Alexey Dobrovolsky

Dobrovolsky grew up admiring Stalin and everything that was associated with him.[3] From an early age, he participated in various dissident movements.[1]

After finishing high school, Dobrovolsky had received an incomplete education at the Moscow Institute of Culture and went on to work as a loader in the printing house of the newspaper "Moskovskaya Pravda"..[1]

In 1956, he left the Komsomol in protest against the campaign that had begun in the country to overcome the consequences of Joseph Stalin's cult of personality. According to him, “From the exposure of Stalin, I drew the wrong conclusions and gradually became an enemy of Soviet power."[3]

In December 1956, influenced by the Hungarian Revolution, he formed the Russian National Socialist Party from the young workers of the defense factories in Moscow, aiming to overthrow the communists and "revive the Russian nation".[1] The group members were mainly involved in distributing leaflets with anti-Soviet and anti-communist slogans.

On May 23, 1958, he was arrested along with his associates from the RNSP and subsequently sentenced to three years in prison. In custody, he became friends with former collaborators, Nazis, associates of Pyotr Krasnov, Andrei Shkuro, and Andrey Vlasov, and members of the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (NTS). Influenced by them in the camp between 1958–1961, he became a monarchist. While serving time in Dubravnye camps (Mordovia), Dobrovolsky met S. R. Arseniev-Hoffman, who in the pre-war years was a member of a secret Russian-German society.Shnirelman 2015

He was released in 1961. In the same year, he was baptized by the dissident priest Gleb Yakunin.[1]

In 1964 he joined the Union of the Working People, an organization created by Boris Evdokimov, a member of the NTS. In March 1964, thanks to a provocateur,[1] all four members of the union were arrested. Dobrovolsky and Evdokimov were declared mentally ill and Dobrovolsky underwent psychiatric treatment for a year. At the hospital, he met dissidents Vladimir Bukovsky and General Petro Grigorenko.

On August 25, 1965, he was released from a special psychiatric hospital. In the autumn, the NTS established a connection with him, which through him transferred the duplicating apparatus to the dissident poet Yuri Galanskov, a member of the NTS. In 1966, Dobrovolsky joined the NTS. Through him, Alexander Ginzburg's "White Book" (a collection of documents about the trial of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel) and a collection of "Phoenix-66" were transferred to the West.

In 1967 he was arrested again. At the Trial of the Four, he testified against himself and his comrades, thanks to which he was sentenced to only two years (while Galanskov received seven years and died in the camp, and Ginzburg was sentenced to five years). Anatoly Krasnov-Levitin wrote in his memoirs: “The most sensational news was that of the surrender of Alexey Dobrovolsky. For a long time, no one wanted to believe this. Dobrovolsky, with his mannerisms - either a white officer or a hero of the people's will - managed to inspire universal confidence in himself."[4]

In January 1968, Pyotr Yakir, Yuliy Kim, and Ilya Gabay, calling Dobrovolsky "mean and cowardly" in their address "To the workers of science, culture, art", wrote:[5]

The life of Alexey Dobrovolsky, who played an ominous Kostomarov-like role in this process, was also tarnished. If he has even an ounce of conscience, thirty pieces of silver (a total of two years in prison) is too little compensation for the contempt and rejection that awaits this slanderer. The stigma of a scoundrel who killed his comrades, who slandered them out of base interests. Our punitive bodies are to a large extent responsible for this moral deformity of Dobrovolsky.

In early 1969, Dobrovolsky was released. He lived in Uglich, Alexandrov, and Moscow.

In 1986 he left Moscow for Pushchino, where he was engaged in folk healing.[1]

In the second half of the 1980s, with the beginning of Perestroika, he joined the patriotic association Pamyat. Dobrovolsky was involved in a dispute with the leader of the association, Dmitry Vasilyev, when Orthodox sentiments prevailed in the association. At the end of 1987, he moved with a group neopagans to the World Anti-Zionist and Anti-Masonic Front "Pamyat", which was headed by Valery Yemelyanov (Velemir).[1]

In 1989, he took part in the creation of the "Moscow Slavic pagan community", which was headed by Alexander Belov ("Selidor"). He took the pagan name "Dobroslav". At this time, he actively delivered lectures organized by Konstantin Smirnov-Ostashvili, a leader of Pamyat. Dobroslav took an active part in Pamyat rallies. In 1990, he collaborated with the Russian Party of Viktor Korchagin.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, he retired to the village of Vesenevo, Kirov Oblast, from where he conducted "educational" work: he performed naming ceremonies and organized "pagan" holidays. During the latter, there was often an abundant use of alcohol and demonstrative destruction of icons.[6] In Vesenevo, Dobroslav founded a pagan community mainly from his family members. One of his sons, Alexander, received the pagan name Vyatich. In 1993–1995, Dobroslav gave "educational lectures" in Kirov at the House of Political Education.

