Report on the work of nine-month training courses for party and state workers under the Mari regional committee for 1951–1952).
44. GARF, f. R-9547, op. 1, d. 443, 1. 225 (Minutes of the board meeting of the Mari regional division of the Knowledge Society, December 19, 1950).
45. GARME, f. R-737, op. 2, d. 307, 1. 48v (Evaluation of the lecture “Crimes of minors” by comrade Kirillov, member of the Knowledge Society, factory for semiconductors, Joshkar-Ola, 1971).
46. GARF, f. A-561, op. 1, d. 22,11. 11–12 (Report on the state, tasks, and means for the improvement of scientific atheist propaganda in the divisions of the Knowledge Society RSFSR, December 1955); GARME, f. R-737, op. 2, d. 69, 11. 64–65 (Review of the lecture text “Origin and life of ancient man” by comrade S. Reshetov, member of the Knowledge Society, reviewed by N. A. Pomrjaskinskaja, January 1963).
47. GARF, f. A-561, op. 1, d. 65, 1. 20.
1. GARME, f. P-12, op. 14, d. 13, 11. 1–2 (Information on the course of public presentations by the district group of political informers, leading workers of the district, and the group of lecturers of the CPSU district committee in Morki district, September 20, 1971); “Vneshtatnye instruktory—upora rajkoma,” Marijskaja Pravda, August 21, 1960, p. 2; “Rajonnyj smotr agitbrigad,” Put' k kommunizmu, March 11, 1972, p. 1; “K vam priekhal agitpoezd,” Marijskaja Pravda, August 16, 1972, pp. 2–3.
2. Technically, the organization was no longer a collective farm (kollektivnoe khozjajstvo, or kolkhoz for short) but an agricultural work group (sel'sko-khozjajstvennaja artel', or sel'khozartel'), one of several forms of voluntary agricultural association that replaced the mandatory state or collective farms after Yeltsin’s 1993 land reform (Wegren 2005: 67–69). But, as in other villages, people referred to the new entity by the Soviet term kolkhoz except in very formal contexts, and I follow them in this usage.
3. Talal Asad’s (1993) critique of Clifford Geertz’s notion of religion as a cultural system can be read as an instance of this debate.
4. This was a little over US$10 in 2005, a sum that might well equal the entire monthly salary of a farm worker, or about half or one-third of the pay of a rural cultural worker. The chairman somewhat exaggerates the actual ticket prices in Joshkar-Ola’s cinemas, which were closer to 100–150 rubles, or US$3–5, at that time. Even that price presented a significant expense for rural and city dwellers alike.
1. V. Vasil'ev, “Nagljadnost' na zanjatijakh,” Put' k kommunizmu, September 7, 1972, p. 2.
2. For archival examples of such evaluations, see GARME, f. P-8, op. 7, d. 507, 11. 7–8 (Information on the work of the agit-brigade and the state of visual agitation in the Joshkar-Ola candy factory, April 5, 1960); GARME, f. R-737, op. 2, d. 307, 11. 27–27v (Certificate of inspection of the Morki district organization of the Knowledge Society, ca. 1970).
3. GARF, f. R-6991, op. 6, d. 80,1. 219 (Report on the state of religiosity among women from commissioner of religious affairs Savel'ev to the first secretary of the Mari regional committee and the chairman of the council of ministers of the Mari ASSR, June 16, 1967). Viktor Solov'ev’s study of religious belief in the Mari ASSR (conducted in 1972) found that 40 percent of Komsomol members lived in households with icons (Solov'ev 1977: 108).
4. But see Plamper 2010 on Stalin era ideas that the Soviet leader’s ubiquitous portrait could see what was going on in offices and homes.
5. Transcript of an audio recording of the discussion (ca. 2003) provided by the Missionary Department, Orthodox Diocese of Joshkar-Ola and Marij El.
