This is an introduction to the current special issue that follows up a seminar addressing one of the popular concepts in today’s anthropology of religion — Webb Keane’s concept of “semiotic ideologies.” This approach, in contrast to traditional semiotics, problematizes not the process of denotation and deciphering as such but rather the explicit representations implied with this process. Keane’s concept also suggests that the semiotic activity possesses certain social and historical specificities, and the task of an anthropologist is to discern and study local semiotic models. The authors introduce the papers applying this approach to various religious cultures of Russia’s recent past and present.