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The Last Men before the Last: A Russian Messianic Revival in the Twilight of History

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Beyond Neoliberalism

Part of the book series: Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference ((ATSIAD))

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Abstract

This chapter presents an ethnographic case study, the ‘revival’ of a tradition of ancient Russian Orthodoxy, as an empirical mirror to critically reflect the epistemological paradigm shifts that occurred within Western social sciences. The community flourished in the window between the collapse of the Soviet state in 1991 and the ascendency of the ‘ordo-liberalism’ that emerged with the regrouping of state power under Vladimir Putin’s premiership in the 2000s. The immediate post-Soviet aftermath did not give birth to rationalistic capitalism in the Russian Far East, but rather unleashed violent quasi-feudal modes of ‘primitive accumulation’.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Social Anthropology, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK

    Dominic Martin

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  1. Dominic Martin
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany

    Marian Burchardt

  2. Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin, Germany

    Gal Kirn

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Martin, D. (2017). The Last Men before the Last: A Russian Messianic Revival in the Twilight of History. In: Burchardt, M., Kirn, G. (eds) Beyond Neoliberalism. Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45590-7_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45590-7_10

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-45589-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-45590-7

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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