The culture of charisma

Wielding legitimacy in contemporary Russian healing

GALINA LINDQUIST
Galina Lindquist is Assistant
Professor in the Department of
Anthropology at Stockholm
University. Her work includes
Shamanic performances on the
urban scene: Neo-shamanism in
contemporary Sweden
(Stockholm Studies in Social
Anthropology, Almquist &
Wiksell International, 1997).
Her email is
aatmare@hotmail.com.

The illustrations included

here are from the newspaper
Orakul (The Oracle), for the
year 2000, but they also appear
in other similar newspapers,
notably Tainaia vlast (The
Secret Power). I am grateful to
three anonymous referees for
their comments.
1. To be granted a licence,
one must have a medical degree
from a college or nursing school.
Since the beginning of the 1990s
there have been advanced
training institutions, or courses,
which admit practising healers
and give them a basic biomedical
education. People who have
displayed some healing abilities,
and who may have practised
healing informally with some
success, can follow these courses
to obtain a document that
certifies them as folk healers,
and also counts as a licence. This
gives them a legal right to
advertise as healers, and to be
employed in centres, clinic-like
or para-medical establishments
that present their services in the
vocabulary of biomedicine.

Matushka Melania is the owner

of a luxurious office with
guards, secretaries, and a
comfortable waiting room,
where clients can watch video
recordings of her TV shows.
Matushka, Little Mother, is an
affectionate form of address for
a prioress in Russian Orthodox
cloisters. The visual details of
the ad the icons and an oillamp in the background are
devices of traditional
legitimation through reference
to the church. Melania calls
herself a hereditary Russian
Orthodox Babka a
contradiction in terms, as the
church anathematizes magic
and healing as the works of
devil. Melanias appearance a
beautiful, well-groomed, selfassured woman in her early
forties, with somewhat stern
and authoritative manner
contrasts with the image of the
approachable village wise
woman evoked by the term
babka.

An important premise for the anthropological study of

healing systems is that they are cultural domains, constituted by local systems of knowledge, meaning, and social
relations. People undertake their quest for health with
more conviction if the medical systems they resort to are
meaningful for them, if the conceptualizations of health,
disease and cure correlate with their more general cosmology, and fit within broader patterns of personal and
collective identity construction. It is this meaningfulness
of the systems of healing within the broader domains of
meaning-making, their place with reference to the dominant structures of knowledge and power, that may be
understood as their legitimacy.
This legitimacy may be particularly contestable in a
society where multiple medical systems coexist, intertwine,
and compete for state funding and paying clients. In such a
situation, discursive and performative strategies of legitimation can become a part of persuasiveness, whether of an
individual healer or of the ideology behind a certain therapy,
which might have bearing on the therapeutic efficacy of
treatment. Unravelling strategies of legitimation that particular healers undertake can therefore provide a glimpse of
healing systems as reflecting broader cultural dynamics, as
windows onto social change a quest started early on in
medical anthropology (see, e.g., Comaroff 1981).
The purpose of this paper is to analyse strategies of legitimation employed in the field of non-biomedical healing in
contemporary urban Russia. It has been noted that peoples
health-seeking strategies sometimes reflect more than
simply the practical possibilities of access and affordability
more even than the pragmatic search for therapeutic efficacy (Burns McGrath 1999). The therapeutic choices may
also be indicative of moral and ideological undercurrents
that determine how the users conceive of bigger collectivities in which they belong a community, a nation, or even
the world (imagined as a global entity); and of how they see
their place within those formations. It is in this sense that
health-seeking strategies can be windows on broader cultural transformations and controversies.
The constitution of legitimacy
In Russia, individual health-seeking strategies may be
pragmatic last resorts; but they also may be statements of
identity, of cultural and ideological convictions, and of
attitudes to past and present. In the health-seeking practices of afflicted persons these strategies of cultural positioning may be overshadowed by pragmatic concerns
(Lock and Kaufert 1998). Healers attempts to wield legit-

