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Bazhovism (Russian: Бажовство) is a Rodnover (Slavic Neopagan) movement focused in the Ural region of Russia, founded by Vladimir Viktorovich Sobolev in the early 1990s in Chelyabinsk, and incorporated as the Bazhovite Academy of Esoteric Knowledge of the Urals (Бажовская академия сокровенных знаний Урала).[1] The name of the movement refers to the writer Pavel Bazhov, whose tales are the main holy scriptures of the Bazhovites.[2] Bazhovism is regarded as the major new religious movement of the Ural region,[3] and its theology is centred around the goddess of the Ural Mountains, the Mistress of the Copper Mountain.[4]
The Bazhovites regard Arkaim, not far from Magnitogorsk in the Chelyabinsk Oblast, as the navel of the Earth where there is an exchange of energy with the higher planes of the universe,[5] and the Ural Mountains as the energetic heart of Russia, being the line of juncture between Europe and Asia.[6] Bazhovites are mostly concentrated in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Tyumen Oblast, Perm Krai and Bashkortostan within Russia, but there is also a community in Kazakhstan.[7]