Editing Ynglism (section)

==Sociology==
[[File:Temple of the Wisdom of Perun in Omsk, 2004.jpg|thumb|upright=1.0|The Temple of the Wisdom of Perun, part of the headquarters of the Ynglist Church in Omsk, as it appeared in 2004, before it was destroyed by arson on September 16 of the same year.{{sfn|Matytsin|2009|loc=passim}} It was rebuilt in the 2010s.]]

===Views on Christianity===
Like other esoteric sciences, Ynglism is ambivalent towards [[Christianity]], considering [[Jesus]] as an important [[prophet]] — a "great wanderer", ''veliky putnik'' — while accusing Christian churches to have distorted his original message, which would be preserved in [[apocryphal]] literature.{{sfn|Shnirelman|2017a|p=98}} The journal ''Dzhiva-Astra'' issued by the Ynglist Church published [[Gnosticism|Gnostic]] scriptures which are popular among Russian nationalists.{{sfn|Shnirelman|2017a|p=98}} More specifically, the Ynglists regard Jesus as an incarnation of the constellation of [[Pisces (constellation)|Pisces]], and [[Paulanism]] — Christianity as formulated by [[Paul of Tarsus]] — to be responsible for the corruption of much of his original teaching.<ref name="Derzhavarus-prayer"/> The Ynglists also argue that early Slavic ''[[volkhv]]''s were aware of the concepts of a supreme God and of the trinity, which were later borrowed by the Christian religion.{{sfn|Shnirelman|2017a|p=98}} Like other Rodnover groups, the Ynglists ultimately consider Christianity to be an anti-national international machination aimed at the degeneration and the enslavement of people, primarily the Slavs and the Russians in particular.{{sfnm|1a1=Shnirelman|1y=2017a|1p=98|2a1=Shnirelman|2y=2017b|2p=90}} They believe that Christianity was deliberately invented by the [[Jews]] — whom they consider as the leading elite of the wicked "gray race" — as an "excellent ideological weapon" to enslave the whole world.<ref name="Derzhavarus-grays"/>

===Links with political parties===
Kaarina Aitamurto characterised the Ynglist Church as less politically goal-oriented than other Rodnover movements.{{sfn|Aitamurto|2016|p=51}} According to Victor Shnirelman, Aleksandr Khinevich was politically active in the propagation of Ynglist ideas between 1990 and 1993, but then left politics and became more focused on an esoteric development of the movement.{{sfn|Shnirelman|2017b|p=90}} The Russian scholar of religion Vladimir B. Yashin of the Department of Theology and World Cultures of [[Omsk State University]] wrote in 2001 that the Ynglist Church had close ties with the Omsk regional branch of the [[far-right politics|far-right]] political party [[Russian National Unity]] of [[Alexander Barkashov]], whose members provided security and order during the mass gatherings of the Ynglists.{{sfnm|1a1=Maltsev|1y=2015|1loc=passim|2a1=Shnirelman|2y=2017b|2p=90}} On the other hand, the non-Ynglist Russian Rodnover leader Nikolay Speransky (''volkhv'' Velimir) in the early 2010s classified Aleksandr Khinevich among the representatives of [[left-wing politics|left-wing]] ideas within Rodnovery, although recognising that he then kept most of his activity outside of politics.{{sfn|Shnirelman|2013|p=62}}

===Judicial prosecution===
Tensions between the Ynglist Church and authorities began in 1997 when complaints accused the former for its use of ''[[swastika]]''-like religious symbolism and for [[ultranationalism]].{{sfn|Shnirelman|2017b|p=91}} Years later, in 2004, the headquarters of the Ynglist Church in Omsk, namely the "Spiritual Administration of the Asgardian Country of Belovodye", were prosecuted and dissolved as "extremist organisations" by decision of the Omsk Regional Court,<ref name="MoJ-extremist-organisations">{{cite web|title=Перечень НКО, ликвидированных в соответствии с ФЗ "О противодействии экстремистской деятельности" (обновлено по состоянию на 19 февраля 2021 г.) |work=Министерство юстиции Российской Федерации |trans-title=List of NPOs liquidated in accordance with the Federal Law "On Countering Extremist Activities" (updated as of 19 February 2021) |publisher=[[Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation]] |url=https://minjust.gov.ru/ru/documents/7822/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210310151542/https://minjust.gov.ru/ru/documents/7822/ |archive-date=10 March 2021}}</ref>{{rp|entries 4, 5, 6}} a decision which was appealed at the [[Supreme Court of Russia]] later that year, but was upheld by the court.{{sfn|Matytsin|2009|loc=passim}} The reasons for the prosecution were once again the use of ''swastika'' symbols and the teachings about the unhealthiness of interracial mixing; Aleksandr Khinevich himself was prosecuted in 2008–2009 by the Omsk District Court, which found him guilty of having illegally reorganised the church and continued to propagate its teachings, under the article 282 of the [[Criminal Code of the Russian Federation]], and on 11 June 2009 sentenced him to the punishment of one year and a half of prison, conditional with two years of probation.{{sfnm|1a1=Matytsin|1y=2009|1loc=passim|2a1=Maltsev|2y=2015|2loc=passim|3a1=Aitamurto|3y=2016|3p=51|4a1=Golovneva|4y=2018|4p=341}}