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 2, APRIL 2001

imacy through particular repertoires of treatment methods

and through rhetorical strategies of self-presentation can
be recognized as deriving from these same processes. Like
their patients, healers appropriate the existing regimes of
authoritative knowledge in complex and ambivalent ways.
The dominant mode of response to the conflicting claims
of these regimes, ambivalence coupled with pragmatism
(ibid.:2), is discernible in the strategies of healers as well
as in those of patients.
The question of legitimacy has been extensively discussed in medical anthropology in relation to biomedicine.
In these discussions, biomedicine is regarded as the dominant regime of authoritative knowledge (see, e.g., Jordan
1997). The anthropological critique of biomedicine is usually deployed to demonstrate how this regime, by consensus, but sometimes by manipulation and subtle
coercion, is made to carry more weight than other existing
knowledge systems, due to its structural superiority, that
is, its association with a stronger power base (e.g. DavisFloyd and Sargent 1997). However, alternative healing
practices are also reflections of broader multiple regimes
of power and knowledge. This paper addresses the issue of
legitimacy of non-biomedical healing systems. These are
considered as cultural domains in their own right, and as
integrated by one practitioner in his own, idiosyncratic
ways of wielding charismatic power that in practice translate into therapeutic efficacy.
In the plural medical field of todays Russia, healers
arsenals of treatment means are constructed, sometimes
appearing as a bizarre bricolage. Their public personas, the
images they project, are similarly often constructed
through their narrations of their lives, as well as through
the material constitution of their treatment locales and the
apparel of their physical gestalts. As an example, I shall
describe a healer for whom this project of public self-presentation has acquired the dimensions of art and ethos. I
shall contextualize his endeavours by looking briefly at the
field of medical care in contemporary urban Russia, and
by tracing the more general strategies of legitimation used
in articulating its constituent parts.
In outlining these strategies, I will take as a starting
point the types of legitimacy originally suggested by Max
Weber (1947), and adapted by Carol MacCormack (1981,
1986) to the field of medical care: rational-legal, traditional and charismatic legitimacy. Applied to healing systems, legitimacy translates into the power of persuasion
that compels people to follow certain prescriptions and to
subjugate themselves to certain practices. To analyse legitimacy in health care is to understand why, and how, people
submit to the authority of specific individuals (healers or
biomedical practitioners), placing themselves within the
systems of knowledge and power that these individuals
represent. In Webers traditional type of legitimacy,
people cope because they believe in the sacredness of a
certain order of power; in the bureaucratic type, it is the
rational decision that makes them obey an institutionalized
technocratic regime. Weber viewed charismatic power as
based on affective devotion of followers to the figure of
authority, and their motives to subjugate themselves as
inspirational (Burgess 2000).
The subsequent critique of Weber highlighted the teleological, evolutionary character of these ideal types. This
typology of legitimacy is based on Webers vision of human
3

The Salon of Supreme Magic

is presided over by the seventhgeneration heiress to the
ancient Babylonian teachings,
head of the Seventh Legion
Order of the Three Winds,
Hierarch of the 1st degree,
Master of Black Magic and
Voodoo. The range of services
on offer includes more extreme
varieties such as, for example,
egiliet rendering your
husband or lover impotent with
all women except for you.
2. This computer program is
based on the premise that the
spine is central to the well-being
of the body, and that every
vertebra of the spine is
connected to a specific internal
organ. Disorders of internal
organs are understood to result
directly from wrongly
positioned vertebrae. This is
expressed in biological
magnetic currents that can be
measured on the surface of the
body, specifically on the palms
of the hands and the forehead.
When the patient holds an
electrode in each hand, and
another electrode in the form of
a metallic band is placed on his
forehead, the computer screen
shows the persons spine with
the vertebrae in different
colours, connected by straight
lines to the corresponding
viscera. These schematics can
be printed out. There is a legend

society as essentially developing from lower, affective and

even instinctual forms of social action to more rigorous or
rationally located ones. In practice, however, peoples ways
of and motives for coping with power, including that of the
regimes of authoritative medical knowledge, seem to be
pragmatic, combining Webers ideal types and devising new
ways never envisaged by grand theories.
Another criticism of Webers typology of domination
and legitimacy concerns the problematic character of his
notion of charisma (for a detailed analysis, see Csordas
1997). Commentators agree that, by the very nature of his
thought, Weber could not conceive of charisma as a mystical personal quality, acultural and ahistorical. However,
his identification of charismatic legitimacy as a separate
type may be understood to this effect. By contrast, following Csordas, we may attempt to deconstruct charisma
and to find its specific situational locus with a concrete
individual healer. The ethnographic research which follows shows that in non-biomedical healing, where charismatic authority is often the most important type in the
therapeutic relationship, the healer wields this authority by
tapping into all existing regimes of authoritative knowledge, as well as by drawing on the whole array of available symbolic, discursive, and performative resources.
Furthermore, the sources of legitimacy that must ultimately be integrated to forge charismatic authority are not
fixed, as Webers typology implies, but are historically and
culturally conditioned. I will argue that an important
source of legitimacy in Russia, as elsewhere, is the power
of alterity (cf. Taussig 1993).
In using alterity or otherness as a source of legitimacy,
healers draw on their own versions of globality the world