In 1994, he tried to create a political organization, the Russian National Liberation Movement (RNOD), the idea of which his student A. M. Aratov later also unsuccessfully tried to implement. On June 22, 1997, Dobroslav convened the Veche - Unification Congress of Pagan Communities, proclaiming himself the leader of the RNOD. Later, he came into conflict with the publishers of Russkaya Pravda, who had previously actively disseminated his ideas. Aratov expelled Dobroslav's son Sergei from the editorial board of Russkaya Pravda for "drunkenness."

The cultural-historical society "Arrows of Yarila", created by Dobroslav's followers, collapsed in the early 2000s.

In the early 2000s, Dobroslav concentrated on the development of a pagan worldview. He came to Moscow several times to give lectures.

On April 23, 2001, the Shabalinsky District Court considered the case of Dobroslav, accused of inciting anti-Semitism and religious hatred. The local communist newspaper Kirovskaya Pravda supported Dobroslav. On March 1, 2002, this case was considered in the Svechinsky District Court of the city of Kirov, where Dobroslav was sentenced to two years of suspended imprisonment.

In March, May, and July 2005, some of Dobroslav's brochures were declared extremist material by various district courts of the city of Kirov. In 2007, these brochures were included in the Federal List of Extremist Literature, compiled by the Federal Registration Service (No. 6-10).[1]

According to Dobrovolsky himself and people who knew him, Nazi ideas, coupled with Nazi symbolism and "great style", made a deep impression on him in the 1960s. He began to dream of the complete extermination of the Jews. Dobrovolsky's new friends, Nazis and collaborators, convinced him that the Americans allegedly built gas chambers themselves to accuse the Nazis of genocide. From S. R. Arsenyev-Hoffman, Dobrovolsky learned about the "faith of the ancestors" and "the role of the Nordic race". Later, in 1969, having bought a library of rare books, he became interested in paganism and the occult and became a supporter of the esoteric ideas of Helena Blavatsky.

Dobroslav represented the "National Socialist" wing in Rodnoverie and enjoyed great prestige among members of Pamyat.[1] He was proud that he did not have a higher education because he believed that "education cripples a person" (an opinion shared by Adolf Hitler). In his opinion, science is at an impasse and "only misfortunes arise from it". Dobroslav referred to himself and his followers "bearers of light" and "healthy forces of the nation".[7]

Dobroslav declared himself a supporter of "pagan socialism". He deduced "Russian spirituality" directly from "Slavic heredity", closely related to his native soil. He interpreted the concept of blood and soil literally, believing that some powerful, tangible force emanated from the graves of the ancestors which influenced the fate of the living. As a National Socialist ("pagan socialist"), he placed the most value not in Slavs or Russians as a nation, but the Russian commune. He believed that the druzhina was not separated from the people in early Slavic communities. Dobroslav traced this concept to "Russian natural peasant socialism", which reportedly included complete social equality, redistribution of property, voluntary self-restraint, and did not recognize the right to private property.

Borrowing the idea of vegetarianism from esoteric teachings, he believed that the harmonious relationship between humanity and animals was first undermined by the introduction of animal husbandry. He blamed the "Semito-Hamites" who came from Atlantis for the invention of animal domestication and blood sacrifice. He believed the Jews were uniquely "separated from Nature", arguing that the Bible portrayed it not as a "nursing mother" but as an insensitive material shell. He called the Jews parasites and supported pogroms as "people's self-defense".

Dobroslav considered the "Jewish Christian alienation from nature" and "the church's justification of social inequality" unacceptable. He wrote about the "unnatural mixing of races" and accused "international Jewish Christianity" of this crime. He viewed the Slavs as a unique race suffering from racial oppression by the "chosen people". Following the attitudes of the German Nazis, Dobroslav opposed "two mutually exclusive worldviews: solar life-affirmation and pernicious obscurantism". He replaced "Aryans" and "Semites" with Slavs and hybrid "Jewish Christians": the former are honest and sincere, the latter are cunning and insidious. At the same time, he borrowed the idea of the "Synagogue of Satan" from Christian antisemitism, associating with it a pentagram, or five-pointed star, which is supposedly a symbol of evil and Freemasonry. The pagan Slavs were peace-loving, and only Prince Vladimir allegedly introduced the custom of human sacrifice, and Christians are distinguished by their bloodthirstiness. Dobroslav saw its roots in “biblical punitive wars against the indigenous peoples of Palestine”. He argued that "the misanthropic racism of the 'chosen' Jews served as a model for Christian racism - for the extermination of entire indigenous peoples". Monotheism, according to Dobroslav, contributed to the consolidation of princely and royal power and ultimately led to serfdom. In his opinion, the Russian civil war, which split the people into nobles and commoners, began not in 1918, but in 988. According to Dobroslav, the church committed a terrible betrayal of national interests by allying with the Tatars, which supposedly helped strengthen the church. He denied the patriotic activities of Sergius of Radonezh and tried to prove that the Russians defeated Mamai not with the church's support, but in spite of it.

