WI: Slavic Pagan Russia?

Not necessarily, but "not giving up" is not the same as "wins in the end".

To be honest I just think it's the fact that this board likely has so many Christian members, or members who come from Christian backgrounds, that they simply cannot conceive of a world where their faith actually fails. If you're raised to believe that the spread of Christianity or Islam or whatever else into every corner of the world was "God's Will" then perhaps you would think it was pre-determined by some greater spiritual power, but in reality the spread of the Abrahamic religions was as much politics and power as anything else.

Pagan Rus has the potential to be huge. Yes, there are other factors to contend with (horselords from the east, for one), but I don't think it's fair to discount the topic of continued Pagan rule based on the flimsy assumption that all of the western world was destined to be Christian.

Forgive me if I seem especially butthurt by this, but recently I've started noticing patterns in the way things are discussed on the board and it's becoming rather frustrating.

There is no guarantee of winning against Pagan Russia. I have to confess that first. But I see some issues why it is harder for a reformed Pagan Russia to survive than for example... Zoroastrian Persia.

I also understand your frustration. Some members are influenced by their nationality or religion or even ideology that makes them think it unacceptable that something goes against their will.
 
Not necessarily, but "not giving up" is not the same as "wins in the end".

To be honest I just think it's the fact that this board likely has so many Christian members, or members who come from Christian backgrounds, that they simply cannot conceive of a world where their faith actually fails. If you're raised to believe that the spread of Christianity or Islam or whatever else into every corner of the world was "God's Will" then perhaps you would think it was pre-determined by some greater spiritual power, but in reality the spread of the Abrahamic religions was as much politics and power as anything else.

Pagan Rus has the potential to be huge. Yes, there are other factors to contend with (horselords from the east, for one), but I don't think it's fair to discount the topic of continued Pagan rule based on the flimsy assumption that all of the western world was destined to be Christian.

Forgive me if I seem especially butthurt by this, but recently I've started noticing patterns in the way things are discussed on the board and it's becoming rather frustrating.
This is honestly the worst way to attack your opponents opinions or making a fuss out of nothing.

We are not talking about Christian determinism in the 4th or 5th century, we are talking about Christianity in the 9th century, a time when it already controlled Europe West and South of a line running from the Elbe to Thrace and controlled the vast majority of the population and wealth, political and economic.

It's not about destiny, it's about a clear global pattern that shows countries converting to institutionalized faiths even without outright imposition, I'm not myself a believer that this trend is deterministic but the argument is far too strong to be derided and discarded this way.
 
This is honestly the worst way to attack your opponents opinions or making a fuss out of nothing.

We are not talking about Christian determinism in the 4th or 5th century, we are talking about Christianity in the 9th century, a time when it already controlled Europe West and South of a line running from the Elbe to Thrace and controlled the vast majority of the population and wealth, political and economic.

It's not about destiny, it's about a clear global pattern that shows countries converting to institutionalized faiths even without outright imposition, I'm not myself a believe that this trend is deterministic but the argument is far too strong to be derided this way.

But even if you stipulate that the conversion of the entirety of Europe was almost inevitable (which I am not sure that I agree with, but again, I am just stipulating the point), even a world where Russia avoids Christianization for merely another century or two would lead to some massive butterflies, in the same way that a world where Russia accepted Christianity a century or so earlier would have also been a massive change.

Even if the broad trends are almost inevitable, people often seem to cite them as a way to dismiss the question, rather than reasoning through how even slightly different circumstances could have led to a very different world. I think that is why people sometimes get frustrated.
 
But even if you stipulate that the conversion of the entirety of Europe was almost inevitable (which I am not sure that I agree with, but again, I am just stipulating the point), even a world where Russia avoids Christianization for merely another century or two would lead to some massive butterflies, in the same way that a world where Russia accepted Christianity a century or so earlier would have also been a massive change.

Even if the broad trends are almost inevitable, people often seem to cite them as a way to dismiss the question, rather than reasoning through how even slightly different circumstances could have led to a very different world. I think that is why people sometimes get frustrated.

I couldn't agree more!
 
But even if you stipulate that the conversion of the entirety of Europe was almost inevitable (which I am not sure that I agree with, but again, I am just stipulating the point), even a world where Russia avoids Christianization for merely another century or two would lead to some massive butterflies, in the same way that a world where Russia accepted Christianity a century or so earlier would have also been a massive change.

Even if the broad trends are almost inevitable, people often seem to cite them as a way to dismiss the question, rather than reasoning through how even slightly different circumstances could have led to a very different world. I think that is why people sometimes get frustrated.
Sure but we need to explain why that wouldn't happen and the development of the trend should be analyzed, not dismissed for the sake of the the question.
 
