The Official Statement

The Official Statement of the Circle of Pagan Traditions Intl. and of the Union of Slavic Communities of the Slavic Native Belief

About concept substitutions in languages, in the history of Slavs and about pseudo-paganism

Recently it often appears in mass media sources and in popular publications a tendency to equate the modern Russian Pagan movement with followers and amateurs of fictions, such as people like Valery Chudinov, Nikolai Levashov, Gennady Grinevich, Alexander Khinevich, Alexei Trehlebov and etc.

The apprehensions declared in their books are presented as model pagan conceptions and viewpoints, though these are figments of aforesaid people’s imaginations and their deliberate provocations.

We, the international public movement ‘the Circle of Pagan Traditions’, guided by the Manifesto of Pagan Traditions within the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World's Cultural and Natural Heritage, and the Union of Slavic Communities of the Slavic Native Belief guided by own Regulations, make the following statements:

  • Not under any circumstances will we ever recognize aforesaid persons as ideologists of modern paganism nor as representatives of the traditional heritage;
  • We consider that the vast majority of those people’s publications are barely their own thoughts/ expressions which come essentially and basically at odds with the evidential basis of modern science and viewpoints of real scientists;
  • We are unable to get those pseudo-scientific concepts recognized; furthermore we believe it is our duty to warn all pagans that reading books of those persons might cause misleading opinions about real paganism by doubtful theories disguised as scientific investigations; these are pseudo-historical and pseudo-linguistic fictions. Eventually all of this leads only to discredit the modern Pagan movement and Russian science.
  • We condemn the publishers and distributors of those books and articles because they misrepresent the history of Slavic traditions and languages, the past of our nations, and deceive uninformed readers by mercantile interests to obtain a profit.

Hereby we, the undersigned representatives of the Circle of the Pagan Traditions and the Union of Slavic Communities of the Slavic Native Belief, declare that our members or supporters have not nor will not ever have anything in common with those provocative book authors; neither to any groups nor actions related to their views or ideas, nor those who stand behind their works.

Signatures:
Acting Chairman of the Board of the Circle of Pagan Traditions, Mr. Constantine Begtin (a.k.a. volhv Ogneyar)
Head of the Union of Slavic Communities of the Slavic Native Belief, Mr. Vadim Kazakov.

Dec 25, 2009.