In the Russian intellectual milieu, Slavic Native Faith (Rodnovery) presents itself as a carrier of the political philosophy of nativism/nationalism/populism (narodnichestvo), intrinsically related to the identity of the Slavs and the broader group of populations with Indo-European speaking origins, and intertwined with historiosophical ideas about the past and the future of these populations and their role in eschatology.
The scholar Robert A. Saunders found that Rodnover ideas are very close to those of Eurasianism, the current leading ideology of the Russian state. Others found similarities of Rodnover ideas with those of the Nouvelle Droite (European New Right). Rodnovery typically gives preeminence to the rights of the collectivity over the rights of the individual, and Rodnover social values are conservative. Common themes are the opposition to cosmopolitanism, liberalism, and globalisation, as well as Americanisation and consumerism.
The scholar Kaarina Aitamurto defined Rodnovers' applied political systems as forms of grassroots democracy, or as a samoderzhavie ("self-rule") system, based on the ancient Slavic model of the veche (assembly) of the elders, similar to ancient Greek democracy. They generally propose a political system in which power is entrusted to assemblies of consensually acknowledged wise men, or to a single wise individual. On the level of geopolitics, Rodnovers have proposed the idea of "multipolarity" to oppose the "unipolarity" of the mono-ideologies, that is to say the Abrahamic religions and their ideological products of the Western civilisation.
The historian Marlène Laruelle observed that Rodnovery is in principle a decentralised movement, with hundreds of groups coexisting without submission to a central authority. Therefore, socio-political views can vary greatly from one group to another, from one adherent to another, ranging from apoliticism, to left-wing, to right-wing positions. Nevertheless, Laruelle said that the most politicised right-wing groups are the most popularly known, since they are more vocal in spreading their ideas through the media, organise anti-Christian campaigns, and even engage in violent actions. Aitamurto observed that the different wings of the Rodnover movement "attract different kinds of people approaching the religion from quite diverging points of departure". Aitamurto and Victor Shnirelman also found that the lines between right-wing, left-wing and apolitical Rodnovers is blurry.
In 1997 some Russian Rodnovers published a political declaration, the Russian Pagan Manifesto, which mentions, as sources of inspiration, three figures famous for their strong nationalism and conservatism: Lev Gumilyov, Igor Shafarevich, and the Iranian Ruhollah Khomeini. In 2002, the Bittsa Appeal was promulgated by Rodnovers less political in their orientation, and among other things it explicitly condemned extreme nationalism within Rodnovery. A further Rodnover political declaration, not critical towards nationalism, was the Heathen Tradition Manifest published in 2007.
Origins of the Slavs
The notion that modern Rodnovery is closely tied to the historical religion of the Slavs is a very strong one among practitioners. Although there is no surviving evidence that the early Slavs, a branch of the Indo-Europeans, conceived of themselves as a unified ethno-cultural group, the reconstruction of the Proto-Slavic language and the principles of historical linguistics indicates that there must have been a Proto-Slavic people tight-knit enough to have spoken a single language or at least closely related groups of dialects that differentiated them greatly from surrounding populations. There is an academic consensus that the Proto-Slavic language developed from about the second half of the first millennium BCE in an area of Central and Eastern Europe bordered by the Dnieper basin to the east, the Vistula basin to the west, the Carpathian Mountains to the south, and the forests beyond the Pripet basin to the north.
Over the course of several centuries, Slavic populations migrated in northern, eastern, and south-western directions. In doing so, they branched out into three sub-linguistic families: the East Slavs (Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians), the West Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks), and the South Slavs (Slovenes, Serbs, Croats, Macedonians, and Bulgarians). The belief systems of these Slavic communities had many affinities with those of neighbouring linguistic populations, such as the Balts, Thracians, and Indo-Iranians.
Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov studied the origin of ancient Slavic themes in the common substratum represented by the reconstructed purported Proto-Indo-European religion and what Georges Dumézil defined as the "trifunctional hypothesis". Marija Gimbutas, instead, found Slavic religion to be a clear result of the overlap of supposed Indo-European patriarchism and pre-Indo-European matrifocal beliefs, such proposed duality being a common theme in her studies about so-called "Old Europe" and the Kurgan hypothesis. Boris Rybakov emphasised the continuity and complexification of Slavic religion through the centuries. According to the scholar of religion Mircea Eliade, the original Proto-Indo-European religious traditions were closer to Siberian shamanism than to the later Near Eastern and Mediterranean religions, as proven by their shared crucial concepts: the supreme God of Heaven (cf. Indo-European Dyeus, Siberian Tengri, and Mesopotamian Dingir) and the three-layered structure of cosmology (cf. Sanskrit Trailokya). pp. 60 ff.
