land. A variant of "Rodnovery" is "Rodianism" (Rodianstvo), which Laruelle also translates as "Ancestrism". The earliest known usage of this term was by the Ukrainian emigree Lev Sylenko, who in 1964 established a mimeographed publication in Canada that was titled Ridna Vira ("Native Faith"). The portmanteau Ridnovir began to be used by Ukrainians to refer to the broader movement (not restricted to Sylenkoism) by at least 1995, popularised by Volodymyr Shaian. From Ukraine, the term began to spread throughout other Slavic countries. In 1996, the non-compound form was adopted by a Polish group, the Association of Native Faith (Zrzeszenie Rodzimej Wiary) and in 1997 by the Russian Union of Slavic Native Belief Communities (Союз Славянских Общин Славянской Родной Веры) led by Vadim Kazakov, while the portmanteau Rodnoverie was widely popularised in Russia by volkhv Veleslav (Ilya G. Cherkasov) by 1999. By the early 2000s, the term was widespread across Slavic countries. In 2002, six Russian Rodnover organisations issued the "Bittsa Appeal" (Bittsevskoe Obraschchenie), in which, among the many topics discussed, they expressed the view that "Rodnovery" should be regarded as the foremost name of the religion. The spread of the term reflected the degree of solidarity in establishing a broader brand and a sense of international movement despite the disagreements and power struggles that permeated the groups. The term was originally also applied to the modern Pagan religions of non-Slavic groups—for instance, in the Polish language Lithuanian Romuva has been referred to as Rodzimowierstwo litewskie ("Lithuanian Native Faith") and Celtic Paganism has been referred to as Rodzimowierstwo celtyckie ("Celtic Native Faith"), however, "now, especially if you write [it] with the capital letter, the term is understood, first of all, as a designation of the Slavic Native Faith". "Orthodoxy", "Old Belief", "Vedism" and other terms The appropriate name of the religion is an acute topic of discussion among believers. Many Rodnovers have adopted terms that are already used to refer to other religions, namely "Vedism", referring to the historical Vedic religion and the ancient Iranian religion, and "Orthodoxy", commonly associated to Orthodox Christianity. For instance, one of the earliest branches of Rodnovery is known as "Peterburgian Vedism". They explain that "Vedism" derives from the word "to know" and implies that rather than dogmatically believing (verit), Vedists "know" or "see" (vedat) spiritual truths. The term was first employed by Yury Petrovich Mirolyubov—the writer or discoverer of the Book of Veles—in the mid-twentieth