Studies on the religion of the ancient Slavs: an experience of periodisation

Abstract

The article proposes a new periodization of the studies on the ancient religion of the Slavs from the earliest scientific research to the present day, structured in four phases. The period of the birth of Slavic philology (Dobrovský, Šafarik) is followed by that of comparative mythology, marked by romantic trends and in particular by the reworking of Grimm's concepts (Buslaev, Afanas'ev, Potebnja). The following period, which constitutes a synthesis of the previous ones and at the same time a reaction to the excesses of the mythological school, is in turn divided into three parts: the first presents the internationalisation of the debate that took place after the 1860s (the figures of Jagić and Veselovsky are especially important); the second describes the formation of the history of religions as a science, which led to the most important studies on the subject (Niederle, Brückner, Mansikka, Gal'kovskij, Aničkov); the third part is devoted to the decadence of studies in the second quarter of the 20th century, due to changing political and cultural conditions in Europe (particular attention is paid to Propp and Jakobson). The fourth period focuses on the trends of the second half of the 20th century, including the return to mythologism (Gieysztor, Ivanov and Toporov), ethnolinguistics (Tolstoy) and others (Rybakov, Łowmiański, Gasparini). Despite the interest of some of the more recent theories, the author calls for overcoming the current crisis in studies on the subject by recovering the results of the third period, which has been unjustly underestimated by the majority of recent scholars.