Bubik, Tomáš & Hoffman, Henryk (eds) (2015) Studying Religions with the Iron Curtain Closed and Opened: The Academic Study of Religion in Eastern Europe. Leiden, Boston: Brill. (Numen Book Series, vol. 149). - 320 p.

In the last fifteen years, historiographical analysis of the study of religion has become an independent and rather actively developed research field. Modern historiographical works, unlike the works of previous decades, not only analyze what was done by previous generations of scientists, what were their positions on important, primarily methodological, issues, etc. 1, but also understand the very purpose of historiographical research in a different way. Modern historiographers seek to examine the history of the science of religion, first of all, in the context of social history, to determine its place in the general space of humanitarian research, which was expanding and contracting under the influence of various ideological influences.

In 2001, Peter Lang published a major work, "The Academic Study of Religion during the Cold War," in which the study of religion in the second half of the twentieth century was examined through the prism of the ideological confrontation between two political systems, in which the religious factor played an important role. Along with a hundred-

The publication was prepared within the framework of the Russian Science Foundation project No. 16-18-10083 "Studying religion in the socio-cultural context of the epoch: the history of religious studies and intellectual history of Russia in the XIX-first half of the XX centuries".

1. Waardenburg, J. (1973) Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion. Aims, Methods and Theories of Research. Introduction and Anthology [Religion and Reason, 3]. Mouton; Kippenberg, H.G. (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age. Princeton University Press.

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In this collective monograph, several publications related to specific studies or individual schools that existed in Eastern Europe during the period of the Soviet ideological model were presented. These articles convincingly show that in the countries of the socialist camp, Marxism was not always the only methodological basis for the study of sacred texts, ritual practices and folk religion, for the study of personal religious experience and individual religiosity; that when engaged in anthropological research, scientists sought academic objectivity, regardless of state ideology; and compliance with the accepted ideological decorum Especially in the 1960s and 1980s, it made it possible to develop religious studies in almost all its areas (see, for example, Josef Kandert. "Ethnographic studies of religion in the era of socialism (the case of the Czech Republic)"; Dalibor Papuszek. "The Soviet School of Early Christian History and its Influence in former Czechoslovakia: the Problem of the Historicity of Christ"; Halina Grzymala-Mozhczynska. "Is ideology a problem for the psychology of religion?"; Dmitry Mikulsky. "Post-war Soviet studies of the Beliefs of the local sedentary population of Central Asia: between academic objectivity and ideological demands"; Linnart Myall. "Semiotics as an opportunity for studying religious texts in the context of communism") 2.

A peer-reviewed book "Religious Studies in Eastern Europe in the 20th Century: Texts and Context", prepared by an international team of authors consisting of Tomas Bubek (Czech Republic), Henrik Hoffmann (Poland), David Vaclavik (Slovakia), Andras Mateot and Chaba Mate Szarnyai (Hungary), Hulo Valk and Tarmo Kylmar (Estonia), Janias Priede (Latvia), Lyudmila Filippovich and Yuri Babinov (Ukraine) and Ekaterina Elbakyan (Russia) in the framework of the international project "Development of Religious Studies in Central and Eastern Europe in the XX century" (Czech Science Foundation, 2010), continues the tradition of "new historiography". The main goal of the project led by T. Bubek and X. Hoffmann,

2. Dolezalová, I., Luther, H., Papousek, D. (eds) (2001) The Academic Study of Religion during the Cold War. Peter Lang. East and West Series: Toronto Studies in Religion.

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The aim was to reconstruct the historical development of religious studies in most countries of the socialist camp (with the exception of Romania, the GDR and Yugoslavia), as well as to analyze various methodological approaches and the main scientific interests of a particular scientific school, the works of scientists who have made a significant contribution to the development of the science of religion, as well as organizational activities religious studies journals and the implementation of important research projects. The authors of the study consider religious studies as an interdisciplinary science, so the object of research was also the development of related humanities, such as history, sociology, Oriental studies, ethnology, folklore studies, psychology and philosophy, as well as Christian theology. The preface to the book says that modern scientists should not ignore the achievements and opinions of their predecessors, this helps not only to avoid "reinventing the wheel", but also protects against repeating previous mistakes. Comparative historiographical research has revealed the common features characteristic of religious studies in Eastern Europe in the 20th century: the influence of freethinking, philosophically close to positivism and evolutionism, in the 1940s and 1980s-the influence of Marxism or Christian theology (depending on the country), and the more or less ideological neutrality of academic studies of religion after the political changes of the early 1990s. It is important to note that the selection of "religious studies in Eastern Europe" as the subject of research does not imply that the science of religion in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, the Baltic States, Ukraine and Russia should be considered separately from European science as a whole.

