Orthodoxych

Part 1 Conceptual Apparatus
CHAPTER 1
The Ambivalent Role of Orthodoxy in the

Construction of Civil Society and Democracy in
Russia
Christopher Marsh, Baylor University
The range of obstacles that have been identified by scholars,

policymakers, and pundits as burdening Russia’s transition to democracy
and the free market is dizzying and seemingly endless. From the
country’s authoritarian past and the debilitated state of the nation’s social
fabric to rampant corruption and President Putin’s latest reform initiative,
cause for pessimism is apparent virtually everywhere one turns. It should
come as no surprise, therefore, that Russia’s religious heritage has not
gone without its share of blame.
Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Samuel Huntington
proclaimed that “the cultural division of Europe between Western
Christianity…and Orthodox Christianity and Islam” was reemerging, and
that “the eastern boundary of Western Christianity in the year 1500” was
“the most significant dividing line in Europe.”1 Huntington not only
predicted that the Orthodox world would clash with the rest of Europe,
but that Orthodox societies seemed “much less likely to develop stable
democratic political systems.” In a similar vein, Michael Radu later
announced the “burden of Eastern Orthodoxy,” arguing that the Eastern
Churches were only interested in promoting nationalism, and could not
contribute in any meaningful way to the construction of civil society and
democracy in post-Communist Europe.2
Not only are such scholars quick to determine that Russia’s
Orthodox religious tradition has nothing to contribute to the country’s
transition to democracy and the free market, they also argue that it will
actually serve as an impediment to these processes. These are not the
only voices in the debate, however. There exist other accounts, written
by scholars with intimate knowledge of the Orthodox tradition and a
more nuanced understanding of the history of religion in Russia.
Scholars such as James Billington, Nikolas Gvosdev, and Nicolai Petro,
1
Burden or Blessing?
for example, have identified positive attributes in Russia’s religious

heritage, focusing on the role of religion as a mobilizing force,
Orthodoxy’s traditions of a symphonic ideal between church and state,
ecclesiastical elections, and the conciliar principle of sobornost’.3
The historical record is actually quite clear on the matter – Russia
has a history of democratic decision-making that can be traced deep into
the nation’s history, as far back as the sixth century.4 The church itself,
moreover, was a central institution that employed elections to fill
ecclesiastical posts. As for the much-touted subservience of the church to
the Russian state, almost without exception it is overlooked or ignored
that the elimination of the Patriarchate and the establishment of the Holy
Governing Synod by Peter the Great in 1721 was actually a reaction to
initiatives taken by the church during the seventeenth century as
Patriarch Nikon sought to bring the state to heel. It is important to bear in
mind, moreover, that Peter’s actions were largely influenced by Western
thought and even specific recommendations.5 Peter’s church reforms,
therefore, broke with the Orthodox tradition of church-state relations and
were an adoption of a more Protestant approach. The fact remains,
however, that neither approach is an example of the symphonic ideal,
where the church and state work together in harmony, with the monarch
ruling the secular realm and religious leaders guiding spiritual matters.
While setting the historical record straight is an important and
necessary task, it is not the primary objective of the current project. The
concern of the authors assembled here, rather, is to address the question
of whether or not Russia’s Orthodox religious tradition will serve as a
burden or a blessing in the construction of civil society and democracy in
post-Communist Russia. In seeking to arrive at a balanced and unbiased
set of conclusions, the voices contained in this volume range from the
pessimistic to the optimistic, with most suggesting that the record is
mixed and what one sees depends on where one looks. In order to set the
stage for this discussion, in the pages that follow I offer the reader a brief
survey of some of the concepts we use to examine the state of Russian
civil society, its economy, and the progress being made in the area of
democratization.
Orthodoxy and its Relationship to Civil Society, the Market, and

Democracy in Russia
The actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin following the massacre

at Beslan have led to a deluge of negative assessments of the prospects
2
The Ambivalent Role of Orthodoxy
for democracy and freedom in Russia. The fate of democracy in Russia,

however, rests upon more than the establishment of democratic
institutions and the holding of free and competitive elections. Russia also
needs a citizenry that is interested, active, and politically efficacious.
Only engaged citizens joined together in a civil society can serve as an
effective check on the power of the state, whose power has grown
exponentially under Putin’s leadership. Russian society, therefore, needs
to develop democratic values and a body of citizens who not only follow
events and participate in formal political and informal civic activities, but
who also make informed choices about the country’s future. To
complicate the situation even further, the experience of democratizing
states around the world shows that new democracies also require
performing market economies to sustain democratic governance. A
decade into the process of post-Communist market development
indicates that, although the rudiments of a market economy have been
laid and considerable progress has been made in certain areas, alongside
the prosperity of Moscow boulevards there exist alleyways of stagnation,
inefficiency, and poverty.
Civil Society in Russia
Civil society can be understood as the relatively autonomous realm that

rests between the state and the private sphere.6 It may also be conceived
of as “institutional and ideological pluralism, which prevents the
establishment of a monopoly of power and truth, and counterbalances
those central institutions which, though necessary, might otherwise
acquire such monopoly.”7 At its core, civil society is composed of a “set
of diverse non-governmental institutions which is strong enough to
counterbalance the state and, while not preventing the state from
fulfilling its role of keeper of the peace and arbitrator between major
interests, can nevertheless prevent it from dominating and atomizing the
rest of society.” Where private individuals come together to cooperate
and work collectively to bring about public goods, civil society can be
said to exist.
Expressed in other terms, civil society also relates to freedom, a fact
that has remained largely outside of the discourse on Russia’s post-
Soviet transformation despite its importance. Certainly there has been a
plethora of work documenting specific areas of freedom, such as
freedom of the press and freedom of religion, along with the more
general discussion of civil society in Russia. But all forms of liberty have
3
Burden or Blessing?
at their core the same source – “freedom of the individual from society –
more precisely, from the state and from all such compelling social
bonds,” as Russian Christian philosopher Georgy Fedotov explained
almost a half century ago.8 Fedotov argued in his émigré writings that
“freedom in this sense is simply a setting of limits to the power of the
state in terms of the inalienable rights of the individual.” It is a limiting
of the power of the state that allows an autonomous realm between the
state and the private sphere – a civil society – to emerge.
Civil society in Russia has been in a constant state of flux since it
first raised its collective voice during the perestroika period. Hudson
recently argued, however, that civil society is developing in Russia
today, and expressed “cautious optimism” that civic groups have become
a permanent feature of Russian political life.9 Based on analysis of
survey data on social networks and civil society in Russia, Gibson has
also shown that social networks and civic attitudes among Russians are
facilitating the country’s democratic transition.10
Churches and religious life are also important actors in civil society,
and they are significant sources of social capital and can facilitate civic
involvement through such means as charitable events, church-sponsored
fairs (yarmarki), and social networks. Given its particular history, with a
Christian tradition stretching back more than one thousand years and
seven decades of militant atheism in its more recent past, churches are an
excellent indicator of civic and religious involvement in Russia. After all,
the church was systematically attacked in the Soviet Union, and the vast
majority of churches were destroyed or converted to state property
during the Communist period. Between 1989-1999, however, believers
fought to reclaim and rebuild their old parishes, with the number of
Orthodox churches in Russia rising from approximately 7,500 to 19,000
during this period,11 indicating the vitality of civic and religious life.
Russia’s Market Transition
As if the challenges facing the development of civil society in Russia

weren’t daunting enough, evidence suggests that democracies require
functioning market economies to survive and prosper. To further
complicate the situation, civil society itself is seen as critical for the
economic prosperity of societies. The development of civil society and a
functioning market economy in Russia, therefore, are inextricably linked
to one another.
4
As the above discussion indicates, Russia emerged from the ashes of

Communism in unique circumstances that may have left it without the
requisite levels of civil society and social capital deemed necessary to
sustain market institutions and democratic governance. But will markets
help build the requisite levels of civil society necessary to maintain
democratic governance? Or, will markets fail to develop due to the
weakness of civil society and the paucity of social capital?
Despite the sheer enormity of the task and many setbacks, the
Russian economy today has stabilized and is experiencing significant
growth. In short, Russia has successfully completed the first phase of the
world’s most daunting economic transformation. As a Western
investment agency recently noted, “competitiveness in Russian domestic
industries has improved, macroeconomic stability has been achieved, and
a basic market environment has been created.”12 While on the whole
Russia has made substantial progress in developing a market economy,
the process is taking place in a highly differentiated manner with some
regions of the country and certain segments of the population achieving
better results than others.
Several scholars working on market reform in post-Communist
societies have identified the strength of civil society as a positive factor
in that process. Additionally, several scholars have identified social
networks as significant factors for the development and functioning of
market mechanisms in Russia. Quite interestingly, Dinello has also
shown that Russian Orthodoxy and its positive orientation towards
society plays an important role in developing an equitable market
economy in Russia, a point also made by Gvosdev.13
The Russian Orthodox Church recognizes the pivotal role is has to
play in the country’s economic transition. In February of 2004 it
launched a conversation at the Eighth All-World Russian People’s
Council on the relevancy of Orthodox social teachings for market
activity. The result was a “Collection of Moral Principles and Rights of
Business (khoziastovanie),” which urges Russian businesspeople not to
break their contractual agreements, not to defraud others, and not to
withhold pay from their employees.14
While guidelines such as these are certainly welcome – and indeed
long overdue – close examination of the role of the church and civic
organizations in Russia indicates that such institutions play complicated
roles in a post-Communist economic transition. When it comes to market
development, perhaps the kind of resources offered by a civil society
may actually hinder market development in certain ways. For example,
while soup kitchens and the charitable activities of churches and other
5
Burden or Blessing?
social institutions may alleviate economic hardship, they do not

necessarily promote market activity. Such institutions may also foster
barter relationships and other non-market activities, that although
promoting short-term economic sustainability, may actually hinder
market development in the long term, and thus they may actually be
barriers to economic growth. While this may be the case, this is only one
small piece of the puzzle, and it is not likely to derail economic reform in
Russia.
The Question of Democracy
Perhaps our primary concern here is with Russia’s transition to

democracy, a process that has proven much more difficult than most
observers and participants had hoped. Russia’s democratic track record,
moreover, is far from unblemished, and the country’s path to democracy
has been a bumpy one. From Yeltsin’s dismissal of the parliament in
October 1993 to the electoral improprieties associated with his reelection
in 1996, Russia’s experiment with democracy certainly began with a
rocky start. Following Yeltsin’s resignation in favor of his protégé
Vladimir Putin, the country does not seem to have changed course
drastically in the new millennium, as Putin has carried out a slow but
steady limiting of civil liberties and the independent media, coupled with
his own electoral irregularities.
According to most accepted definitions of democracy, Russia still
has a way to go before it is a consolidated democratic society. Robert
Dahl offers a flexible set of criteria by which to assess democracies. To
begin with, control over governmental decisions must be constitutionally
vested in elected officials who are chosen and peacefully removed in
relatively frequent, fair, and free elections. Additionally, practically all
adults have the right to vote, and most adults also have the right to run
for public office. Dahl’s definition sets itself apart from earlier attempts
to define democracy by arguing that citizens must have an effectively
enforced right to freedom of expression, including criticism of officials,
the conduct of the government, the prevailing political, economic, and
social system, and the dominant ideology. Moreover, they also must have
access to alternative sources of information that are not monopolized by
the government or any other single group. Finally, they must have an
effectively enforced right to form and join autonomous associations,
including political associations, such as political parties and interest
6
groups, that attempt to influence the government by competing in

elections and other peaceful means.15
Based on these criteria, Russia’s record is far from unblemished.
The potential elimination of numerous elected posts, including governors
and mayors, along with widely-documented questionable activity during
all of Russia’s post-Soviet elections, violate democracy thus understood.
Equally disconcerting, Putin’s attack on independent media outlets
moves Russia even further behind in its path to democracy.
Despite such developments, the fact that Russia continues to operate
within a democratic institutional framework, although one that is often
pushed to and sometimes beyond its limits, is not a bad track record for a
country that has struggled for centuries in its attempt to make a transition
to democracy. The goal of the Decembrists in 1825 and many of the
protesters and strikers in 1905 and 1917 was democracy, and although
the outcome remains uncertain, the historical chance to construct a
democratic society in Russia is not yet over.
It is perhaps no surprise that Russia does not meet the definitions of
democracy offered above, but what becomes obvious is that the real
question regards the degree to which it is democratic and whether or not
it will become democratic in the decades to come. Although this is not
our primary concern here, we are interested in assessing the role
Orthodoxy is playing in this process. Each of the contributors to this
volume has much to offer and should provide the reader with a balanced
account of the progress made in Russia’s transition to democracy and the
obstacles that still stand in its way.
Notes
1
Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?,” Foreign Affairs 72, 3
(Summer 1993): 29-30.
2
Michael Radu, “The Burden of Eastern Orthodoxy,” Orbis 42, 2 (Spring
1998): 283-300.
3
James Billington, “The Case for Orthodoxy,” New Republic 210, 22 (May 30,
1994): 24-28; Nikolas Gvosdev, Emperors and Elections: Reconciling the
Orthodox Tradition with Modern Politics (Huntington, NY: Troitsa Books,
2000); Nicolai Petro, The Rebirth of Russian Democracy: An Interpretation of
Political Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).
4
Christopher Marsh, Russia at the Polls: Voters, Elections, and
Democratization (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2002).
5
Dmitry Pospielovsky, The Orthodox Church in the History of Russia
(Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 111-112.
7
Burden or Blessing?
6
Much of the discussion presented here comes from: Christopher Marsh, “The
Challenge of Civil Society,” in Stephen K. Wegren, ed., Russia’s Policy
Challenges: Security, Stability, and Development (Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe,
2003), 141-158.
7
Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (New York:
Penguin, 1994), 3-4.
8
Georgy Fedotov, “The Christian Origins of Freedom,” in Ultimate Questions:
An Anthology of Modern Russian Religious Thought (Crestwood, NY: St.
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977), 285.
9
George Hudson, “Civil Society in Russia: Models and Prospects for
Development,” Russian Review 62, 2 (2003): 212-213.
10
James Gibson, “Social Networks, Civil Society, and the Prospects for
Consolidating Russia’s Democratic Transition,” American Journal of Political
Science 45, 1 (2001): 51-69.
11
Nathaniel Davis, A Long Walk to Church: A Contemporary History of Russian
Orthodoxy (Boulder: Westview Press, 2003).
12
Ernst & Young International, Ltd., Doing Business in the Russian Federation
(Moscow: Ernst and Young, 2002), p. 5.
13
Natalia Dinello, “Russian Religious Rejections of Money and ‘Homo
Economicus’: The Self-identifications of the ‘Pioneers of a Money Economy’ in
Post-Soviet Russia,” Sociology of Religion 59, 1 (1998): 45-64; Gvosdev, 2000,
123-132.
14
Nikolas Gvosdev, “A New Decalogue for Russian Business,” Acton
Commentary, February 18, 2004. Available at: http://www.acton.org.
15
Robert Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1989).
8
CHAPTER 2
Civil Society, Russian Orthodoxy, and Democracy:

