‘What do we know for sure about the personal gods of Slavs?’ was a work by philologist Aleksander Ivanovich Kirpichnikov (1845-1903), publ. in the magazine Zhurnal of the Ministry of People’s Education in 1885. It was an attempt to rebut broad generalizations of the mythological school on the base of historical sources.
The author gives information about Slavs taken from foreign writers: in the sixth century, Procopius noted the superior god of thunder at Slavs; in the eleventh century, Bishop Dietmar described a Slavic city from someones’ words and gave an important but not completely truthful data (K. argued, that only one or two episodes there deserves the trust); in the same eleventh century, Adam of Bremen noted a sanctuary of Retts for the god Redigast/Redigost (K. considered him as a hero only, not a god), and divinations, which seemed correctly described. The author considered the testimony of Helmold in his ‘Chronicle of Slavs’ not rather trustworthy, because Helmold had taken much from Adam of Bremen and had given contradictory data on mythology. On K.’s point of view, folk conceptions were formed under the influence of Christianity as well, and the so called double-beliefs were shaped, which differed from the initial mythological worldview. Saxo Grammaticus gave a detailed description of treating the statue of Svyatovit by the Slavs of the isle of Ruegen, and the connecting divinations. The most part of that testimony K. considered fictional, and explained the cult of Svyatovit as a distortion of the cult of St Vitus.
When the author turns to Slavic sources, he notes their difference from foreign ones, as wells as even more meager data. He finds only two names of gods of East Slavs which can be accepted as trustworthy: Perun and Volos. Other gods mentioned in the sources can not be taken for all-Slavic deities. On the opinion of K., only Perun can pass through historical criticism as a certain Russian god. The author notes, that pagan beliefs were partly lost, partly disfigured by the tenth century, and later writes had to use unreliable sources.