Slavdom as Christendom’s colony – Slavonic identity according to Zadruga

Abstract

The topic of this article is Slavonic identity according to the Zadruga movement. Zadrugians believed that normal cultural and civilizational development of a nation is possible only if there is harmony between the ethnos and spirituality. The believed that Christianity not only alienated Slavs from their native culture and spirituality but also subjugated them to the (German) Holy Roman Empire and Papacy – prime powers of Christendom – through symbolic power. Zadrugians saw the creation of a new, Slavonic-Pagan identity (as opposed to the Christian one) as the only way of breaking what they perceived as “cultural paralysis”. Only through a fundamental change in their national character and mentality, Poles and Slavs will be able to cease being Western civilization’s cultural periphery.