Theoretical Framework/Conceptual Clarification
Zoe Knox, Rice University
The idea of civil society remained in the background of political theory

for much of the twentieth century. It was revived in the context of the
activities of Solidarity, the Polish independent trade union, in the late
1970s and early 1980s. It was appropriated by political commentators
observing the dramatic changes in the Soviet bloc in the late 1980s; the
extensive use of the concept to describe the transformations led to the
observation that “a veritable ‘cult of civil society’ seized liberal analysts
of these developments.”1 Civil society has since been used in a diverse
range of contexts.
This paper will argue that there is a need to elucidate how, as a
theoretical construct, the concept of civil society is useful for the
examination of the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) and
the construction of democracy in Russia. It establishes that the term civil
society is useful in three different, but intimately linked, ways: as a term
denoting a society that accommodates social self-organization
independent of the state; as a term denoting a state of affairs in the
religious sphere characterized by interaction between different
denominations and religions; and as a term denoting a particular kind of
dynamism within Church structures. This paper aims to demonstrate how
applying the concept of civil society in these three ways can overcome
the shortcomings of many Western analyses of the Russian Orthodox
Church, and can offer a balanced assessment of the role of the Church in
Russia’s democratization process.
Shortcomings of the Literature
Political scientists seeking to understand the social, cultural and political

transformations in Russia often overlook religion. For example, a major
study of post-communist Russian politics contended that the infrequency
9
Burden or Blessing?
of Orthodox Church attendance indicated widespread indifference

toward religion. The same survey that led three eminent political
scientists to conclude that there was a high level of trust in the Orthodox
Church also led them to assert: “In parallel with secularization in
Western Europe, Russians have increasingly become indifferent to
religion rather than dividing between believers and anticlerical secular
groups.”2 There is ample evidence to support the contention that church
attendance is a poor indicator of levels of religious practice and
adherence.3 Furthermore, the Orthodox Church’s significance in Russia
is demonstrated by leading politicians consulting with Orthodox
dignitaries, continued polemics about the Church’s role in mainstream
(and peripheral) media, religious themes in art and literature, and the
constant presence of the Church in discussions of the nation’s historic
path: past, present and future. The extent of Orthodoxy’s influence
should not be as readily dismissed as some political scientists propose.
Another shortcoming of commentary on Russian Orthodoxy derives
from Western analysts’ predilection to reduce the Church’s influence to
that of its conservative and xenophobic elements. Journalists are
particularly prone to paint the Church as a monolithic body, one that
uniformly does not support liberal democracy. It is true that the
traditionalist current, which emphasizes powerful authority and limits on
pluralism, is strong, both within and outside Church structures. The
statement in an editorial in The Times (London), however, that “The
Russian Orthodox Church is in the grip of extreme nationalists and anti-
Semites” is overblown and reduces the movement among reformist
clergy and laity for changes to Orthodox life to inconsequence.4 Another
example is British journalist Victoria Clark’s long chapter on Russia in
her book on Eastern Orthodoxy in modern Europe. Each Orthodox
adherent she encounters, from prelate to priest to starets, is a Russian
national chauvinist, or anti-Semitic, anti-Western or anti-Catholic.5
The salience of internal Church dynamics, and especially the
convictions and activities of the reformist wing, is habitually overlooked
in Western analyses of Church life. This emphasis on nationalists
obscures the contribution of reformist elements. Likewise, the impression
that there are but a handful of laity promoting Orthodoxy as a tolerant,
ecumenical and intellectual faith is misleading.6 Evaluations of the
Church’s influence tend to focus on the Moscow Patriarchate, that is, the
Church’s institutional form. Lay activism, including the initiatives of
clergy separate from Church control, or opposing the Church
leadership’s decrees or directives, is an increasingly important influence.
Examining Russian Orthodoxy through the prism of civil society strives
10
to restore some balance in assessments of the Church and

democratization by appraising the agenda and influence of reformist
elements, both within and outside the Church.
Re-Emergence of the Term
The concept of civil society re-emerged in Eastern European literature in

the late 1970s and 1980s, when the transformation of Polish dissent was
heralded as the end of revisionism and the rebirth of civil society.7 The
activities of Solidarity brought the concept of civil society to the fore of
discussion about state-society relations. In 1982 Andrew Arato wrote of
Polish dissidents who were divided on most issues: “One point, however,
unites them all: the viewpoint of civil society against the state − the
desire to institutionalize and preserve the new level of social
independence.”8 In this understanding, the shift from disconnected
dissident activity to organized opposition marked the birth of civil
society.
In the context of the Soviet Union, discussion of civil society
centered on the debate over whether or not Gorbachev’s reforms
heralded the emergence of civil society. In 1988 S. Frederick Starr
proclaimed the USSR to have significant elements of a civil society,
citing the proliferation of unsanctioned economic and social activity of
an anti-regime nature as evidence that the state was unable to form,
control or successfully disseminate social values.9 Geoffrey Hosking and
Vladimir Tismaneanu identified social movements overtly opposing
Soviet-style communism’s environmental and militaristic policies as the
rebirth of civil society.10 In this understanding social awareness, social
concern and independent organization were the defining features of a
civil society. Moshe Lewin emphasized the social relations fostered in
Soviet cities as key to the development of civil society. This resulted in
spontaneous activity which was beyond the control of the regime.11 In
each of these understandings, the shift from fragmented dissent to
organized, communicative oppositional associations marked the re-
emergence of civil society.
In 2002 and 2003, articles published in Western academic journals
on civil society in Russia have examined different models of civil society
in the post-Soviet context;12 the development of civil society since the
demise of Soviet Marxism-Leninism;13 prospects for civil society’s
development under President Vladimir Putin;14 trade unions and civil
society;15 case studies of civic engagement at the local level;16 and the
11
Burden or Blessing?
activities of non-governmental organizations,17 just to name a handful of

topics. It is not hard to see how engaging the term without conceptual
clarification must befuddle those following the scholarship on Russia’s
post-Soviet trajectory. It is important to clarify how the concept of civil
society is useful for assessing the Church’s role in the democratization
process, and how it can be used to overcome the shortcomings of the
existing literature outlined above.
“Three Spheres” of Civil Society
There are three spheres within which the role of the Orthodox Church
can be evaluated and its contribution to the construction or the
obstruction of civil society in Russia assessed. Analysis of the Church’s
contribution to the construction of democracy is facilitated by the
examination of, to use Jean L. Cohen and Andew Arato’s terminology,
the “sphere of associations”.18 Considering the Church, or rather the
governing body of the church, the Moscow Patriarchate, as one
association among the many operating – and competing for influence –
in the new Russia enables an evaluation of the Church’s significance in
the democratization process. Orthodoxy’s influence in this first sphere of
civil society can be evaluated by assessing the Moscow Patriarchate’s
role in the social and political life of the country.
The Church leadership seeks to instill values and norms in society to
create a social and political consensus based on Orthodox doctrines and
traditions (see Glanzer and Kljutcharev’s contribution to this volume). In
this respect, it is not especially different from other bodies seeking to
gain power and influence in Russia. The influence of religious bodies in
the “sphere of associations” deserves special attention because religious
bodies have a special role to play in a country’s social and political life.
Where a theological perspective or public pronouncement or policy
initiative coincides with social and even political mores orientated
toward constructive, inclusive and tolerant relations between
associations, a religious group may contribute to the construction of civil
society. Religious institutions thus have the potential to contribute to the
construction of civil society by promoting conditions and sentiments
conducive to its consolidation. Likewise, religious institutions espousing
principles that are xenophobic, anti-pluralist or chauvinistic can obstruct
the formation of civil society.
Russian Orthodoxy’s role in the construction of democracy can also
be evaluated by examining the Church’s role in the second sphere of civil
12
society: the religious field. The success of the Patriarchate’s campaign in

the early to mid-1990s to implement restrictive religious legislation in
Russia is demonstrative of Orthodoxy’s leverage on matters that extend
throughout the entire religious domain. The Patriarchate is therefore
uniquely positioned to influence attitudes which shape the religious
sphere. The way the Church operates in the pluralist religious
environment and how it interacts with other religious bodies determines
its influence on the religious sphere.
Orthodoxy’s “unofficial” or non-institutional influence can be
determined by examining the activities of lay associations which
promote ecumenism and tolerance, or conversely those which promote
xenophobic sentiments or intolerance toward non-Orthodox faiths. Those
groups united in the Union of Orthodox Brotherhoods, for example,
speak in the name of Orthodoxy, and so also have an impact on
Orthodoxy’s contribution to the construction or obstruction of civil
society. The contribution of lay activism to the emergence of civil
society can be evaluated through the laity’s work in social, political and
charitable organizations, and also through the initiatives of reformist
clergy, who seek to make Orthodoxy more “transparent” and accessible.
Russian Orthodoxy can therefore influence Russia’s religious sphere in
numerous, even conflicting, ways.
The third sphere of civil society, the narrowest sphere, comprises
the Church structures themselves. Of interest here are the dynamics
within Church structures; the way that dialogue and decision-making is
conducted among prelates and clergy, and those initiatives and agendas
of nonconformist clergy which deviate from the doctrines and practices
laid down by the Patriarchate (see, for example, the analysis of three
Moscow parishes in Daniel’s contribution to this volume). For example,
the Church leadership has made attempts to limit the extent to which
alternative visions of Church life and different understandings of
Orthodoxy are aired by disciplining non-conformist priests. This
diminishes freedom of speech within Church structures. Freedom,
tolerance, a plurality of opinions and the opportunity to air competing
visions of Orthodoxy are essential if civil society is to exist within the
church itself.
It should be noted that this application of civil society to internal
Church structures does not seek to judge Orthodox canons. This is
essential to avoid charges of Western-centric evaluation. For example,
that the Patriarchate affirms that Old Church Slavonic remain the
language of the liturgy is not relevant here. The debate over whether Old
Church Slavonic or vernacular Russian is more appropriate for modern
13
Burden or Blessing?
services is pertinent because it reveals how demands to change the

language of the liturgy are received and negotiated by the Church
leadership. This is indicative of the extent to which dissenting voices are
mediated within Church structures.
Each of these three spheres is important for the assessment of the
Church’s impact on the construction of democracy because the Church is
a complex body, which has a variety of influences. It is neither a paragon
nor an enemy of civil society in modern Russia, as some commentators
would have us believe.
Conclusion
The resurgence of the concept of civil society in political discourse has

ensured that civil society remains at the forefront of discussion about
post-communist democratization. This paper has emphasized how
employing the concept of civil society as a methodology can overcome
the major shortcomings of the existing literature on the Orthodox Church
in Russia.
Three spheres of civil society have been proposed in order to
overcome reductionist explanations of the Church’s contemporary role.
Orthodoxy’s impact on civil society can only be established by
examining its influence in three domains of civil society: in the social
and political arenas, in the religious sphere, and within Church
structures. This offers a picture of the Church as being multi-layered.
Given the Church’s opportunity for influence outside the religious
sphere, there is the potential for the Orthodox Church as a whole to be a
constructive, active participant and integrative force in Russia’s
transition. It also, however, has the power to provoke division and
conflict.
Elements both within and outside the Church speak in the name of
Russian Orthodoxy, and invoke this religious tradition to bolster their
claims to act as Russian patriots, or pious Christians, or traditionalists.
Each of them contributes to Orthodoxy’s overall part in the
democratization process. Recognition of the roles of these diverse – and
sometimes diametrically opposed – elements are rare, and so too are
balanced assessments of Orthodoxy’s multi-faceted influence. Engaging
the concept of civil society enables analysts to evaluate Russian
Orthodoxy’s role in a balanced way, and so recognize the Church’s
myriad influences in post-Soviet Russia.
14
Notes
1
Roger D. Markwick, “An Uncivil Society: Moscow in Political Change,” in In
Search of Identity: Five Years Since the Fall of the Soviet Union, ed. Vladimir
Tikhomirov (Melbourne: Centre for Russian and Euro-Asian Studies, University
of Melbourne, 1996), 40.
2
Stephen White, Richard Rose and Ian McAllister, How Russia Votes
(Chatham: Chatham House Publishers, 1997), 65.
3
See, for example, Ronald Inglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial
Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 185.
4
“A Church’s Shame: Russian Christians Should Lay their Tsar to Rest,” The
Times, 20 June 1998, 23.
5
Victoria Clark, Why Angels Fall: A Portrait of Orthodox Europe from
Byzantium to Kosovo (London: Macmillan, 2000), 299-322.
6
See Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, “Christianity, Antisemitism, Nationalism’:
Russian Orthodoxy in a Reborn Orthodox Russia,” in Consuming Russia:
Popular Culture, Sex, and Society Since Gorbachev, ed. Adele Marie Barker
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 423.
7
Jaques Rupnik, “Dissent in Poland, 1968-78: The End of Revisionism and the
Rebirth of the Civil Society’, in Opposition in Eastern Europe, ed. Rudolf Tokes
(London: Macmillan, 1979).
8
Andrew Arato, “Civil Society Against the State: Poland 1980-1981,” Telos 47
(1981): 24.
9
Frederick Starr, “Soviet Union: A Civil Society,” Foreign Policy 70 (1988):
26-41.
10
Geoffrey Hosking, The Awakening of the Soviet Union (London: Heinemann,
1990); Vladimir Tismaneanu, “Unofficial Peace Activism in the Soviet Union
and East-Central Europe,” in In Search of Civil Society: Independent Peace
Movements in the Soviet Bloc, ed. Vladimir Tismaneanu (New York: Routledge,
1990); Vladimir Tismaneanu, Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe from Stalin
to Havel (New York: The Free Press, 1992).
11
Moshe Lewin, The Gorbachev Phenonmenon (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1988).
12
Henry E. Hale, “Civil Society from Above? Statist and Liberal Models of
State-Building in Russia,” Demokratizatsiya 10, 3 (2002).
13
Alexander N. Domrin, “Ten Years Later: Society, ‘Civil Society’, and the
Russian State,” The Russian Review 62 (2003): 193-211; Marcia A. Weigle, “On
the Road to the Civic Forum: State and Civil Society from Yeltsin to Putin,
Demokratizatsiya 10, 2 (2002).
14
George E. Hudson, “Civil Society in Russia: Models and Prospects for
Development,” The Russian Review 62, 2 (2003): 212-222.
15
Paul Kubicek, “Civil Society, Trade Unions and Post-Soviet Democratization:
Evidence from Russia and Ukraine,” Europe-Asia Studies 54, 4 (2002): 603-
625.
15
Burden or Blessing?
16
Ivan Kurilla, “Civil activism without NGOs: The Communist Party as a Civil
Society Substitute,” Demokratizatsiya 10, 3 (2002): 392-401; Yelena Shomina,
Vladimir Kolossov and Viktoria Shukhat, “Local Activism and the Prospects for
Civil Society in Moscow,” Eurasian Geography and Economics 43, 3 (2002):
244-271.
17
Sarah L. Henderson, “Selling Civil Society: Western Aid and the
Nongovernmental Organization Sector in Russia,” Comparative Political
Studies 35, 2 (2002): 139-168; John Squier, “Civil Society and the Challenge of
Russian Gosudarstvennost,” Demokratizatsiya 10, 2 (2002): 166-183.
18
Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory
(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992), ix-x.
16
CHAPTER 3
Failing Freedom: Parties, Elites and the Uncertainty

of Religious Life in Russia
Beth M. Admiraal, King’s College
By most accounts, Russia is loitering somewhere in the muck of

