Mikhail Yuryevich, tell us how you became involved in the sociology of religion.

Mikhail Smirnov. I am not a sociologist by basic education, I graduated from the Philosophy Department of the Leningrad State University named after A. A. Zhdanov in 1979 with a degree in philosophy. After graduating from the university, he continued to work at the faculty. In those days, scientific atheism was taught and young teachers were needed who could be chased "in the tail and in the mane", because the course "Fundamentals of Scientific Atheism" was taught at all faculties of the university, in full-time, evening and correspondence departments. That's what I was hired for. And then I suddenly discovered that there is something called religion. And I don't know much more about it than the students I teach about scientific atheism. My own education was practically without any serious references to religion. And when I became a university teacher, I realized that if I read only the books of Velikovich - Ugrinovich - Shakhnovich, I wouldn't really understand anything about religion, and I intuitively decided that I should get acquainted with the religious environment, at least make up for my lack of training by personal observations. However, in 1979 and the early 1980s, this was not the most comfortable activity. Pom-

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nu, as our Leningrad representative of the Council for Religious Affairs, Zharinov, told me at an installation event held within the walls of the Museum of the History of Religion, where teachers of scientific atheism were also invited: "But this young man is repeatedly seen by our people where he should not be."..

So I didn't get a major in scientific atheism when I was a student, and then I went on the path of self-education. In 1986, he defended his PhD thesis on "Issues of war and peace in modern Christian ideology".

How did you move from the philosophical space to the space of sociology?

The fact is that when I reached a certain level of qualification and it was time to go for a doctorate, I wrote my dissertation "Mythological Consciousness and Religion", intending to defend it at the Faculty of Philosophy. However, due to various circumstances, this could not be done. And the question arose of what to do next. I realized that I would not leave this topic and that I needed to find a different angle. And I found a sociological angle for myself. This required getting into the material, mastering the language of sociology, and integrating into the environment itself. Because the sociological environment is the same clan environment as in other scientific circles, and to be recognized there, it is not enough just to appear there. It is necessary to master the professional language of this environment, to declare yourself as a specialist in some of the sociological areas. There was a problem here, because I'm a religious scholar, and the sociology of religion is a weak point in our sociology. But I was interested in all this, and because of my philosophical education, I found my "niche" in the field of theoretical and methodological issues of the sociology of religion. To increase my level of competence, I immersed myself in foreign literature, and since I am far from a polyglot, mainly in the English - language one, which is the most accessible to me, and also contains the main body of publications on the sociology of religion.

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What was the impression of getting acquainted with Western literature?

I realized what a catastrophic gap we have, first of all, theoretical and methodological. I won't say that everything is great there, but everything is bad here. Intellectually, we are not inferior to anyone. But as soon as the conceptual framework that we used to rely on in the Soviet era collapsed, it turned out that there was no new one. The result was an omnivore, everyone began to greedily grab everything they could. In addition, there are two types of perception of foreign literature. The older generation is rejected, " why do we need these words?" Representatives of junior believe that "this is the right thing", and they practically ignore everything that was developed in the Soviet era. And then, after all, something was developed - especially since the time of Klibanov. And I tried to connect all this at least on my own, personal level. I don't know if it worked, but at least I started to distinguish between the concepts. For me, this is an experience of scientific self-knowledge - to absorb what we managed to learn and understand from the foreign sociology of religion, and at the same time take into account our domestic tradition. Because the foreign research apparatus does not always work, it is often attracted by the ears. I wrote a short book, An Essay on the History of the Russian Sociology of Religion, which was published by the St. Petersburg State University Publishing House in 2008. Even earlier, in 2006, before the defense of my doctoral dissertation, my monograph "Russian Society between Myth and Religion. Historical and sociological essay". This is what preceded the publication of the dictionary "Sociology of Religion", which, by the way, after writing lay in the publishing house for three years. During this time, unfortunately, it was only possible to insert the year of Levi-Strauss ' death and correct some details. Naturally, I would have written some things differently now, and added some things. After all, during those three years, I began to understand some things better, more precisely. But I'm also glad that this book is finally out. I'm not ashamed of her.

What can you say about the state and prospects of the sociology of religion in modern Russia?

