SPECIFIC FEATURES OF THE MASS CONSCIONESS OF RUSSIANS AT THE TURN OF THE 1980s AND 1990s AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIALLY SIGNIFICANT PERCEPTION OF RELIGION

Annotation

This article analyses the phenomenon of blurred and unstructured spirituality, which is a complex issue for the sociology of religion and religious studies, and which exists alongside institutional religions. The study explores how, in response to secularised mass consciousness, spirituality forms distinct spiritual subcultures. Particular focus is given to the emergence of these phenomena in late Soviet society and how they differ from their foreign counterparts. The author proposes an original method of classifying closely related yet distinct phenomena of ‘spirituality’ and ‘religiosity’, which is based on belief in the supernatural and modes of interaction with sacred objects. The research demonstrates how mass perceptions of religion, formed within spirituality, evolve into hybrid religious- spiritual forms through mechanisms of ethnic and national identification. The author also explains why the religious segment can construct identity, whereas the spiritual segment cannot. The concluding section examines how mass perceptions of religion are formed in Russian society, interpreting them as a kind of social contract. Particular emphasis is placed on analysing the interaction mechanisms between institutional religion and spirituality in contemporary Russia.

Keywords

spirituality, spiritual subcultures, religiosity, religion, ethnic identity, national identity, religion construction, image of religion

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