“managed democracy”, “delegative democracy” or “postcommunist
authoritarianism”, where both democracy and liberal democracy appear
vulnerable. As the democratic ideal calls for freedom of religion, it
would be remiss to overlook the effect of managed democracy for
religion in Russia. In particular, I argue in this paper that one aspect of
managed democracy – a weak party system – has had detrimental
consequences for religious freedom.
The position of the Russian administration towards religion and
religious freedom remains unsettled and unsettling. Early in his tenure,
President Putin’s remarks about the role of religion in public life were
confusing, if not contradictory. A few examples are in order: In 2000, at
an Orthodox service the day before Orthodox Christmas, celebrated on
January 7, Putin proclaimed first that “Orthodoxy has traditionally
played a special role in Russian history” but later noted that Orthodoxy is
an unbending spiritual core of the entire people and state.”1 The first
statement gives Orthodoxy a historical role; the second gives Orthodoxy
both a cultural and, remarkably, a political role. From the perspective of
democratic norms, his latter comment is controversial, even if we
acknowledge the tendency of speakers to use poetic language that
resonates with the audience: to say that Orthodoxy is the “spiritual core”
entails that the non-Orthodox of Russia are (at best) second-class
citizens, if citizens at all.
The week following Orthodox Christmas, Putin issued his first
National Security Policy, parts of which contained pointed references to
religion. The thrust of Putin’s religious policy was in its blows at
‘outside’ religious groups. “Threats to the national security and interests
of the Russian federation . . . are created by the economic, demographic,
17
Burden or Blessing?
and cultural-religious expansion of neighboring states into the Russian

territory.” The preservation of the national security called for
“counteracting the negative influence of foreign religious organizations
and missions” and “resistance to economic, demographic, and cultural
and religious expansion on the part of other states onto the territory of
Russia.” Putin’s security doctrine, while it left open the position of the
state towards minority groups, excluded members of ‘foreign’ religious
groups from full membership in the Russian nation. At this point it
appeared certain that Putin was aiming at a durable relationship between
nation and religion that firmly cemented the central role of Orthodoxy in
the Russian nation and, furthermore, that he was awarding the church
territorial status.
More recently, Putin has appeared cautious in his religious rhetoric.
As Nikolas Gvosdev noted in a recent article, while Putin “is comfortable
publicly displaying his Orthodox identity, he also seeks to reassure
members of other religious groups as well as nonbelievers that he is the
president of all Russians” and draws upon “the shared values of all of
Russia’s traditional religions.”2 At the same time, Putin still promotes the
cultural role of Orthodoxy for Russianness: “One must not draw a line
between culture and the church,” he said during a visit earlier this year to
an orphanage. He then continued, “Of course, our church is separated
from the state. But in the people's souls everything is together.”3 Putin no
longer seems inclined to find an overtly political role for Orthodoxy,
though its historical-cultural relevance is still oft-noted.
Putin’s administration has been far more unpredictable in its
religion-speak. The Education Department, the Interior Ministry, and the
Nationalities Ministry are only a few departments that have received
press coverage for undemocratic statements on religious groups and
religious life. In September of 2000, directors of higher education across
the country received a letter from the Education Ministry outlining a
wide range of accusations against foreign religious organizations and
calling on educational establishments to take measures to prevent the
infiltration of such religious groups into the schools. In one of its more
outrageous claims, the letter accused 700 religious groups of military
espionage and separatist activity. The letter was signed by the deputy
minister, Yelena Chepurnykh. More recently, the department issued a
license to a Roman Catholic school on the condition that its rector be
replaced. The Interior Ministry, since it received authority for dispensing
visas, has denied visas to many foreign religious workers who had not
experienced problems with previous applications. In December 2002,
accounts of a draft report on religious extremism prepared by a working
18
Failing Freedom
group under the supervision of Nationalities Minister Vladimir Zorin and

Chechen administration head Akhmat Kadyrov appeared in the press.
The draft, as leaked to the press, focused primarily on radical Islam but
also mentioned a sharp increase in the number of religious groups in
general, asserting that their activity constituted a security threat. There
was specific mention of Roman Catholics, whose activities were causing
“tension,” and of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
These ministries, in sum, lack a coherent vision for religious
matters. While Putin, as of late, has expressed fewer illiberal views on
the role of religion and religious freedom, his administration still
confounds his message with inconsistent, incoherent discourses.
Religious Discourse and Parties
One might wonder why the Russian administration fails to offer a

cohesive program for religious freedom and a coherent construction of
the relationship between nation and relation. More broadly, one might
question why the consolidation of human rights, particularly religious
freedom, fails to find consistent support among state elites in Russia.
Most celebrated explanations of the enigmatic nature of Russian
elites, particularly of Putin, revert implicitly to rational choice
explanations. Russian elites are taken to be self-interested actors who
seek to ‘buy’ votes or power by appeasing different constituents with
audience-tailored messages. This explanation does have some
plausibility – it suggests that democratic claims sometimes pay and
sometimes do not – but it fails to explain why Russian elites, as opposed
to elites from other democracies, are not forced to bring a consistent
platform on religion and the nation to bear in the election season and
while in office. It seems that Russian elites do not suffer politically for
the inconsistency or undemocratic character of their political remarks.
Ironically, Russian elites breach the norms of religious freedom in their
discourse in part because of democracy, as it has developed in Russia. In
particular, the Russian political party system, a natural outgrowth of
democratic governance, has underserved its role in structuring distinct
beliefs among elites and in forming an opposition to the executive on
matters of the nation. Instead of focusing our attention only on self-
interested politicians, it is equally vital to look at institutions that
constrain choices by forming an opposition.
The importance of opposition provided by party systems has not
been fully appreciated. The leading culprits, in this respect, are those
19
Burden or Blessing?
who advocate the adoption of consociational arrangements to contain

conflict and ensure respect of minority rights.4 Consociational
arrangements are a set of rules designed to include all major political
players in the decisionmaking process. The consociational institutions
are designed to bridge highly divided societies and increase the prospects
for a healthy democratic polity. Limiting competition, however, has
serious ramifications for the long-term life of a democracy. The
fundamental problem with constricted competition is that it undermines
the creation of a credible and vigorous opposition. As Valerii Solovei, a
leading Russian expert on social movements, asserts, in “democratic
societies, power and opposition represent two sides of the same coin.
Their simultaneous function, cooperation and contestation, form the core
of the political process.”5 “Within system” oppositions serve a variety of
important functions in democratic states. Most critically, opposition
groups facilitate the peaceful transfer of power among political groups in
the wake of elections,6 but they also serve as a check on the discourse
and practice of the state, in the election cycle and between elections, by
voicing opposing positions on policy fronts and participating in debates
on these topics.
The crux of my argument, then, is that a strong party system can
disclose the state’s discursive and behavioral practices by formulating
responses, forcing debate, and laying out an opposition platform. Even
discursive practices of the state that are not voiced in the legislative or
electoral process but are communicated by the state directly to the public,
at times a very small segment of the public, are most easily opposed by
parties. A watchful media and international groups can also play a role in
checking the discourse of the state, but within-system institutions, i.e. the
party system, retain more internal legitimacy, pack more electoral punch,
and are better situated to respond with an opposing platform.
Party systems marked by programmatic parties that show continuity
from election to election are essential for holding the state accountable in
its discourse, articulating an oppositionist position or strategy and
committing the state to an opposing position. The political space
becomes defined and positions are more readily attributed to each group
or individual contesting for power. The issue of nation and religion
becomes a topic for Habermasian discourse, a discourse that centers on
the values and morality of decisions (though it may be unreasonable to
expect it to meet the Habermasian ideal a conversation free from power
struggles and hierarchies, and prevents a scramble by elites to adopt a
position on the issue that will reap the most benefits, post hoc. We can
expect to see little debate on the proper church-state relationship and
20
Failing Freedom
religious freedom when political parties are weak and elites gain too
much autonomy. Thus, we can say that a weak party system, by failing to
inhibit inconsistency in the administration, is indirectly responsible for
undermining the nation building process and the development of liberal
democracy.
In a strange twist of fate, then, certain types of democracies (i.e.
those with weak party systems) can be detrimental to the development of
human rights. Despotic states with opposition at any level, such as the
level of civil society, have shown stronger commitment to religious
freedom than states with weak parties and weakness in other sources of
opposition.7 In democracies, the best way to ensure a discursive
commitment to religious freedom may be to support a competitive party
system.
The Case of Russia
How has this scenario played out in Russia? In looking for evidence of
party system competitiveness, it is vital to examine the system during
and between elections. As an electoral matter, the loss of opposition in
Russia’s party system is transparent from the gradual escalating strength
of pro-Kremlin parties. In 1993, Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar's party,
Russia's Choice, won 5 percent of the vote. In 1995, the party that backed
President Boris Yeltsin, Our Home Is Russia, fared better, pulling in 15
percent. In 1999, the Kremlin's hastily assembled Unity party clinched 23
percent, putting it head-to-head with the Communist Party. In early 2002,
the balance of power shifted strongly in favor of Putin's Kremlin when
Unity merged with a former rival, Fatherland-All Russia. Now tagged as
United Russia, the new centrist party controlled over 140 of the Duma
seats, more than any other faction. In the 2003 parliamentary elections,
United Russia, having received Putin’s blessing, managed around 40
percent of the vote. A second Kremlin-creation, Rodina, performed well,
garnering about 8 percent of the vote. The latter two parties are not only
pro-Kremlin, they are new to the political scene, indicating a dearth of
party continuity in the system.
This electoral recounting, though, does not tell the full story. In the
Duma, few parties have consistently advanced a platform that played the
foil to the Kremlin’s double-speak. Unity had unusually great influence
in the Duma after the 1999 election. Soon after the election, many
deputies switched alliances to back Unity. In an extraordinary move,
Unity formed a loose alliance with the KPRF, granting its members key
21
Burden or Blessing?
committee posts in return for their support. The KPRF became

significantly more moderate in its economic programs as a result.8 Other
major winners of the election – most significantly, The Fatherland-All
Russia bloc, the SPS, and the LDPR – began singing pro-Putin chants,
discrediting their commitment to their own agendas.9 The Fatherland-All
Russia bloc lost a full third of its Duma representatives to other
parliamentary factions. Even the LDPR kowtowed to Putin, despite
Zhirinovsky’s candidacy in opposition to Putin. His party, LDRP, once
the hard-nosed pro-Russian, anti-semitic party, became a vocal supporter
of Unity and Putin, voting in favor of Putin’s proposals more than any
other party for the year 2001.10 McFaul notes that all of Russia’s parties
gravitated toward the center in this election.11 In a comparison of party
platforms, another Carnegie scholar found convergence among party
positions for nearly every major issue.12 Both the Fatherland-All Russia
bloc and the SPS acted less like a party than a coalition of officially
independent political organizations, some with close connections to
Yeltsin’s government and others in obvious opposition to it; attempts to
turn it into a party after the election led to serious rifts within the
coalition. Today, the popular kid on the block, United Russia, prides
itself on its lack of ideology.
In summary, since the late-Yeltsin era, nearly every party has been
unwilling to appeal to the electorate with an articulate party platform and
to retain a commitment to any platform once in power. The end result, I
contend, is that no single party has had both significant influence in the
Duma and a strong commitment to a platform that could force the state
into developing a consistent construction of the nation and religion and
point out the inconsistencies in the discourse of the administration.
The low levels of competition within the Russian party system,
evident in both the lack of long-term stability of parties and their
inability to articulate and maintain a platform in office, leave Putin and
his administration without an opposition to constrain their discourse.
They are not forced to express overtly a normative commitment to
religious freedom or a sustained vision for the relationship between state,
nation and religion. Even though Putin, himself, has advocated more
consistently for religious tolerance in recent times, he has failed to forge
a long-term vision on religion for his administration.
There are considerable reasons to be concerned by the double-speak
of the Russian administration. The consolidation of human rights in post-
communism is highly dependent on the willingness of the enforcers to
endorse human rights as a valued commodity and to execute the laws and
rules accordingly. Their willingness to promote religious freedom
22
Failing Freedom
depends on the position of religious freedom that they endorse, both as

norm-bearing agents and as rational beings. In fact, in Russia, as well as
other post-communist states where religious freedom has failed to
develop religion fully, the problem lies not in the laws – most of them
very similar to one or more Western democratic laws – but in the
execution of the laws.
The way in which the nomenklatura are encouraged to view the
nation and the relationship between nation and religion will impact the
way they manage religious organizations and religious freedom within
the state. Discourse theory tells us that linguistic cues from elites indicate
to the enforcers which underlying principles they ought to use in
administering the laws. Simply put, the lack of cues from the
administration to lower level bureaucrats – the nomenklatura – for how
to construe the relationship between religion and nation and how to
envision religious freedom leave these enforcers with no guiding
framework for interpreting and executing laws on religion. When the
administration fails to offer a coherent program for religion in the public
sphere, the nomenklatura will act on other cues or on other motives,
many of which do not consistently uphold religious tolerance as a valued
end.
Notes
1
“Putin nadeetsiya chto Pravoslaviye ukrepit Rossiyu,” Interfax, Moscow, 6
January 2000.
2
Nikolas Gvosdev, “Vladimir Putin’s Faith,” UPI, 24 February 2004.
3
“Vladimir Putin: Pravoslavnaya—eta chast nashye kulturii,” Portal-credo.ru, 7
January 2004.
4
See Lijphart, Politics in Europe: Comparisons and Interpretations (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969) and Democracy in Plural Societies (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1977).
5
Valerii Solovei, “Politicheskii konformizm na grani kholuistva,” Literaturnaya
Gazeta, 24 May 2000.
6
For Samuel Huntington, the peaceful transfer of power is at the heart of the
democratic process and a sign that a new democracy is consolidated. The
turnover of the reigns of government indicates a strong commitment to the
democratic process by the major political actors. See Huntington, The Third
Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1991), 266-68.
7
For example, Zimbabwe and Singapore are considered religiously free while
still maintaining semi-despotic structures.
23
Burden or Blessing?
8
Robert G. Moser, Unexpected Outcomes: Electoral Systems, Political Parties,
and Representation in Russia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001),
152.
9
Stephen E. Hanson, “Instrumental Democracy: The End of Ideology and the
Decline of Russian Political Parties,” in The 1999-2000 Elections in Russia.
Their Impact and Legacy, eds. Vicki L. Hesli and William M. Reisinger
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 163-185.
10
This was reported in an article by Chinyaeva in the Jamestown Foundation
(2002) and reproduced in Johnson’s Russian List (JRL), May 2001.
11
McFaul, “Russian Electoral Trends,” 49.
12
See Tatyana Krasnopevsteva, “Comparing Party Platforms,” Russia’s 1999
Duma Elections: Pre-election Bulletin No. 1. (Moscow: Moscow Carnegie
Center, 2 December1999).
24
Part 2 Church – State Relations
CHAPTER 4
Unity in Diversity: Civil Society, Democracy,

and Orthodoxy in Contemporary Russia
Nikolas K. Gvosdev, The Nixon Center
The above title is derived from a letter written in 2003 by Patriarch

Aleksii II, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, where he stated,
“Unity in diversity is a richness with which Russia has been endowed by
the Lord.” This formula was originally developed as part of Trinitarian
theology to reconcile multiple persons within a single divinity, and was
later applied in an ecclesiastical sense to explain how multiple languages,
cultures and practices could co-exist within a single church. It is also
useful, however, in understanding how the Russian Orthodox Church
today copes with questions of pluralism and democracy.
Why does it matter what the Russian Orthodox leadership thinks
about democracy and civil society? It is because religion plays a unique
role in civil society, since religious leaders speak to two constituencies.
The first is to members of their specific faith community. Even accepting
the lowest estimates of those who consider themselves to be active
members of the church, this means that the Russian Orthodox Church is
the single largest national non-governmental actor in the Russian
Federation with over 10 million active members, far outstripping any
political party or other voluntary association. A democracy cannot
consolidate if the major civil society actor in the country views its world-
view as being antithetical to that of democracy.
The second constituency is to members of the general public.
Religious leaders often function not only as leaders of a specific faith
community but as public intellectuals, especially when they are expected
to provide moral or cultural answers. For the absolute majority of
Russian citizens, even those who do not consider themselves believers or
active members, the Russian Orthodox Church is seen as the conveyer of
national values, morals, and culture.
25
Burden or Blessing?
Democratic institutions cannot take root in a society that views

democratic values as alien to the national culture. Either the national
identity must be changed in order to accommodate democracy, or
democracy will fail to plant lasting roots into the society. It is interesting
that two extremes in Russian political life – extreme Westernizers and
extreme Eurasianists – both contend that democracy is antithetical to
Russian culture. For the Westernizers, in order to be modern, Western,
and democratic, Russia must cease being “Russian.” For the Eurasianists,
Russia cannot become a democracy and remain uniquely Russian at the
same time. Both have turned to the Orthodox Church for support of their
positions.
To the surprise of many both within Russia and without, for the last
fifteen years the mainstream of Russian Orthodoxy has accepted and in
some cases even blessed moves toward the creation of a civil society and
political democracy. Some have put forward an explanation that this is
simply a reflection of the church’s traditional subordination to political
authority – accepting the new state of affairs because this is what first
Mikhail Gorbachev and then Boris Yeltsin wanted. Others have argued
that the church’s acquiescence has been merely tactical; that vocal
proponents of an autocratic monarchy and a totalitarian society reflected
the “real” Orthodox view. But it does seem that the leadership of the
Russian Orthodox Church is in fact prepared to recognize that civil
society and democracy are in fact compatible with Orthodoxy.
The Orthodox Church and Civil Society
Orthodox Christianity – like Talmudic Judaism and Sunni Islam – is a