seen as a single place, where meanings, forms, techniques,

practices, material objects, and people move across
national borders and take root in local arenas (cf. Hannerz
1996). These versions of globality are both culturally
shared and individually idiosyncratic constructions which
provide a stock of means for innovation and cultural creativity and constitute a motor for broader changes.
The healing locale
Unlike many of his fellow practitioners who operate on an
amateur and part-time basis, Georgii is a licensed healer.1
The healing centre where he works occupies a large, somewhat dilapidated premises on the ground floor of a huge
apartment building constructed in the prestigious architectural style of Stalins empire, a ten-minute metro ride
from the centre of Moscow. Inside, the centre is unpretentious. It consists of two small rooms, occupied by the two
acting healers, and one big hall divided into small cubicles
by old, worn cloth curtains, with couches used for massage
and acupuncture. Apart from the healers, the staff consists
of two masseurs, an ultrasound specialist, two secretaries
who answer the phone fourteen hours a day, a bookkeeper,
and a general nurse. The centres income is brought in by
the healers, and staff salaries are paid out of this money. It
is equipped with ultrasound and ECG equipment, and a
battered old computer running the AMSAD diagnostic
program.2
Georgii is the main attraction of the centre. Even at times
when the economic depression meant that there were few
patients and the centre was bringing in little money, there
were always long queues of people waiting to be treated by
him. Georgii is a man in his mid-thirties, although he claims
to have turned fifty, perhaps
to accommodate some of the
more spectacular episodes of
his invented biography and
to strengthen the aura of
wisdom lent by age and
experience. His resemblance
to the historical figure of
Rasputin,
the
famous
Russian
self-proclaimed
Grigorii Efimovich Rasputin
(1869-1916), the healer-monk
who played a crucial role in the
downfall of the Romanov dynasty.
White and pactical magic are offered by this International Master.
The distinction between white and practical magic obviously reflects
the fuzziness of the moral domain on the boundaries of legimitacy. Thus,
elimination of rivals clearly falls outside the domain of white magic
but may be urgently required for practical reasons. The range of services
also includes correction of fate, attraction of lovers and money, and a
protective energy shield.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 2, APRIL 2001

for the colours, on the spectrum

from red through blue to green,
corresponding to the gravity of
affliction of the internal organs.
If, on the schematic, your spine
and viscera are all coloured blue
to red, this means you are in
trouble. Healers usually have
patients diagnosed in this way
before and after treatment, so
that the results of the therapeutic
intervention become not only
perceptible but graphically representable and visible as well.
3. Narod is conventionally
translated as people or
sometimes as nation. But in
the history of Russian thought,
narod also connotes a mystical
entity or community that in itself
bears a supreme value and the
knowledge of truth. In the prerevolutionary discourse of the
radical intelligentsia, this connotation was spelled out in the
expression narod-bogonosets
the God-bearing People. The
notion is associated with the
traditional Russian values of
endurance and patience, as in
nash mnogostradalnii narod
our long-suffering people but
also with primordial vitality and
strength.
4. This connection between
Russian Orthodoxy and the
mystical Folk Spirit, narodnost,
complemented and augmented
by the third pillar, the Divine
Right of the Monarchy, has deep
roots in the Russian culture. It
was identified long before the
revolution, in the triad Russian
Orthodoxy, the Divine Right of
the Monarchy, Folk Spirit
(Pravoslaviye, samoderzhavie,
narodnost), as one of the
cornerstones of Russian
statehood and national identity.
This leading expert promises
convincing restoration of
health at the first session,
dematerialization of tumors,
and cure from terminal
diseases. The absence of
licence number in his ad makes
these promises legally
precarious, but allows him to
present himself additionally as
a witch: his other services
include realistic magic support
for business and the solution
of love and money problems.

