Historia del espiritismo en Rusia

History of spiritism in Russia

A group of people hold a spiritism séance in an attempt to contact the dead, circa 1870.

High society circles in St. Petersburg in the late 19th century were fascinated by spiritism séances and efforts to contact the dead. However, there was a problem. The fraudulent nature of this pseudoscience, however, did not prevent educated and powerful Russians from indulging in what came to be known as spiritism.

In the 1850s, spiritism spread from the United States to Europe and soon reached the salons of Russian high society, where it was warmly welcomed by the idle rich, increasingly disillusioned with organised religion, but who also craved something exotic to pass their leisure time.

The first spiritism séances in Moscow and St. Petersburg were held in 1853, and these occult séances quickly became popular among a small section of the upper classes in these two cities. By the 1870s, more Russians believed that contact with the dead was possible, and spiritism seances became widespread in urban society.

Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, early 20th century.

The fashionable furore over spiritist séances became so great that, in 1875, the famous professor Dmitri Mendeleev proposed to form a commission to study spiritism phenomena. Although the findings strongly criticised spiritism as false, this did not dampen the faith of true believers.

Spiritism had powerful supporters in Russia, such as the state councillor Alexander Aksakov, the professor of zoology at St. Petersburg University Nikolai Wagner and the chemist Alexander Butlerov in St. Petersburg.

"Spiritism attracted public attention thanks to media articles describing and promoting ‘mediumistic phenomena", says Natalia Veprikova, an expert on spiritism at the State Museum of the History of Religion (St Petersburg), ’The press coverage had a great impact on public opinion, not only because of the novelty and exotic character of spiritism, but also because eminent scientists acted as its convinced apologists.’

A contact session with the spirits of the dead.

To establish "contact" with the afterlife, the followers of spiritism said there were two prerequisites:

the ‘spirits’ themselves must have wished to communicate with the living
era necesaria la presencia de un médium que supiera establecer «contacto» con los muertos.

This "contact" with the dead took place in a dark, closed room, with light and sound effects, strange knocks, vibrations or movements of objects and furniture, as well as the medium speaking strange things in a trance. Again, all this was organised by the organisers of the séance.

Journals specialised in spiritism were published, describing the séances in detail. The reports were written according to strict rules: the time and place of the seance, the names of the mediums and the strange things that happened. Thus, many people were eager to witness this "miracle" of "contact" with the dead.

The weekly magazine "Rebus" was one of the main media about spiritism at the end of the 19th century.

"The passion for the occult in Russia reached unprecedented proportions and even members of the imperial family joined secret occult societies", says Veprikova. ‘Sometimes, when making strategic state decisions, the Romanovs turned to ‘prophets’ and astrologers for advice.

In 1910, the number of spiritism groups in Russia exceeded 3.500, of which at least 1.000 were active in St. Petersburg alone. Most of the followers came from aristocratic circles, among intellectuals, as well as people from creative professions and even the clergy.

"The vogue among the Russian intelligentsia for spiritism and table-turning was facilitated by the perception of the movement as part of more complex religious and mystical teachings", says Veprikova. The Spiritism flourished amid the general rise of theosophical societies in Russia in the late 19th and 20th centuries.’

With the coming to power of the Bolsheviks in 1917, such superstitions were discouraged, and the Soviet state sent agents to occult societies to control their activities. By the early 1930s, virtually all spiritism and occult societies ceased to exist in the Soviet Union. Members of these groups were accused of anti-Soviet agitation and counter-revolutionary activities.

In the early 1930s, virtually all spiritism and occult societies ceased to exist in the Soviet Union. Members of these groups were accused of anti-Soviet agitation and counter-revolutionary activities.

Photograph with a mysterious figure wrapped in a white shroud in the background, Warsaw, 1919.

Since the 1990s, spiritist societies have been officially permitted in Russia, but mass enthusiasm for spiritism today is a far cry from the hysteria of more than a century ago.