The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Cries in the New Wilderness: From the Files of the Moscow Institute of Atheism, by Mikhail Epstein, translated by Eve Adler
reviewed by Michael Pinker

Mikhail Epstein. Cries in the New Wilderness: From the Files of the Moscow Institute of Atheism. Trans. and intro. Eve Adler. Paul Dry Books, 2002. 236 pp. Paper: $15.95.

Cries in the New Wilderness does not read like a novel. It purports to reprint an obscure 1985 research study in Soviet political sociology, The New Sectarianism, edited by Professor Raissa O. Gubaydulina of the former Institute of Atheism, along with selected reviews, selections from Gubaydulina’s literary archives, and a tribute to the late professor. Yet in doing so, Mikhail Epstein takes on more than state-sponsored scholarship. Allegedly the official counterpart of samizdat, Gubaydulina’s “Reference Manual” examines numerous species of native religious enthusiasm, the contemporary fringe of faith. Her contributors have sifted classified intelligence, so the story goes, sorting and distributing distinctive subspecies among so-called Everyday, Philistine, Nationalist, Atheist, Doomsday, and Literary sects. Passages from sources identified only by authors’ initials glorify the peculiar dogmas and devotions of, among others, Bloodbrothers, Sinnerists, and Steppies. Yet the absurdity of these avant-garde sects’ “religio-mystical” practices undercuts their legitimacy, despite the fulminations of a careful cross-section of reviewers. If such niche denominations portray a desperate hunger for faith, especially among the intelligentsia, they can be taken only half-seriously. The joke is on Epstein’s doughty Marxist-Leninist editor, alert to the dangers to materialism but unable to stem the tide. Efforts by Gubaydulina and her cohort to obliterate all worship but to the State became passé in Russia and elsewhere. Still, whether descanting on the glories of spilt blood, the sacrificial necessity of sin, or the irresistible allure of open spaces, these imagined sectarians may indeed represent a yearning for spiritual succor that continues to haunt the land. If so, Mikhail Epstein, literary critic and cultural theoretician, here takes aim not only at social scientific research but also the insufficiency of traditional religious practices to satisfy a rising generation. And his aim, if not his manner, seems true.