But even if you stipulate that the conversion of the entirety of Europe was almost inevitable (which I am not sure that I agree with, but again, I am just stipulating the point), even a world where Russia avoids Christianization for merely another century or two would lead to some massive butterflies, in the same way that a world where Russia accepted Christianity a century or so earlier would have also been a massive change.

Even if the broad trends are almost inevitable, people often seem to cite them as a way to dismiss the question, rather than reasoning through how even slightly different circumstances could have led to a very different world. I think that is why people sometimes get frustrated.

Thank you - you've said it far better than i could have.
 
Weaker christianity with Greece abandoning christianity after the 717 siege of Constaninople, this is the scenario from Broken Cross.
 
It would be an interesting thing to see I should think. Maybe recognizable, maybe not, who can say.

I guess the question is do we know enough about Russian-flavored Slavic paganism to discuss it?
 
Honestly, this topic comes up often enough (either the Slavs or more commonly the Norse) and discussion is usually stifled by a severe case of Christian Determinism.

"Pagan faiths will always fall to Abrahamic ones because religion!"

"But what if the Pagan faith tried to organise?"

"It can't because it was tribal and not written down!"

"Let's suppose it did."

"Enemies on all sides! It will convert eventually!"
To be fair, most of these are somewhat reasonable objections (except "because religion" which I assume is hyperbole).

For instance, being able to organise a reformed and united faith from disorganised and illiterate tribes is virtually impossible. Religions need laymen and adepts who are able to refer to a greater canon, hopefully without contradicting eachother. If 2 pagan preists give entirely different theologies but with some names in common, whilst the local christian preists give consistent answers, its hard to see why people without the time to dedicate philosophically would choose the former over the latter.

Organisation in succesful religions, also takes both time and an ability to grow organically. Forced religions (ala Julian the Apostate) don't seem to work well, whilst Christianity was able to very slowly integrate itself into Roman life before reformation movements like Nicea would actually be effective.

That isn't at all to say Pagan survival TLs are ASB (and I have argued for such tls in the past), but that all the objections listed are very valid criticisms.
 
We are not talking about Christian determinism in the 4th or 5th century, we are talking about Christianity in the 9th century, a time when it already controlled Europe West and South of a line running from the Elbe to Thrace and controlled the vast majority of the population and wealth, political and economic.

It's not about destiny, it's about a clear global pattern that shows countries converting to institutionalized faiths even without outright imposition, I'm not myself a believer that this trend is deterministic but the argument is far too strong to be derided and discarded this way.

Lithuania stayed Pagan for centuries and only converted because Władysław II Jagiełło was offered the Polish crown. In Kievan Rus Orthodox Christianity was also chosen for political reasons. If the Rus decided to stay Pagan, the odds for Lithuania also staying Pagan would be even better than in OTL. DanMcCollum argued above that in OTL the crusades were a spent force by the time of the Mongol collapse. If we assume that the same would be the case in this time line, both the Rus and the Lithuanians would have good odds for staying Pagan regardless of whether they were conquered by invading Mongol tribes or not (IICC, it has been argued that the Mongol invasion was linked to climatic changes and population pressure, so they would likely happen also in this time line).
 
Lithuania stayed Pagan for centuries and only converted because Władysław II Jagiełło was offered the Polish crown. In Kievan Rus Orthodox Christianity was also chosen for political reasons. If the Rus decided to stay Pagan, the odds for Lithuania also staying Pagan would be even better than in OTL. DanMcCollum argued above that in OTL the crusades were a spent force by the time of the Mongol collapse. If we assume that the same would be the case in this time line, both the Rus and the Lithuanians would have good odds for staying Pagan regardless of whether they were conquered by invading Mongol tribes or not (IICC, it has been argued that the Mongol invasion was linked to climatic changes and population pressure, so they would likely happen also in this time line).
Little ever happens for just "one" reason, Lithuania by the time it converted was likely already demographically a majority Christian nation. Regardless of the Rus and Lithuanians staying pagan you still have all of the important economical and political players around them entrenched in Christian institutions if nothing else is changed.

We would need to explain why the Rus would avoid Christianity when many more countries and they themselves converted between 800-1000, most of which not exactly forcefully(this is meant in relation to foreign policy), for example Moravia, Bulgaria, Poland, Scandinavia. You can either try to break the trend from the get go or try to explain why any particular country avoids being part of it.
 
Little ever happens for just "one" reason, Lithuania by the time it converted was likely already demographically a majority Christian nation. Regardless of the Rus and Lithuanians staying pagan you still have all of the important economical and political players around them entrenched in Christian institutions if nothing else is changed.

