The Return of Ancestral Gods: Modern Ukrainian Paganism as an Alternative Vision for a Nation

The Return of Ancestral Gods: Modern Ukrainian Paganism as an Alternative Vision for a Nation. By Mariya Lesiv. (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2013. Pp. xii + 221, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, notes, bibliography, index. $65.00 cloth.)Mariya Lesiv has made a fine and very timely contribution to our understanding of the mechanisms, motivations, and aesthetics behind facets of the Ukranian Pagan movement, which has been developing since the 1930s right alongside more highprofile Paganisms elsewhere in the world. Many studies of modern Paganism, particularly within the political context of the United States, focus on the relationship between developing Paganisms and the countercultural milieu of the 1960s and 1970s. Lesiv's research provides an important corrective by concentrating on the other history of modern Paganisms, particularly those originating from Central and Eastern Europe, which frequently emerged as a response to communism and the secularizing attempts at cultural homogenization that those political ideologies championed. Unlike their counterparts in the United States, these Paganisms are frequently linked with a particular nationalist consciousness and are also ideologically charged with nativism, notions of cultural and racial purity harkening back to an imagined golden age of cultural pride and flowering. In some cases, they can be linked to historical Fascism or neo-fascist sentiments. While these Paganisms might be considered by many to be more right-wing in sentiment, they provide an interesting opportunity for a comparison of ideological frameworks shared by a number of types of modern Paganisms across the political spectmm. Antimodem aesthetics, cultural revival, and emphasis on expressive culture, authenticity, and tradition are centrally recurring themes. Naturally, these themes sit at the heart of folkloristic theory and practice.In Return of Ancestral Gods, Lesiv provides a useful case study of the development of Ukranian Paganisms against the backdrop of the changing political climate of her home country, first as a resistance to Soviet Communism and then as part of Ukraine's postCommunist struggle to forge a strong, independent identity and secure economic and political stability. The book concentrates primarily on three different contemporary Pagan groups within Ukraine and the Ukrainian Diaspora: RUNVira, Native Faith, and Ancestral Fire. Lesiv explores their origins, practices, and aesthetic sensibilities, as well as the ways in which they view nationhood and their own relationship to history, as they interpret historical and ethnographic documents to justify their practices and to create ritual. Lesiv also includes in her study branches of these communities that have been relatively long established in the United States and Canada, which provides fascinating insight not only into some aspects of the Ukranian diaspora, but also into long-standing forms of North American Paganism that have received relatively little scholarly attention. …

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