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Thursday 22 September 2022

Blavatsky and the Theosophical Movement in Russia & Ukraine

Blavatsky's place of birth, Now Blavatsky-House Museum
Note: As the current contexts have generated a lot of commentary, I overeestimated my capacity for concision. However, I do think I can wrap up the current round of posts with three more instalments in the coming month.
 
Somber message from Ukraine when the war broke out in March, I think they're doing better now: 'Blavatsky H.P. museum in Dnepropetrovsk in the south of Ukraine which is now a war zone. The museum is closed until further notice and the staff is trying to preserve it in the present time. But are also and especially busy saving their own lives.'
 
Blavatsky ‘The Sphinx’ & Spirituality in Ukraine
Interview by Colyn Boyce with Svitlana Gavrylenko, July 5, 2022
The first members of the Theosophical Society appeared in Ukraine in 1998, the first branch in 2007, the Regional Association was approved in 2013, and the status of the Section was assigned in 2018. There are eight branches in the nation – including in Kyiv (“Ankh”), Yalta (“Aletheiya”), Odessa (“Pearl Necklace”) Dnipro (“H.P.Blavatsky” ) and Kropyvnytskyi (“Laya”) in central Ukraine.
https://hermesrisen.wordpress.com/2022/05/07/blavatsky-the-sphinx-spirituality-in-the-ukraine-interview-by-colyn-boyce-with-svitlana-gavrylenko%ef%bf%bc/
 
Blavatsky Under the Tsars
Marina Alexandrova, April 23, 2021
Virtual Centre for Theosophical Studies Lecture
New research on Blavatsky's early Russian life from an intrepid Russian studies prof. who grew up near where Blavatsky used to live.
 

 
Effects of Theosophy on Russian Cultural History
Björn Seidel-Dreffke 2021
New book shows how deep the research is getting.
Theosophy across Boundaries brings a global history approach to the study of esotericism, highlighting the important role of Theosophy in the general histories of religion, science, philosophy, art, and politics. The first half of the book consists of seven perspectives on the activities of the Theosophical Society in very different regional contexts, ranging from India, Vietnam, China, and Japan to Victorian Britain and Israel, shedding new light on the entanglement of "Western" and "Oriental" ideas around 1900. The second half explores specific cultural influences that Theosophy exerted in the spheres of literature, art, and politics, using case studies from Sri Lanka, Burma, India, Japan, Ireland, Germany, and Russia. The examples clearly show that Theosophy was part of a truly global movement, thus providing an outstanding example of the complex entanglements of the global religious history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
 
HPB in Today's Russia
Abbasova, Pyarvin. Quest 103.3 (Summer 2015): pg. 112-113.
Since 1992, interest in the work of Blavatsky has been constantly increasing. Many books, including her collected writings, talks, and articles, have been published and can be found in every bookstore that has an esoteric or spiritual shelf. Every year new editions and commentaries are being published. I did some research and found a Russian YouTube channel with videos and movies about HPB and lectures of Russian Theosophists; many groups and online communities in the social network VK (similar to Facebook) that have thousands of followers, with information and audiobooks posted on a daily and weekly basis; and Web sites where one can download and read books and articles for free. Practically all the Web sites of the different spiritual organizations have pages about Helena Petrovna or references to her work.
Exile and Utopia:
Nicholas Roerich's Shortcut to Promised Land
Natasha Lvovich The Montréal Review, January 2018
Good overview of Roerich's life
https://www.themontrealreview.com/2009/Exile-and-Utopia-Nicholas-Roerich-Shortcut-to-Promised-Land.php
 
Third Parties: Henry Wallace and the Progressive Party
Potus Geeks Sep. 9th, 2020
In 1934, when Roosevelt and Wallace had sent Nicholas Roerich and his son George to Central Asia to search for drought-resistant grasses to prevent another Dust Bowl, Roerich caused a stir by trying to bring about a revival of the legendary Buddhist kingdom of Shambhalla, variously located in Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, or Manchuria. 
 
Fashionable Occultism

Maria, Carlson. "Fashionable Occultism: The Theosophical World of Silver Age Russia." Quest  99. 2 (Spring 2011): 50-57.

The more intellectually inclined Theosophists also belonged to these societies and participated in their discussions. The names of the leading Russian idealist philosophers (Berdiaev, Sergei Bulgakov, E.N. Trubetskoi, Sergei Frank, Vasily Rozanov, Aleksandr Meier, Dmitry Filosofov, and N. O. Lossky) frequently appeared in Vestnik Teosofii ("Herald of Theosophy"), the principal journal of the Russian Theosophists; their lectures and articles were regularly reported and reviewed in its pages. "Closely observing the religious seeking of our time, one cannot pass by Theosophy, because for certain strata of contemporary educated society Theosophy has made it easier to come to religion," Berdiaev pointed out (Berdiaev, 1).
 
The Occult Revival in Russia Today and Its Impact on Literature 
Birgit Menzel,  Harriman Review v16 no4-v17 no1 64-77 April 2009
flashes of the Occult in the Soviet Past The considerable impact of theosophy and other occult theories on Russian Symbolist literature and art and the fact that so many of Russia's intellectuals at some point were fascinated by theosophy, including later Marxists such as Anatoly Lunacharsky, Maxim Gorky and Sergei Eisenstein, has been the subject of numerous studies, in particular, Maria Carlson's brilliant study of theosophy's influence on high artistic culture, and more recently by Bogomolov, Obatnin and Stahl-Schwaetzer. 19
 
Keller on Rosenthal, 'The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture'
Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, ed. Reviewer:Shoshana Keller 1998
Theosophy, Spiritualism, and kabbalistic studies (Judith Deutsch Kornblatt has a fine essay on Vladimir Soloviev's interest in the Jewish Kabbala and its impact on religious thinkers as diverse as Nikolai Berdiaev, Sergei Bulgakov, and Vasily Rozanov) all posit a superior, hidden knowledge that masters may reveal only to the elect, if the elect can prove their worthiness

The New Age of Russia Occult and Esoteric Dimensions
Glatzer Rosenthal, Bernice (editor) 2012
Occult and esoteric ideas became deeply embedded in Russian culture long before the Bolshevik Revolution. After the Revolution, occult ideas were manifested in literature, the humanities and the sciences as well. Although the Soviet government discouraged 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 neo-paganism to science fiction, the field is wide. Everyone interested in the occult and esoteric will appreciate this book, because it documents their continued importance in Russia and raises new issues for research and discussion. 
 
Occult Russia Pagan, Esoteric, and Mystical Traditions 
Christopher McIntosh
New book due December 2022

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