religion which looks to tradition to legitimize action. Unlike Protestant
Christianity, possessing an ahistorical approach to the primary sources,
allowing for re-interpretation or re-invention, Orthodox thinkers, like
lawyers in a common law setting, must locate precedents in which to
situate their conclusions. This is done either with an appeal to previous
historical practices, or by presenting an approach which is said to be
aligned with or in accordance with the mindset of the Tradition, what in
Greek is termed as “phronima.” And something which might be seen as
an innovation can gain greater acceptance through repetition. So the
church – and here I refer to the church in an institutional sense of those
people and institutions whose acts are seen as setting the norm, rather to
the church in a theological sense of the royal priesthood of all believers –
26
Unity in Diversity
can adapt and reshape traditions if authoritative figures promote the

acceptance of new interpretations of traditional values.
While one can speak about Orthodox ethics and theology, many
formulations can be vague and are subject to interpretation and
clarification. While the Russian Church may appear monolithic to
outsiders, there is a good deal of internal debate and the church lacks a
papal structure capable of imposing a single interpretation in the absence
of a widely-held consensus. In recent years, debates over the
canonization of the imperial family, and even the final text of the 2000
“Bases of the Social Conception of the Russian Orthodox Church” led to
compromise formulations.1 The Russian Orthodox Church, a as an
institution, is one of the largest Christian organizations in the world, in
terms of membership and geographic scope. Unlike more ethnically and
territorially compact bodies such as the Roman Catholic Church of
Poland, the Lutheran Church of Sweden, or the Orthodox Church of
Georgia, the Russian Orthodox Church’s heterogeneity has led to some
degree of regional and sectoral differentiation.
Linked to this is the fact that after the collapse of the USSR and the
introduction of a multiparty system, there was no single party or group
that could speak authoritatively on behalf of Orthodoxy. Orthodox
activists, intellectuals and lower clergy gravitated to different political
and social movements. On a variety of critical questions – especially
related to economic and political reform – there was no clear position
that could be defined as being “Orthodox,” especially when factoring in
the experience of other Orthodox communities outside of Russia (such as
in Greece or Cyprus) or the evolution of Orthodox thought in the
Western diaspora. Even when there was a clear social or ethical position,
usually expressed in terms of an ideal outcome, there could be significant
disagreement on the best way to achieve that goal.
In the early 1990s, therefore, the Russian Orthodox leadership made
a critical decision to abandon any effort to create a unified “Orthodox”
social and political movement and instead accepted the notion that there
could be an acceptable range of social and political opinions that fell
within Orthodox parameters. This removed the institutional church as a
political competitor and instead established the church as a more neutral
arbiter. This immeasurably strengthened the church’s role as one of the
leading forums for debate and discussion over the future of Russia.
It is here that the Orthodox Church has helped to shape the
development of civil society. The church not only possesses a developed
intra-church network of parishes and dioceses, schools, newspapers,
27
Burden or Blessing?
pilgrimages, economic outlets, councils and meetings, but has taken the
lead in developing all-Russia civil society fora that interface with other
religious groups and “secular” society.
Indeed, the Orthodox Church has attempted to position itself as the
coordinator for civil society. Thus, in its Social Doctrine, the Church
calls for “peace and cooperation among people holding various political
views.” A spokesman for the patriarchate, V. Rev. Vsevolod Chaplin,
pointed out in November 1999 that the Orthodox Church in
contemporary Russian society sees its role as promoting “a dialogue of
public forces and their leaders in the interests of uniting its forces in
service to the fatherland and the nation.”2 Since 2001, the Russian
Orthodox Church has also offered its assistance to the European Union
as an “important institution of civil society” capable of sponsoring a
dialogue with the public on all types of social questions.
Endorsement of civil society has not been merely tactical. The
Orthodox Church also theologically accepts the definition of civil society
as the “space” between the state and government and the family, a
collection of autonomous actors. The Social Doctrine notes:
Christian socio-governmental ethics demands that a certain

autonomous sphere should be protected for a person where his
conscience might remain the “autocratic” master, for it is free will
that ultimately determines salvation or destruction, the way to Christ
or the way away from Christ. Thus, the right to belief, to life, to
family, is what protects the inherent foundations of human freedom
from the arbitrary rule of outside forces. These internal rights are
complimented by and ensured by other, external ones, such as the
right to freedom of movement, to obtain information, and to create
property both to possess and utilize.
The Church has also accepted that political power in Russian

society is bestowed via election, following the ancient maxim that “glas
naroda, glas Bozhii” (the voice of the people is the voice of God). When
Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk sent a congratulatory message to
Vladimir Putin after his 2004 re-election as president, the prelate noted,
“Your re-election … by a general majority of votes is clear witness that
the citizens of our country support the course you have chosen for the
renewal and strengthening of Russia, increasing her authority on the
international arena and the creation of an honorable standard of living for
our people.”
28
Unity in Diversity
Yet the church endorsed no one platform or candidate. It instead

encouraged citizens to make that decision. Patriarch Aleksii, prior to
casting his own ballot, released this message: “Every citizen, believer
and nonbeliever, young and old: all should take part in voting. Everyone
should make known their own will, and give their vote to that candidate
who, in their own opinion, is worthy to stand at the head of Russia for
the next four years.”3 This echoes his message for the 2000 elections,
when he also invoked the notion of personal responsibility to encourage
Russians to vote: “ … every citizen, especially the Orthodox, is called to
assume responsibility for ... the country and the people, for their present
and their future. ... The Lord has placed their fate in the hands of the
people, who are endowed with the divine-resembling freedom.”4
It is very true that the Russian Orthodox Church is not comfortable
with complete pluralism and absolute liberty. The Church maintains that
“universal” moral norms and tradition should place limits on the exercise
of freedom. In December 1999 the patriarch stated:
We should realize that the God-given, age-old moral norms are not
mere words. Their violation leads to a collapse of the individual
personality, society, and the state. But their observance brings
harmony and peace not only into the social realm, but also into the
human heart.
Russian Democracy or Managed Pluralism?
Universal morality is often best expressed, in the church’s view, through

long-standing traditions and cultures. Thus, it has a view of civil society
which gives predominance to the established traditions of the Russian
people. In January 2003 Metropolitan Kirill labeled the Orthodox a
“decisive majority” of Russian society, and said that “the stability of
society depends on how relations between the majority and various
minorities develop.” This leads to a vision of “managed pluralism” for
state and society, where the number of options made availability is
consciously limited, usually for the sake of stability or consensus in
society.
Those outside of Russia may not be satisfied with the “managed
pluralism” offered by the Russian Church’s vision of a democratic
society, one that limits the range of acceptable political behavior and
discourse. Others may also charge that emphasis on consensus prevents
29
Burden or Blessing?
genuine political competition. Nonetheless, the Church has played an

important role as a moral voice, reminding Russia’s post-Soviet
leadership that they are, in fact, accountable for their stewardship of the
public trust. By sketching out an Orthodox understanding of politics, a
further step has been taken in ensuring that the democratic reforms
introduced during the last decade can become firmly rooted in the public
square. This process is likely to continue, and perhaps even accelerate, in
the coming years.
Notes
1
This document, popularly referred to as the “Social Doctrine,” contains the
current stance of the Russian Orthodox Church on a wide variety of issues, from
church-state relations to bioethics. While it is an authoritative document only
for those Orthodox Christians who fall under the jurisdiction of the Moscow
Patriarchate, its interpretation of Orthodox tradition in light of modern
conditions has found a good deal of acceptance among other Orthodox
Churches. The complete text of the document is contained on the website of the
Moscow Patriarchate, at http://www.russian-orthodox-church.org.ru/sd00r.htm.
2
Very Rev. Vsevolod Chaplin, “Active Neutrality,” in Nezavisimaia Gazeta,
November 10, 1999.
3
“The Most Holy Patriarch Took Part in the Voting for the President of
Russia,” press release of March 14, 2004.
4
“Television Appeal of the Most Holy Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus’
Aleksii II in Connection With the Elections for President of the Russian
Federation,” March 25, 2000.
30
CHAPTER 5
Orthodoxy and the Societal Ideal

Vsevolod Chaplin, Moscow Patriarchate – Russian Orthodox Church∗
In the years following the demise of totalitarian regimes, Russia and

other Eurasian nations have witnessed an unprecedented flourishing of
Orthodox thought. In Russia alone, the relationship between the Church
and society is discussed each year in hundreds of books, thousands of
newspaper and journal articles, at dozens of conferences, and in a
multitude of Internet publications. This issue is often brought up by
Church officials, Orthodox clergy, theologians, sociologists, politicians,
members of Orthodox social movements, physicians, artists, religion
scholars, military leaders, popular singers, and members of many other
vocations and walks of life. Orthodox Christians are wrestling with
issues related to the role of the Church and the place of traditional moral
and spiritual values in today’s society and political structure.
Unfortunately, Western society is not aware of the progress being made
in Russia, perhaps due to a lack of translated materials. This paper
presents the results of the Church’s involvement in the discussion of
social issues and the contributions this dialogue can make to the
challenges facing the world today.
Democracy Can Further the Mission of the Church
Having experienced totalitarianism and state-imposed atheism, Orthodox

Christians view democracy as capable of furthering the mission of the
Church. Only a handful of Orthodox believers reject democracy because,
in their opinion, it does not leave room for the God-given authority of the
tsar. Freedom of speech and conscience provides an avenue for
preaching the Gospel and expressing the Orthodox position on social
issues. Democratic mechanisms allow Orthodox Christians to influence
the government through their participation in elections and civil activism.
In the past few years Church officials, enthusiastic clergymen, and
31
Burden or Blessing?
Orthodox social organizations have caused significant changes in the

way politicians view such issues as pornography, television violence, sex
education in public schools, moral climate in prisons, business ethics,
and so on. As Russia moves towards the development of a civil society,
spirituality and morality are entering the public arena. This process is
taking place partly because issues of importance to Christians are voiced
in election campaigns and the national political dialogue.
In the early 1990s, Russia had witnessed the rise of moral nihilism
and dissoluteness. As the official communist morals began to lose their
grip on the people, they were replaced by an ideology of personal
freedom and success at any cost. In a time of redistribution of national
property, the economy was dominated by “wild capitalism,”
characterized by an uncontrollable thirst for material gain. The tyranny
of immoral techniques prevailed in politics making it possible for a
person without a clear agenda to be elected to any government position.
This was accomplished by pouring funds into television ads and
eliminating political opponents through “media wars.” Schools and mass
media were permeated by propaganda of sexual immorality, financial
gain as the sole purpose of life, and the success of prostitutes and leaders
of the criminal world. Ideals of patriotism, community, family, faith, and
social justice became unspoken taboos. Everything that had to do with
social morality was dismissed as “a remnant of the communist past.”
Unfortunately, this ideology found many supporters in society. People
were so tired of totalitarian government control that they were willing to
accept anything different from the dull reality of the Soviet lifestyle.
It was not until the mid-1990s that most Russians began to realize
that the nation was headed down a path of self-destruction. Much of this
change of perspective can be attributed to the influence of the Church
whose clergy and laity have continually reminded the society of the
dangers of having an extreme gap between the wealthy and the poor as
well as the importance of personal morality, social responsibility, and
peaceful and legitimate resolution of political, economic, and
international conflicts. The Church was able to carry out its social
mission and voice its concerns largely because of the freedom of speech
and newly-established democratic principles.
The Orthodox Societal Ideal and the Issue of State Governance
Numerous Western politicians and scholars have rightly argued that

Orthodox Christians perceive democracy as an acceptable political
32
system rather than a societal ideal. Due to the recent resurgence of

Orthodox social thought, members of the Orthodox Church are becoming
increasingly bold in advocating this view.
What is the crux of the above mentioned view of democracy? First
of all, it advocates the doctrine of the preference of God-sanctioned
authority. This doctrine is based on the Biblical narrative, the Church
tradition, and the Fundamentals of the Social Conception of the Russian
Orthodox Church, a document which systematically outlines the
approach of just one of the branches of the Orthodox Church to social
issues. This document proposes that the highest form of governance is
the Old Testament rule of judges who acted in accordance with God-
sanctioned authority rather than through the use of coercive force.
Monarchy is presented in the document as the second-best type of
societal structure. While maintaining the idea of God-given authority,
monarchy replaces God’s direct governance with the rule of a human
person. Finally, contemporary secular democracy is viewed as yet
another type of governance which rejects the religious nature of authority
and declares the government’s independence from God. The only type of
societal structure viewed more negatively than democracy is anarchy.
Thus, the preferred type of governance, according to the Church’s
view, is God-sanctioned authority which recognizes its religious mission.
The society is also expected to take seriously its religious mission
because in the Russian and Byzantine Orthodox traditions nations are
viewed as unified communities of faith. A society which rejects God-
given authority and promotes autonomy from God is, to put it mildly, far
from ideal. This is the reason why it is problematic for an Orthodox
Christian to accept as the norm the destruction of the religious
foundation of the societal ideal, the exclusion of religion from public life,
and the confinement of religion to the private realm.
The second reason why it is unlikely that the Church would ever
come to view democracy as an ideal political system is because
democracy is rooted in competition. The Orthodox Church has
purposefully stayed away from participation in political campaigns, court
arguments, and market competition. The Church’s ideal is the nation as a
living organism, a unified body that sees disagreements as unnatural and
unhealthy. The New Testament ideals of community, unanimity, and
rejection of competition influence the lives of Orthodox Christians and
shape their view of society.
It does not make any difference whether Orthodox Christians
constitute a majority or a minority, whether they shape an Orthodox
nation or represent an insignificant group. They consider themselves to
33
Burden or Blessing?
be a people of God, a Church community which has the right to protect

its peculiar social structure. In a country where Orthodox Christians are a
majority, they should have the right to shape the essence of public life
while ensuring the rights of minorities. In a case where Orthodox
Christians constitute a minority, they strive to protect their subculture,
which allows them to follow their social preferences. It may surprise
Western Christians, but in this aspect of their views Orthodox believers
are more similar to Muslims and Orthodox Jews.
Societal, political, and religious pluralism as well as competition
stand in stark contrast to the goal of the Orthodox ideal of “sobrati
rastochennaya,” or to “gather the scattered,” meaning to unite people
regardless of their ethnic, political, and social differences. Orthodox
Christians are convinced that this goal is in agreement with the spirit of
the Gospel, and any movement toward this ideal is viewed as a positive
social development. Once this principle is understood, it is easy to see
why the leadership of the Orthodox Church calls for moderation in
political dialogue, peaceful resolution of international conflicts, and
rejection of extreme methods of economic competition. Perhaps it would
not be an overstatement to suggest that the Orthodox influence is partly
responsible for the Russian people’s lack of respect for political
pluralism, parliamentary debates, aggressive court hearings, and media
wars.
Finally, another aspect of Orthodox consciousness which affects the
perception of the societal ideal is its eschatology. Social optimism, faith
in the progress of the human race independently from God, or the drive
to establish God’s Kingdom on earth is uncharacteristic of Orthodox
Christians. The Orthodox tradition takes seriously the apocalyptic
prophesies which warn Christians that good men will gradually depart
from God and evil will increase. Orthodox Christians realize that the
victory will not be achieved until Christ returns to earth. Moreover,
continual secularization of public life, dominance of godless ideologies,
escalating violence and disease, and other facts of recent history
strengthen the views of Orthodox Christians. If the Book of Revelation is
to be taken seriously, the world cannot be significantly improved. Thus,
it should not surprise anyone that Orthodox Christians are often skeptical
about the social changes which improve people’s economic conditions
but fail to draw them nearer to God. A society in which earthly interests
of sinful Man are given preference over God and His Truth cannot be
viewed positively by an Orthodox believer.
34
On the Threshold of the Values Debate
Western colleagues have repeatedly tried to convince members of the

