But this is not exclusive to Slavic faith - absorption of cults happened in the history many times when those on a stronger position were conquering those who were weaker. Slavs had to abandon their faith in the face of growing Christianity and baptize, turn themselves into Christians in order to avoid being raided by neighbors and treated as infidels.
The other guess is a family, which is important in Russia and to maintain tradition is like to honor ancestors. One of the traditions is to drink vodka at the graveyard with dead relatives. Come with your family to show to dead grandparents their grandchildren. Drink vodka and leave a glass of vodka and a piece of bread to the dead to show that your life is good and you can afford to buy food and entertainment.
contrary and conveniently omitted parts from your own wikipedia article, which itself is condensed from the source documents (http://community.dur.ac.uk/a.k.harrington/christin.html):
"Vladimir the Great sent envoys to study the religions of the various neighboring nations ... Of the Muslim Bulgarians of the Volga the envoys reported there is no gladness among them, only sorrow and a great stench ... In the churches of the Germans his emissaries saw no beauty; but at Constantinople, where the full festival ritual of the Byzantine Church was set in motion to impress them, they found their ideal: "We no longer knew whether we were in heaven or on earth", they reported, describing a majestic Divine Liturgy in Hagia Sophia, "nor such beauty, and we know not how to tell of it." Vladimir was impressed by this account of his envoys."
but yes, lets highlight the drinking quote and the authority, and ignore the rest.
And concerning the Bolsheviks, you state:
"Bolsheviks killed priests and then ressurected religion: they were unable to trust to Ortodox Church"
This was not a "trust" matter.
Marxist ideology holds destruction of religion as a core tenet.
nevermind further that bolsheviks were also financed by hostile outside groups, both geographically and theologically..
Quote about drinking is funny. Sorry about it, couldn't hold myself from quoting.
But I'm not sure what do you not like with authority. IIRC in Novgorod there was a riot, which was supressed. It was Vladimir's decision that Rus needs new religion, it is not like people came to Vladimir and ask him to find new god instead of their old and mossy ones.
> This was not a "trust" matter. > Marxist ideology holds destruction of religion as a core tenet.
Maybe. You know, I do not believe in ideologies. At least I do not believe that government is moved by ideology. Ideology is used as an excuse sometimes. But if something that ideology suggests is not wise to do now, then it wouldn't be done.
> nevermind further that bolsheviks were also financed by hostile outside groups, both geographically and theologically..
Yeah, I do not mind it, really. It is a complete BS: if those groups were hostile, why did they bother to finance bolsheviks? They probably were not friends, but at least partners they were.
Heroes with a thousand faces
I assume that pagan traditions were prompted by the state in the same reason how Hitler promoted pagan traditions to unify all Germans.
The same happened with religion and socialism: bolsheviks didn't hold back on killing priests, but the religion went strong (though it's said that the opposition to religion was abandoned in the light of unifying rhetoric of '41–45).
Basically, people don't seem to care about ideological purity as long as the rhetoric is attractive.