Does patriotic pride inevitably develop into nationalistic aggression? Is this exacerbated by the global outreach of the media? And what is the relationship between mainstream politics and increasingly vocal far-right groups in Britain and the United States, Germany and Russia? Nationalist Myths and the Modern Media addresses these questions from a variety of angles, exploring topics ranging from the War on Terror to Holocaust denial, from the ""sanctity"" of Rasputin to the ""martyrdom"" of Rudolf Hess.

This book dispels the widely-held view that paganism survived in Russia alongside Orthodox Christianity, demonstrating that 'double belief', dvoeverie, is in fact an academic myth.

Scholars, citing the medieval origins of the term, have often portrayed Russian Christianity as uniquely muddied by paganism, with 'double-believing' Christians consciously or unconsciously preserving pagan traditions even into the twentieth century. This volume shows how the concept of dvoeverie arose with nineteenth-century scholars obsessed with the Russian 'folk' and was perpetuated...