monk-healer who treated the son of Tsar Nicholas II for

haemophilia and contributed to the demise of the royal
family, is clearly not fortuitous. He is of medium height
and stout, if not fat, a trait he shares with many Russian
Orthodox priests. Like them, he has shoulder-length hair
swept back from the forehead, and a beard that falls onto
his wide chest. His face is exceptionally handsome in an
icon-like way, with clear and regular features, and a grave
and piercing gaze. This stern appearance presents a
striking contrast to the sudden glances of tenderness and
compassion which he focuses on a patient while listening
to his or her story. Georgiis ecclesiastical features are
framed in the highest-quality garments, in the latest
Western fashion flannel, leather, suede and blue denim in
exquisite combinations which betray his healthy financial
position and keen interest in the world of clothes. A large
crucifix on his chest and several massive rings with
crosses on his fingers, with rubies and turquoise in heavy
gold settings, complete the picture.
Georgii has a reputation as a very powerful healer.
Among his specialities are child cerebral palsy, hormonal
growth deficiency in children, diseases of the bones and
spine such as osteochondrosis and scoliosis, and also systemic diseases like lupus. His patients, like those of most
healers, are those on whom conventional biomedicine has
given up. There are always two patients lying on the
couches in Georgiis treatment room, with glass pyramids
suspended above their heads, for focusing the cosmic
energy on their second chakras as he explained to me. On
the walls of the room, acupuncture charts hang next to
Russian Orthodox icons, candles and a lampada (oilburning icon lamp). A tape recorder plays New Age music
during the treatment.
A trained masseur who teaches massage and bone-setting in a nursing school, Georgii is also adept in acupuncture and zone therapy (acupressure), and he prescribes
herb mixtures to his patients, claiming to have gathered
these himself during summers spent wandering in the
mountains of the Altai, the Urals and Tibet. Most insistently, however, he urges his patients, as part of their treatment, to buy herbal/vitamin/mineral medications
produced by the American company New Ways, an enterprise operating in Moscow through the pyramid sales
system. Georgii himself is one of the firms Moscow distributors. Selling these products requires a great deal of
persuasion, given that a bottle of New Ways vitamins costs
three times an average monthly salary, and as much as the
whole cycle of fifteen treatments by Georgii.
Healing sessions at the centre might include massage
and chiropractic treatment for bone and spinal diseases,

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 2, APRIL 2001

though Georgii no longer carries these out himself, as the

centre employs two other masseurs. His sessions may
include acupuncture and acupressure for inflammatory
diseases like arthritis or cirrhosis of the liver, but this is all
optional. The essence of his treatment, and the only element he uses in his work with children with cerebral palsy
or with systemic diseases such as lupus erythematosus, is
the bio-energy treatment. The treatment itself takes about
three minutes. The patient lies on the couch, under the
glass pyramid, and Georgii makes passes with his hand
over the ailing parts of the body, or all over the body. These
are surgically precise, confident, aesthetically accomplished gestures, but quick as the flutter of a butterflys
wing. They are mimetic movements that iconically represent the operations he performs virtually, in order to
smooth out tissues, draw out pus or excise foreign bodies
such as cysts. This performance of healing is a masterly
pantomime which enables one to see clearly the operation
done, with the concrete sequence of healing procedures
perfectly embodied in the act.
The strange thing, however, is that the observing anthropologist is the only, and very rare, spectator, because the
patient always lies with her eyes closed. Other possible
spectators may be a childs mother or a patients close kin,
but this is far from always the case. The marvellous pantomime theatre of Georgii and other healers is not meant
for spectators. After this brief performance he lights a
candle on the wall in front of one of the icons (the lampada
always burns, as is traditional in Russian Orthodox households), puts on New Age music, and leaves to attend to
another patient, to answer the telephone, to chat with the
staff of secretaries and other paramedics who solve crosswords in the waiting room, or to disappear with one of the
girls who are always in attendance waiting for this moment
(he has a number of female admirers who often follow him
wherever he goes).
When I asked Georgii why his treatment takes such a
short time, he explained somewhat vaguely that with his
quick passes he sets into operation a curing program within
the bio-energy-information field of the patient. He also
told me that while he was chatting with me or doing something else, part of his mind was with the patient, ceaselessly
continuing the healing work, and that he actually knew
exactly what the patient was doing lying there on the couch,
what she was feeling, if the pain was stronger or weaker, if
she stirred, scratched or coughed, thereby disturbing the
needles. Nor did he need to look at his watch in order to
know when it was time to release the patient. It all sounded
fantastic, if it were not for the queues of patients waiting
their turn, and the stories of miraculous cures from the
clinics staff, who were rather critical of other aspects of
Georgiis personality and behavior.
As I heard repeatedly during my fieldwork, it is not
unusual for healers to suffer from mythomania. They are
powerful individuals, seen by themselves and others as
capable of changing the physical reality of the human
body. Being able to change the present, many of them
seem to want, and dare, to change their own past as well.
They do this by weaving narratives of their own life so as
to mould their present gestalts for the enquiring listener, be
it an anthropologist or a journalist interviewing them for a
media programme.
Georgii told me that he had three academic degrees, and
that he used to be fluent in four foreign languages. But he
decided to take a break in his academic career and enrolled
in an elite paratroop regiment. He was sent to Vietnam,
became shell-shocked there, and lost his foreign languages
and with them, the ability to learn languages at all. My
first teacher was Baturin, a famous Russian healer then
living in Tashkent, founder of a chiropractic and
osteopathy school [and a promoter of Tibetan medicine]. I
5

The centre for development

and scientific research in
human psychology is an
example of scientificbureaucratic legitimacy. It
offers rejuvenation of skin and
internal organs, along with
the usual luck, fortune, and
money, and trains healers,
using the best hypnosis
techniques available in the
world. The no-nonsense
photos of the experts, of the
kind used in official
documents, present a stark
contrast with the evocative
gestures of the witches and
healers in the illustration
below.

