ABSTRACT
Based on oral history interviews, this chapter examines youth religiosity among Russian Orthodox converts in the 1970s–1980s. Born for the most part in non-religious families or having turned away from religion in their school years, many young people with higher education found faith and turned to Russian Orthodoxy during this period. They had come to regard Communist ideology as an empty shell, with a performative dimension emptied of any content, and they searched for new life meaning, holistic world conceptions, and identities. Despite the authorities’ measures to stem youth religiosity, the lack of available religious literature, and the ban on religious teaching, young converts went to great lengths to gain religious knowledge and find masters and teachers. This chapter argues that the new converts created a kind of “parallel polis” not only within society but also largely within the Russian Orthodox Church. Three dimensions of this phenomenon are examined: the circulation of religious samizdat and tamizdat (literature imported from the West); the creation of underground religious seminars and Bible study and prayer circles; and the visit of monasteries and contacts with venerable monks, the startsy.
