Victory Day is a holiday that commemorates the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. It was first inaugurated in the 15 republics of the Soviet Union following the signing of the German Instrument of Surrender late in the evening on 8 May 1945 (9 May Moscow Time). The Soviet government announced the victory early on 9 May after the signing ceremony in Berlin. Although the official inauguration occurred in 1945, the holiday became a non-labor day only in 1965, and only in certain Soviet republics.
The German Instrument of Surrender was signed twice. An initial document was signed in Reims on 7 May 1945 by Alfred Jodl (chief of staff of the German OKW) for Germany, Walter Bedell Smith, on behalf of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, and Ivan Susloparov, on behalf of the Soviet High Command, in the presence of French Major-General François Sevez as the official witness.
Since the Soviet High Command had not agreed to the text of the surrender, and because Susloparov, a relatively low-ranking officer, was not authorized to sign this document, the Soviet Union requested that a second, revised, instrument of surrender be signed in Berlin.
A second surrender ceremony was organized in a surviving manor in the outskirts of Berlin late on 8 May, when it was already 9 May in Moscow due to the difference in time zones.
During the Soviet Union’s existence, 9 May was celebrated throughout it and in the Eastern Bloc. Though the holiday was introduced in many Soviet republics between 1946 and 1950, it became a non-working day only in the Ukrainian SSR in 1963 and the Russian SFSR in 1965
The celebration of Victory Day continued during subsequent years. The war became a topic of great importance in cinema, literature, history lessons at school, the mass media, and the arts. The ritual of the celebration gradually obtained a distinctive character with a number of similar elements: ceremonial meetings, speeches, lectures, receptions and fireworks.
Victory Day in modern Russia has become a celebration in which popular culture plays a central role. The 60th and 70th anniversaries of Victory Day in Russia (2005 and 2015) became the largest popular holidays since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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There isnt really much theological beef between the various Neo-Pagan faiths when compared to like the Abrahamic faiths (Those guys really know how to hate each other while worshipping the same god). Like, you dont really see Heathens arguing with Hellenists over which gods are real or what their names are or what they represent. Theres definitely more vitriol between Pagans of the same tradition arguing over interpretation (though thats still pretty mild compared to how the different christian sects get along) and between Pagans of different political leanings. I have to assume a large part of this is just how small and culturally insignificant Neo-Pagan religions are, but it definitely feels removed like theres a lot less friction between polytheists than monotheists.
Still, I do think it would be funny bit to get into it with other Neo-Pagans for gendering the Sun and Moon deities differently.
My analysis; Neopagans have no systemic power. Orthodoxy has no material benefits nor does heterodoxy carry any costs. Most of the big religious conflicts in Christianity were tied up in contemporary political and economic struggles. Likewise Islamic orthodoxy was as much a means of maintaining centralized political orthodoxy as anything else and the largest division - Sunni/Shia, was the result of dynastic politics and a small civil war.
If we ever get to a point where there’s money and power riding on it orthodoxy will become important in neo-pagan movements. Only one person gets to be Pontifex Maximus, after all.
Thats definitely a part of it, but I also think the structure of polytheism makes it less rigid than monotheism when it comes to accepting other faiths. This also makes it less useful for statecraft, which is a big part of why Christianity was able to supplant the original Pagan cults in the Roman empire. Neo-Pagan religions are of course individually structured differently than the ancient counterparts theyre based on (because its been over a millenia since any of them saw widespread practice), but they still start with the same basic theological position that multiple gods can exist.
it is not necessary to assume polytheism presupposes the existence of alien gods that must be tolerated; it’s something that happened, but polytheists also violently suppressed other religions.
Im simply saying that polytheism structurally lends itself more easily toward tolarance/indifference toward the idea of other gods than monotheism. When you believe there are numerous gods its easier to accept that a different religion’s gods are also real or different interpretations of the same gods. Thats just not possible with monotheism because if only one god exists then all the rest have to be false.
Certainly there are individual polytheists and polytheistic religions that are intolerant toward outside faiths, I dont deny that. Hinduism comes to mind as a polytheist faith that still has political dominance and so is more inclined toward intolerance toward outside competition (though Hinduism doesnt really count as “Pagan”, so its less relevant to the point of my first post).
it’s just as complicated from the monotheist side, i don’t really like the sorting of religion that divides between mono-poly as essential groupings with specific shared characteristics. a monotheist can take the tack that other beliefs are different interpretations of their One God, a monotheist can have a doctrinal obligation to tolerance. in the former case it’s very much like some hellenistic polytheists viewed the world, not through an idea of credible separate gods, simply different names and divergent rituals for their own gods.
I mean, if you can be a monotheist and believe in other gods then you stop being a monotheist. Kinda makes the distinction between the two meaningless.
i mean yeah, kinda what im saying, it’s pretty difficult to draw a line between polytheism with hierarchy of divinities and monotheism with hierarchies of divinities (think saints, imams, angels, etc.)
so we can’t very well reliably ascribe attributes to either group.