In this ad for a parapsychology

salon, the slogan That Which
is Hidden Will Be Revealed:
Clairvoyance, Magic, Healing
places the emphasis on the
mystical and the mysterious.
The images of the healers are
clichs of folk fantasies of
witches, with stereotypical
paraphernalia such as the
crystal ball. This ad also
reflects the multi-ethnic
composition of Moscow: one
healer is Armenian, another
Georgian. Services include
description of the person who
put the evil eye on you; tracing
missing persons; protection
from a random bullet; and
casting spells on banknotes to
make them multiply, bringing
material abundance.

became interested in massage and bone-setting when I

went through his treatment myself, convalescing after the
shell-shock. When I watched how the masseur worked, I
realized this was what I wanted to do. I went to Baturin and
asked him to accept me as his student. He looked at me and
said: You dont need to be my student. You are already

better at this than I am. You are a born healer. Still, I was
his apprentice for a number of years. But my first real
teacher was a Tibetan monk. I spent three years in Tibet
with him, learning bone-setting and herbal remedies. He
spoke perfect Russian, because he was from Buriatiia. He
taught me to touch patients, listen, and ask questions, to

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 2, APRIL 2001

Seraphim Kassandr is
presented in his ad as the
living legend of magic, our
ages Caliostro, a high priest of
Voodoo initiated personally by
the supreme Voodoo archpriest
Babalua Vonban Conbobo. He
claims that only the secret
knowledge of the ancient
Voodoo magic can work
genuine miracles.

5. Babka, or babushka, is a
folk term for village or
neighbourhood female healers
who, traditionally, treated
diseases in people and livestock
for symbolic fees or free of
charge. The traditional babka is
a wise old woman who
possesses a gift of healing power
as well as a vast repertoire of
spells and herbal remedies.
There are many contemporary
urban healers/gurus who
advertise as babki (pl.). These,
however, are often businesslike
young women who receive their
patients in modern consulting
rooms with fax machines and
electronic security equipment,
like Mother Melania (see
illustration, p.3).
6. The grounds on which
healing is rejected by these two
sources of social authority are
however quite different.
Biomedicine and natural science
often dismiss healing as
superstition and healers as
charlatans who dupe gullible
people. At the same time, there
is a whole field of paranormal
studies, where healing is
researched by laboratory
methods as part of the
unknown (nepoznannoe). By
contrast, the church does not
deny the power of healing, but
claims that it comes from the
devil. According to the church,
healing can achieve short-term
physical betterment at the cost of
the perdition of the soul that will
then burn in eternal flames.

Bauman, Zigmund. 1998.

Globalization: The human
consequences. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Burgess, Peter J. 2000. Law and
cultural identity. Arena
Working Papers. Available at:
www.arena.uio.no
Burns McGrath, Barbara 1999.
Swimming from island to
island: Healing practices in
Tonga. Medical Anthropology
Quarterly , 13 (4): 483-505.