6. Lacking a centralized authority comparable to the Vatican for deciding doctrinal questions, the Orthodox churches accommodate quite a broad diversity of opinion, and Orthodox print culture in contemporary Russia reflects this. Until an editorial council was instituted at the Moscow Patriarchate in 2009, individual diocesan bishops and metropolitans had the right to authorize publications. Under that system, the imprint “With the blessing of …” (followed by the name and title of the church hierarch) and the fact that a book was sold in a church or an Orthodox store were the only indications for a lay reader that its contents were theologically acceptable. Individual bishops vary in the range of theological tendencies to which they give their blessing (Mitrokhin 2004: 174–208), and Dukhanin’s brochure certainly only reflects a fraction of the spectrum of opinion among Russian Orthodox Christians, and is not a work of academic theology. I quote from it because it resonates with opinions about images, imaginaries, and prayer expressed by engaged Orthodox laypeople in Marij El, and with treatments of spirituality and sensuality in other Orthodox publications.
7. In spite of reservations, even Russian icon painting did not remain untouched by this trend, as attested by eighteenth-century icons of St. Catherine with the face of Empress Catherine I (Marker 2008).
8. Evagrios the Solitary (ca. AD 345–399), “On Prayer: One Hundred and Fifty-Three Texts,” §§ 117, 120, quoted from the English edition of the Philokalia (Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware 1979–1995, vol. 1: 68).
1. GARF, f. R-9547, op. 1, d. 1314, 1. 34 (Transcript of the scholarly conference “Laws of the formation and development of the spiritual life of communist society,” May 9–11, 1963).
2. For example, campaigns against the alcohol use associated with rural religious holidays made no effort to distinguish concerns with public health and decorum from concerns with economic productivity. See GARME, f. P-14, op. 26, d. 7, 1. 115 (Resolution of the Novyj Tor"jal district committee, “On the celebration of the festival of St. Elijah’s Day by the workers of avant-garde collective farm,” August 24, 1973); Mari Republican Radio sound archives, tape 810 (Priglashaem k razgovoru, April 23, 1972).
3. See 1 Thessalonians 5:23; Hebrews 4:12. On the division in the Philokalia and later Russian Orthodox elaborations, see Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware 1979–1995, vol. 4: 76–77, 107–108; Luka 2006 [1978].
4. Caroline Humphrey (1998: 417) makes a related argument about Siberian shamanism as offering responses to the unacknowledged tensions of late Soviet society.
5. Simon Coleman (2000) and Joel Robbins (2004: 256–257) give insightful descriptions of the repetitive structure behind the apparent spontaneity of Pentecostal and Charismatic services, raising intriguing questions about the intended and unintended effects of liturgical actions. Tanya Luhrmann (2004) recognizes the crucial role of liturgy for sustaining members' commitment to Charismatic-type megachurches, but sees their effect largely in the triggering of individual imaginative processes.
6. The Russian word is sila, which translates both as “strength” and “power” in English. I use “strength” to distinguish sila from vlast' (power, authority, used both in an institutional sense, as in sovetskaja vlast', Soviet power, and in terms of control over others, such as vlast' diavola, the power of the devil). This translation also emphasizes the everyday nature of many of the tasks for which Pentecostals rely on this gift of the Holy Spirit (Shaull and Cesar 2000: 65–71).
7. Course 3: “Life and spirit of praise.” Materials written and provided by the leader of the praise-and-worship band, Joshkar-Ola Christian Center.
8. In Slavonic: “Priidite, poklonimsja Tsarevi nashemu Bogu / Priidite, poklonimsja i pripadem Khristu, Tsarevi nashemu Bogu / Priidite, poklonimsja i pripadem Samomu Khristu, Tsarevi i Bogu nashemu / Priidite, poklonimsja i pripadem Emu” (Vsenoshchnoe bdenie 2001: 15).
9. This is Psalm 103 in the Russian Synodal Bible translation, which follows the numbering of the classical Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (Septuagint).
10. For the teachings about praise, power, and changes in the world that I outline below, an important influence seems to be Myles Munroe (see Munroe 2000), a U.S.-trained Jamaican preacher who has made several visits to the Embassy of God and whose books have been published in Russian translation by its Kievan publishing house, Fares.
11. Note that the three stages she identifies differ from those given earlier in this section, which were praise, worship, and entry into the holiest of holies. The terminology in which the congregation discussed their liturgy was quite fluid, and at other times the bandleader distinguished between “worship” and “entry into the holiest of holies.” The phrase “entering the courtyard” was used to describe the introductory part of the service.
12. GARF, f. A-561, op. 1, d. 282, 1. 28.
13. Ibid., 1. 29.
14. For an earlier, but similar list of prohibited groups, see GARF, f. R-6991, op. 3, d. 1417, 1. 175 (Circular from the Council for Religious Affairs on “Strengthening the work of inhibiting the illegal activities of sectarians,” June 1963).