I was gonna chalk it up to neo-pagans not really believing in their religion, but then I realized I don’t know any neo-pagans and that I’m just projecting what I believe about their faith on to them.
So, genuinely, do neo-pagans actually believe? I always took to be more a political exercise, a deliberate use of religious freedom, or else possibly done to mock established religions.
And then the same question but for otherkin. Like my assumption is that people don’t genuinely believe themselves to be not entirely human but instead part deer or elf or what have you. That instead they are making a statement about autonomy, and maybe gender abolition, and respect or lack-thereof for valuing someone else’s social norms and customs.
Cw: “reddit atheist” analysis that isn’t very nice.
spoiler
There’s no meaningful orthodoxy. All neo-pagan religions are neo-religions and the oldest of them dates from the sixties. They’re based, primarily, on the counter-culture and orientalism of the 60s and 70s, gradually alloyed with more and more research material and archeological material as time goes on. The result is a weird mixture of hippie new-ager attitudes, intentional and unintentional white supremacy, 19th century romantic nationalism, christian beliefs that aren’t identified as such, beliefs about magic dating back to Crowley, stuff cribbed from fantasy fiction, and idiosyncratic interpretations of fragmentary archeological information.
It’s mostly a reactionary movement against Christian cultural hegemony wherein adherents attempt to create what they believe is an authentic, meaningful religion that provides them with the emotional support and purpose they did not find in Christianty. Many individual’s have a “take that” attitude towards christian religion, with neopaganism being a form of self-assertion that they position as real and authentic, allowing them to dismiss a socially violent christianity that harmed them as false, dead, or inauthentic. In that sense it resembles many prior Christian heresies and could probably be studied in the same category of social phenomena as a christian heresy.
There are also elements of reaction against modernity, multi-culturalism, and capitalism.
In many ways it’s a false consciousness of the violence of western cultural hegemony - capitalism and protestant christianity. Instead of confronting capitalism and it’s super-structure neopagans retreat in to a reactionary fantasy of a golden age of authentic religion and meaning that they have conjured for themselves out of scraps and whole cloth.
All of which is to say, neo-pagans believe whatever things they want to believe. There’s no orthodoxy or authority that could define an orthodoxy. As it is primarily a reaction against christianity many adherents beliefs are defined either against what they think christianity is or as what they think christianity should be but isn’t. You get the macho “warrior religion” people who despise christians for perceived weakness, and then you also get people ostracized by Christianity’s social violence who espouse pro-lgbt beliefs, celebration of sexuality, or alternate views on family that mainline christian sects reject. Many American adherents are seeking the “your own personal jesus” relationship claimed in christian fascism, but without the cultural violence of christian fascism.
To really understand where it comes from you need to look at the roots; 19th century romantic nationalism, fascist rejection of contemporary christianity, the counter-culture of the 60s and 70s, new ager mysticism, the “self help” movements, various 20th and 21st century magical belief systems. There are distinct origins for the modern neo-religions in the us and europe. In the us norse neopaganism was roughly the first expression and started with a neo-nazi writing from prison. Other strains evolved out of wicca later. In europe neo-paganism began a few decades later in the nordics as an environmentally focused alternative to bloodless nordic protestantism. Neo-pagan neoreligions have undergone a great deal of evolution since these originating strains without any authority or body of tradition to enforce orthodoxy, resulting in a variety of modern movements. There is often no authority within those movements, leading to even more variety as individual adherents build very idiosyncratic practices and beliefs.
Tldr; neo-pagan religions lack a central authority to enforce orthodoxy of belief and practice resulting in a very heterodox variety of beliefs where any two individual adherents may have very different beliefs and practices.
Yes we really do believe this shit lmao. But, like Frank said, theres no orthodoxy to enforce specific beliefs among the branches of Neo-Paganism, so can you have wildly different sets of individual beliefs among people who are nominally of the same faith. You’ll have a guy who literally believes Oðinn is an old one-eyed man living in the sky dictating who wins and loses battles, along with a guy who thinks Oðinn is a representation/personification of human consciousness, and both are equally Heathen.
People believe weird shit, Paganism is not really that odd compared to everything else.
Yeah, people think of Christianity as unified faiths with clear orthodoxy, but go actually sit down with Catholic lay people and ask them about various points of faith and you will hear absolutely wild stuff. While there is an official orthodoxy and dogma that governs the actions of priests and more educated lay members there’s an enormous about of variation in the beliefs and knowledge of individual catholids. I recently met a guy who did the whole catholic 60s thing - church every sunday, abusive sunday school nuns, and somehow never in hius long life had he heard “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to go to heaven”
It is a major point of official Catholic doctrine that the sacrament is literally actually cannibalism.
And i love them for that.
Just a cute little cannibal death cult