make more precise diagnoses. But nobody can teach you

to heal. You are born with the gift, but it emerges gradually. I stayed with him for three years, and then he said:
Now you are ready to leave: you know all I know. After
that I studied with sorcerers in Iran and with shamans in
Siberia. But my next personal teacher after my Tibetan
guru was an old wise woman (babka or babushka) from
Briansk [a forest area in mid-Russia]. Baba Nastia lived in
a tiny hut deep in the forest with her sister who helped her
with herbs and with the household chores. Patients came to
her themselves, she was known far and wide. When I first
came to her, she was very stern with me. I had to sweep her
yard and scour her pots for half a year, and only watched
from a distance how she treated her patients. Once her dog
hurt its paw, and Baba Nastia saw me heal it. Then she said
to me: Come in now. I will show you how to heal. I
stayed with her for about a year. She taught me a lot about
bone-setting and herbs. Many diseases can be healed by
bone-setting to begin with. Everything starts from the
spine. And in the end she also told me: You are ready to
go and work on your own. I have taught you all I know.
Once I remarked on his crucifix, and he told me that he
was also a priest, ordained by a Greek Orthodox bishop
somewhere in a distant monastery in Greece. He gave me
the crucifix as a sign that I was ordained, he said.
Strategies of legitimation
According to MacCormack (1986), rational-legal legitimacy in health care places a healing system within the context of a modern bureaucratic state, rationalist
epistemology and a reductionist and mechanistic cosmology. The worth of practitioners is judged on the basis
of formal examinations leading to legal entitlements, and
by their professional position within the institutions established by the state.
In todays Russia, this type of legitimation is of great
importance. It underlies biomedical health care, the main
medical system that the state continues to finance (to a
degree) and that the majority of people still resort to on a
daily basis. This has its pragmatic reasons, since very basic
biomedical health care is still free an important consideration for those who barely manage to survive from day
to day, as many Russians do. Ideologically and affectively,
the persuasiveness of this system draws on the high
authority of natural sciences, which for many people,
especially the intelligentsia, still remain the basis of their
world view. Legitimation through biomedicine can be discerned in the physical organization of the centre described
above, with its diagnostic apparatuses, and the healers
proudly displayed Ministry of Health licences and medical
diplomas. Georgii refers to the state scientific establishment when he mentions his four university degrees, and
his work as a teacher in a medical college. High-tech
modern biomedicine also backs up his sales pitch for the
medications of the New Ways company, which, though
natural preparations, are stressed to be developed, produced and tested scientifically (both in the accompanying brochure that he sometimes shows to patients, and in
his presentation of them).
The second type of legitimacy, which MacCormack,
after Weber, calls traditional legitimacy, places healers and
their methods within a deeper temporal range and within
the contexts of personal and national identity. It is associated with concrete human links connecting generations of
kin and providing continuity between past and present, village and city. In present-day Russia, traditional legitimacy
draws not only on concrete lineages and locales, but also
appeals to the nostalgia for the pre-industrial rural past, the
values of land (zemlya) and people (narod).3 Alternatively, traditional legitimacy might draw on small local
traditions, like the shamans of Chukotka or the lamas of

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 2, APRIL 2001

Buriatiia, evoking the unbending spirit of distant ethnic

groups which has miraculously survived the ideological
and political steamroller of the Soviet state.
Another, and very important, facet of tradition is represented in Russia by the Orthodox church, whose very identity and pride lie in having resisted changes brought about
by both Western and domestic (Communist) modernity and
in preserving the essence of the national Russian soul.4
Resorting to this legitimation strategy, and defiantly
blending these two facets of tradition, healers can advertise as a hereditary Russian Orthodox babka,5 claiming to
have received their knowledge and skills from an unbroken
lineage of powerful village healers. Or they might offer
healing through Russian Orthodox prayers from the
Church prayer books. The photographs that often accompany written advertisements for healers may present them
in monastic garments and ecclesiastical head-dresses, with
ancient church books in hand, against the backdrop of icons
and icon lamps (lampada) the objects that epitomize the
Russian Orthodox religious folk spirit.
In Georgiis mythology of the self, traditional legitimation plays a crucial role. His teachers represent the great
Russian tradition (Baba Nastia) and the small non-Russian
ethnic or native traditions (the Siberian shamans as well as
the healer from Buriatiia, who is also a Buddhist lama).
The reference to the church is salient, read in his entire
appearance, in his crucifix and the rings decorated with
crosses, and explicitly spelled out by his claim to have
been ordained as an Orthodox priest. Healers reference to
the church as a bearer of tradition, their wilful co-optation
of the church for legitimation, is however rather precarious. The Russian Church, together with biomedicine, is
adamant in vilifying all kinds of healing, anathematizing it
as a work of the devil.6 This may be the reason why
Georgii, in turning to the church for legitimation, chooses
not Russian but Greek Orthodoxy. In the view of some
Russians, notably a more radical section of the scientific
and Western-oriented intelligentsia, the Russian Orthodox
Church, as a highly visible social institution, is corrupt,
opportunistic, conservative, and associated with darker
political forces of xenophobic nationalism. Accordingly,
Georgiis religious reference is to Russias spiritual precursor, Orthodox Greece, and to the rural, ascetic,
monastic tradition, untainted by mundane involvements
with the powers-that-be.
Another kind of legitimacy, not mentioned by Weber
and MacCormack, is constituted through reference to the
foreign origin of the craft. In many societies, methods,
knowledges, systems, and individual healers from afar are
often considered especially powerful, even if sometimes
highly dangerous. This is true of the attitude to Western
medicine in Third World countries, and also of the crosscultural healing notable, for example, in Africa, where
people often seek the help of medical/ritual specialists
from other ethnic groups (Rekdal 1999). In todays Russia,
a large proportion of healers (and gurus) eagerly resort to
this strategy of legitimation through alterity.
Advertisements feature the seventh-generation heir to
ancient Babylonian teachings, Master of Voodoo, as well
as Masters of Indian and Tibetan medicine. There are
experts who claim to master the secret techniques of
ancient Scandinavian runes, and a number of followers of
Reiki a Japanese tradition which allows you to extract
the life force, to become one with it, and to transmit it
through your hands.
In his narratives, Georgii forges legitimacy as a man of
power and knowledge by referring to alterity as a combined
set of influences that constitute a very particular version of
the global, the world seen as a single place. This larger
world, as it emerges from his ethos, is however strikingly
reminiscent of the map of the world presented to Russian
7

