The situation of the Russian Orthodox Church changed radically in the late 1980s under Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost. Persecution and marginalization were replaced by a privileged position in society. The greatest difference is that the number of churches open increased from 7,500 to today’s 26,600, or triple the number under the early 1980s. The network of monasteries that dates far back in Russian history is enjoying a revival, and the number of monasteries has increased from about fifteen to nearly 700. Statistics show that the Church stands strong despite a long period of persecution that lasted 70 years.

Since 1991, the Church has been led by Patriarch Alexei II, who grew up in the interwar period in an independent Estonia. He descends from a German-Baltic Russified noble family, von Ridiger. He thus has an interesting and unusual background to be the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Nonetheless, there are very few people who actually attend church. As in many other countries, the Church is associated with the rites of passage in a person’s life, like baptism, marriage and burial, as well as with special holidays, Easter in particular, in Russia. Roughly 80 % of all Russians still consider themselves Orthodox, whereas only about 40 % say they are believers. Orthodoxy is very much about identity. After the fall of the Soviet Union, many Russians felt lost.

A major problem for the Church is that it has never come to terms with its past. Many of today’s highest-ranking Church leaders were appointed during the Soviet era. A number of bishops were accused of being fellow-travellers of the godless state, and many are likewise said to be former KGB agents. In recent years, Russian reckoning with the Soviet past has virtually come to a standstill. The question of guilt seems to basically have been written off, here just as in other areas of Russian society today.

In this bewildering new situation for the Church, there is reason to discuss its influence both from a historical and contemporary perspective. When the principality of Kiev, the common precursor to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, adopted Christianity from Byzantium a thousand years ago, in 988, this eastern Slavic region was incorporated into a Christian eastern Roman culture and into a church we now call Orthodox. The Russian Orthodox Church today can be characterized by two distinctive features which both have their roots in this relation: first, its loyalty to power and especially to various Great Power ambitions, and second its mystique and preservation of tradition.

 

The Church and the empire

In an Orthodox hymn sung in the Russian Church on Christmas Day, the emperor Augustus is compared to Christ. They lived in the same age and had the same vision of a world kingdom, an empire. Both wanted to unite the world under one ruler:

When Augustus reigned alone on the earth,

The many kingdoms of mankind came to an end;
And when You became man from the pure Virgin,

The many gods of idolatry were destroyed;
The cities of the world passed under one single rule;

And the nations came to believe in a single Godhead;
The peoples were enrolled by decree of Caesar;

We the faithful were enrolled in the name of the Godhead,
When You became man, O our God.

It was this notion of the close connection between empire and Christianity that the principality of Kiev inherited when it became Christian. For the inhabitants of Kiev, empire meant Byzantium, but Kiev and then Russia were not politically a part of this Great Power, they were instead included in what might be called a Byzantine commonwealth. After Byzantium fell in 1453, there were various notions that Russia should embrace the heritage of the Christian Roman empire, the assumption of power that historians call translatio imperii or, in a Russian context, the dream of a ”Third Rome”. The old Rome had fallen, as had the new Rome, which was another name for Constantinople, and now it was Moscow’s turn to oversee this empirical heritage.

For many Russian conservative intellects in the 19th century like the poet Fyodor Tyutchev but also Fyodor Dostoevsky, the notions of empire and the Orthodox Russian Church were almost identical. The Church was the guarantor of the ideology that maintained the empire.

It is this whole notion of church-state and church-empire that has now once again come to the fore.

 

The Moscow Patriarchate and the empire

Despite the fall of the Soviet Union, the Moscow Patriarchate (another official name for the Church) is still active in nearly all of what was once Soviet territory, so that on the Church’s map this empire is still almost completely intact. Certainly, independent Orthodox churches have been founded in both Ukraine and Estonia, but there are also parishes here that report to Moscow. Power over Ukraine is especially important for the Church. The Patriarch has the title ”Patriarch of Moscow and All of Rus”. Rus is the historical name for the principality of Kiev but, during the Soviet era, in the language of the Church it meant the Soviet Union. Alexei II has expressed his support for Russians in the former Soviet republics when they have seen their language and rights threatened, and he visited Latvia in 2006, for instance, for this purpose. He was received there almost like a head of state. There is great consensus between the Russian leadership and the Church when it comes to their actions vis-à-vis the former Soviet republics.

