conspiracy theories

The Spiritual Version of History as Discursive Order of Political Eschatology: Theology of Ritual in Contemporary Orthodox Historiosophy and Conspirology

The article examines methods of argumentation used for constructing eschatological historical narratives in the discursive field of Russian Orthodoxy. The main presupposition of the analysis is that the essential discursive claim of a religion which has to exist and survive in secular society is that a religious person and especially religious expert can and even must see the deep meaning of historical events, which is not accessible for non‑religious individuals.

VseiaSvetnaia Gramota: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Utopian Comparative Studies

Post‑Soviet cultural landscape is characterized by considerable popularity of nationalistic ideas and narratives applying conspiratorial explanatory models and suggesting various versions of “alternative history”, which are framed, in particular, within amateur concepts of language — a sort of cryptolinguistics. This discourse is illustrated here with the case of the so‑called “Vseiasviatnaia gramota” (“World‑ wide Writing”), a teaching, according to which an esoteric Slavic alphabet “encodes” the entire universe.