The desire of some Russian authors to show that individual researchers of the socialist camp countries "borrowed ideas that were popular in Western science", and then on their basis made discoveries that enriched world science, is surprising, since the separation of national scientific schools does not in any way imply the existence of a gap in the unified scientific space in which ideas and ideas were created. scientific achievements exist and circulate freely, mutually enriching each other, regardless of the nationality of their creators. Moreover, these ideas were broadcast only in the last century.-

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in the traditional way - through scientific journals and participation in conferences. And if participation in international scientific events was limited (but it was in the USSR even in the 1930s, not to mention in the 1970s and 1980s), then European scientific journals on religious problems were regularly received by libraries (in the USSR - in Moscow and Leningrad), and there was an exchange of journals. However, if serious researchers from the Soviet camp countries could read in European languages, then few people read magazines published in Russian. For the sake of justice, it should be said that in recent decades, most of the publications of Russian scientists are carried out in Russian.

H. Hoffmann points out which areas of religious study were most popular in the second half of the 20th century among researchers from Eastern Europe (the origin of religion and its early forms, the origin of the Old and New Testaments, the social roots of religion and religiosity, the psychological causes of religious experience, and the theological and philosophical controversy between "faith and reason"). major controversial issues. In his opinion, the contradictions between fundamentally different methodological approaches, such as historicism and ahistorism (i.e., diachronic or synchronous analysis), reductionism and anti-reductionism, rationalism and irrationalism, are unsolvable and do not allow us to come to a single point of view. However, these antinomies were relevant for the entire world science of religion in the second half of the last century. Studying the history of religious studies in different countries of Eastern Europe, the authors show its inseparable connection with world science, demonstrate the use of research strategies common to scientists of a particular historical period, whether it is evolutionism, phenomenological direction, cultural and historical school, or Marxism as a scientific methodology. They show how, at a certain historical stage, Marxism in its Leninist-Stalinist or "Soviet" form is transformed into an ideology. Thus, the authors of the peer-reviewed publication set themselves a very ambitious task-to characterize all the achievements and difficulties of the development of religious studies as a science in the second half of the XX century in Eastern Europe and to identify new vectors of its development after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR. Project Managers

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The editors of the book T. Bubek and H. Hoffmann note that they tried to pay special attention to the study of the influence of ideology on scientific research, since it is, in their opinion, it forms the interpretation of religion in each specific period of development of religious studies. They believe that all the humanities are subject to some degree of ideologization, but religious studies is more prone to this than any other discipline. The ideologization of religious studies can be carried out in two directions: first, the history of religious studies constantly shows that it has other goals besides scientific ones, and second, most of these goals contain conscious or unconscious criticism or defense of a particular religion. the understanding of science and the humanities was materialistic, and its task was to formulate, defend, and disseminate a "scientific worldview." 3
It should be noted that the question of how much a researcher's worldview is reflected in his works on religion and how much it is possible to separate the researcher's worldview preferences from the method and nature of research chosen by him is by no means new and very significant; it became the subject of separate special consideration at the beginning of the XX century, World War II and the Declaration of Ts. This approach led to the emergence of the concept of "methodological atheism" by P. Berger, 4 and the spread of constructivism and phenomenological research.

T. Bubek and M. Hoffmann point out that science and scientists can be subjects of ideologies, and this is mainly due to the aspirations of various interest groups, or individuals, to use scientific knowledge for non-scientific purposes within the framework of political, racial, national, economic, religious or other agendas. They note that many scientists from byvshe-

3. Bubik, T., Hoffman, H. (eds) (2015) Studying Religions with the Iron Curtain Closed and Opened: The Academic Study of Religion in Eastern Europe, p. 28. Leiden, Boston: Brill.