The Church often speaks of the importance of patriotism, and priests are in attendance in the armed forces. As an official Church document declares:

”If a person refuses to die for his faith and the freedom of his country, then he dies as a criminal or as a slave; if one dies for one’s faith and one’s country – then he will receive life and glory in heaven.”

 

Saints and the empire

Perhaps the most important thing that has happened in the Church during the years following the fall of the Soviet Union is the canonization of Christians who were killed by the Soviet state for their belief. They are called new martyrs. New legends, new hymns and new icons have been crafted for these martyrs, and the entire Russian Church calendar has been radically transformed with the introduction of all the new days dedicated to the memory of these new martyrs. The vitae often include gripping accounts of their great suffering and courage.

These new martyrs are often presented as protectors of holy Russia against the evil Soviet Union. In some of the canonizations, the political content of preserving the empire is obvious, like the canonization of the imperial family, with Nicholas II presented as a ruler who tried in every way to save and preserve his realm. His abdication was seen as a final attempt by him, humbling himself, to prevent revolution and civil war.

One of the great admirals of the 18th century, Fyodor Ushakov, was recently declared a saint. The connection here between Church and empire is even stronger. Ushakov defeated both the Turks and the French in major naval battles. The few canonizations carried out at the end of the Soviet era all had a geopolitical undertone as well: there were two bishops who had served as missionaries and founded the Orthodox Church in the US and Japan, respectively, as well as Dmitry Donskoy, the grand duke who defeated the Tatars at the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380.

This political motivation is even stronger in the world of ideas of Russian Orthodox extremists. A Russian soldier, Yevgeny Rodionov, who was killed by Chechen rebels in 1996, reportedly after refusing to remove his crucifix at their insistence, was canonized by extremists, and there is a cult around him now developing. On icons of him, he is dressed both as an angel and in camouflage. There have been church hymns written about him and a church erected in his memory. The cult is not recognized by Church leaders, but nationalist and imperialist extremists have called him the first martyr of the ”Fifth Empire”. That is the name extremists give to the new Russian great power they dream of. (The First Empire was the principality of Kiev, the second the Moscow Empire, the third the Russian Empire, with St. Petersburg the capital founded by Peter the Great, and the fourth the Soviet Empire.)

 

Symphony between Church and state

In actuality, the view of relations between Church and state that the principality of Kiev adopted from Byzantium foresaw no competition between them and the West, but rather cooperation without convergence or, to use a Byzantine term, symphony. This has always been the ideal in the Russian Orthodox Church’s view of its relations with the state, but in reality it has actually been the tsarist state that has incorporated the Church in its domains. This tendency was strongest from the time of Peter the Great to the Revolution in 1917, when the Church lost its independence and was no longer run by its own head, a patriarch, but instead by a secular establishment, the Holy Synod, with the tsar as its highest leader.

In the Soviet era, the Church’s humiliating dependence on this secular power was replaced by persecution and threats of eradication. What the Church now wants, with the fall of the Soviet Union, is a return to the symphony that previously characterized the relationship between church and state. If the Catholic view of the world entails the notion of a universal church, the heritage of Byzantium entails the notion of a world kingdom with a church in symphonic accord with secular power.

So it is this symphony that determines in various ways the relationship between church and state in today’s Russia. The Church’s legal status, for instance, has changed radically from the extreme marginalization that characterized its position under Communist law. In the constitution from 1993, it was established that all religions were equal and that there is to be no state ideology in Russia. The law on religion from 1997 now in effect deviates from these principles in favour of the Russian Orthodox Church, as is indicated in the preamble, that is, in the explanation of the actual foundation of law:

”…proceeding from the idea that the Russian Federation is a secular state, but recognizing the special role that Orthodoxy has had in the history of Russia, in its creation and in the development of its spirituality and culture.”

