Paul Goble
Staunton, April 27 – Eighty-five percent of Russians now turn to fortune tellers or tarot card readers (wciom.ru/analytical-reviews/analiticheskii-obzor/mistika-gde-to-rjadom), a dramatic rise from before 2022 (vedomosti.ru/society/news/2026/01/28/1172246-atol-spros-rossiyan).
According to specialists on this form of public behavior, Russians are turning to fortune tellers because they believe that those who offer information from the other side as it were can provide them with reassurance and predictability that their lives currently lack under the rule of Vladimir Putin (currenttime.tv/a/v-rossii-rastet-populyarnost-gadaniy-i-magicheskih-obryadov/33741111.html).
Among the most prominent of these experts is Nataliya Shavshukova, a Moscow State University-trained political scientist who now teaches in Warsaw, says pointedly that “ by turning to magicians and fortune tellers, Russians are seeking new sources of support during unstable times.”
She suggests that something similar happened at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, another “period also characterized by a high degree of uncertainty.” Russians apparently believe that fortune tellers can give them if not “clear answers, at least ‘some’ kind of answer,” something that Russian officials increasingly don’t even try to provide.
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