Preface

On the evening of January 18, 2006, over tea between vespers and the midnight mass in honor of the feast of the Baptism of Christ, the Russian Orthodox priest of one of Marij El’s district centers questioned the German-born anthropologist about her views on intellectual influence. “You have probably read all three volumes of Capital, in the original?” Some of it, I cautiously admitted. “Do you think Marx wrote it himself?” I supposed so. “And I tell you, it was Satan who wrote it through his hand.” I made a feeble defense in the name of secular interpretation, saying that it seemed safer to assume that human authors were capable of their own errors, but could not always foresee the full consequences of their ideas. The priest remained unimpressed, but was otherwise kind enough to sound almost apologetic when he reminded me that, as a non-Orthodox Christian, I had to leave the church after the prayers for the catechumens, at the beginning of the liturgy of communion. Most priests in larger cities were quick to relegate that rule to ancient liturgical custom, but the rarer that actual appearances of heterodox visitors were in a church, the more literally clergy seemed to take it. During this particular mass, the dismissal of the uninitiated would come around 2 a.m., and since it was thirty below outside, the priest gave me permission to sit on a bench at the back of the church instead of actually leaving the building, and told me to be sure to stay for tea and breakfast after the service.

Among the many debts I incurred while writing this book, I am most thankful to the hosts who were honest about the suspicions that my eclectic interests raised in them but almost invariably willing to go a little further in their hospitality than their understanding of duty allowed. In a no less welcome contrast, archivists in Joshkar-Ola, Moscow, and Saint Petersburg provided professional help and respite from the opinionated worlds of religious and anti-religious activism. My special thanks go to Valentina Pavlovna Shomina and Valentina Ivanovna Orekhovskaja at the State Archives of the Republic of Marij El, Dina Nikolaevna Nokhotovich and Ljudmila Gennad'evna Kiseleva at the State Archives of the Russian Federation, and Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Terjukova, Petr Fedotov, and Elena Denisova of the State Museum of the History of Religion. In two of Marij El’s district museums, Galina Nikolaevna Novikova (Novyj Tor"jal) and Galina Evgen'evna Selëdkina (Sovetskij) provided both work space and warmhearted hospitality, a combination for which I am doubly grateful.

A number of people and institutions facilitated my entry into the religious and social life of the Volga region. If the Bosch Foundation had not sent me to Mari State University as an instructor of German in 2000–2001, I might never have heard of the Republic of Marij El. Subsequent visits were made possible by reliable visa support from the International Office of Mari State University, in particular its director, Alexey Fominykh, and the vice rector for international relations, Andrey Andreevich Yarygin. Among local specialists in problems of religion and atheism, Nikandr Semënovich Popov and Viktor Stepanovich Solov'ev gave generously of their time and insights. Writer-folklorist-filmmaker Marina Kopylova shared the contents of her address book as generously as those of her fridge, and facilitated a wealth of initial contacts. Svetlana and Veronika Semënovy and Svetlana Algaeva assisted me in transcribing and translating Mari-language recordings. In a friendship that goes back long before my first trip to Marij El, Olga Nyrkova and, more recently, Andrey Nyrkov (Moscow) taught me how to move through Russian Orthodox services, and they continue to improve my understanding of what goes on there.

Financially, my research travel was made possible by grants from the German Academic Exchange Service, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and various institutions at the University of Michigan: the International Institute, the Center for Russian and East European Studies, the Department of Anthropology, and the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History. Crucial support for periods of writing came from a Humanities Research Candidacy Fellowship (Rackham Graduate School, University of Michigan), a Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship (Woodrow Wilson Foundation), an SSRC Eurasia Program Fellowship (with Title VIII funds provided by the U.S. State Department), and an Izaak Walton Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of British Columbia.

Intellectually, this book owes much to the vibrant community of the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History at the University of Michigan, and especially to the students and faculty in the 2003 installment of the core seminar: Dan Birchok, Dong Ju Kim, Ken Maclean, Oana Mateescu, Kate McClellan, Ed Murphy, Eric Stein, Nancy Hunt, and Ann Stoler. My dissertation committee, Alaina Lemon, Webb Keane, Douglas Northrop, and William Rosenberg, made a perfect team for all occasions, and I am grateful for their presence in these pages.

Heather Coleman and Bruce Grant were generously non-anonymous readers for Indiana University Press. Their enthusiasm, doubts, and practical suggestions helped to make this a better book, as did the wise editing of Rebecca Tolen and Merryl Sloane’s thoughtful copyediting. For asking questions that stayed in my mind while writing, I also thank Danna Agmon, Michael Bergmann, Frank Cody, David William Cohen, Susanne Cohen, Maria Couroucli, Victoria Frede, Kate Graber, Chris Hann, Stephen Headley, Angie Heo, Paul Christopher Johnson, Sergei Kan, John Kelly, Valerie Kivelson, Julia Klimova, Jeanne Kormina, Michael Lambek, Ritty Lukose, Andrea Muehlebach, Vlad Naumescu, David Pedersen, Brian Porter-Szcs, Justine Buck Quijada, Joel Robbins, Daromir Rudnyckyj, Danilyn Rutherford, Sergey Shtyrkov, Michael Silverstein, Ron Suny, Nikolai Vakhtin, Katherine Verdery, Ilya Vinkovetsky, and Mayfair Yang. Doug Rogers has been a source of many stimulating conversations on things religious in Russia, and provided much collegial aid. Rudolf Mrázek was a good spirit who always appeared at the right moment, and Christian Feest set high standards for a scholarship that takes itself seriously at all stages, from research to publication. At the University of British Columbia, I am grateful to Alexia Bloch, John Barker, Julie Cruikshank, Anne Gorsuch, and the members of the Eurasia reading group for a congenial writing home.

Parts of this book were published earlier in different form, and I thank the publishers for permission to reprint them here. Materials from chapter 2 appeared as “On the Importance of Having a Method, or What Does Archival Work on Soviet Atheism Have to Do with Ethnography of Post-Soviet Religion?” in Anthrohistory: Unsettling Knowledge and the Question of Disciplines, edited by Edward Murphy et al. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011). Materials from chapter 5 appeared as “A Dual Struggle of Images on Russia’s Middle Volga: Icon Veneration in the Face of Protestant and Pagan Critique,” in Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective, edited by Chris Hann and Hermann Goltz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).

For making clear that practicing a religion involves the courage to live with difficult questions, I owe thanks to my parents, Renate and Dieter Lührmann, and to the communities of Lord of Light Lutheran Church (Ann Arbor) and Christ Church Cathedral (Vancouver). Silke Lührmann and the other significant atheists in my life remind me that, as Soviet sociologists well knew, it is very difficult to say what difference religiosity or areligiosity actually makes. Jona, Philipp, and Vera set effective deadlines for various stages of writing, and Philipp also made excellent company on a wrap-up visit to Marij El in September 2008. Thanks to big brother Fyodor for patience and good humor, and most of all, to Ilya Vinkovetsky for a life that has room for all of this.