Despite the absence of any national ideology in the constitution, God is named as the protector of the country in the new text of the Russian national anthem. Vladimir Putin has explained that he is a practising Orthodox and has spoken of a personal conversion; the same is true of the new president, Medvedev. Medvedev has told how he was baptised as an adult and how this baptism changed his life. Meetings between patriarch and president are staged as meetings between two equal heads of state. On Easter 2008, when Putin and his successor as president, Medvedev, took part together in the Easter service at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Medvedev held a short speech in which he said, among other things:

”On this holy Easter, I would like to note that it has been during your time as Patriarch that the Russian Orthodox Church has become an extremely important part of Russian society and continues to exercise a distinct positive spiritual influence on its development.”

This is how the symphony works in today’s Russia. The country is at the same time secular and Orthodox.

Preserving unity and harmony in the country is an issue that is handled by both the Church and the secular state. Conferring an honour on the Patriarch about a year ago, Putin stated the following:

”Alexei II became the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church at a time of upheaval in Russian history. It was a period of painful searching for moral values. The patriarch has provided a great personal service in ensuring that both society and the Church could avoid splintering and maintain their unity.”

The argument for harmony is the same one formulated in the Christmas hymn quoted earlier. Putin has summed up the special role of Orthodoxy by saying that without Orthodoxy there is no Russia and without Russia there is no Orthodoxy. At the same time, the president has the task of holding together a multiethnic state in which a large group of people are Muslims or belong to other faiths. Many are estranged from any kind of religion and perhaps even feel nostalgic about the disappearance of an atheist Soviet Union. Still, there are no theocratic elements being introduced in today’s Russia, although nearly all political figures speak approvingly of the Orthodox Church – everyone from the Communist leader Zyuganov to the leaders of the now small liberal political groups. Many of the leaders in the new government were baptised, like the president, as adults.

Many Russian nationalist groups also support the Church, and there are anti-Semitic elements in many of these and in some parts of the Church. The Church leadership has distanced itself from anti-Semitism, but without the vigour that would be needed in this context.

 

The Church and society

The Church is thus seen as a preserver and protector of society. It recently produced a 70-page programme outlining its assumption of this role. The document sets forth its approach to society, which is absolutely essential today, when many people are looking to the Church for an answer to various social questions. The programme condemns abortion, stem-cell research and homosexuality but expresses itself cautiously in avoiding the issue of birth control. The Church has also become involved in the modern economy. A code of ethics in business has been developed to improve business ethics in the country.

The Church demands the right to be present in prisons, hospitals and perhaps most importantly the military; these demands too have been met. Muslims have protested about the presence of Christian symbols in the state coat of arms, namely, the cross held by the double eagle, but also against the placement of icons in public buildings. These protests have apparently not led to any change.

Relations with other churches are chilly and can be seen as a mirror of Russia’s relations with the West today. Its view of the Catholic Church is negative, given the negative attitude the Orthodox Church has adopted to the increasingly solid presence of the Catholic Church in Russia today. Yet there is also shared interest in both churches to protect and promote Christian values in today’s Europe, which is discussed from time to time in the official meetings between the churches.

The Orthodox Church is trying in every way to fight what could be called proselytism, the recruitment of members from one religious community to another. There has thus been criticism of other new spiritual movements active in Russia as well. Relations with the various Protestant churches are also cool, and the Russian Orthodox Church has officially broken off contacts with the Church of Sweden as a result of its position on the blessing of homosexual unions.

One major new development is that one of the emigrant churches, the Russian Church Abroad, has allied itself with the Moscow Patriarchate. The president himself has supported the Church in its negotiations, which has been seen as an important step along the road to reconciling Russian emigrants with their home country. The desire is to make it once again a Russian Orthodox Church – the same drive for unity expressed In the Christmas hymn.

 

Bringing the divine down to Earth

The other side of the Russian Orthodox Church is the mystical and anti-rationalist side that preserves traditional values, which can perhaps best be understood through the importance of its icons. Here, too, one can see the Byzantine heritage but in a different way than we saw earlier in the article. Veneration of these images stems from Byzantium.