4. Schimmel, A. (1960) "Summary of the Discussion", Numen 8: 236-237; Stroumsa, G.G. (2016) "R. J. Zwi Werblowsky: The Spark of Comparative Religion (1924-2015)", Numen 63(1): 1-5; Cantrell, M.A. (2016) "Must a Scholar of Religion Be Methodologically Atheistic or Agnostic?", Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84(2): 373-400.

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Some of the authors of the book had extensive experience with what might be called "anti-religious propaganda" or, conversely, "religious propaganda". In the light of historical analysis, as well as their own life experience, the authors argue that the ideologization of the humanities can take various forms, and can change depending on social processes and the impact of certain interests of dominant groups.

They believe that the study of religions is always ideologized to one degree or another, and this hypothesis is confirmed by the analysis of scientific activities in the field of religious studies during different historical periods, and not only in the analysis of research carried out under totalitarian regimes. When identifying the features of a particular period of development of the science of religion, it is necessary, in the authors ' opinion, to keep in mind that in addition to generational generality or common methodological grounds for studying religious phenomena, common object and subject of study, researchers could differ in belonging to completely different political camps, have different attitudes to anti-Semitism, nationalism, communism, and nationalism.-socialism, have different religious or non-religious beliefs and use different strategies for existence in the same society and state.

David Vaclavik, in his chapter on the history of religious studies in Slovakia, raises a very important issue: the interplay between the study of religious history and the search for national identity. He believes that the history of the science of religion in Slovakia is not just connected with the "search for the spirit of the people" and the study of folklore, but also with the formation of the political concept of the Slovak nation. This applies not only to the Slovak tradition. Interest in national folklore, traditional religious beliefs and practices reflects general trends associated with the growth of national identity. However, it also had its downside. Vaclavik writes about the 1930s that " as elsewhere in Europe, the racial question was widely discussed in public discussions and in the humanities, and its most extreme incarnation in the form of anti-Semitism was largely present in all countries of the region under consideration. The development of education and science was driven by the idea of "intellectual national defense" (Geistige Landesverteidigung), which

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it does not presuppose the ideological autonomy of the sciences. " 5
Unfortunately, this position is not consistently followed in all the texts presented in the peer-reviewed publication. Some authors try not only to avoid this topic, but, unfortunately, ignore important facts, focusing mainly on criticism of the communist ideology. The article devoted to religious studies in Latvia describes in detail the scientific activities of Gustav Mensching and indicates that he was forced to emigrate from Latvia to Germany. However, it is not said that Menshing was not only a German-born Riga university professor, but also a politically active figure. Mensching joined the National Socialist Party in Riga as early as 1934.6 and, according to contemporary researchers, "used all the ideological foundations of Nazism in his studies of religion, and after the war carefully removed all hints of it from later editions of his writings." 7
The book under review raises a very important question about the relationship between theology, philosophy, and religious studies. In this respect, the most remarkable, in my opinion, are the observations of Tomas Bubek, who points out that as early as 1918 Otakar Perthold, in his book "Introduction to Comparative Religious Studies", separated the science of religion from the philosophy of religion and theology. We can also read about this in Russian authors of the same period, who were engaged in comparative religious studies and anthropological studies of religion. This view was the dominant one within the framework of evolutionism that was developing at that time. T. Bubek points out that in the church circles of the Czech Republic, the academic study of religion was considered as anti-religious, but gradually the non-confessional study of religion became widespread and took a worthy place in the academic space. In the 1990s, a discussion between those who believed that between religions-

5. Bubik, T., Hoffman, H. Studying Religions with the Iron Curtain Closed and Opened: The Academic Study of Religion in Eastern Europe, p. 127.

6. Heinrich, F. (2002) Die deutsche Religionswissenschaft und der Nationalsozialismus. Eine ideologiekritische und wissen-schaftsgeschichtliche Untersuchung, ss. 329-337. Imhof, Petersberg.

7. Stausberg, M. (2007) "The study of religion(s) in Western Europe (I): Prehistory and history until World War II", Religion 37: 313; Junginger, H. (2008) The Study of Religion under the Impact of Fascism, p. 69. Leiden, Boston: Brill.

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The need to draw a line of demarcation between education and theology has become more acute, but in recent years the distinction between secular and religious studies of religion has shifted to a personal level. We have a similar situation, and I would like to hope that it will continue without going beyond the"personal level".