Capitalism, according to Dobroslav, is "a monstrous product of Jewish Christianity" and a "Western plutocracy, which is the result of the internal development of Jewish Christianity": "Capitalism and conscience are incompatible". For this reason, the modern industrial society has brought the world to the brink of ecological catastrophe, and nature will take cruel revenge for this. Like the Nazis, Dobroslav believed that urbanites had betrayed their national values and became corrupted with bourgeois culture. However, unlike the Nazis, he saw the Russian Revolution as the revolt of the village against the city and "Russian truth against Jewish-Christian falsehood". He called Bolshevism "the element of the Russian soul" and separated it from Marxism. In declaring the Russian Revolution "an attempt to return to [Russia's] natural independent path," Dobroslav revived such concepts as National Bolshevism and Eurasianism, which were popular in the 1920s among some white Russian émigrés. Dobroslav called for an alliance of nationalists and "patriotic communists" in the name of building "Russian national socialism".

Dobroslav saw salvation for the Slavs in "a return to the very core of the radiant pagan worldview - to the highly moral attitudes of the ancients, primarily in relation to Mother Nature". Dobroslav declared an uncompromising war on the "Jewish yoke" and prophesied an imminent Russian revolt against it. He wrote that the Yarilo-Sun would soon burn those most sensitive to ultraviolet radiation, a trait which he attributed primarily to the Jews. The death of the "Judeo-Christian" world, in his opinion, will mark the beginning of "our new era". Only "new people", sun worshipers, will be able to survive.

Eight-ray "Kolovrat", the name and meaning of which was introduced by Dobroslav

In the early 1990s, Dobroslav became the first to call the four-pointed swastika "Kolovrat", and later transferred this name to the eight-pointed rectangular swastika that he introduced. According to the historian and religious scholar R. V. Shizhensky, Dobroslav took the idea of the swastika from the work of the Nazi ideologist Herman Wirth, the first leader of the Ahnenerbe.[8] The eight-ray "Kolovrat", supposedly a pagan sign of the Sun, consisting of two superimposed swastikas, Dobroslav declared the symbol of an uncompromising "national liberation struggle" against the "Jewish yoke". According to Dobroslav, the meaning of "Kolovrat" entirely coincides with the meaning of the Nazi swastika.[1]

Dobroslav's ideas had a significant impact on the Russian native faith. Most of his ideas have become commonplaces for variations of this teaching. Many of these ideas, created earlier by neopagans, became known to the next generation through Dobroslav, including the understanding of the tribal system as "Aryan" socialism (National Socialism or Nazism); opposition of Slavs and "Jewish Christians", antisemitic ideas, including the introduction by Jews of bloody sacrifices, anti-natural activities and "racism" of the Old Testament and modern Jews; the treacherous activity of Prince Vladimir in the introduction of Christianity; the imminent onset of a new age (the Age of Aquarius), favorable for the Slavs and destructive for their enemies.

Dobroslav introduced the term and meaning of the eight-pointed "Kolovrat", the most famous symbol of Rodnoverie. Dobroslav's idea of an alliance of nationalists and “patriotic communists” became the basis for the desire of a part of neopagans for an alliance with “nationally oriented” communists.

Dobroslav's follower, A. M. Aratov, director of the Russkaya Pravda publishing house, wrote about the onset of the Era of Russia and the imminent end of Christianity and Judaism.[1]

• Shnirelman, Viktor (2015). Aryan myth in the modern world. New literary review. ISBN 9785444804223.
• Kaminskaya, Dina (2009). Lawyer's Notes (PDF). M.: New publishing house. (Free man). pp. 315–412.
• Krasnov-Levitin, Anatoly (1981). Native space: Democrat. movement: Memories. Part 4. Frankfurt: Sowing. pp. 114–115.
• Gabay, Ilya; Kim, Yuliy; Yakir, Pyotr (1968). To workers of science, culture, art.
• Buldakova (2000). "Dobroslav, Svetobor, Lubomir, Tverdolik... Neopagans at the crossroads of centuries". Binoculars. Vyatka Cultural Journal (7).
• Shnirelman, Viktor (2012). Russian Rodnoverie: Neopaganism and Nationalism in Modern Russia. M.: Biblical Theological Institute of St. Andrew the Apostle. p. xiv + 302. ISBN 978-5-89647-291-9.

• Shizhensky, Roman Vitalievich (2021). "Neopaganism and the middle class". Lecture hall "Krapivensky 4". 03/02/2021.
• Shizhensky, Roman Vitalievich (2012a). "The experience of a comparative analysis of the texts of A. A. Dobrovolsky and H. F. Wirth (on the issue of the source base of Russian neopagans)". Archived from the original on 2016-05-08.