First of all, it must be said that the sociology of religion as a concept, as a certain area of scientific research and scientific research, is a very important part of social science.-

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In my opinion, this type of research is quite legitimate in our country. In other words, the expression "sociology of religion" no longer causes confusion, at least in the scientific community. But at the same time, the question arises about the subject of the sociology of religion - not about the object, but about the subject. Because there is no professional training for sociologists of religion. We have no educational institutions that produce sociologists of religion, there is no such specialty in the nomenclature of the Higher Attestation Commission, there is no such specialization in either sociology or religious studies. And it turns out that the situation is quite consistent with what Vladimir Alexandrovich Yadov said in the early 1960s, when sociology itself was just emerging, "A sociologist is someone who is engaged in sociology." So it is here: a sociologist of religion is someone who deals with the sociology of religion, and this can be philosophers, historians, political scientists, or conflict scientists...

It is good if they are people with a sociological education who have graduated from the faculties of sociology. They at least know the technique and can conduct field research. But they have a very narrow, very selective, or rather, very fragmented outlook on the subject itself, that is, there is practically no systematic religious studies knowledge. I say this responsibly, because for many years I have been dealing with students, including those who could do such work. The level of understanding of religion among social science students is very low, not because they are incapable, but because the educational system itself does not contain this knowledge. They take a very short course in either basic religious studies or the history of religions, no more than one semester, and that's it. Further education - at the expense of personal enthusiasm. However, the situation is no better for religious scholars in this regard. Since the mid-1990s, a sufficient number of people have received religious studies education in accordance with the state standard, there are bachelor's and master's degrees. But the sociological component of training religious scholars is the weakest. Sometimes a religious scholar has no idea about any sociological theories. At the level of classics, he knows Weber and Durkheim, but his knowledge of modern foreign sociology depends on the teacher.-

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people who often do not have a very good command of this modern knowledge themselves. The training of a religious scholar does not include conducting what in Soviet times was called a concrete sociological study, and therefore he does not know how to make a sample, how to draw up working documents, a field diary of observations, etc., what to say about mathematical methods of sociology. As a result, the sociologist lacks religious studies competence, while the religious scholar lacks sociological competence.

But there is another aspect of the problem. In order to interpret the data of specific sociological studies, some theoretical models are needed. Conversely, these models themselves rely on some kind of empirical research.

Yes, this is precisely mutual conditioning. As I said, the subject of the sociology of religion is a product of some interdisciplinary education. However, no such institution has yet emerged that would provide both religious and sociological competence, and therefore it is difficult to talk about the emergence of high-quality theoretical models. In sociology, it is customary to distinguish between two levels: fundamental sociology and applied sociology, and fundamental includes theoretical and empirical. Our empirical research is still poorly conducted, and our traditions and skills have been preserved since the Soviet era. As for applied sociology, there is nothing to talk about at all. Where do we have sociologists of religion who can make specific recommendations? And if they were, who would listen to them?

As for the theoretical sociology of religion, it is a desert. Because in fact, the conceptual framework for generalizations that would set the tone for subsequent research has not developed. First, because we are still partly thinking in the same terms; if not in the language, then at least somewhere in the subconscious there are concepts from the Soviet scientific and atheistic religious studies, which are involuntarily projected when we start writing or talking about something. And secondly, because we do not know foreign sociologists very well-

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some theories or knowledge are fragmentary. Translation of scientific literature and even contacts and scientific communication are poorly managed. On a personal level, it is there. When I was working on the Dictionary, I made personal contact with about a dozen Western colleagues through the Internet. But at the level of institutions, there are no joint congresses, conferences in which domestic and foreign sociologists of religion would participate on equal terms.

What does "bad with translations" mean?

Even the classics of the sociology of religion, such as Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life, have not been translated, with the exception of one chapter. Ukraine made a full translation in 2002, but we still haven't. We are proud that Max Weber is represented by some works (by the way, let me remind you that the first translations of Weber were published in the magazine "Antireligious"). And as soon as you start talking, for example, about the typology of religious associations, you have to refer to the untranslated works of Richard Niebuhr, Howard Becker, John Milton Yinger, Robert Neilly Bell and other authors. If we do not have such seemingly self-evident things that have long been established in the minds of foreign colleagues, what can we say about more modern authors and theories, and even more so about our own theories.