Of course, the book's pages devoted to Ukrainian and Russian religious studies are of particular interest, both because of their shared history and because of their closer academic contacts. It's a shame that the poor quality of the translation led to some funny things. I do not think that the authors of the article really believe that "the earliest roots of Ukrainian religious studies should be sought in Kievan Rus' "(p. 240), since further they quite rightly say that various monuments of ancient Russian literature are an important source of information about the spread of Christianity and about pre-Christian beliefs in ancient Rus', but from It follows from the text that the monks-chroniclers were researchers of religion. Translation errors led to the fact that B. Lobovik turned out to be an expert on the "gnostic nature of religious phenomena", and not on the epistemological, that is, cognitive-theoretical, causes of religious phenomena (p. 246), and to my disappointment, such examples can be cited again.

Unfortunately, the article on religious studies in Ukraine is fragmentary, either because of lack of space, or because the authors do not know enough about the history of religious studies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Describing the state of religious research in the pre-Soviet period, only N. I. Kostomarov, A. A. Potebnya, and M. P. Dragomanov were mentioned, although a huge number of works on religion were published in Kiev, Kharkiv, and Odessa from the end of the XIX century to the first quarter of the XX century, written by both theologians and philosophers, historians, and philologists. It is enough to look at such periodicals as "Kiev University News", "Proceedings of the Kiev Theological Academy", "Notes of the Imperial Novorossiysk University", "Notes of the Imperial Kharkiv University" to understand the breadth of coverage of problem fields and the variety of approaches. The absence of even mentioning the names of academicians M. S. Grushevsky, A. E. Krymsky, and D. I. Yavornitsky, who had significant works on the history of religion and religious thought, is strange.

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Unfortunately, the Soviet-era religious studies that existed in the Ukrainian SSR are also fragmentary. So, based on this article, one gets the impression that the problems of Judaism and biblical studies did not interest Ukrainian researchers at all, because not a word is said about this direction of studying religion in the article. Although recently a PhD thesis was defended in Kiev, which analyzes in detail the works on Judaism published in the Soviet period and acute discussions on this problem.8 Ukrainian religious studies is actively developing, only in 2014-2015, about 200 candidate and doctoral theses related to the study of religion were defended in historical, philosophical and political sciences, but there are no names and works of Ukrainian religious researchers who have entered science in the last twenty years.

E. Elbakyan, on the contrary, in his article on the history of religious studies in Russia, pays great attention to the challenges facing modern Russian religious studies, objectively describing the current situation. The whole article is made in the same vein as the author's previous publications on this topic.: It is a historiographical survey that focuses primarily on the works of Soviet philosophers of the 1950s and 1980s who wrote on the problems of religion and atheism. The desire to list as many philosophical authors as possible from Pashkov to Borunkov and from Andrianov to Lebedev and Kalashnikov (?) it might be appreciated if the author had enough space for even a brief description of serious historical and anthropological works - at least those whose titles she indicates. Of course, works on religious rituals and mythology written within the framework of the Tartu-Moscow school, works on medieval folk culture, religious art, calendar rituals, and so on deserved special consideration., that is, those religious studies that formally do not fall into this category due to the affiliation of their authors, but are essentially scientific works that have made a significant contribution to the science of religion.

Not to reproach the author of this article, I want to note that for a long time

8. См. Басаурі Зюзіна А.-М. Становлення та розвиток сучасної удейської теологічної освіти. Дисертація канд. філос. наук (09.00.11 - релігієзнавство), Нац. ped. im. M. P. Dragomanov University. Київ, 2014. 200 стр.

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It is time for us to move from listing the works published in the Soviet era to analyzing their content or reviewing the scientific discussions that took place in Soviet literature. Some of them are also of some interest to the modern reader; in any case, they destroy the myth of dogmatism and methodological uniformity inherent in Soviet-era research. Among them, in addition to some of the discussions of the 1920s, which I have already written about, we can single out the discussion of the 1970s on the origin of religion and the so-called "non-religious period", on the "Asian mode of production", on the "missing link", on the "origin of feudalism in Russia" in the context of its Christianization and development. etc. But this is already out of the realm of suggestions for further research.

It would be great if the book under review was translated into Russian and made available to the Russian reader, especially since the works of C. Loukotka, A. Nemoevsky, A. Novitsky, I. Trenceni-Waldapfel, K. Kerenyi are well known in Russia.

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