Orthodox Church that the above mentioned “peculiarities” of the
Orthodox societal ideal will disappear as East European nations reach a
higher stage of social and economic development. However, in the last
15 years these nations have witnessed a renaissance of a distinctive
Orthodox thought in theological, political, academic, and literary circles.
Furthermore, such authoritative scholars as Gerhard Robbers point
out that religion is making a comeback into the center of social life not
only within but also outside the Orthodox world. America and Russia are
drawing closer to each other not simply because Russia is becoming
more like the United States. To the contrary, the immanent threat of
terrorism has awakened Americans to the reality that the rest of the world
had been dealing with. What proved to be a logical response to the
terrorism threat was an emphasis on religious motivation in domestic and
foreign policy. The same emphasis on religious motivation is evident in
Islamic nations, Korea, Japan, and even Europe. It is possible that radical
secularism is characteristic only of those societies that are experiencing
what Anna Akhmatova wittingly called “vegetarianskiye vremena”
(vegetarian times).
Conrad Rizer once said that the crucial issues in the age of
globalization are those that concern power and values. Indeed, the
increasingly interdependent global community is characterized by a
quick exchange of ideas and the clash of societal ideals whose
proponents fight to achieve political, military, and informational
dominance in the world. In the context of an ongoing ideological
struggle, the issue of the role of religion in government and society
becomes especially important.
It is not a mere coincidence that the so-called “question of hijabs”
has become a point of contention in France, Belgium, Germany, and
Turkey. It appears that advocates of radical secularism are trying to
escape from history by attempting to resolve a serious worldview debate
with a series of desperate bans. According to a statement by the Grand
Mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina Mustafa Ceric, secularists are
experiencing a crisis of arguments. A merely administrative approach to
resolving these issues will prove to be a temporary solution.
Russia is also experiencing a dialogue about religion’s role in public
life. This discussion is primarily fueled by members of the liberal
intelligentsia who embraced the persecuted Church under the Soviet
regime but have now come to oppose it. For instance, Lev Levinson, a
35
Burden or Blessing?
human rights activist, in a 1997 article in Express-Khronika entitled

“There is No Sex in Holy Russia,” discusses the Church’s stance on
sexual immorality and accuses Orthodox clergymen and laity of
obscurantism. Levinson calls Orthodox believers “gendarmes for Christ,”
“professional witch hunters,” “the great inquisitors,” and so on. In
contrast to the Church’s teaching, Levinson promotes “intentional sexual
freedom” which is, in his view, “a necessary component of political,
economic, and ideological liberty.” The role of religion in the military
and in public schools, partnership between government and religion, the
Christian influence on business ethics, the limits to the use of religious
symbols in disrespectful works of contemporary artists, and the
possibility for Church values to be represented in politics – these are
some of the issues being hotly debated today.
Perhaps an important question to answer is whether it is possible to
avoid the struggle between the “world of faith” and the “world of
disbelief,” a war being promoted by Osama bin Laden. Orthodox
Christians do not wish for this war to continue. Their desire to build a
harmonious society extends beyond their immediate communities and
into the world as a whole. However, in order to avoid what Samuel
Huntington has called the “clash of civilizations,” proponents of all
worldviews, including secular humanists, must give up their ambitions of
achieving a monopoly on societal structure and recognize the right of
each group to its distinctive way of life, values, and aspirations. A true
plurality of social structures in the global community, in which no one
would impose their model of government and society, may be the answer
to a peaceful coexistence of nations, religions, worldviews, cultures, and
societal ideals.
Notes
∗
Translated from the Russian by Konstantin Petrenko.
36
CHAPTER 6
The Resurgence of Russian Orthodoxy and its

Implications for Russian Democracy
Irina Andre Papkov, Georgetown University
A decade and a half after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the political
and economic transformation of its largest successor state, the Russian
Federation, has not been resolved to the satisfaction of transition
scholars. Arguably, the major task facing Russia analysts today continues
to be to define the type of political system that has replaced communism
in what remains a highly important geopolitical space. Did the
freewheeling democracy of the Yeltsin era give way to a semi-
authoritarian regime? Has Vladimir Putin succeeded in creating a sort of
neo-Soviet political system under the trappings of what has become
known as “managed pluralism?” Or is Russia, however falteringly, a
democracy?
The debate is not an academic one. At the turn of the millennium,
Russia appeared on the brink of irreversible economic and social
collapse, leading many experts to predict the disintegration of the state.1
Yet, six years after the default of 1998, the Russian economy has
recovered and continues to grow at unprecedented rates; the war in
Chechnya, while grinding on, has not led to a general Caucasian uprising
against the federal authorities. Moreover, the Putin government has
succeeded in implementing a series of reform packages aimed at
ensuring that future economic growth does not remain hostage to high oil
prices. In short, Russia has stabilized and is increasingly in a position to
actively reassert its influence in the CIS region as well to exercise a
greater degree of flexibility in its relations with the rest of the world. The
issue then becomes to understand the continuing evolution of the
political system that has served as the context for this admittedly
unexpected outcome – an economically resurgent, democratic Russia is a
much more attractive partner for the United States than a Russia that
presents a successful authoritarian alternative, which, taken together with
37
Burden or Blessing?
the Chinese experience, may seriously undermine the proposition that

democracy and the market are part of the same indivisible package.
I will not argue here that Russia is a consolidated democracy. I will,
however, propose that, for all of the alarm bells in the Western press and
despite Colin Powell’s concerns to the contrary, the prospects for
Russia’s descent into an autocratic abyss are less significant than one
would gather from a surface analysis focusing solely on current events.
However, the type of regime that is emerging is unlikely to be one that
will be fully recognizable as a democracy modeled on the Western
European or American secular state. In part, the trajectory of the Russian
political system will be conditioned by a factor often noted but not fully
appreciated: the cultural dominance of the Russian Orthodox Church and
its close but uneasy relationship with the government.
It is a truism that the collapse of communism resulted in the radical
restructuring of the Russian economic and political context. It also
resulted in an equally radical restructuring of the permitted value system
– the reintroduction of religious freedom after eighty years of official
atheism represented a cultural shift whose magnitude and potential
impact on the political system was not immediately recognized. Despite
vigorous competition from other religious denominations, the Russian
Orthodox Church has managed, over the last fourteen years, to capture
and solidify a hegemonic position as the dominant national religion,
whose renaissance can be quantitatively observed through the thousands
of reopened or newly built churches, monasteries and educational
institutions. If in the early 1990s the heightened profile of the Orthodox
Church in Russian life could be treated as a sociological curiosity whose
importance paled in the face of ostensibly more important socioeconomic
issues such as privatization and democratization, it is no longer possible
today to analyze Russia’s trajectory without taking the religious question
seriously. Fourteen years of effective catechization and social activism,
together with a consistently high level of media coverage, have
contributed to making the Orthodox Church the most highly respected
actor within Russian society today, far outranking the government and
the army as the institution garnering the trust of most Russians, whether
believers or not. Furthermore, the explosion of religious publications,
Orthodox parish schools, gymnasiums, sermons and other forms of
outreach have had the effect of radically changing the demographic of
church attendees; around the year 2000 priests began to notice the
startling fact that the majority of parishioners were no longer old ladies
but young adults, many of them with a higher education.
38
Implications of the Russian Orthodox Resurgence
Thus, there are indications that the upcoming generation of leaders

is a generation that has been profoundly shaped by the upsurge of
Orthodox religiosity, as Orthodox values have begun to penetrate societal
discourse to an extent unimaginable even five years ago. Here, it is
appropriate to consider the bankruptcy of Western-style liberal ideology
to the Russian context, demonstrated most recently by the utter failure of
the liberal opposition to muster anything resembling a coherent
alternative to the pro-Putin political juggernaut during the 2003-2004
electoral cycle.2
Wholesale adoption of the liberal political and economic package
appeared to have resulted in a decade of chaos; this perceived failure led
naturally to a reorientation of Russian political thought towards domestic
sources of ideology – in the twenty-first century, seeking answers in the
national historical experience has become respectable, and no longer the
exclusive provenance of such eccentrics as Vladimir Zhirinovskii. In this
atmosphere, the Orthodox Church, capitalizing on its traditional role as
the caretaker of “truly Russian” culture, has clearly captured a leading
role in the formation of a post-Yeltsin set of values that are increasingly
shaping the ways in which Russia’s political and cultural elites think
about the ideal political and economic system.
The question then becomes whether or not there is some quality to
so-called “Orthodox values” that might be conducive to the flourishing
of democracy in Russia. The instinctive reaction to this question among
many Russia scholars is an emphatic “of course not.” They point to the
fact that the Orthodox Church has traditionally been a pillar of autocracy
in Russia, to such an extent that it was regarded as the “handmaiden” of
the pre-revolutionary tsarist state. Moreover, it is argued that for most of
the communist era the church hierarchy submitted to the atheist state,
declaring communism’s goals compatible with the Orthodox worldview,
in sharp contrast to the staunchly pro-democratic ideology of the
Catholic Church in Poland. Finally, the argument goes, since 1989 the
Orthodox Church has demonstrated a pattern of intolerance towards
religious pluralism and an unwillingness to accept a political system in
which the religion is legally separate from the state. With the shift of
power from a nominally Orthodox Yeltsin to the actively practicing
believer Putin, the Church has been accused of succumbing to the
temptation of lobbying for a fundamentalist Orthodox state, leading the
faithful away from democratic ideals towards something resembling a
theocracy. In short, there are plenty of familiar arguments to suggest that
the Orthodox Church is an anti-democratic institution; in that case, if, as
I propose, the Russian elites are increasingly likely to be guided by at
39
Burden or Blessing?
least the rhetoric of Orthodox values, the prospects for democracy

surviving in Russia are weak indeed.
It is true that the current official attitude of the Russian Orthodox
Church towards democracy, as expressed in the Social Doctrine adopted
in 2000, is openly skeptical of the ability of this type of government to
bring Russia’s citizens the social and material well-being it promises.3
Enumerating possible forms of government and the Church’s assessment
of each of them, the Church praises theocracy as the highest attainable
form of human association. Democracy, in contrast, is regarded as better
only than anarchy. The drafters of the doctrine apparently view the
Church as the locus of a monolithic culture, which seeks to bring
everyone towards unity and civil consensus, a state of affairs not possible
under democratic conditions that by definition encourage the voicing of
opposing views. In this conception, a one-party system is more
inherently acceptable to Orthodoxy than a multi-party democracy. Given
the apparent effort by the Putin administration to transform the pro-
presidential party Edinstvo into the permanent party of power, this view
takes on particularly ominous connotations for Russia’s political
trajectory.
An exclusive focus on the Social Doctrine risks obscuring a number
of important aspects of Russian Orthodoxy that may contribute to a more
positive outcome for Russian democracy. First and foremost, the idea
that the official policy view of the Russian Orthodox Church towards
democracy has always been negative does not stand up against the
historical record. The Republic of Novgorod is conventionally pointed to
as an example of early Russian democracy; what is often missed is the
fact that the prince of Novgorod was not the only elected leader – the
Orthodox Archbishop of the city-state was also elected directly by the
people. During the Muscovite era, the Patriarch and other bishops played
important roles in the composition of the periodic Zemskii Sobor, an
elected assembly that would gather at important political junctures to
pass legislation and, on one notable occasion in 1613, to elect the first
Romanov Tsar.4
Moving to the modern era, popular portrayals of the pre-
Revolutionary church as one of the willing pillars of Russian imperial
autocracy have been successfully debunked by historical scholarship in
recent decades.5 It is true that Peter the Great abolished the Patriarchate
and instituted lay oversight over church affairs, in effect turning the
Orthodox church into part of the imperial bureaucratic apparatus. The
clergy, however, regarded this state of affairs as an unnatural situation of
captivity, from which by the end of the 19th century the Church actively
40
sought to free itself. Caught up in the Revolutionary ferment of 1917, the

hierarchy insisted on the convocation of an elected Council made up of
both clergy and laypeople, whose purpose was to institute radical
reforms that would redefine the relationship of the Church to the state,
monarchical or otherwise, first and foremost by reinstituting the
Patriarchate and providing the Church with its own independent
leadership structure. It is important to note that, conceptually, the Church
Council of 1917 was timed to coincide with the aborted Constitutive
Assembly that was supposed to determine the shape of post-autocratic
Russia. Significantly, the Church invited Kerensky to the opening
session of the Council, at which time leading bishops welcomed him and
other members of the Provisional Government in terms that left no doubt
as to their positive attitude towards democracy and indeed joy at the fall
of the oppressive tsarist regime. Even after the fall of the Provisional
Government, the Church refused to support pro-monarchist forces in the
civil war, condemning the Bolsheviks only when it became clear that the
policies of that party were aimed at the extermination of the Church.
It is also worth recalling here that the Russian Orthodox Church
belongs to a much larger international community of Orthodoxy,
represented by a total of eighteen “Local” Orthodox Churches, usually
organized along ethno-national lines. As a member of this larger
community, the Russian Church is bound to consider external practices
in the formulation of its own internal policies. For the Orthodox Church
as understood in this broad sense, neither the support of nor opposition to
democracy has ever been an issue of defining dogmatic importance.
Indeed, the experience of the other Orthodox communities provides the
Russian Church with numerous examples of majority Orthodox
populations living successfully in democratic conditions: the Greek
Orthodox Church happily coexists with a democratic state in Greece, as
do the Romanian, Bulgarian, and Georgian patriarchates with the
governments of their respective countries.
The extent to which Orthodox values might be compatible with
political democracy may also be examined from the perspective of the
Church’s own governing structure. Though strongly hierarchical, the
Church is ultimately organized along conciliar principles: major
questions of dogma and official policy are debated by councils, at which
decisions are made based on majority vote. The councils are also
responsible for the election of bishops to fill vacant dioceses. At least in
theory, an organization that recognizes elections as an integral part of its
own operations cannot reject this same principle when it comes to
secular politics without risking a debilitating internal crisis. Finally, the
41
Burden or Blessing?
decision of one council is always open to revision in the future. In this

respect, although the 2000 Council approved the Social Doctrine’s
clauses concerning democracy, a future council is fully entitled to
overrule them and to put forth its own vision of the ideal government
type.
For the moment, though, the Social Doctrine of 2000 represents the
official view of the Russian Orthodox Church on democracy, as well as
on a whole host of social issues ranging from terrorism to equitable
income distribution. Admittedly, the above-mentioned negative
characterization of democracy in the document is a cause for concern.
However, a closer reading reveals two aspects of the Social Doctrine that
suggest that, despite its conservatism, the Church is not going to openly
lobby for the imposition of an authoritarian government, and may in fact
find itself in opposition to the state if Putin or his successors actually
attempt to formally impose non-democratic rule. First, the Social
Doctrine does not call for the Orthodox faithful to actively oppose
democracy by staging a theocratic revolution; rather, believers are asked
to recognize that this form of governance is a reflection of the general
sinfulness of society. Second, and more importantly, the Doctrine
contains another clause that has made the federal government extremely
uncomfortable: recognizing the negative consequences of its
collaboration with the KGB during the Soviet era, as of 2000 the Church
claims the right to call for civil disobedience should the government act
in a way that the hierarchy considers unjust.6
This last point is particularly important. There is strong evidence to
support the claim that the viability of a democracy is ensured by the
flourishing of a meaningful civil society that engages the state over
questions of justice and serves as the generating force of constructive
opposition to government policies.7 Analysts of Russian civil society
have increasingly come to characterize the Orthodox Church as the
largest and most influential non-governmental actor – if this is the case,
the civil disobedience clause in the Social Doctrine obligates it to
counterbalance the state in a manner that may result in a surprisingly
positive democratic outcome.8 Even if the political situation in Russia
deteriorates to the point where there is no check against the executive
coming from the legislative or judicial branches, the Orthodox Church
may, theoretically, provide a modicum of balance against unbridled
autocracy through appealing to the conscience of the ruler/ruling class
and, if necessary, calling for civil disobedience; the likelihood of this
occurring is strengthened by the centuries-old tradition in which the
Church has viewed itself as the check against strong personal rule.
42
In this scenario, then, attempts on the part of Putin to behave as an

