Romuva and National Identity After Soviet Rule

Romuva, the modern Baltic pagan revival movement centered particularly in Lithuania, developed significant momentum following Lithuanian independence from Soviet rule in 1990, drawing connections between traditional Baltic religious and folkloric heritage and a broader post-Soviet Lithuanian national cultural revival, a pairing of religious reconstruction with national identity that scholars of new religious movements note is a recurring pattern across several pagan revival movements in formerly Soviet-controlled Eastern European countries, including the Slavic Rodnovery movement discussed elsewhere in this atlas.

Romuva has pursued and in various respects achieved a degree of official legal recognition within Lithuania as a genuine religious organization, reflecting a generally more institutionally established position than some comparable revival movements enjoy elsewhere. Its practice draws on the folkloric dainos tradition and reconstructed understanding of historical Baltic deities and seasonal observance, though as with other revival traditions in this atlas, contemporary Romuva practice necessarily involves interpretation and adaptation rather than unbroken continuation of a pre-Christian liturgy that was never comprehensively recorded in the first place.