Comaroff, Jean 1981. Healing

and cultural transformation:
The Tswana of Southern
Africa. Social Science and
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Csordas, Thomas 1997.
Language, charisma, and
creativity: The ritual life of a
religious movement. University of California Press.
Davis-Floyd, Robbie and
Carolyn Sargent (eds) 1997.
Childbirth and authoritative
knowledge. University of
California Press.
Geertz, Clifford 1977. Centers,
kings, and charisma:
Reflections on the symbolics
of power. In: Ben-David,
Joseph and Nichols Clark,
Terry (eds) Culture and its
creators: Essays in honor of
Edward Shils, pp.132-157.
University of Chicago Press.
Hannerz, Ulf 1996.
Transnational connections.
London: Routledge.
Jordan, Brigitte 1997.
Authoritative knowledge and
its construction. In: DavisFloyd, Robbie, and Sargent,
Carolyn (eds) Childbirth and
authoritative knowledge,
pp.55-79. University of
California Press.
Kapferer, Bruce 1997. The feast
of the sorcerer. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Lindquist, Galina 2000. Not
my will but Thine be done:
Church versus magic in
contemporary Russia.
Culture and Religion, 1(2):
247-276.
Lock, Margaret and Kaufert,
Patricia (eds) 1998.
Pragmatic women and body
politics. Cambridge
University Press.
MacCormack, Carol 1986. The
articulation of Western and
traditional systems of health
care. In: Chavunduka, G.L.
and Last Murray (eds) The
professionalization of
African medicine, pp.151162. Manchester University
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1981. Health care and the
concept of legitimacy. Social
Science and Medicine, 15B:
423-428.
Rekdal, Ole Bjorn 1999. Crosscultural healing in East
African ethnography.
Medical Anthropology
Quarterly, 13 (4): 458-482.
Taussig, Michael 1993. Mimesis
and alterity. London:
Routledge.
Tomlinson, John 1999.
Globalization and culture.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Weber, Max 1947. The theory
of social and economic
organization (trans. and ed.
T. Parsons). New York: Free
Press.
Willner, Ann Ruth 1968.
Charismatic political
leadership: A theory.
Research monograph No.
32. Princeton: Center of
International Studies.