In 2008, a local Ynglist organisation in [[Adygea]] was prosecuted by the [[Maykop]] District Court,<ref name="MoJ-extremist-organisations"/>{{rp|entry 26}} while in 2015 an Ynglist organisation in [[Stavropol Krai]] was prosecuted by the [[Stavropol]] Regional Court.<ref name="MoJ-extremist-organisations"/>{{rp|entry 45}} In the same year 2015 it was the turn of the ''Slavo-Aryan Vedas'', the sacred writings of Ynglism, to be condemned as "extremist literature" by the Omsk District Court, a decision which was later appealed but confirmed in 2016 by the Omsk Regional Court.{{sfnm|1a1=Maltsev|1y=2015|1loc=passim|2a1=Yashin|2y=2016|2p=39|3a1=Shnirelman|3y=2017b|3p=91}}<ref>{{cite web|title=Экстремистские материалы |trans-title=Extremist materials |work=Министерство юстиции Российской Федерации |publisher=[[Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation]] |url=https://minjust.gov.ru/ru/extremist-materials/?page=34 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201127005226/https://minjust.gov.ru/ru/extremist-materials/?page=34 |archive-date=27 November 2020}}</ref>{{rp|entry 3353}}

===Demographics===
Despite the judicial prosecutions, Ynglist organisations continued their activities and mass celebrations as an unregistered religious movement, having expanded to all the [[federal subjects of Russia]] and to various countries abroad, and Aleksandr Khinevich himself resumed large-scale preaching activities in 2011.{{sfnm|1a1=Golovneva|1y=2018|1p=341|2a1=Maltsev|2y=2015|2loc=passim}} According to the scholar Vladimir B. Yashin, it would have been impossible for the authorities to uproot the church from public life, since in 2001 there were already about three thousand Ynglists in Omsk alone.{{sfn|Maltsev|2015|loc=passim}} By 2009, the number of Ynglists in Omsk alone had grown to 13,000.{{sfn|Matytsin|2009|loc=passim}} Meanwhile, between 2001 and 2009 the community of permanent residents at the Asgardian headquarters had grown from 500 to 600 people.{{sfn|Shnirelman|2017b|p=90}} In 2016, the scholar Kaarina Aitamurto reported that Ynglism clearly had a "substantial number of followers",{{sfn|Aitamurto|2016|p=51}} while Elena Golovneva noted that Ynglist ideas were not marginal even among non-Ynglist Russian Rodnovers.{{sfn|Golovneva|2018|p=342}}

According to Yashin, Ynglism came out strengthened after the prosecutions, turning into a decentralised phenomenon, a movement of dozens of organisations which were not only present in all of the regions of Russia, particularly in [[Krasnodar Krai|Krasnodar]], [[Chelyabinsk Oblast|Chelyabinsk]] and [[Tyumen Oblast|Tyumen]], in [[Moscow]], but also present in [[Ukraine]], [[Germany]] and the [[Czech Republic]].{{sfn|Maltsev|2015|loc=passim}} Judge V. A. Matytsin of the Omsk District Court reported that as of 2009 the movement had also established communities in [[Estonia]], [[Latvia]] and [[Lithuania]], as well as in the [[United States]] and [[Canada]].{{sfn|Matytsin|2009|loc=passim}} According to Yashin, Ynglism, along with mainstream Rodnovery, has gained many adherents in the regions of the [[North Caucasus]] of southern Russia because many Slavs who live there believe that Ynglism and Rodnovery represent their cultural identity, which they believe is at war with the culture of the area's [[Islam]]ic population.{{sfn|Maltsev|2015|loc=passim}}

Golovneva reported that at the time of her study the activities of Ynglist communities were financed by their parishioners themselves and by two commercial organisations, namely "Asgard" and "Iriy", which were involved in building and consulting.{{sfn|Golovneva|2018|p=341}} She found that among the Ynglists in Omsk, many of them were teenagers and young adults, both under-graduate and post-graduate students, "modern people with a great reverence for the spirituality of the past".{{sfn|Golovneva|2018|p=341}} An adherent of Ynglism stated that the movement's doctrines were attractive to "a full cross-section of society", from "immature youth to bureaucrats, businessmen and military personnel", and these people found "normal, harmonious mutual relationships" within the movement.{{sfn|Golovneva|2018|p=342}}