outright authoritarian run the ruler risk of encountering a powerful social
force ready and willing to oppose him. Taken in this light, the on-going
canonization of thousands of victims of the communist regime can be, in
part, read as an explicit expression of the Church’s desire to keep alive
the memory of what a full-blown authoritarian regime can result in.
There are increasing signs that the government is fully aware of this and
is preparing to act out its authoritarian proclivities by clamping down on
the Church itself, seeking to transform the clergy once more into an arm
of the bureaucracy as it had been for two centuries under the Russian
Empire.9
In the end, I would like to suggest that thinking about the political
trajectory of the Russian Federation requires rejecting the currently
dominant Putin-centered approach and considering deeper processes
ongoing in the Russian political and social scene. First, limiting the
analysis of whether or not Russia is on the slippery slope towards
authoritarianism to a guessing-game based on Putin’s actions obscures
the fact that sooner or later his administration will be succeeded by a
generation of leaders whose values will have been formed largely in the
post-Soviet era. It then becomes crucial to understand the content of this
new value system: To the extent that it has been partially informed by an
increasingly powerful Orthodox Church it becomes necessary to grapple
with the attitudes of this institution towards democracy. Characteristic of
most issues in the still unsettled Russian landscape, it is impossible to
ascertain with certainty that the Church is a pro-democratic force.
However, on balance the conservative tendencies within the organization
are, I propose, outweighed by institutional factors that may, in the end,
make the Russian Orthodox Church an unexpected guarantor of a
Russian-style democratic society.
Notes
1
For example, speaking at Georgetown University in the fall of 1999, Paul
Goble of Radio Free Europe expressed his belief that the renewed violence in
Chechnya signaled the imminent disintegration of the Russian Federation.
2
Christopher Marsh, Helen Albert, and James W. Warhola, “The Political
Geography of Russia’s 2004 Presidential Election,” Eurasian Geography &
Economics 45, 4 (2004): 262-280.
3
Available online: http://www.mospat.ru/chapters/conception/
43
Burden or Blessing?
4
The Orthodox Church was also involved in the elections of Boris Godunov and
Vasili Shuiski.
5
See, in particular, G. L. Freeze, “Handmaiden of the State,” Journal of
Ecclesiastical History 36, 1 (1985).
6
Noteworthy here is an interview with Georgii Poltavchenko, the President’s
Representative for the Central Federal Okrug, in which he laments the fact that
the Church saw the need to include this clause in the Social Doctrine. “Tserkov’
mozhet effektivno uchavstvovat’ v reshenii vazhnyh gosudarstvennykh
voprosov: Beseda s Polnomochnym predstavitelem Preszidenta Rossii v
Tsentral’nom federal’nom okruge Georgiem Sergeevichem Poltavchenko,”
Zhurnal Moskovskoi Patriarkhii 2 (2002): 71.
7
On links between civil society and democracy see, for example Iris Young,
Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
8
Nikolas Gvosdev, “‘Managed Pluralism’ and Civil Religion” in Civil Society
and the Search for Justice in Russia, eds. Christopher Marsh and Nikolas
Gvosdev (Landham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002), 83.
9
At the 2004 symposium, from which this collection of essays comes, Lawrence
Uzzell and Andrei Zubov – two scholars with very different approaches to the
issue – expressed their concern that the state was preparing to bring the
Orthodox Church to heel, as it were.
44
CHAPTER 7
Centralization of Power, Fragmentation of Belief:

Statist Relativism in Post-Soviet Russia
Lawrence A. Uzzell, International Religious Freedom Watch
The February 9, 2004 issue of Novaya Gazeta included a warning of the

“danger to society now coming from the leadership of the Russian
Orthodox Church.”1 It reported increasing complaints “that the Church is
acting more and more aggressively toward the populace.” Is that
“danger” genuine, and if so how serious is it? Will state favoritism
toward the Patriarchate become so systemic that post-Soviet Russia
essentially turns into a theocracy, with Orthodox Christianity replacing
Marxism-Leninism as the compulsory state ideology?
My reading of the evidence has led me to two conclusions; the first
is widely accepted, the second I expect to be controversial. The first is
that state discrimination in favor of the Moscow Patriarchate is already
common; that articulate elements within Russia’s political and cultural
elites are working to increase and consolidate such discrimination; and
that some of these elements would indeed like to make Russia a
theocracy. My second, more debatable thesis is that this process has
already passed its peak; that the current pattern of discrimination has
more to do with buying off clergy of various faiths as useful interest
groups than with imposing a monolithic belief system; and that there is
no serious chance of the Russian state’s becoming a theocracy.
The present model of church-state relations is one in which the state
favors not just the Moscow Patriarchate but other religious factions as
well. I use the word “factions” rather than “religions” because the forms
of discrimination that we now see are not based on theological
boundaries; the state favors some Baptists over other Baptists, some Jews
over other Jews, and the Sovietized Moscow Patriarchate over all rival
claimants to the country’s Orthodox Christian heritage. The state makes
these distinctions on the basis of its own political interests, not any
religious creed; in order to benefit from state discrimination a religious
45
Burden or Blessing?
faction must accept that the state’s interests come first and must avoid
challenging the state on issues that the latter considers important. The
focus is not on promoting a moral or spiritual vision of the good life, but
on providing financial or regulatory advantages to those clerics who
agree to play by the state’s rules. The whole system might be summed up
under the label “statist relativism.”
Statist relativism meets resistance from two very different kinds of
Orthodox believers. There are those who really believe in the 1993
Russian Constitution’s guarantee of individual freedom of choice in
religion, including the freedom of a Tatar or Uzbek to accept Orthodoxy
as well as that of a Slav to reject it. At the opposite pole are groups such
as the Union of Orthodox Citizens (Soyuz Pravoslavnikh Grazhdan, or
SPG). The Union’s press secretary recently attacked a key official of the
Putin administration for encouraging what he calls “Russian Islam,” i.e. a
moderate version of Islam that would not be threatening to Russia’s
social and political institutions. He called the very idea “anti-Orthodox.”
While that vision may fairly be called theocratic, its political appeal
seems to depend more on secular nationalism than on classic, patristic
Orthodox teachings. The SPG’s co-chairman is Sergei Glaziev, a
professional economist and one-time Communist deputy known for his
criticisms of Yeltsin’s and Putin’s free-market reforms.
Even though some of the SPG’s proposals are too maximalist for the
Moscow Patriarchate to endorse publicly, there remains a substantial
overlap between their policy agendas. Both want further statutory
restrictions on religious minorities; a national program of Orthodox
catechization via the state schools; a far more sweeping return of lands
and buildings confiscated from the Church by the Soviet state; the return
of confiscated art objects and other valuables still held by state museums;
and more tax exemptions for the Church’s agricultural and business
activities. How much concrete progress have they made?
Much has been written about the trend away from religious freedom
in Russia since the mid-1990s; there can be little doubt that disfavored
religious organizations have faced increasing difficulties. What perhaps
deserves more emphasis is that the pattern of discrimination and
repression is not what one would expect from an Orthodox Christian
theocracy. There has been virtually no correlation between the degree to
which a religious entity disagrees with Orthodox doctrines and the
likelihood that the state will crack down on that entity. For example,
exotic groups such as the Moonies have not faced significantly greater
difficulties than Protestants or Roman Catholics. The frequent violations
of religious freedom look more like those of England under King Henry
46
VIII than like those of Calvinist Geneva. The primary agenda is not to
stamp out heresy but to promote the material and ideological interests of
the state.
The would-be theocrats’ greatest victory came in 1997, when they
enacted a law which on paper severely restricted the rights of all
religious bodies which had been suppressed by the Soviet regime before
the dawn of the Gorbachev reforms. The implementation of that law,
however, soon proved to be comparatively mild in practice. Restrictions
on religious freedom have since grown tighter, but those who support the
law in its full rigor still have good reason to be dissatisfied.
Geraldine Fagan, of the Forum 18 News Service, wrote a useful
overall survey last July of the current state of religious freedom in
Russia.2 She emphasized the lack of a coherent, systematic nationwide
policy, pointing out that “when decisions are made which violate
believers’ rights, they are largely informed by the political agendas and
personal loyalties of local politicians. The particular nature of a religious
belief seems to play little role in restrictions – such as visa bars being
imposed – groups being far more likely to be targeted if they are
dynamic and visible, whatever their beliefs.” Despite the Putin
administration’s drive to centralize decision-making on other issues, she
noted that “Russia still has no centralized state body dealing with
religious affairs… Religious freedom concerns are consequently resolved
in an ad hoc manner, if the Kremlin is involved at all, or are more usually
left to government departments and/or regional administrations.”
Proposals for a coherent state policy on religion have continued to
be discussed since then, and the Putin administration’s key decision-
makers have continued to ignore them. The Putin administration’s lack
of action gives little ground to think that the would-be theocrats of the
Moscow Patriarchate are dictating its decisions.
In 2002 the Russian parliament considered a proposal to return to
the Moscow Patriarchate all the real estate, including monastic
farmlands, which had been confiscated from it by the Soviet regime.
When it became clear what huge areas of land were at stake – as many as
7.4 million acres – the idea was dropped. The Patriarchate suffered
another defeat in the spring of 2003, when the Duma rejected legislation
which would have allowed religious organizations to gain full ownership,
free of charge, of buildings and lands used for religious purposes. The
Putin administration opposed the bill.
Compared with the land and tax questions, the place of Orthodoxy
in the state schools has provoked much more public debate – and that
debate has been much more passionate. In late 2002 Minister of
47
Burden or Blessing?
Education Vladimir Filippov proposed a new subject for Russia’s public

schools – “Foundations of Orthodox Culture.” Though ostensibly a
neutral history of the undeniable contributions of Orthodox Christianity
to Russian history, art, music, literature, etc., the new course and its
associated textbook were denounced by their critics as a thinly disguised
attempt to indoctrinate children into Orthodox dogma. The proposed
curriculum drew vigorous opposition not only from secular human-rights
activists but from Russia’s Muslim leaders. Ravil Gainutdin, the
country’s most influential mufti, stated publicly that he and his co-
religionists “were alarmed by the fact that the Ministry of Education
approached this question unilaterally, recommending all schools to
introduce the study of the foundations of only one of the traditional
religions. This could lead to serious conflict.”3
It soon became clear that resistance to the new curriculum was
strong enough to keep the Moscow Patriarchate from winning a
nationwide, monopoly position for itself in which Orthodox
catechization would be compulsory. The Patriarchate’s Metropolitan
Kirill met with leading representatives of Russia’s other recognized
“traditional” faiths in the spring of 2003, and all agreed that
schoolchildren should be offered a voluntary course on the “Foundations
of Religious Doctrines,” in which a single textbook would provide
information on Islam, Buddhism and Judaism as well as Orthodoxy (see
chapter 8 in this volume for more on this issue).
The Moscow Patriarchate seems to have made more progress with
the Russian armed forces and security agencies than with the school
system. Its main focus, as far as one can tell from the outside, is on using
the armed forces not as a vehicle for proselytizing or evangelizing non-
Orthodox servicemen but as yet one more source of subsidies for itself.
Just as it has concentrated on reclaiming and restoring church buildings
all over Russia, the Patriarchate has given a high priority to installing
Orthodox chapels on military bases; as of April 2003 the Defense
Ministry calculated the number of such chapels to be 37. The
Patriarchate has also sought to revive the formal institution of military
chaplains.
Russian nationalism is a fundamental component of the Moscow
Patriarchate’s current worldview – especially among priests who are
attracted to working with the military – and this of course makes it easier
for the Church and the “siloviki” to find a common language. At a June
2003 seminar for Orthodox priests working with soldiers, it was simply
taken for granted by the participants that there was a direct correlation
between the Orthodox religiosity of conscripts and their willingness to
48
serve in the army – and they clearly thought that this was a good thing.
The public campaigns by human-rights activists for the rights of
conscientious objectors, or against the deadly practice of “dedovshchina”
or violent hazing within the military, have received virtually no support
from the Patriarchate. In fact, the Patriarchate’s public statements about
issues such as a young man’s duty to accept military conscription or
about atrocities against civilians in Chechnya could often be mistaken for
press releases from the Ministry of Defense. Even more clearly in its
interaction with the military than other areas of church-state relations, the
Moscow Patriarchate seems satisfied to accept the role of junior partner.
Nevertheless, there are areas of potential friction. Anticipating the
subsequent attempts to introduce Orthodox teachings into the public-
school curriculum, in 1996 the army began to open departments of
“Orthodox culture” in some of its military academies. The defense
ministry’s exclusive focus on formal ties with the Orthodox Church has
led to public protests; mufti Ravil Gainutdin asked, “Does our army
really consist only of Orthodox Christians?”4
By the end of the 1990s, opinion polls suggested that the interest of
military officers in religion was falling. One survey found that some 39
percent of senior officers opposed the idea of military chaplains, and 41
percent opposed the creation of religious parishes within military bases.5
These figures are strikingly high given that the high command had
consistently supported cooperation with the Patriarchate. The formal
institution of a military chaplaincy has yet to move beyond the stage of
discussion, so in that area the Russian military is still more “secular”
than that of the United States.
Even more secular are Russia’s mass media. Orthodox activists
have tried sporadically to ban television programs which they find
particularly offensive, such as the film “The Last Temptation of Christ.”
Nearly all such attempts have failed. The Church’s near-total lack of
influence is especially striking in light of the decline of the media’s
independence in other respects. In recent years all the nationwide
television networks have come firmly under the Putin camp’s control,
but Putin’s people have made no visible effort to use that control to
promote Orthodox Christian moral or aesthetic standards. As one
commentator observed last year in an essay for the liberal Moscow daily
Nezavisimaya gazeta, “In spite of its flirtations with the Russian
Orthodox Church, the political elite of Russia is in fact oriented toward
completely different ideals and values. One of the most convincing
proofs of this is the un-Orthodox – to put it mildly – flavor of most of the
mass media.”6
49
Burden or Blessing?
To a remarkable degree, what I call “statist relativism” has been

largely accepted by the Patriarchate itself. For example, the “law of
birth” – the idea that an ethnic Russian should be considered “Orthodox
by birth” even if he has never been baptized – in effect substitutes a
crudely ethnic concept of Church membership for the Orthodox faith’s
own historic canons. As the commentator Aleksandr Soldatov put it, this
novel doctrine “excludes proselytism ‘in both directions’: the Russian
Orthodox Church refrains from missionary work among, for example,
those who are ‘traditionally’ Muslims in return for their not trying to
attract ethnic Russians to Islam. By this interpretation, religion is
deprived of its most important attribute – faith in the absoluteness and
universality of the revealed truths which it confesses, i.e. faith that these
truths are ‘for all’ and not only ‘for our culture.’ Religion is thus
transformed into a collection of ‘myths and legends of the peoples of
Russia.’”7
The Patriarchate’s current emphasis on the ethno-cultural
component of Russian Orthodox Christianity is understandable, and it is
that emphasis which most easily enables the Church to appeal to the tens
of millions of ethnic Russians who identify themselves as “Orthodox”
though they never go to church and often do not even believe in God.
But in the long run, as religious-studies scholar Nikolai Shaburov said,
the ethnic emphasis erodes “the very understanding of what it means to
be Orthodox….Orthodoxy for many citizens is now only a marker of
cultural identity….The fact that more than half of the populace call
themselves Orthodox is merely a result of the post-communist fad of
‘Russianness.’ With the further growth here of capitalism, which by its
very nature is international, this ‘ethno-confessional complex’ will melt
away. The genuinely Orthodox Russians…number 3 to 5 percent.”8
The partnership between the Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate
is not only an unequal one, but one in which the inequality will probably
grow even more pronounced in the years ahead. The bishops were not
willing to criticize Boris Yeltsin or his policies even when both were
deeply unpopular, and it is not likely that they will suddenly begin to
defy a president who has tighter control of key institutions than any
Russian or Soviet leader since the 1980s. Though the Patriarchate will
continue to provide its symbolic blessing at presidential inaugurations, it
will of course play no role in choosing Putin’s successor. The Kremlin
on the other hand, with its growing tendency to treat all social
institutions as extensions of the state, will almost certainly meddle in the
decision about who will succeed Patriarch Aleksi.9 The threat to a free
50
and robust civil society is all too real – not because the Church is
swallowing the state, but vice versa.
Notes
1
“Bozhii promysel: Russkaya Pravoslavnaya Tserkov kak khozyaistvuyushchii
subyekt,” Novaya gazeta, 9 February 2004.
2
Geraldine Fagan, “Russia: Religious Freedom Survey,” Forum 18 News
Service, Oslo, Norway, 29 July 2003. Available online:
http://www.forum18.org/.
3
Quoted by Nikolai Mitrokhin, “Russkaya pravoslavnya tserkov i postsovetskie
musulmane,” polit.ru, 18 November 2003.
4
Sergei Mozgovoi, “Siloviki blagochestiya,” Otechestvennye zapiski, 1 (2003)
5
Ibid.
6
Mikhail Shakhov, “Klerikalizatsiya Rossii ne grozit,” NG-Religiya, 18
February 2003.
7
Quoted in Aleksandr Soldatov, “Russkaya pravoslavnaya tserkov na puti k
monopolizatsii ‘dukhovnogo prostranstva Rossii,” Otechestvennye zapiski, 1
(2003).
8
“Liudi otvernutysa ot Pravoslaviya, yesli Pravoslavie ne otverntusya ot vlasti,”
Novaya gazeta, 12 January 2004.
9
For a recent example of an unsuccessful attempt by the state to meddle in a
religious body’s internal decision-making, see Geraldine Fagan, “Old Believers
Summoned by Ex-KGB Before Church Leadership Election,” Forum 18 News
Service, 17 February 2004.
51
CHAPTER 8
Russian Orthodoxy, the Russian Ministry of