15. GARME, f. R-836, op. 2, d. 21, 11. 20–21 (Notes, in commissioner for religious affairs Savel'ev’s hand, on the achievements of Soviet power in the Mari republic and the dangers of Pentecostalism, evidently prepared for a conversation with members of this group, ca. 1977); 1. 18 in the same file contains a handwritten report on a conversation held December 13, 1977, which follows the same basic points.
1. For example, in the Mari ASSR in 1965, 33.7 percent of all newborn children were baptized; 2.3 percent of couples had a church marriage; and 37.3 percent of all deceased received a funeral service, although mainly in the “absentee” form where a service was held without the presence of the corpse (zaochnoe otpevanie). Only 9.7 percent were actually buried by a priest. GARF, f. R-6991, op. 2, d. 572, 1. 73 (Data on religious rituals and the income and expenses of religious organizations in the Mari ASSR for 1965, compiled by commissioner for religious affairs Savel'ev). For 1973, Savel'ev reported that the percentages had dropped to 24.2 for baptisms and remained at 2.3 for weddings. He did not mention funerals, perhaps because their rate continued to be high. Ibid., op. 6, d. 634, 1. 99 (Report from commissioner Savel'ev to council chairman Kuroedov, October 21, 1974). The preponderance of funerals and baptisms over religious weddings is consistent with union-wide trends. Generalizing from Soviet sociological literature, Christel Lane (1978: 60) concludes that the reported rates for baptisms and Christian funerals were stable at around 50 percent throughout the 1960s, while the rates were between 1 and 15 percent for church weddings, depending on the region and with trends declining over time (see also Merridale 2000: 278). The figures from the Mari ASSR are on the low end of these trends, and this may be because of the tenuous influence of Christianity among the Mari population. Muslim life-cycle rituals do not seem to be factored into these percentages, and the numbers of rites recorded at the sole legally functioning mosque of the republic offer limited insight into the practices that may have been performed by knowledgeable Muslims without state registration. But mosque records also suggest a preponderance of funerals. In 1970, for instance, the mullah in Kul'bash performed two naming ceremonies, two weddings, and four funerals. GARF, R-6991, op. 6, d. 302, 1. 70.
2. There is a large literature on the significance of the possessive pronoun “ours” (nash) in Russian discourses and practices of collectivity. For examples, see Pesmen 2000; Ransel 2000: 176; on the related reflexive possessive pronoun svoj (one’s own), see Paxson 2005: 82–85.
3. GARF, f. R-6991, op. 6, d. 643, 1. 75 (Report from commissioner Savel'ev to the Council for Religious Affairs, October 22, 1974). See also ibid., d. 80, 1. 219 (Report from commissioner Savel'ev to the Mari regional party committee on the state of religiosity among women, June 16, 1967), where Savel'ev claimed that religiosity was highest among Mari women with low levels of education, giving an ethnic dimension to the association between religion and social marginality
4. Ibid., d. 470, 1. 219 (Information on the state of religiosity and control over the observance of the law on religious cults in the Gornomari district from February 28 to March 6, 1972, commissioner Savel'ev to the district committee of the CPSU).
5. GARF, f. R-6991, op. 3, d. 569, 11. 83–84 (Report from commissioner Nabatov for the first quarter of 1948, April 19, 1948).
6. GARME, f. R-836, op. 2, d. 15, 11. 84–85 (Savel'ev to the executive committee of Lenin district and the city executive committee of Joshkar-Ola, January 12, 1977).
7. GARF, f. R-6991, op. 3, d. 571, 1. 26 (Report from commissioner Nabatov for the second quarter of 1952, July 11, 1952).
8. On a comparable interest in quasi-scientific explanations of ritual efficacy among people who identify as Orthodox Christians, see Barchunova 2007; Kormina 2006; Lindquist 2006.
9. Antonov now markets his books on spiritual development on the website of the scientific-spiritual ecological center “Swami,” Saint Petersburg. See www.swami-center.org/en/text/about_us.html, accessed June 6, 2008.
10. Priglashaem k razgovoru, produced by Antonina Aleksandrova, Mari Republican Radio sound archives, Joshkar-Ola, tape 810 (April 23, 1972).