In Russia, unlike in Byzantium or the West, there is almost no written theology; spirituality is communicated in these very icons and in worship services. Interestingly, the importance of icons has in fact increased in the Church rather than decreased compared to before the Revolution. In that era, icons were found in museums. Icon albums were printed despite the atheist position of the state and the party. The government tried to interpret icons as folk art and later as an expression of the medieval artistic heritage of Great Russia, while for many Russians they continued to be holy relics. Icons thus represent a special continuity. It was not until the first years after the Revolution that the Soviet state engaged in a more systematic destruction of old icons.

Worship has the same iconic function; it brings the divine down to Earth and brings the profane up to heaven in a two-way process. The icon, like worship, is a sign of incarnation – that the divine, by Christ taking human form, has manifested itself in material form here on Earth.

The form of worship is Byzantine. An old Russian woman in a village out in the country, singing a hymn from old Byzantium full of Byzantine rhetoric, is perhaps the best symbol of the Russian Orthodox Church. The solemn service led by a bishop has many features that originated in imperial rituals in Constantinople: the sakkos, the priestly vestments, was designed based on the Byzantine emperor’s robe. The bishop is greeted by the choir, which sings the same phrase used to praise the Byzantine emperor – ”Many years to You, Master” – and conveyed in Greek. It is thus a living, enduring Byzantium we encounter here.

The Soviet era has also left its own very special marks on worship. According to Soviet law, the Church was prohibited from engaging in social activities or evangelising. The only thing allowed was worship services, and the result was that a tradition already centred on the liturgy became even stronger. There is a firm belief that if the Church were to stop these services, the world would end in chaos.

In this mystical piety, there is also a sense of immutability. The worship service is medieval Byzantine in structure; the language is Church Slavonic, originally a medieval southern Slavic language; the saints are celebrated following the old Julian calendar, which is now thirteen days behind our Gregorian calendar. There is also a self-image here of constancy across the generations. A Russian Orthodox priest and philosopher, Pavel Florensky, has expressed this as a provocative challenge to modernity: ”We are not interested in the present day, we are interested in eternity.” Unlike almost every other religious community in the West, the Church has not budged an inch to oblige modernity.

Nor is there room for any kind of fine-tuning the Christian message today. It remains intact with all its parts in place. When the Church celebrated its millennium in 1988 and a service was broadcast on TV, there was no social or public message in the sermon – instead, it dealt with the resurrection of the dead. A large part of the Church’s energy today is spent on celebrating the different saints’ days, and saints have taken on an even more important function in the Church today, if that is possible, than they did before.

 

Criticism of the Church

For the Orthodox Church, the late 1980s and early 1990s entailed almost unanimously positive treatment in the media. Liberal forces are now beginning to criticize the Church more and more for its authoritarian tendencies and for its demand of hegemony in religious life. Still, the Church’s influence over the state has its limits, and its demand to ban one TV programme or another have not produced any response. In 2003, the Sakharov Museum in Moscow arranged a major art exhibit, Warning: Religion, which included severe criticism of the Church. Objects from the Orthodox world, like icons and crosses, were placed next to a hammer and sickle, swastika or other trademarks to call the Church’s own activities into question. The exhibit generated a great deal of criticism and was also subject to vandalizing by Orthodox extremists. Yet it was the exhibit organizers who were judged legally responsible and ordered to pay a fine by virtue of a section of law that is perhaps most comparable to Sweden’s ”incitement to racial hatred” act.

So today the Russian Orthodox Church often represents a nationalist, at times xenophobic, imperial and patriotic message. However, the importance of the Church in this context should not be exaggerated. The Orthodox Church was never a generator of political or moral values in the first place. Above all, it represents something different ideologically; it is a preserver of traditions, it defends eternity and spirituality against the present day and the world. It maintains, above all, an extremely rich liturgical life, a medieval world that provocatively continues to exist in a post-Soviet Russia and in a postmodern world.