children of the Soviet era in their geography lessons. The

USSR, occupying one fifth of the earths land area, was a
metonym for the world, just as Russia was a metonym for
the Soviet Union, despite the rhetoric of the multinational
state that was also current during this period. Somewhere
on the other side of the world there was the USA an evil
counterbalance to the good represented by Russia, as is still
the case for some contemporary Russians. Clearly, the USA
is a source of fascination for Georgii, as it is for many of his
compatriots, as his paratrooper story and his purported
involvement in Vietnam indicate. Yet for him the USA is
also a cause and a place of loss, since he loses his four foreign languages because of the Vietnam war, and thus severs
his symbolic connection with the North American and
European world. The route from Russia out into the
Western world is thus closed to him; all his other global
pathways move from the outside inwards. His current
involvement with America his connection with the New
Ways natural medicine company is a purely pragmatic
undertaking, not a source of learning, not an input into his
knowledge and healing art, but a materialistic supplement
to his healing, even as it represents, also pragmatically, a
source of income.
Deconstructing charisma
Georgii comes across as an undeniably charismatic individual. Charisma, a seemingly ineffable force of attraction
that some people exude, occurs in different historical and
cultural contexts. In many instances it manifests itself,
among other things, as a power to heal. Charismatic power
on the part of a healer implies the strongest loyalty of his
clients (who in many instances are better conceptualized
as followers), as it engages the consciousness of the
patient in toto, in a passionate act of devotion. But in the
context of healing this kind of power is also the most
fragile, as it is contingent on the perceived efficacy of therapeutic intervention. If the patients fail to experience the
healing as effective, the trust and devotion to the charismatic healer is withdrawn, and the God-given gift of the
healing power is denied. As it is understood to come from
God, so God can always take it away.
Georgiis charisma is manifested in his reputation as a
powerful healer, and in the consensus on the efficacy of
his interventions. The complementary embodiment of his
healing power is the male erotic power that lends him his
image as a womanizer (much sneered at and ridiculed by
the other, female, healer at the centre, but highly culturally
valued in Russia), and that attracts women to him in droves.
(It is worth remembering that the charismatic power of
Georgiis apparent role model, the legendary Rasputin, was
also expressed in his putatively unlimited sexual prowess.)
The healing gift as a divine endowment is stressed
repeatedly in Georgiis narratives. Thus, his teachers tell
him again and again that nobody can teach healing; rather,
one is born with this capacity as a kind of divine gift. This
theme of Gods gift figures prominently in a broader discourse on healing. Healers say that they recognize it in
other people by intuiting it at first sight. Sometimes it reappears in healers children, manifested at a very early age as
an inexplicable radiation or energy. Or it is expressed in
some spontaneous healing feats, as when a child heals a
family pet just by laying a hand on the sick animal (this is
a story told by Georgii about his own five-year-old son).
This narrative also returns in Georgiis ethos, in the story
of Baba Nastia who finally decided to initiate her disciple
after he healed her dog.
Insofar as charisma can be seen as a quality of the individual, it consists, as Willner suggests, in his capacity to
project successfully the image of himself as an extraordinary person (1968:4). Deconstructing charisma would
then mean discerning what qualities can contribute to this

capacity to project, what images are projected, and what

means are used to project them. In Georgiis case, it is his
performative talents and his personal endowments that
make him an attractive and desirable man in the terms and
symbols of his culture. But it is also his ability to tap into
the discourses that, in Geertzs words, connect him with
entities [bearing] ultimate, order-determining power and
with symbolic centers of the social order (1977:151).
The locus (in Csordass terms) of Georgiis charisma is a
new moral synthesis (Csordas 1997:147) that he achieves
by referring to contemporary political processes and
salient cultural discourses, narratives and oppositions, by
welding together the performative, discursive, and symbolic resources offered by his culture.
Conclusion
The strategies of legitimation outlined in this paper using
the example of one particularly striking individual can be
discerned, in various combinations and with varying patterns of emphasis, in medical practitioners in all sections
of the pluralistic health care system in Russia. These
strategies of legitimation are also likely to inform the
health-seeking behaviour of the users of medical care.
The first of them, rational-bureaucratic legitimacy, still
underlies the dominant part of health care system in
Western countries. The second, traditional legitimacy, is
likely to be prominent in countries and among population
groups where the search for group identity nourished by
roots plays an important role. The third, legitimation
through alterity, seems be increasingly important, especially in places and with people who are in a position to
enjoy the advantages of communication and mobility.
Even those who are deprived of access to globalizing
technologies, however those who, as Bauman (1998)
poignantly remarks, are by dint of their social position
locked in immobility increasingly tend to imagine the
world as a single place, and their lives as being shaped,
empowered and imperilled by global connectivities (cf.
Tomlinson 1999). Local folk models of globality are
likely to be reflected in the methods of legitimation by
alterity to which local healers will resort. These folk
models of globality deserve careful study, because they
are determined by, and reflect, the locality, its history and
culture.
Healing in Russia may be clad in the ritual and poetry
of the folk tradition, or in the armour of ingenious
machinery, the fruit of Russian technical inventiveness.
Its perceived essence is concealed under layers of occult
or para-scientific terminology and behind speculations
about the unknown and unknowable bio-energy-information fields. But beyond all this, healing in Russia
appears as a form of what I would like to call power
transactions. Its main agency, as locally imagined, is a
pure power of consciousness, crystallized in the directed
force of intent (cf. Kapferer 1997), and flowing from the
hands of the healer to the ailing parts of the patients body.
Healers in Russia, as elsewhere, are charismatic individuals, standing out against the background of the sick, suffering and enduring masses.
They are audacious personalities who dare to take
responsibility and control over the bodies and lives of
others, in the face of a condescending biomedical system
and a castigating church, the critical doubt of patients, and
tough competition among themselves. As figures of
power, they arouse admiration and fascination as well as
apprehension and mistrust. These feelings, corollaries of
power, are indispensable elements of the therapeutic efficacy of healing. But the masks and garments through
which the healer constructs him- or herself as a man or
woman of power are offered, contested and confirmed by
culture. !
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 17 NO 2, APRIL 2001