KOMI RELIGION. The Komi peoples (the Zyryans and Permians) comprise a group of Finno-Ugric peoples who from time immemorial have lived in northeastern Europe. The Zyryans were Christianized at the end of the fourteenth century, the Permians in the second half of the fifteenth century. The study of the traditional Komi culture started only in the second half of the nineteenth century. Klavdij Alekseevich Popov (1874), Alexandr Vasilevich Krasov (1896), and Kallistrat Faloleevich Zhakov (1901) made attempts to reconstruct the ancient religion of the Komi-Zyryans; Nikolai Abramovich Rogov (1858, 1860), Nikolai Dobrotvorsky (1883), Ivan Nikolaevich Smirnov (1891), and Vladimir Mikhailovich Yanovich (1903) made attempts to reconstruct the Komi-Permian nature religion, separate manifestations of being in ancient cults (fire, water, and trees), animistic ideas on spirit masters, dual conception of cosmogenesis, and ideas on the dual function of a soul (soul-shadow and soul-breath). The profound study of separate aspects of the religious world outlook started...