‘Paganism and Old Rus’ was the main work of the historian of literature and folklorist Eugeny Vasilievich Anichkov (1866-1937), publ. in 1914. In the introduction the author declares that folklore is to be analyzed in the context of the history of religion, not only as a literary text. He offers to change the concept of mythology with another one – ‘religious antiquities’, because he considers theoretical constructions by specialists in mythology too arbitrary. Then, in the introduction, A. gives a short excursus in the history of Christianity. The task of the author is studying the literary monuments of the time of Christianization of Europe. On his opinion, it could help to get the idea what was the European Paganism, because the process of Christianization was connected with the struggle against Paganism.
The book consists of two parts and a supplement with additional texts. The first part, ‘Pagan common-day life and Christian sermons’, provides a textual analysis of several sermons published by N. S. Tikhonravov in 1862, and later reproduced by A. I. Ponomarev and others. Among them, there was the ‘Word of a certain Christ lover, adherent of the right faith’, and ‘Word, how pagans venerate idols’ (Word on Idols), and others. The author tries to find out the time of compiling those words, their ‘layers’, who and under what circumstances wrote them and with what aim. On his opinion, it would allow to restore the data on Old Russian Paganism. He argued against attempts to reconstruct dogmas of ancient Paganism, because he believed that there was not a system of gods. He also considers the problem of double-faith, which he finds in the “Word of a certain Christ lover…’. Several chapters of the first part were on the feasts and plays which were the main object of exposure.
In the second part, ‘Gods and Rites’, he searches for the time of insets into the texts and sums up information of pagan gods. He explains mentioning Slavic gods in written sources with late insets and with the artificial evolution of the cult of military-princely gods. He supposes that preachers were interested in domestic and household cults. After the first chapter, he puts a table with certain plots, rites, data on pagan gods, and sources on them (for instance, about sacrifices, the fire cult, the name of Mokosh, etc.).
In spite of the hard position of the author in the evaluation of Slavic gods, the book is an important collection of data and comparative European folklore material on the rites.