Rodnover political ideologies Veche democracy
Many Russian Rodnover groups are strongly critical of democracy, modern liberal democracy, which they see as a degenerate form of government that leads to "cosmopolitan chaos". According to Shnirelman they favour instead political models of a centralised state led by a strong leader. Aitamurto, otherwise, characterises the political models proposed by Rodnovers as based on their interpretation of the ancient Slavic community model of the veche (assembly), similar to the ancient Germanic "thing". Nineteenth- and twentieth-century intellectuals often interpreted the veche as an anti-hierarchic and democratic model, while later Soviet Marxist tended to identify it as "pre-capitalist democracy". The term already had ethnic and national connotations, which were underlined by nineteenth-century Slavophiles, and nationalist circles in the last decades of the Soviet Union and from the 1990s onwards.
Many Rodnover groups call their organisational structure veche. Aitamurto found that it proves to be useful in what she terms as Rodnovery's "democratic criticism of democracy" (of liberal democracy). According to her, the veche as interpreted by Rodnovers represents a vernacular form of governance similar to ancient Greek democracy. According to the view shared by many Rodnovers, while liberal democracy ends up in chaos because it is driven by the decisions of the masses, who are not wise; the veche represents a form of "consensual decision-making" of assemblies of wise elders, and power is exercised by wise rulers. Ynglists call this model samoderzhavie, "people ruling themselves". Anastasians give to "self-government" and consensual decision-making a theological interpretation, viewing it as realising the "thought of God" through people. However, Aitamurto also described many Rodnovers' political philosophy as elitism, in which not everyone is reputed as having the same decision ability; the most conservative Rodnovers espouse the ideal that "the opinion of a prostitute cannot have the same weight as the opinion of a professor".
Western liberal ideas of freedom and democracy are traditionally perceived by Russian eyes as "outer" freedom, contrasting with Slavic "inner" freedom of the mind; in Rodnovers' view, Western liberal democracy is "destined to execute the primitive desires of the masses or to work as a tool in the hands of a ruthless elite", being therefore a mean-spirited "rule of demons". The Anastasians describe modern Western democracy as a system of control through conflict, which always inevitably produces disaffected sections in the population, and through money; in their books, The Ringing Cedars, democracy is criticised as "demonocracy" through a myth in which it is personified as "Demon Cratiy" (Демон Кратий), a demon who invented such system as a way to subordinate all people to the monetary system through the illusion of freedom.
In these ideas of grassroots democracy which comes to fruition in a wise governance, Aitamurto saw an incarnation of the traditional Russian challenge of religious structures and alienated governance—such as autocratic monarchy and totalitarian communism—for achieving a personal relationship with the sacred, which is at the same time a demand of social solidarity and responsibility. She presents the interpretation of the myth of Perun who slashes the snake guilty of theft, provided by the Russian volkhv Velimir (Nikolay Speransky), as symbolising the ideal relationship and collaboration between the ruler and the people, with the ruler serving the people who have chosen him by acting as an authority who provides them with order, and in turn is respected by the people with loyalty for his service. Some Rodnovers interpret the veche in ethnic terms, thus as a form of "ethnic democracy", in the wake of similar concepts found in the Nouvelle Droite.
Nationalism The scholar Scott Simpson stated that Slavic Native Faith is fundamentally concerned with ethnic identity. This easily develops into forms of nationalism, and has often been characterised as ethnic nationalism. Aitamurto suggested that Russian Rodnovers' conceptions of nationalism encompass three main themes: that "the Russian or Slavic people are a distinct group", that they "have—or their heritage has—some superior qualities", and that "this unique heritage or the existence of this ethnic group is now threatened, and, therefore, it is of vital importance to fight for it". According to Shnirelman, ethnic nationalist and racist views are present even in those Rodnovers who do not identify as politically engaged. He also noted that the movement is "obsessed with the idea of origin", and most Rodnover groups will permit only Slavs as members, although there are a few exceptions. There are Rodnover groups that espouse less radical positions of nationalism, such as cultural nationalism or patriotism.
Conservatism, anti-miscegenation and eugenics The ethics of the Rodnovers in general emphasise the conservative values typical of the political right-wing: patriarchy, heterosexuality, traditional family, fidelity and procreation. Many Rodnovers believe in social hierarchy and it's much open than hereditary.
Along with these values, some Rodnover groups are against miscegenation, the mixing of different races carriers of different cultures. In its founding statement from 1998, the Federation of Ukrainian Rodnovers led by the Ukrainian Rodnover leader Halyna Lozko declared that many of the world's problems stem from the "mixing of ethnic cultures", something which they claim has resulted in the "ruination of the ethnosphere", which they regard as an integral part of the Earth's biosphere. Rodnovers generally conceive ethnicity and culture as territorial, moulded by the surrounding natural environment (ecology). Similarly, Lev Sylenko, founder of the Ukrainian branch of Rodnovery known as the Native Ukrainian National Faith, taught that humanity was naturally divided up into distinct ethno-cultural groups, each with their own life cycle, religiosity, language, and customs, all of which had to spiritually progress in their own way. Therefore, many Rodnovers emphasise a need for ethnic purity and oppose what they regard as the "culturally destructive" phenomena brought about by liberal globalisation.