The paper reveals features of relation to mystic in the culture of east branch of the Russian émigré community. The author addresses one of the most popular editions of the Russian abroad – to “Rubezh” (“Frontier”) journal. “Psychological homelessness” of the emigrants, their frontier situation cause aspiration to maintaining identity and the leaving heritage, Orthodox belief and culture in the world of the Russian diaspora. At the same time, the reader meets spirits and ghosts, gods and deities, hypnotists and soothsayers, clairvoyants and predictors, magicians, alchemists, etc. on the pages of “Rubezh”. On the one hand, it is a peculiar response to the surge of interest to supernatural in its different manifestations: spiritualism and Egyptomania, clairvoyance, mantic and occult practices, creations of theosophic circles and so forth. On the other hand, it was natural reaction of the Russian émigré community to its critical situation as a result of negative sociopolitical processes at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries: confusion and need for spiritual bases turns into illusory confidence in a possibility of affecting objective reality by means of various occult and mystical practices and begins to emanate in different forms including literary ones. The author makes an attempt of identification of main subjects set in literary and art and publicistic texts of “Rubezh” journal and try to reconstruct the underlying ideas and images.
Keywords: occultism, mysticism, syncretism, periodical press, emigration, Russian émigré community, Harbin, “Rubezh” journal
DOI: 10.22250/2072-8662.2018.2.140-153
About the author
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Evgeniya A. Kontaleva – Postgraduate student at the Department of Religious Studies and History of the Amur State University, Senior Teacher, Research Fellow at the Laboratory of Archeology and Anthropology of the AmSU; of. 412, build. 7, 21 Ignatievskoe Shosse, Blagoveschensk, Amur Region, Russia, 675027; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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