About the Contributors

Birgit Menzel is Professor of Russian Literature and Culture and Chair of the Slavic Division at the Johannes-Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. Her relevant publica- tions include Civil War on Words. Russian Literary Criticism of the Perestroika (in German: Bürgerkrieg um Worte, Cologne 2001, St. Petersburg, 2006); Reading for Entertainment in Contemporary . Post-Soviet Popular Literature in Historical Perspective, ed. with Stephen Lovell (Munich, 2005); “The Occult Revival in Russia Today and its Impact on Literature” (Harriman Review, 2007).

Michael Hagemeister is an independent historian. He has published widely on Russian philosophy and history. Together with Boris Groys he edited a book on biopolitical utopias in Russia in the early 20th century (Die Neue Menschheit. Biopolitische Utopien in Russland zu Beginn des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt a.M., 2005). In his cur- rent research he concentrates on the origins of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and the Russian religious and apocalyptic writer Sergei Nilus. Hagemeister was employed at the Universities of Marburg, Bochum, Basel, Innsbruck, Frankfurt (Oder), Berlin, and Munich.

Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal is Professor of Russian/Soviet History and European Intel- lectual History at Fordham University, Bronx, New York. Her relevant publications include: New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche to Stalinism (University Park, PA, 2002, 2004); The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture (Ithaca, 1997), editor and con- tributor; Nietzsche and Soviet Culture, Cambridge, 1994, 2010) editor; Nietzsche in Russia (Princeton, NJ, 1986) editor and contributor; A Revolution of the Spirit: Crisis of Values in Russia, 1890–1924 (New York, 1990, with Martha Bohachevsky Chomiak) co- editor and co-author; and D. S. Merezhkovsky and the Silver Age: The Development of a Revolutionary Mentality (The Hague, 1975).

Marina Aptekman is Assistant Professor of Russian Literature at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY (with a Ph.D. from Brown University). She is the author of the monograph Jacob’s Ladder: Kabbalistic Allegory in Russian Literature (Boston, 2011). Her other publications include articles on problems related to Kabbalah, Judeo- Masonic Conspiracy, Magic Science, and Russian Literature. Michael Hagemeister and Birgit Menzel - 9783866881983 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/24/2021 04:51:14AM via free access 446 Contributors

Demyan Belyaev is research fellow at the Territory, Culture and Development Research Centre (TERCUD) of the Lusophone University of Humanities and Technologies (ULHT) in Lisbon. He holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of Hei- delberg, a Master’s in public policy from Harvard University and a B.A. in international relations and European studies from the State University of St. Petersburg. His disserta- tion was entitled The Geography of Alternative Religiosity in Russia. The Role of Hetero- dox Knowledge after the Collapse of the Communist System (Heidelberg, 2008, in Ger- man). His current research interests are in the area of social and cultural geography.

Konstantin Y. Burmistrov is Research Assistant in Jewish Philosophy and Mysticism at the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, and Chief Librarian of the Oriental Department, The Russian State Library. The main fields of his research are: the place of Kabbalah in Russian culture; Jewish Kabbalah and Jewish and Christian al- chemy; Kabbalah and freemasonry; European Christian Kabbalah of the seventeenth century; the problem of name and language in Jewish and Christian mysticism. He is the author of the monograph For He is like a Refiner’s Fire: Kabbalah and Alchemy (, 2009, in Russian) and more than 40 articles on the history of Christian and Jewish Kabbalah.

Boris Falikov is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow) and columnist for gazeta.ru. He got his Ph.D. at the Institute of American and Canadian Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, on Buddhist and Hindu based movements in the U.S. (1987) and researched modern Hinduism at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences. He is the author of several books on contemporary religion such as Neo-Hinduism and Western Culture (Moscow, 1994, in Russian) and Cults and Culture (Moscow, 2007, in Russian).

Leonid Heller is Honorary Professor of Russian Literature at Lausanne University (Switzerland). His publications include Vselennaia za predelom dogmy (London, 1985) and, together with Michel Niqueux, A History of Utopia in Russia (Paris, 1995, in French; Bietigheim-Bissingen, 2003, in German; St. Petersburg, 2003, in Russian). He has published widely on Russian and Soviet Science-Fiction and utopian genres, Social- ist Realism, the literary and artistic Avant-garde, libertarian and libertine traditions, and edited several anthologies and collected volumes. Recent subjects include representa- tions of exoticism and animal in the Russian culture.

Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, where he is also the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies. He is the author of Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Para- Michael Hagemeister and Birgit Menzel - 9783866881983 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/24/2021 04:51:14AM via free access Contributors 447 normal (Chicago, 2011); Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (Chicago, 2010); Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago, 2007); The Serpent’s Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion (Chicago, 2007); Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism (Chicago, 2001); Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Rama- krishna (Chicago, 1995). His present areas of interest include the revisioning and re- newal of the comparative method, the comparative erotics of mystical literature, Ameri- can countercultural translations of Asian religious traditions, and the history of Western esotericism from ancient Gnosticism to the New Age.

