apocalypse

“Let Your Lamps Be Ready”: Individual Destiny and Collective Identity in Eschatological Perspective (the Case of the Moscow Spiritist Circle)

The aim of this study is to highlight the links between eschatological ideas and social/ethical beliefs of the Moscow spiritist circle who viewed their fellowship as a religious eschatological community. Eschatological doctrine of the group could be characterized both as “catastrophic” and “progressive” millennialism. Eschatological social project suggested the elimination of the border between the earthly and heavenly realms and a shift towards egalitarian social model through a total renewal of the present world.

Microhistory of the Failed Apocalypse: The Village of Podavikha and Its Inhabitants in August–December 1932

This article provides a phenomenological interpretation of the eschatological experience of the participants in the movement that captured the Kungur and Ordinsky districts of what is now Perm Territory in the second half of 1932. Its center was the small village of Podavikha. During the movement’s liquidation by the the OGPU, the leadership and parish clergy of Kungur eparchy were unsure of their position in relation to what had happened. Someone put the name “Ivanovskaya secta” into circulation, after the movement’s spiritual leader, Protopriest Ivan Kotelnikov.