Dvoeverie – The Slavic Double Faith

*This article is an excerpt from "The Three Golden Hairs: Slavic & Germanic Myth in Czech Folklore," European Fairy Tales Series​ Vol VI.

"Firebird and Princess Vasilisa" artist unknown

​I argue quite strongly that the phenomenon of holding a hybrid form of religion occurred clear across Northern Europe, from Britain clear to Russia. However, the manifestation of it occurred much more strongly in Slavic lands than elsewhere. In fact, the ancient faith of the Slavs was so overtly prominently practiced by the peasantry that the Slavs began to be referred to as the people of two faiths. Dvoeverie is a Russian word that is typically translated as “dual belief” or “double faith.”

Social Circumstances Kept Slavs More Culturally Isolated

​Unfortunately for English speakers interested in Slavic groups other than Russian, the vast bulk of material available in English only covers Russian culture, especially as it pertains to mythology and folklore.

However, as mentioned above, the slow nature of the separation of Slavonic languages means that Slavic mythology likely retained a strong continuity between various Slavic language speakers. Therefore, studying scholarship on Russian folklore will still help us understand lore and practices of other Slavic groups.

​There are other similarities between the different Slavic groups that allowed them to remain both closely related and tied closely to their indigenous folkways. One important factor is that most of the Slavic lands remained quite rural and agrarian based, so they were less abruptly affected by the kind of urbanization elicited by the Industrial Revolution in the West. 

Illustration for "Copper Mountain Hostess" by Russian writer Pavel Bazhov. artist Vyacheslav Nazaruk

​In addition, the Slavic nations remained strongly Orthodox in the East and Catholic in the West (Poland, Bohemia), and so they were not affected by the purge on native practices that was brought with the Protestant Reformation in the West. It is also worth mentioning that the Renaissance was a decidedly Western phenomenon. So, we can see that most of the Slavic people were insulated from several movements that shook things up in Western Europe.

​We are so removed from these events today that we may not immediately understand their cultural ramifications.

Urbanization drastically reduced the rural peasant population in Western nations, which had an eroding effect on the preservation of rural folk customs.

Prior to that, the Protestant Reformation attacked not only Roman Catholicism, but also all of the indigenous European beliefs and practices that had been allowed to continue to flourish under the Catholic Church.

​While native European belief did certainly live on after those events, it certainly took quite a hit by both social movements

Illustration for "Copper Mountain Hostess" by Russian writer Pavel Bazhov. artist Vyacheslav Nazaruk

​Lastly, the role that the U.S.S.R. played in preserving Slavic culture also must be emphasized. Much has been said about communist attacks on religion, how it promoted atheism, and pushed homogenized thought upon its people. This is all true. However, the other thing that Soviet rule did is wall the Slavs off from Western cultural influence. 

Without foreign mass media breaking through to lure people away from their culture, the Soviet Union essentially placed Slavic people in a time capsule for several decades. 
​
​While religion was frowned upon under Soviet rule, nationalism was encouraged. Fairy and folk tales seemed innocuous enough to communist leaders, so they were not suppressed in the same way that Christianity was.

In fact, fairy and folk tales served as a vehicle by which Russian and other Slavic writers and artists could express themselves during an age when self-expression was severely limited.

​So, therefore, the magical realm of fairy tales and folklore continued to flourish and inspire ballets, film, artwork, and literature.

Art by Nikolai Kochergin

The Folklore Boom Allowed for the Study of Russian Peasants

​The period when this double faith was especially noted was during the period of folklore collecting in the late 19th century. The field of folklore boomed throughout Europe at this time. Though there had been some examples of earlier collecting of folk belief in the West, there was no field of study dedicated to it until the Romantic Era of the 19th century influenced a boom of interest in folk tradition and European native culture. The folklore craze moved into Russia a little later than elsewhere, but soon enough folklorists could be found in the field collecting peasants’ tales in the same way that the Grimm brothers had done in Germany.

Art by Boris Olshansky

​It has been noted that virtually every ethnographic study of Russian peasant belief made a point to acknowledge the strong presence of paganism in the daily life and beliefs of the common folk. One researcher commented that one thousand years of Christianity had only penetrated the Slavic consciousness superficially, while their indigenous paganism comprised the deep roots of Slavic daily life and belief. 

​Yet another researcher found himself recording folklore from a rural Russian fellow who claimed to have never before heard of Jesus Christ!

The notes record that he had heard something about God from his parents but, no, nothing about Christ.

What this demonstrates is that in very remote and rural areas of Russia into the late 19th and probably early 20th century, there were still peasants who had never been converted to Christianity and were still practicing a form of native faith.

​And in fact, we know that there are still some groups in Russia today who still have not converted, most notably the Mari El people, known as “Europe’s last pagans.”

Maria the White Swan, by Sergei Solomko 1917

​That example is extreme, and it does not seem to speak for the majority of Slavic peasants. But, it is worth noting as it speaks to how much more slowly belief changes trickled out into the vast remote areas in Slavic lands as opposed to the smaller and more urban-industrialized Western nations. And, researchers who noted that their Slavic subjects did attend church regularly made sure to note that their research subjects were Christian on Sundays but returned to their pagan ways as soon as they returned home.

"The Russian Princess" by Charles Robinson, 1913

The Merging of Paganism with Christianity

​In addition to belief about nature spirits, rituals (sometimes lingering as superstitions), tales, and other ways that native belief carried on among the peasantry, a great deal of pagan imagery remained a constant within Slavic folk art. Images and symbols traced back to ancient pagan gods are still common motifs in Slavic folk crafts.

"Ivan Tsarevich and the Grey Wolf" by V. Vasnetsov

​The phenomenon of pagan deities being transformed into Christian saints is observed clear across Europe. But, as mentioned above, the Slavs did not experience a Protestant Reformation to wash away their cult of saints. So whether Catholic or Orthodox, the pantheon of Christian saints was yet one more way in which the attributes of pagan deities could carry on in the Slavic folk consciousness in a way that died off in northwestern Protestant Europe.

​One point that speaks volumes is that when scholars look at recorded sermons from the time of conversion to Christianity (roughly the 10th century, varying by locale) and then compare them to the notes made by ethnographers recording folk traditions in the late 19th and early 20th century, they find many of the exact same practices that Christian priests rallied against at the pulpit were still being practiced by Slavic peasants a good millennium later. 

​In some of my other work, I have pointed out that one source of information to understand native European practices that have since died out is to look at church sermons, papal bulls and edicts, and other Church communications written closely to the time of conversion.

"For the peace of" by V. Rassohin - Depicting a Orthodox Russian Ritual

 In my article, “The Hidden History of Christmas Carols,” I mentioned that one piece of evidence for the tradition of Christmas caroling having a pagan origin (although only Christian carols survive today) is that there is written documentation very close to the period of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons that rallies against the practice, and that the Church actually tried to ban it.

​So that certain practices described in Church sermons from the point of nominal conversion were still being practiced by Slavic peasants a good one thousand years later speaks volumes about the notion of a living dual-faith that carried on unbroken.

Art by Konstantin Vasiliev

The Three Golden Hairs: Slavic & Germanic Myth in Czech Folklore 

This piece has been excerpted from Volume VI in the European Fairy Tales Series, "The Three Golden Hairs: Slavic & Germanic Myth in Czech Folklore ."

Each volume explores some of the deeper cultural elements found within the tale followed by a re-telling of the story. 

​Explore the series and download Volume I for FREE here!

​​My name is Carolyn Emerick, and I write on the history, myth, and folklore of Northwestern Europe. 

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