Marlène Laruelle is Research Professor at the Institute for European, Russian and Eura- sian Studies, The Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. In Paris, she is a associate scholar at Sciences Po (Institute of Political Studies), and at the French Center for Russian, Caucasian and East-European Studies at the School of Advanced Social Sciences Studies. Her main areas of expertise are political philosophy, nation and nationalism, citizenship and migration in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia and Central Asia. Her English-language publications include Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (Washington, DC, 2008), and In the Name of the Nation: National- ism and Politics in Contemporary Russia (Basingstoke, 2009).

Julia Mannherz is Lecturer and a tutorial fellow in Modern History at Oriel College, University of Oxford. Her research interests are in Russian history, particularly in Rus- sia’s cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her book Modern Occult- ism in Fin-de-Siècle Russia will be published by Northern Illinois University Press in 2012.

John McCannon teaches Russian and European History at Southern New Hampshire University. He has written about Russian exploration, aviation, and culture. His publi- cations include Red Arctic: Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the , 1932–1939 (New York, 1998); and several articles about Nicholas Roerich and related topics. He is currently completing a biography of Nicholas Roerich.

Markus Osterrieder is an independent historian, lecturer and writer. He graduated in East European History, Slavonic Studies and Political Science at the University of Mu- nich and was a research fellow of the Osteuropa Institut Munich, specializing in Rus- sian, Ukrainian and Polish history. He has published and lectured on a wide range of topics related also to the History of Esotericism and lectured in many European coun- tries and in Russia. His monographs include Sonnenkreuz und Lebensbaum: Irland, der Schwarzmeer-Raum und die Christianisierung der Europäischen Mitte (Stuttgart, 1995/ 2010); Durchlichtung der Welt: Altiranische Geschichte (Kassel, 2008). Michael Hagemeister and Birgit Menzel - 9783866881983 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/24/2021 04:51:14AM via free access 448 Contributors

Matthias Schwartz is a research fellow and lecturer for East-European Studies and Comparative Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin. His research interests include the interplay of science and arts in Russia, Soviet and post-Soviet popular culture; Polish, Russian and Ukrainian literature in a globalized world. His publications include Die Spur des Sputnik. Kulturhistorische Expeditionen ins kosmische Zeitalter (ed. with Igor Polianski, Berlin/New York, 2009), Die Erfindung des Kosmos. Zur sowjetischen Science Fiction und populärwissenschaftlichen Publizistik vom Sputnikflug bis zum Ende der Tauwetterzeit (Frankfurt a. M., 2003). His book Aufbruch in andere Welten. Sowjetische Abenteuerliteratur und Science Fiction 1917–1957 will be published in Vienna, 2012.

Mark Sedgwick is Professor in the department of Culture and Society at Aarhus Uni- versity, Denmark. He is the author of the first major academic study of Traditionalism, Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (New York, 2004). His recent books include Muhammad Abduh (Oxford, 2011), Islam and Muslims (Boston, 2006) and Saints and Sons: The Making and Remaking of the Rashidi Ahmadi Sufi Order, 1799–2000 (Leiden, 2005). He also published articles on sectarianism and on terrorism.

Oleg Shishkin is a playwright and independent scholar in Moscow, who has specialized in topics related to the Occult in Early Soviet time. Among his publications are Fight for the Himalayas. The NKVD: Magic and Espionage (Мoscow 1999/2003, in Russian), Kill Rasputin (Мoscow 2000, in Russian); Red Frankenstein (Мoscow 2003, in Russian), and Dawn of the Magi. Gurdjieff and Others (Мoscow 2005, in Russian). He is monitoring the programs Enigmas of history (Zagadki istorii) and The Magic of Cinema (Magiia kino) on the TV-Kanal Kul’tura.

Natalia Zhukovskaia is Professor and Chairman of the Center of Asian and Pacific Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences. As a historian and a cultural anthropologist, she is an expert in the Mongolian-speaking nomads in the steppes of Eurasia, specializing in religious traditions, Shamanism and Buddhism. Zhukovskaia has spent numerous field work seasons, mainly in Central Asia (Mongolia, Buriatia, Kalmykia). She is the author of seven books and more than 200 scholarly and popular scientific articles.

Michael Hagemeister and Birgit Menzel - 9783866881983 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/24/2021 04:51:14AM via free access ccult and esoteric ideas became deeply embedded in Rus- Osian culture long before the Bolshevik Revolution. After the Revolution, occult ideas were manifested in literature, the humani- ties and the sciences as well. Although the Soviet government dis- couraged and eventually prohibited metaphysical speculation, that same government used the Occult for its own purposes and even funded research on it. In Stalin’s time, occultism disappeared from public view, but it revived clandestinely in the post-Stalin Thaw and became a truly popular phenomenon in post-Soviet Russia. From cosmism to shamanism, from space exploration to Kabbalah, from a neo-paganism to science fiction, the field is wide. Everyone inter-

ested in the occult and esoteric will appreciate this book, because ussi

it documents their continued importance in Russia and raises new R

issues for research and discussion. f o e g A w e

N New Age Russia e The of Worldwide Distributor: Th KUBON & SAGNER Servicing libraries since 1947

ISBN: 978-3-86688-197-6 ISBN (eBooK): 978-3-86688-198-3

Michael Hagemeister and Birgit Menzel - 9783866881983 Downloaded from PubFactory at 09/24/2021 04:51:14AM via free access