ABSTRACT
The eschatological motifs reflected in the texts of contemporary church culture have developed on the basis of a number of sources. First, at a superficial level, they express how popular consciousness experiences the realia of today. Images of disaster can reflect collective fears, including the threat of war. Second, they inherit concepts derived from a specifically Russian religious tradition. For example, the idea of a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy has changed little from that characterising church culture in the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Thirdly, these motifs are closely associated with the apocalyptic tradition common to all Christianity, which is based on the church fathers’ exegesis of the images of the Apocalypse, as well as on apocryphal works. Lastly, they reflect the universal mythological representations which are manifest in various traditions, taking into account cultural and national specificities. Apart from this, representations of the end of the world exist closely interwoven with other mythological concepts: mysticism, demonology, rumours and gossip, quasi-scientific concepts, literary motifs, and so on and so forth.