But there is another point here. I must state - I don't know whether with sadness or with joy - that the main object of study of sociologists of religion in Russia is mainly Russian realities. What happens outside of them is almost never included, even for matching and comparison purposes. In this respect, we differ even from our Eastern European colleagues. When I talked to Polish colleagues, for example, Henrik Hoffman, we talked about this topic. They have a common field for discussion with Western scientists: today they are in Italy, tomorrow in Vienna, then in Russia... But we don't, because we are very interested in our specifics, and we always focus on it.

In other words, you can't understand the specifics outside of the general context...

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This is why our sociological or theoretical arguments are often dominated not so much by the sociological language as by, say, political and ideological language. That is, from some objective sociological research, we translate everything into other discourses. Therefore, I have, say, a skeptical attitude towards the sociological service "Environment" due to its well-known bias. This is similar to what happened in the Soviet era, when the task was set: show that religion is steadily dying out. Just do what you want. A Soviet sociologist would say, "I have these numbers here..." and the answer would be, " Work with the number." I worked with the figure: "Here, this is already closer, but not enough..." And now we need to show that mass religiosity is flourishing, that is, also "work with the figure".

For the sociology of religion to really work, the demand for adequate knowledge is essential. And this does not depend on sociologists. In my opinion, the Russian public consciousness in the state in which it is currently located is not characterized by the need for adequate knowledge of itself, in understanding what is really happening. Mythologems are much more popular, which are easier to describe yourself, which are easier to compensate for the discomfort of the modern social situation. In our country, social myth-making serves as an integrator, thanks to which a complete model of the world appears. And it turns out to be quite functional.

Another point: sociologists of religion do not have a community. There are only individual enthusiasts. Across the country, you can recruit a dozen and a half or two specialists, with degrees, with publications, with some research. But there is no community because such sociologists are not needed, especially if you do not give the right figure. Because a sociologist is now also expected to give the correct figure. And so I can't say that we don't have a sociology of religion, but I can't say that we do. If there is, then some kind of sluggish one...

Is the absence or originality of the request to the sociology of religion related to the fact that different authorities - state and public - have concerns about the following issues:-

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what about religion, which seems to be an area of incomprehensible, obscure, and fraught with extremism? Hence, so to speak, the political attitude towards religion, which excludes its consideration as an independent object of study.

That's right. I believe that, unfortunately, in Russia the attitude to religion is instrumental - at least on the part of those very "instances". That is, religion is considered not so much in itself as the spiritual state of people, which forms the inner world, but as an important tool that can replace ideology, which can touch something like a magic wand - and now, this something immediately became different, flourished. Introduce religion in schools, in the army, somewhere else, and as a result, something will change. Religion is taken as an instrument of social construction. Religious organizations are also perceived from this point of view: they either function as a social tool, or they don't. It is clear that this also explains the ranking of religious associations.

Obviously, there are different religious traditions, and they have different connections with culture, with the state, with history. But it turns out that the instrumental approach just does not allow us to identify the real resources and the real rootedness that specific religious traditions possess, because the political assessment has already been given.

Yes, and this hinders the sociologist. Because he is ultimately expected to confirm this assessment. And when a sociologist tries to show that religiosity is important after all, not because of its social institutionality, that a person passes it personally through their own needs, through their inner world, then this is often perceived as speculation, talking about something that is not clear. Because it is already known in advance: there is "our faith", there is "not our faith", there is "our church", there is "not our church" (or even worse-various "sects" that supposedly only dream of how to get everyone involved). And "our church" works as a sovereign, state, etc. You can say about the same ROC MP critical word-

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vo, and this may be regarded as undermining the most important pillar of the state.

But there is another point: the perception of religion by the mass consciousness. Because the "instances" we talked about are one thing, and the mass consciousness, which, in my opinion, is characterized by a myth - magical perception of religion, is another thing. That is, religion is perceived not as a religion itself, but as a certain magical practice that helps to solve some specific life problems or problems, to get some specific result: applied-healed, prayed - passed the exam. If religion is understood as transcendence, then there is no such understanding.

How can one distinguish between religion proper and magical pseudo-religion from a sociological point of view? How can a sociologist introduce the idea of transcendence?