Didn’t the Christianization process in Northern Europe and Eastern Europe actually work in the opposite direction? That is, the country’s leadership would convert to Christianity, which would then slowly trickle down into the peasantry, sort of like how much of the Middle East was still firmly Christian for centuries after the Muslim conquests. This explains how you could still see widespread revolts in Poland in favor of the old gods decades after the country’s nominal Christianization, and how the Finnish government felt the need to stamp out rural pagan festivals well into modernity.
 
Didn’t the Christianization process in Northern Europe and Eastern Europe actually work in the opposite direction? That is, the country’s leadership would convert to Christianity, which would then slowly trickle down into the peasantry, sort of like how much of the Middle East was still firmly Christian for centuries after the Muslim conquests. This explains how you could still see widespread revolts in Poland in favor of the old gods decades after the country’s nominal Christianization, and how the Finnish government felt the need to stamp out rural pagan festivals well into modernity.
Well in some cases yes though you can't say that having popular revolts means the lower classes as a whole are against Christiniaty while elites are for it, that's jumping to conclusions.

But the case of Lithuania, they controlled vast amounts of East Slavic Christianized territories by the late 14th century.
 
Well in some cases yes though you can't say that having popular revolts means the lower classes as a whole are against Christiniaty while elites are for it, that's jumping to conclusions.

But the case of Lithuania, they controlled vast amounts of East Slavic Christianized territories by the late 14th century.

With respect to Lithuania, fair enough, I thought that we were talking about the kingdom’s core ethnic Lithuanian population specifically.

More generally, I am not making the Margaret Murray argument that Europe was secretly majority pagan until, like, yesterday. Merely that there is evidence that pagan traditions persisted well after the arrival of Christianity, first as underground worship and then as a syncretic blend of the two faiths. Even in the Byzantine Empire, which occupied some of the parts of Europe with the earliest exposure to Christianity, there were reports of a sizeable number of Hellenic polytheists in today’s Greece as late as the ninth century.
 
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Well in some cases yes though you can't say that having popular revolts means the lower classes as a whole are against Christiniaty while elites are for it, that's jumping to conclusions.

But the case of Lithuania, they controlled vast amounts of East Slavic Christianized territories by the late 14th century.

Hence, if the Rus stays Pagan, these areas could very well remain Pagan, so even if Lithanuia should conquer much of those areas after the collapse of an ATL Mongol empire, they would not necessarily become majority Christian in this time line.
 
Hence, if the Rus stays Pagan, these areas could very well remain Pagan, so even if Lithanuia should conquer much of those areas after the collapse of an ATL Mongol empire, they would not necessarily become majority Christian in this time line.
We still didn't resolve the question of why Rus wouldn't convert to Christianity when half a dozen sizeable states, them included, did in the timespan of 2 centuries.

there were reports of a sizeable number of Hellenic polytheists in today’s Greece as late as the ninth century.
Honestly that's irrelevant, you could find a plethora of examples of small communities being "behind" various types of trends that the vast majority of the populations and communities follow, this doesn't really change anything.

The argument is not that Christianity is irresistible at a popular level, but that the fact all the new founded or newly consolidated kingdoms and states voluntarily integrated themselves in the christian world and consequently converted their population too.

Also the adjective "sizeable" is really questionable, the Hellenes of the 9th century lived in a peripheral region without many people.
 
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yoyo

Banned
My opinion is that rather than defeating the Khazars and forming a link with the byzantines, the Rus' states focus more on political and cultural consolidation and development. The conquests of sviatoslav led to increased contact with more sophisticated cultures the leadership found an interest in.
Thus with the conquests more limited and greater internal development in terms of organized religion and to an extent government, the Rus' pursue a trajectory of development in terms of cultural isolation and independent development mirroring how vedic india progressed, except with greater intent.
Considering that there was an attempted Pagan revolution in neighboring Poland, could this Russian state intervene in support of the Paganists? If so, could this lead to a "Pagan league' between the Polans and Rus'?
Given the Mongol conquests, the Rus' and Christian Europeans would see each other as completely alien civilizations, despite phenotypical similarities.
 
While I know this thread is about a pagan Rus state, I'd find it fascinating if the Rus would hold on to paganism, only to convert to Buddhism under the Mongols, in part to delineate their own culture in contrast to the surrounding ones. A constant Buddhist influence on Eastern Europe could lead to all sorts of mayhem.
 

yoyo

Banned
While I know this thread is about a pagan Rus state, I'd find it fascinating if the Rus would hold on to paganism, only to convert to Buddhism under the Mongols, in part to delineate their own culture in contrast to the surrounding ones. A constant Buddhist influence on Eastern Europe could lead to all sorts of mayhem.
A Vajrayana Buddhist Russia. This is something
 
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