Bartlett, R., ed. (1990). Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Mironov, Boris, and Eklof, Ben. (2000). A Social History of Imperial Russia, 1700-1917. Boulder, CO: West- view.
Occult books of fortune-telling, dreams, spells, astrology, and speculative mysticism entered medieval Russia as translations of Greek, Byzantine, European, Arabic, and Persian “secret books.” Their prohibition by the Council of a Hundred Chapters (Stoglav) in 1551 enhanced rather than diminished their popularity, and many have circulated into our own day.
The Age of Reason did not extirpate Russia’s occult interests. During the eighteenth century more than 100 occult books were printed, mostly translations of European alchemical, mystical, Masonic, Rosicrucian, and oriental wisdom texts. Many were published by the author and Freemason Nikolai Novikov.
As the nineteenth century began, Tsar Alexander I encouraged Swedenborgians, Freemasons, mystical sectarians, and the questionable “Bible Society,” before suddenly banning occult books and secret societies in 1822. The autocracy and the church countered the occultism and supernatural-ism of German Romanticism with an increasingly restrictive system of church censorship, viewing the occult as “spiritual sedition.”
Nevertheless, Spiritualism managed to penetrate Russia in the late 1850s, introduced by Count Grigory Kushelev-Bezborodko, a friend of Daniel Dunglas Home (1833-1886), the famous medium who gave seances for the court of Alexander II. Their coterie included the writers and philosophers Alexei Tolstoy, Vladimir Soloviev, Vladimir Dal, Alexander Aksakov, and faculty from Moscow and St. Petersburg Universities.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Russia, like Europe, experienced the French “Occult Revival,” a reaction against prevailing scientific positivism. Spiritualism, theosophy, hermeticism, mystery cults, and Freemasonry attracted the interest of upper- and middle-class Russian society and configured decadence and symbolism in the arts.
Theosophy, founded in New York in 1875 by Russian expatriate Elena Blavatsky (1831-1891), was a pseudo- religious, neo-Buddhist movement that claimed to be a “synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy.” It appealed to the god-seeking Russian intelligentsia (including, at various times, Vladimir Soloviev, Max Voloshin, Konstantin Bal-mont, Alexander Skryabin, Maxim Gorky). A Christianized, Western form of theosophy, Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy, attracted the intellectuals Andrey Bely, Nikolai Berdyayev, and Vyacheslav Ivanov.
Russian Freemasonry revived at the end of the nineteenth century. Masons, Martinists, and Rosi-crucians preceded the mystical sectarian Grigory Rasputin (1872-1916) as “friends” to the court of Tsar Nicholas II. After the Revolution of 1905-1906, Russian Freemasonry became increasingly politicized, eventually playing a role in the events of 1916-1917.
The least documented of Russia’s occult movements was the elitist hermeticism (loosely including philosophical alchemy, gnosticism, kabbalism, mystical Freemasonry, and magic), heir of the Occult Revival. Finally, sensational (or “boulevard”) mysticism was popular among all classes: magic, astrology, Tarot, fortune-telling, dream interpretation, chiromancy, phrenology, witchcraft, hypnotism.
More than forty occult journals and papers and eight hundred books on occultism appeared in Russia between 1881 and 1922, most of them after the censorship-easing Manifesto of October 17, 1905. After the Bolshevik coup, occult societies were proscribed. All were closed by official decree in 1922; in the 1930s those members who had not emigrated or ceased activity were arrested.
In the Soviet Union, occultists and ekstra-sensy existed underground (and occasionally within in the Kremlin walls). The post-1991 period saw the return of theosophy and anthroposophy, shaman1083
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ism, Buddhism, Hare Krishnas, Roerich cults, neo-paganism, the White Brotherhood, UFOlogy, and other occult trends. See also: FREEMASONRY; PAGANSIM; RELIGION
Carlson, Maria. (1993). “No Religion Higher Than Truth”: A History of the Theosophical Movement in Russia, 1875-1922. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer, ed. (1997). The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
During the October 1993 events, Boris Yeltsin’s forcible dissolution of parliament took Russia to the edge of civil war. Seen as decisive and essential by his supporters, the dissolution was a radically divisive action, the consequences of which continued to reverberate through Russian society in the early twenty-first century.
In 1992 and 1993 a deep divide developed between the executive and legislative branches of government. The root cause of this was President Yeltsin’s decision to adopt a radical economic reform strategy, urged on him by the West, for which he and his government were not able to generate sustained parliamentary support. Faced with resistance from the legislators, Yeltsin made only minimal concessions and on most issues chose to confront them. This subjected Russia’s new political and judicial institutions to strains that they could not adequately handle. In addition, the confrontation became highly personalized, with the principal figures forcefully manipulating institutions to benefit themselves and their causes.
Apart from Yeltsin, key individuals on the executive side of the confrontation were Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais. They were the ministers most responsible for launching and implementing the radical economic reforms known as shock therapy. Leading the majority in parliament was its speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov, a former ally of Yeltsin and an inexperienced and manipulative politician of high ambition. Over time, he was increasingly joined by Yeltsin’s similarly ambitious and inexperienced vice-president, former air force general Alexander Rutskoi.
On March 20, 1993, Yeltsin made a first attempt to rid himself of parliament’s opposition. Declaring the imposition of emergency rule, he said that henceforth no decisions of the legislature that negated decrees from the executive branch would have juridical force. However, the Constitutional Court ruled his action unconstitutional, some of his ministers declined to back him, and the parliament came close to impeaching him. Yeltsin backed off.
At this time, Khasbulatov and the Constitutional Court’s chairman, Valery Zorkin, separately sought to engage Yeltsin in a compromise resolution of the “dual power” conflict. The proposed basis was the so-called zero option. The centerpiece of this approach was simultaneous early elections to both the presidency and the parliament. However, Yeltsin had no desire to share power sub-stantively, even with a newly elected parliament.
In taking this stance, he sought and obtained the support of Western governments by repeatedly inflating the negligible threat of a communist revanche. He also got some qualified backing from the Russian public, when an April 1993 referendum showed that a small majority of the population trusted him, and an even smaller majority approved of his socioeconomic policies.
On September 21, Yeltsin announced that to resolve the grave political crisis he had signed decree 1400, which annulled the powers of the legislature. Elections would be held on December 12 for a parliament of a new type. And the same day a referendum would be held on a completely new constitution.
In response, the Supreme Soviet immediately voted to impeach Yeltsin and, in accordance with the constitution, to install Vice President Alexander Rutskoi as acting president. Rutskoi proceeded to annul decree 1400 (whereupon Yeltsin annulled Rutskoi’s decree) and precipitously appointed senior ministers of nationalist and communist views to his own government, thus alienating many centrists. On September 23, with pro-government deputies boycotting the proceedings, the congress confirmed Yeltsin’s impeachment by a vote of 636 to 2.
The next ten days were occupied by a war of words between the rival governments, as they
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Pro-Yeltsin soldiers watch the Soviet parliament building as it burns. © PETER TURNLEY/CORBIS sought to build support around Russia, and by official acts of harassment, like switching off the electricity in the parliament’s building, known as “the White House.” Although most Russians remained passive, adopting the attitude “a plague on both your houses,” small groups demonstrated for one or the other camp, or sent messages. According to Yeltsin’s government, 70 percent of the regional soviets supported the parliament. From five locations around Moscow, Kremlin representatives solicited visits from wavering deputies and offered them-if they would change
