And I'm starting on the final draft of the chapter which dissects how the strategies of popularization of science used in the Soviet Union led to the conservation and preservation of esoteric and occult ideas under an overtly-atheist state. Super hard chapter, honestly - I've been looking through my notes and drafts all morning, and the mood is like "why did I think this was any good at all? whyyyy" - but I hope to make it at least close to the elegant construct in my mind.
I once had a funny encounter when I must have a had a very skeptical face expression during one of my friend's tirade about ghosts or something, and he asked me "так вы не верите в энергетику" and my response was a blank stare as I completely didn't get what he meant — I asked "you mean electric poles, plants?!" as the use of the term "энергетика" in the esoteric sense was completely foreign to me.
Same in Poland's 90's, I studied in technical university and anything remotely related to humanist sciences, such as philosophy was absent and despised. Possibly due to the mandatory courses of Marxism-Leninism which were widely hated and immediately abandoned after 1989.
@kravietz Oh! I was wondering! Did Poland's technical circles have Galilei or Giordano Bruno filk, presenting them as scientists who bravely stood against the Inquisition (and, of course, who were a metaphor for tech people and the KGB in this context)? I know the Russian-speaking context had more than a few of those, but not so sure if the discourse had time to make it into Poland.
@kravietz Haha! I can imagine that very well, because philosophy was really the only humanities thing tech folks were even remotely exposed to, and it was completely full of stuff like "there were scientists in all conditions, and the protoscientists were precursors to modern science, and their ideas evolved, and modern scientists take these old ideas and elaborate on them." It's amazing, honestly: the entire system of technical education is very much part of the post-Soviet occult revival.