Texts

Here is the text version of my talk on Seminar at the ML PSA Lab. Original announcement is here Dear colleagues, thank you very much for the invitation. It is a great honor and an excellent opportunity to participate in this seminar. My name is Nikita Obraztsov. I will briefly outline my background: my first degree is in law (I studied in Moscow at the Kutafin Moscow State Law University). After studying law, I made a sharp turn and moved into religious studies because I realized that this is what truly fascinates me. I completed my master’s degree at St. Petersburg State University in 2020, where I focused on the “Brights” movement using qualitative methods—specifically, conducting in-depth interviews. At the time, we didn’t have quantitative or computational methods in our program. Then, in 2025, I enrolled in the European University to study computational sociology, and right now, I have just completed my first year of the master’s program. ...

Translation of an article by Elena Strelkova, published in Forbes Young (Russia), 31 May 2026. Original in Russian →. Translated and published here with attribution. Sunday mass instead of yoga, and clubs for keeping the fast — it seems that young people are increasingly declaring a religious affiliation. We explore why and how they are turning to faith, what questions they are seeking answers to, and how they are changing their way of life. ...

Does a Secular Course in Religious Studies Affect Religiosity? A Proposed Randomised Experiment Essay for the course “Introduction to Causality” Nikita Obraztsov, European University at St. Petersburg, 2025 Read the article →

Published in: Sociology and Society: Formation and Functioning of Social Memory. Proceedings of the VII All-Russian Sociological Congress. Moscow, November 2025. EDN QUINAN. Download PDF in Russian→ Nikita A. Obraztsov European University at Saint Petersburg, Saint Petersburg, Russia. Abstract. Analyzing the religious identity of Orthodox Christians in contemporary Russia, the author concludes that the concept of belonging without believing can be successfully applied to interpret sociological data. In particular, the author draws attention to a significant gap between declared religiosity and actual religious practice, and proposes possible mechanisms for interpreting empirically observable facts. ...

Based on an appearance on the Pascal’s Wager podcast, November 2024. This is not a transcript but a reconstruction of the main ideas from the conversation. Video: [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LINK Rationality as a Bludgeon Start with an uncomfortable observation: the word “rationality” is today most often deployed irrationally. In media discourse it has become a weapon — a way to stigmatise opponents rather than describe a genuine quality of thought. The people who shout loudest about rationality typically make no effort to justify their use of the term or to build even a minimal conceptual framework. ...

Published in April 2022 on Alexander Bydantsev’s Yandex Zen channel (“Trickster”). Read the original (Russian) → Read the interview in English→ Tell us about yourself. Where did you study? What do you do? I live in St. Petersburg — my home city. I spent four years studying for my bachelor’s degree in Moscow, which among true Petersburgers is considered a mortal sin. Better to sleep on a bench near Sennaya Square with a volume of Dostoevsky under your head than to rot in that spiritually bankrupt Moscow. I never saw it that way, and I still don’t. ...