Evolution of Heathen Presentations of East Slavs About the Beyond the Grave World
Based on extensive archaeological material, Old Russian written sources and ethnographic data, a historical analysis of the basic worldview models of the East Slavic pagan representations of our ancestors of the pre-Christian era about the afterlife was carried out. Using historico-comparative and problem-chronological methods of scientific analysis as well as the method of interpretation synthesis, the author was able to distinguish three basic worldview models of Old Russian posthumous representations and several of the most characteristic plots of Old Russian folk and druzhinnyh ideas about the afterlife as “antimire” or the kingdom of eternal winter and cold, or a huge pasture where the faceless souls of the dead are grazing. Pagan beliefs and representations associated with death and the afterlife of man were first presented not as a single traditional metaphysical structure, but in the form of several more intertwined and changing during the time most characteristic pagan ideological models of the representations of the Eastern Slavs of the pre-Christian era about death and the afterlife.