No, of course not. Sociologists don't do this, and they shouldn't do it. But as a religious scholar, I would make such a distinction, because for me the religious is still connected with transcendence, with the supernatural, and a magical operation always appeals to something simply super-ordinary and has a specific tangible result as its goal. Moreover, it is assumed that this result can be claimed and obtained: if I uttered the correct formula, made the correct body movements, manipulated the correct objects, I get what I need, and if I didn't get it, then I said the wrong formula, used the wrong object. If I can't do it myself , I'll go to a "specialist", sorcerer, shaman, etc.

So, as academician Lev Mitrokhin used to say, the question of meaning and life is not raised at all?

Yes. There is such a type of perception of religion, for example, in Orthodoxy-near-church superstitions, when church practices are completely inadequately perceived. By the way, I was not without surprise to find recognition of this fact in the church environment, when in December 2009 I participated in a conference with a name that sounded almost in the old propa-

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gandhian spirit: "Under the mask of Orthodoxy". The conference was held by clerics of the St. Petersburg Diocese, who are very concerned about the presence of magism in the religious consciousness of believers. This is an aberration, when the religious is translated to the level of magic, to the level of superstitious, para-religious.

This, by the way, is a very interesting field for sociological research, but almost no one does such research. Although this is the real state of mind of millions of our fellow citizens. In addition, there is no adequate sociological study of what we call new religious movements ( NSDS). Anything falls under this abbreviation. But it is important to understand how these communities arise and function, to understand that people participate in them not because of some kind of madness or deviation, but because of some needs that were not met elsewhere. Roughly speaking, if someone goes there, it means that there, where they leave, something is underperforming.

So it seems to me that the sociology of religion has a lot of topics and problem areas that it can fully cover and reveal, but there are not enough opportunities.

Are there any common points between Russian and foreign sociology of religion?

As far as I can tell, Western, or at least American, sociology of religion is very subject-oriented. They are much more concerned with specific situations, sometimes very narrow problems, up to the electoral preferences of believers. Here, try to find out the electoral preferences of, for example, Evangelical Christians in the Apostolic Spirit. They themselves will be surprised that someone is interested in it. And where will it go next? That is, foreign sociologists develop methods of specific research that give high accuracy, but we still have nothing to apply them to.

But in fact, we still do not know the real state of the religious situation in Russia. We know some external quantitative indicators of the presence of a particular religious tradition, but we, firstly, do not know the qualitative content, and secondly, not very much

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we have a good idea of this spectrum - either 66, 67, or 70 directions of various religions. There are statistics on registered religious organizations, but they do not say anything. And this ignorance gives rise to fantastic assessments of what religion is or is not in the life of our society.

It is rather strange that the authorities have no demand for such information.

It seems to me that the authorities are not interested in knowing the real situation, at least not in the religious sphere. Or the authorities believe that the information that goes through special channels is sufficient. Of course, the relevant structures have their own bright minds, analysts, but they usually do not have a professional education in the field of sociology or religious studies and do not conduct special research.

But apart from the sociological situation, which is difficult to describe, we have big problems with expert activity, with state religious studies expertise. There is an expert council under the Ministry of Justice, there are local expert councils, but in fact we do not have any religious studies expertise. Because the composition of all these councils does not presuppose the presence of specialists; it presupposes the presence of people who will give the kind of expertise that is currently required of them.

In addition, religious scholars lack legal competence. I do not know what the situation is in the institutions of higher professional education of the Moscow Patriarchate, but I can say for sure that religious scholars who are trained in secular universities in Russia are not able to conduct religious studies expertise. When you say to a graduate student,: "Do you know how to make an expert opinion?" his eyes are round. He just doesn't know how to do it. Therefore, when it is necessary to make an expert assessment, homegrown enthusiasts, including journalists, are invited. Accordingly, the system of subjective assessments begins to dominate.

So we have a sociology of religion in survival mode. Sometimes, by the way, a positive factor is-

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Contact is made with religious organizations, which, as it turns out, feel more in need of an adequate understanding of what religion is, what is happening around and about religion in Russian society.

Back to your Dictionary of the Sociology of Religion: what effect do you expect from the book's release?

First of all, I expect an educational effect. That is, I don't pretend to be a scientific discovery, because the dictionary is not the right genre. My goal was to introduce a system of certain concepts, identify the historical foundation and provide a bibliographic base. If all this is in demand in a certain circle of educated people, even in a small stratum of religious scholars and sociologists, I will consider my task completed.

Interviewed by A. Kyrlezhev

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