Education, and Post-Communist Moral Education
Perry L. Glanzer, Baylor University and Gregori Kljucharev, Russian
Academy of Sciences
The fall of the Soviet regime brought numerous changes and challenges
to Russia’s public school system. One of the most important concerned
the matter of vospitanie, variously translated as upbringing, moral
education, or character education. In 1991, the Russian Ministry of
Education disbanded the communist program of moral education
including the communist youth organizations and compulsory ethics
courses. As a result, Russia’s public school administrators and teachers
found themselves in a moral vacuum that many perceived had tragic
results. They wanted to fine new sources of vospitanie they convey
within a public education system that now accommodated ideological
pluralism.
The emerging ideological pluralism in the country and in the public
schools also posed a dilemma for the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC).
The ROC welcomed the demise of communism’s monopoly over
education, which allowed it to rebuild its own forms of Christian moral
education by starting Sunday schools and independent religious schools.
Yet, the ROC now faced a new challenge with regard to Russia’s public
schools that it had never faced. Would the Ministry of Education allow a
religious or ROC contribution to vospitanie in public schools? Moreover,
would the ROC attempt to recapture the influence it enjoyed over public
education before the Revolution or would it seek a different role in
Russia’s pluralistic system of education? The evolution of the answer to
these questions is the subject of this paper.
Russian Orthodoxy and Moral Education in Post-Communist Russia
Desperate for help with moral education, the Russian Ministry of

Education initially turned to whoever would offer them aid. For instance,
53
Burden of Blessing?
in the early 1990s it approved curriculum and training provided by two

groups, a group of Evangelical Protestant para-church agencies,
denominations, and colleges known as The CoMission and a group
affiliated with Sun Yung Moon’s Unification Church, the International
Educational Foundation (IEF). The foreign groups, unlike the ROC,
possessed the resources to produce a new curriculum and the volunteers
to provide the training necessary to implement it.
Though they initially welcomed these groups, the Russian Ministry
of Education never envisioned supporting a particular branch of
Christianity. Therefore, the Ministry of Education mandated that classes
in moral education take place as part of a voluntary, supplemental
curriculum and not part of the mandatory curriculum. Families could
then choose the type of vospitanie they wanted for their children. Any
church-state problems, the Ministry believed, would be solved by the
voluntary nature of the supplemental classes.
The ROC’s response to the presence of foreign religious groups in
Russian public schools varied. The ROC clearly and consistently stated
its opposition to the involvement of the Unification Church in the
schools. By contrast, the Church initially established a cordial
relationship with the CoMission and even approved its curriculum. When
the ROC learned that the CoMission was interested in converting
teachers and planting Protestant churches, however, its attitude changed.
The ROC leadership then successfully encouraged Russian Ministry of
Education officials to rescind their official protocol with the CoMission
in 1995.
Soon after the fall of communism, the Church leadership also
continually contended that the ROC deserved a special relationship with
Russian public schools. The ROC eventually set forth its official position
at the 2000 Jubilee Council of Bishops in the Basic Social Concept of the
Russian Orthodox Church. The document states, “From the Orthodox
perspective, it is desirable that the entire educational system should be
built on religious principles and based on Christian values.” Nonetheless,
it begrudgingly acknowledged the secular public school system and
claimed it was “willing to build relations with it on the basis of human
freedom.” Moreover, the document cautions against the use of the system
to promote anti-religious or pagan worldviews and indicated a preference
for what we can call the public and structural pluralism options:
The Church believes it is beneficial and necessary to conduct

optional classes on Christian faith in secular schools, at the request
of children or parents, and in higher educational institutions. The
54
Post-Communist Moral Education
church authorities should conduct dialogue with the government

aimed to seal in the legislation and practice the internationally
accepted right of believing families to the religious education and
upbringing of their children. To this end, the Church has also
established Orthodox institutions of general education and expects
that they will be supported by the state.1
At many points, the vision articulated by the ROC appears to support a

robust civil society and the idea that the child, in the words of a famous
U.S. Supreme Court decision, “is not the mere creature of the state.”
Some important ambiguities in the document, however, raise
questions about the ROC’s intentions. Although the ROC supports the
right of other religious schools to be funded, its Social Concept never
specifies whether the ROC supports optional classes on the Christian
faith for Protestant or Catholic groups or if it supports religious
education classes for Jewish, Muslim or Buddhist groups. Furthermore,
with regard to vospitanie, the document articulates a vision of
cooperation that is closer to the Orthodox Church’s past ideal of
symphonia than to a vision of public equality or public pluralism. It
claims:
School is a mediator that hands over to new generations the moral

values accumulated in the previous centuries. School and the
Church are called to co-operation in this task. Education, especially
that of children and adolescents, is called not only to convey
information. To warm up in young hearts the aspiration for the
Truth, authentic morality, love of their neighbours and homeland
and its history and culture is a school’s task no smaller but perhaps
even greater than that of giving knowledge. The Church is called
and seeks to help school in its educational mission, for it is the
spirituality and morality of a person that determines his eternal
salvation, as well as the future of individual nations and the entire
human race.
In another place the document suggests that one of the areas of

cooperation between church and state concerns “spiritual, cultural and
patriotic education and formation.” Zoe Knox claims such parts “refer to
the Orthodox Church and do not extend to other faiths” and that “the
Patriarchate does not want other faiths to influence educational
curriculum…”2 If this claim is true, the ROC not only longs for public
funding of Russian Orthodox schools and voluntary after-school
55
Burden of Blessing?
religious classes, but it also wants some sort of religious minimalism in

Russia’s public school. It is on the subject of the degree of plurality
acceptable to the Church that the Orthodox vision and the Russian
Ministry of Education’s vision initially showed the most tension.
The Ministry of Education’s Shifting Strategy
By the late 1990s, however, the Russian Ministry of Education once

again changed its approach to moral education. In 1998, it demonstrated
a desire to return to a centralized government program of vospitanie by
reinstating the Administration of Upbringing Work. In September 1999,
it published the Program for the Development of Upbringing in the
Russian System of Education for 1999-2001. According to the Program,
the state needed to clarify its role in relation to the upbringing work of
parents, nongovernmental organizations and other aspects of society.
Interestingly, the Program did not even mention the ROC as a source of
vospitanie. Moreover, the Program continually acknowledged the need to
respect and support a “diversity of upbringing systems.” The acceptance
of both civil society and pluralism appeared to be at least one new reality
that remained in Russia’s approach to moral education.
During this time, however, the ROC continued to offer to help with
vospitanie in Russian public schools. Eventually, the Ministry of
Education rewarded its persistent knocking on the public school door. On
July 4, 1999, a letter issued by the Russian Ministry of Education
signaled an official change in attitude toward the ROC. It set forth the
possibility of “offering religious organizations the opportunity to teach
children religion on an extracurricular basis in facilities of state and
municipal educational institutions.” Later, the ROC and the Russian
Ministry of Education sponsored a set of joint meetings to make this
possibility a reality. Vladimir Filippov, the Russian Minister of
Education, commented on this partnership at the end of his presentation
during the 2000 Christmas readings:
I should like to express my confidence that joint efforts on the part

of the schools and the church, these two primary, mutually
reinforcing pillars of spiritual life in our Fatherland, will ensure the
enhancement of the level of education and spirituality of society on
a high level in keeping with the needs of the individual, the needs of
the country’s future, and the enduring ideals and values of
Humanity and the Orthodox faith.3
56
Filippov and the Ministry of Education eventually supported these words

with concrete actions. On October 22, 2002, at a church-state conference
the Russian Ministry of Education introduced a new course called
“Fundamentals of the Orthodox Culture” into the core curriculum.
Filippov officially introduced the class to regional offices and
administrations of education through a letter that included a sample of
course content. It outlined an eleven-year curriculum for the course. The
course outline’s authors recommended that, ideally, children would study
the material for 544 hours over those eleven years. They also advised
schools to invite priests to serve as the teachers of the course. According
to Filippov’s letter, regional officials and principles would have the
option of including the course in the required curriculum.
The introduction of the course produced a storm of controversy. For
example, Aleksey Volin, deputy head of the Russian governmental
administration, argued:
It is dangerous to introduce classes in Orthodox religion in a multi-

confessional and multiethnic country like Russia…. As a secular
state, the Russian Federation should not allow any religious
teaching in a state school. I think this document reeks of the Middle
Ages and obscurantism.4
Critics also pointed out that the suggested outline of the course imitated
an Orthodox theology course taught in ecclesiastical seminaries.
Consequently, they maintained, “under the guise of a secular religious
studies discipline, children will receive a purely confessional theological
education.”5 Certainly, it did not demonstrate neutrality toward various
religious groups. At one point, the curriculum stated, “The graduate of
the ninth grade should be able to explain…distinctives of the apocalyptic
notions of destructive religious sects.” Consequently, critics maintained
that the textbook forced Orthodoxy on people through the required
curriculum instead of merely providing it through private schools.
Vladimir Filippov later issued a response to critics in the form of a new
order further defining the subject. He clarified that the curriculum was
not obligatory but would only be taught as an elective subject and would
require the consent of the parents.6
Despite the Ministry of Education’s strong support for the initiative,
opposition to the course remained strong. Lyubov Kezina, Head of the
Moscow Department of Education, has consistently opposed the teaching
of the course. Moreover, the St. Petersburg and Ekaterinburg districts
also have not supported the initiative. Nonetheless, newspapers have
57
Burden of Blessing?
reported support in other districts. At this time, the extent to which the
course will be implemented in other regions or who the teachers will be
remains to be seen.
Civil Society, the Orthodox Church and Russian Public Education:

Points of Unity and Tension
Currently, the Russian Ministry of Education and the ROC exhibit both
agreements and disagreements about the best vision for the relationship
between religion, morality and education in Russia’s public system of
education. Clearly disagreement exists over the funding of religious
schools directly. Despite ROC statements, the Russian government does
not fund religious chools.
With regard to religious instruction in public schools, however,
both the Ministry of Education and the ROC agree. The Russian
Ministry of Education supports the possibility of religious groups
offering religious education in voluntary classes outside the required
education program. In addition, the joint efforts regarding the
Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture class demonstrate that both groups
are seeking to work together with regard to religious and moral
education.
At most points, both visions appear consistent with certain Western
concepts of civil society. The Ministry of Education vision incorporates
a broad conception of civil society in that it seeks to include both secular
and religious groups and organizations. Families can choose a form of
religious education. The voluntary nature of the programs, one can also
argue, protects a family’s right choose the comprehensive vision of the
good in which they want to train their children. In contrast, approaches
to moral education as used in America’s public schools often only focus
upon finding common moral teachings within a secular framework.
When it comes to the question of justice and civil society, the main
tension with both the Ministry of Education and the ROC visions
concerns the degree to which both groups will attempt to show
favoritism toward Orthodoxy and/or allow religious classes by other
groups. Both groups clearly believe that the history of Russia
necessitiates that Russian Orthodxy needs special attention. For example,
Leonid Grebnev, Deputy Minister of Education, noted at a January, 2004
academic conference on the topic, “The Study of Orthodox Culture in
Secular Schools,”
58
There is an opinion that since Russia is a multi-denominational

country it is therefore unacceptable to emphasize one religion even
if it played a significant role. However, if Russian is the required
language then why not introduce everyone to Orthodox values
regardless of their religious affiliation.7
The ROC social document also reinforces this view. What appears
unclear is the degree to which the Ministry of Education and the ROC
will allow other religious groups to influence moral education in the
required curriculum or to offer supplemental education classes.
If the partnership between the ROC and the Russian Ministry of
Education ends up promoting state-favoritism toward Orthodoxy, we
would argue that such a situation could begin to foster an unjust civil
society. In addiition, the ROC may also find its cause and reputation
undermined by this partnership. As a general rule, state support often
translates into loss of popular support for the state-supported church.
Moreover, this close partnership, as such close partnerships between
church and state often do, may mute or dilute the Orthodox Church’s
prophetic voice to the state. Since this state favoritism toward Orthodoxy
may also fail to nurture a just civil society, this situation could
undermine the Orthodox Church’s public witness with regard to matters
of justice.
Overall, it still remains to be seen to what extent the ROC will
maintain, in Evert van der Zweede’s words, “a fundamentally different
vision of society and of the good life than the one imaginable within the
framework of civil society,”8 or whether the Orthodox Church will
support including a plurality of religious approaches to vospitanie in the
public schools.
Notes
1
Basic Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, XIV.3. All quotes are
taken from the English translation of the document found at the ROC’s official
website: (http://www.mospat.ru/chapters/e_conception/).
2
Zoe Knox, “The Symphonic Ideal: The Moscow Patriarchate’s Post-Soviet
Leadership,” Europe-Asia Studies 55 (2003): 582.
3
Vladimir Filippov, “The Russian system of education at the turn of the
millennium: the acquisition of spirituality’,” Russian Education and Society, 43
(2001): 14.
4
“Russian official criticizes proposed Orthodox studies in schools” BBC
Monitoring International Reports, 15 November 2002.
59
Burden of Blessing?
5
O. Nedumov, “Russian schools cease to be secular: church and government
workers force children to study Orthodox theology,” Nezavisimaia Gazeta, 18
November 2002.
6
The Russian Ministry of Education, Informative message (Order) N 14-52-
87ин/16 of 22.10.2002.
7
“The Orthodox Culture will be in the core curriculum of secondary schools,”
Izvestiya, 28 January 2004, 12.
8
Ernst Van der Zweede, E., “‘Civil Society’ and ‘Orthodox Christianity’ in
Russia: a Double Test-Case,” Religion, State and Society 27 (1999):30.
60
Part 3 Civil Society
CHAPTER 9
The Church and the Struggle for Renewal:

The Experience of Three Moscow Parishes
Wallace Daniel, Baylor University
When the Orthodox Church experienced a renaissance in the last years of

the Soviet state, top church officials saw the parish as the key to that
rebirth. As the fundamental religious unit of the Church, the parish
offered a concrete means to rebuilding the Church’s role in Russian
society. In theory, the parish provided a connection to a people searching
for new moorings in a sea of chaos. In such circumstances, strengthening
the parish became a vital, tangible form for establishing a sense of
community and hope at the most elemental level of the Church and the
society. This paper will explore these efforts, the hopes and expectations
such acts of reconstruction entailed, the difficulties they encountered,
and the tensions, both within the Church and within society, they
provoked. The paper will contend that these efforts suggest both the
possibilities and the limitations of the development of civil society in
Russia.
My study deals with such interrelated issues by exploring three
Moscow parishes and the individuals who led them. By relating
biography, religion, and history, such an approach will examine the
stories of the leaders of these parishes, the dilemmas such leaders
confronted, their efforts to rebuild their parish communities, and their
differing views about the past and the future. My main subjects and their
parishes include: Fr Georgii Kochetkov and his former parish of the
Dormition of the Mother of God in Pechatniki; Mother Serafima and her
parish at the famous Novodevichy monastery in Moscow; and Fr
Maksim Kozlov and the parish at the University Church of the Sacred
muchenitsy Tat’iana at Moscow University.
The Parish: The Church in Civil Society
In the early 1990s, as the Orthodox Church began to recover its voice
and its own sense of identity, Church leaders focused on the parish as a
61
Burden or Blessing?
central part of this process. It was at this time that Metropolitan Kirill
attempted to define the most pressing issues facing the Church. He spoke
in detail about the revival of parish life in Russian towns and villages,
especially where a sense of community hardly existed and “people did
not know each other.” Such conditions created a moral and spiritual
vacuum, a sense of isolation, and the “lack of any center.” Metropolitan
Kirill especially underscored the importance of rediscovering a sense of
“miloserdie” (compassion) and of charity. “We must have,” he said, “a
revival of these elements; they are essential characteristics of a Christian
community,” qualities that had to be implanted at the center of the
parish.1 Children, the elderly, and the infirm were among the most
vulnerable people in Russian society, and in recreating the parish
community, Metropolitan Kirill believed, concern for them ought to be
the organizing principle.
In articulating such principles and needs, Metropolitan Kirill and
other Church leaders expressed in 1990 what might be called a
rudimentary social doctrine of the Orthodox Church. Their principles
also related to the development of civil society; the charity, compassion,
energy, community, and social action they proposed to nourish and
encourage are key elements in the creation of social capital. But whether
the theoretical statements and goals these leaders voiced could be
effectively put into practice remained an open question.
The three Orthodox parishes in Moscow that are the subject of my
discussion differed not only in their leadership but also in their purposes
and operations. Located in various parts of the city, they appealed to
diverse groups of people, spoke to different social needs, and interpreted
the Church’s mission in varied ways. Looking at the Church’s religious
heritage, they aspired to recover different aspects of that past, seeing in
diverse parts of Church tradition elements on which to build, to
reconnect, and to retell their own stories. Stories, as historian and
geographer David Lowenthal has superbly shown, are never immutable,
set in stone, or fixed forever in the imagination, but are always alive,
changing, and part of the present.2
The nature of the worshippers was distinctive. Most of the people
who attended worship services in Kochetkov’s church were young; by
my estimate eighty to ninety percent of the congregation of about three
hundred in a typical service were between twenty and forty years of age;
a few people are older and children are also present. As in other settings,
women made up a large percentage of the worshippers, perhaps about
sixty-five percent. Socially and intellectually, most of the people clearly
belonged to the intelligentsia; their dress was not working class and a
62
The Church and the Struggle for Renewal
large number of them carried either sacred texts or theological works.

Many of the members knew each other. These people had already created
a bond, and they participated as members of an urban community. These
were not isolated individuals but were united by their gathering and their
outward displays of friendship.
For Fr Georgii, decentralization and greater independence must be
coupled with a new vision of society and the world. He sees the sources
for such a vision in Orthodoxy’s own theology – in which the workshop,
the school, and the parish are icons of the Trinity, and in which, through
the Trinity, all forms of oppression and injustice are opposed. Russia
now needs this commitment more than ever, he has written, beset, as it
were, by nihilism, loss of community, extreme individualism, internal
devastation, alienation, lack of respect for human life, the crushing of all
traditions, and trampling down of “refined and higher values.” The
Church cannot ignore such conditions. It had to counter this nihilism, this
“flight from life,” with values that lay at the core of the Orthodox faith.3
At Novodevichy Monastery, the community to which Mother
Serafima relates, in many ways, is similar. According to Mother
Serafima, a large number of the women who visit the monastery come
seeking help with the brokenness and social dislocation they have to live
with nearly all the time.4 The problems they bring to her provide clear
testimony of the suffering that many Russian women have to bear within
their families. The daily visits that they make to the monastery speak to
the intense demoralization that presently characterizes parts of Russian
society: “Many women come here asking for help and needing counsel,”
Mother Serafima said, “because they don’t have the means to live or
because their husband or son often gets drunk and treats them badly.
Sometimes these women simply ask me to bless or pray for them – to
give them strength to deal with their hardships.” Some of the women
who come face difficult practical decisions in trying to survive in the
harsh economic realities of present-day Russia. Many of these women
are financially destitute and often are tempted to sell their apartments to
gain additional funds. Mother Serafima and her nuns counsel them: “I try
to get them to think beyond the moment and consider all the
consequences; I always ask them ‘What will you do after you sell?
Where will you live?’ It is often obvious that these women do not have
any place to go and will have to live in the railway station, the city
gardens, or the metro.” Sometimes women come to the monastery
searching for food or needing protection from their husbands; a few
come to learn about religion. But, according to Mother Serafima, “by far
63
Burden or Blessing?
the largest numbers of women who seek me out do so because of

instability in their families.”
When the parish at Moscow University began operation in the early
spring of 1995, it had little more than an empty space in which to build.
By the early summer, the parish numbered about sixty-five people, a
steady increase that to Fr Maksim Kozlov signified hope. As the parish
became better known, he was convinced, as it rebuilt trust and
strengthened its educational program, its constituency would expand.
In 1995, the majority of the church’s active participants came from
the faculties of philology and history – especially from classical
philology, Asian languages and history, Russian language and literature,
and Russian history. Several other members belonged to the mathematics
faculty. But the church had made little headway among members of the
philosophy and science faculties. Father Maksim expressed confidence
that this would change as the church developed greater contact with these
faculties. “We have found,” he said, “that interest in our parish especially
among the students has developed as a kind of chain effort.”5
As for university students and faculty, the parish seeks to create a
religious community within the university. This kind of community is
known as a “home parish,” and it differs from others described earlier in
this study that encompasses surrounding neighborhoods. Unlike them,
the missionary activity of the “home parish” operates only within the
university itself.6 As Father Maksim explained, the sermons in the church
and all of the church’s activities – the pilgrimages to historical sites, the
special lectures, and studies of religious art – are geared specifically to
this community.
In each of the Moscow parishes, their leaders attempted to rebuild
certain traditions and memories, and to rebuild on the basis of these
traditions and memories. In Fr Georgii Kochetkov’s case, part of that
tradition lay in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He
particularly focused on the Church Council of 1917-1918 and its passage
of several resolutions, including, in April 1918, the Regulation of the
Parish, which established the parish as an autonomous unit. The 1918
regulation gave priests greater personal security, making them no longer
servitors of the state but servitors of the local people. The regulation
further stipulated the duties of the associate laymen, attempting to give
the parish more unity and stability and to establish it on the basis of
sobornost’. It was the intent of the Council to bring the Church closer to
the people, an effort that required translation of doctrine and instructions
to them in language that could be readily understood. To make services
more comprehensible, the Regulation of the Parish allowed the use of the
64
Russian language in the reading of the liturgy and in other parts of the
service. Other acts, previously denied, were admitted into practice,
including reading the Psalms in Russian and opening the tsar’s gates in
the iconostasis, innovations aimed at making the Church’s message more
accessible.7 In recovering this part of the “chain of memory,” in
reclaiming the spirit of earlier Councils, Kochetkov aspired, in fresh
ways, to confront the social and spiritual dislocation of a post-
communist, urban world whose daunting challenges, he passionately
believed, demanded creative approaches.
In contrast to the forms of worship at Novodevichy Monastery, the
recovery of memory related both to personal and to economic concerns.
Early in the twentieth century, Novodevichy had a large number of craft
activities that supported the monastery’s social services. These craft
activities offer promising sources of economic renewal. But the main
problem is that these crafts have to be almost totally recreated, since they
too have not been practiced since the monastery’s closure in 1926.
Rebuilding the crafts of the monastery Mother Serafima sees as one of
her greatest challenges. She has made plans to organize several craft
shops. She intended to establish a sewing center for the monastery to
make clerical garments. She also intends to create a small bakery to
produce bread for the services. In these activities, the model she uses is
based on the Convent of the Dormition in Pyukhtitsa, Estonia, where her
mother lived, and the convent at Kolomenskoe, which produces
porcelain and embroidered cloth. “We are going to develop such
possibilities,” she emphatically said. “Right now we are only in the
initial stages, but we are going to work hard on these craft activities.” At
one time, she reminded me, the monastery was economically self-
sufficient; it had a very sizable economic base that enabled it to perform
its religious functions without fear of collapse. Presently, that economic
base existed only in memory.
At Moscow University, the recovery of memory has similarities to
Novodevichy’s, but also has some significant differences. Fr Maksim
was concerned about economics and in particular its underlying
assumptions and values. He aspired to re-create a religious-philosophical
tradition that had been nearly forgotten for most of the twentieth century.
Chief among this tradition was a certain perspective on the ethics of
work. He gives this subject a great deal of attention in his teaching,
because he believes that neither the former Communist understanding of
labor nor the current free-market perspective offers the necessary values
on which Russia can build its future.
65
Burden or Blessing?
Each of the three Moscow parishes attempted to stimulate a

dialogue over the future, and each confronted major challenges and,
often, opposition. In Kochetkov’s case, the conflict centered on the
relationship between his parish and the Church hierarchy and between
two rival visions of Church authority. According to Sergei Averintsev, a
leading philologist and poet and a member of Kochetkov’s parish, the
Church had to overcome its distance from the people; while preserving
its traditions, it had also to make its message understandable to a
population yearning for spiritual meaning. It had to bring directly to them
the spiritual benefits that Orthodoxy offered, in contrast to the doctrines
of historical materialism that the Soviet state had proclaimed.8
While she would recognize little connection between herself and
Kochetkov and would reject such an assertion, Mother Serafima, too,
focused on the psychological problems of Russian society as its primary
issues. The Novodevichy she hoped to rebuild stood in opposition to the
values she saw emerging everywhere in the city. In present-day Russian
society, the two groups at each end of the age spectrum, the elderly and
the young, have experienced the greatest social dislocation, and Mother
Serafima’s mission related particularly to them. But, in addition, she was
concerned with the whole tenor of life and the personal values that are
presently shaping Russian society. The renewal of parish life, she
believed, requires a different set of commitments, including the
rebuilding of “miloserdie,” a concept that, to her, is central to those
commitments.
In contrast both to Kochetkov and Mother Serafima, Fr Maksim
Kozlov believes the Church had to look primarily inward – rather than
outward – at its own traditions and heritage. Fr Maksim signed the 1994
letter of church leaders who voiced strong objections to Kochetkov’s
attempts to modernize the language of the Church.9 Rather than
introducing what Fr Maksim calls “heretical innovations,” he believes
the most important task is to “renew and cleanse the original roots of the
Church” that lie “at the core of our religious life.” Instead of reshaping
these principles to fit present circumstances, Fr Maksim maintains that
the Russian people must first be taught the central teachings of
Orthodoxy which, he argues, are “poorly understood in our society.” The
revival of parish life does not require any specific Church innovations
but rather well trained, committed priests who can help people
understand what the Church had been teaching for centuries. The key to
the future of Christianity and to Russia’s social and moral well being,
according to Fr Maksim, lies in recruiting and educating such priests.
66
Conclusions
The experiences of the three Moscow parishes lead to several

conclusions about the Orthodox Church and its struggle for renewal.
Throughout the first decade after the collapse of the Soviet state, many
observers described Russia as a country sliding gradually but assuredly
into disintegration. There is a more hopeful, countervailing story,
however. During the 1990s, the Church in Russia responded vigorously
to many of the challenges it faced. Seeking to restore Orthodoxy’s
spiritual mission, it has tried to rebuild parish life, restore churches and
monasteries, contribute to rebuilding Russia’s national identity, and
create a new social doctrine. It has supported the governments of both
Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, while seeking to retain an independent
voice. In establishing hospitals, providing food for the hungry, opening
libraries, operating schools, reclaiming its rich spiritual and cultural
heritage, the Church has exhibited a great deal of dynamism. The three
parishes examined here exemplified not lethargy, but vision and energy.
Meanwhile, within the Church hierarchy, pressures for unity and
discipline remained extremely strong. These pressures were particularly
evident in the case of Fr Georgii Kochetkov, whose activities incurred
the wrath of many powerful members of the Church hierarchy and
provoked charges of heresy. The church Kochetkov led attempted to
reach across denominational and national boundaries in order to
strengthen parish life. But the Kochetkov case also challenged the notion
of unity and its discipline. By calling for more independence and greater
parish autonomy, Kochetkov came into direct conflict with the principle
of hierarchical control. His case brought to the forefront the question of
whether the Church would be an institution disciplined from the top or
would be an organic entity, open to change and growth, searching for
new means of expression.
The individuals whose stories are told in this study are all people
who provide a bridge between Russia’s Communist past and its uncertain
future. All of them, having been shaped by that past, have struggled
against parts of it, have sought to reclaim other aspects, and have tried, in
very different ways, to build something new. Their various legacies, if
honored, will serve to strengthen Russia’s moral and religious foundation
and aid in the building of social capital and, hence, of civil society.
67
Burden or Blessing?
Notes
__________________________
1
Metropolitan Kirill (Gundyrev), “Tserkov’ v otnoshenii k obshchestvu v
usloviiakh perestroika,” Zhurnal Moskovskoi Patriarkii, February 1990, 36-37.
2
David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985), 362, 396.
3
“Prikhod, obshchina, bratstvo, tserkov’,” Pravoslavnaia obshchina 3, 9 (1992):
29-30, 32; S. Smirnov, “Storozh! Skol’ko nochi?” Khristianskii vestnik (1997):
57-59; I. B. Eshenbakh, “Teoriia i opyt obshchinnoi zhizni,” Pravoslavnaia
obshchina 1 (1992): 49, 54.
4
Interviews with author, Moscow, 3 June 1995 and 23 June 1997.
5
Interviews with author, Moscow, 6 June 1995 and 25 May 2001.
6
“Domovaia tserkov’,” Tat’ianin Den’, July 1995, 2.
7
Fr Georgii Kochetkov, “Pravoslavnoe bogoslovskoe obrazovanie i
sovremennost’,” Pravoslavnaia obshchina 6, 24 (1994): 95, 99; “Preodolenie
raskola mezhdu svetskim i dukhovnym v cheloveke i obshchestve,”
Pravoslavnaia obshchina 3, 21 (1994): 57; Nikita Struve, Christians in
Contemporary Russia, trans. Lancelot Sheppard and A. Manson, 2nd ed., revised
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967), 31; Nicolas Zernov, The Russian
Religious Renaissance of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper and Row,
1963), 199.
8
Aleksandr Kyrlezhev, “Ponimaet li bog po-russkii? Spor o iazyke
bogosluzheniia,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 21 April 1994, 5.
9
“Tserkov’ protiv modernizma,” Russkii vestnik, 28 February 1994, 9.
68
CHAPTER 10
The Church of the Icon of the Kazan’ Mother of God

on Red Square: A Symbol of Unity for Russian
Society
Brigit Farley, Washington State University and Ann Kleimola, University
of Nebraska
The Church of the Icon of the Kazan’ Mother of God stands near the
northern entrance to Moscow’s Red Square, the city’s historic center. It
is at the edge of Kitai-Gorod, a district once known for its trading rows,
booksellers and icon stalls. The area was also home to churches and
monasteries, government offices and the university, and residences of
both elite and merchant families as well as clergy, government clerks,
and more ordinary urban dwellers. The Red Square area was always a
place where the sacred and the secular, the commercial and the official,
the spiritual and the material interests of Muscovy met, cooperated, and
collided.
The building of the Church of the Icon of the Kazan’ Mother of God
on Red Square both commemorated the Russian victory in the Time of
Troubles and symbolized the renewal of national life. Its dedicatory icon
was a new focus of veneration in Muscovy in the early seventeenth
century. The icon had appeared miraculously in Kazan’ in 1579, but its
cult spread only in the “national liberation” phase of the Time of
Troubles, when the icon became the palladium of Prince Dmitrii
Pozharskii and his contingent from Nizhnii Novgorod. But from the time
of its first appearance in Moscow the icon seemed to be, and was
acknowledged as, miracle-working or wonder-working. After the
liberation of Moscow the icon remained with Pozharskii, who placed it in
a special chapel in his renovated parish church in Lubianka.
The history of the church dedicated to the Kazan’ icon is still
cloudy. According to tradition it was built with funds donated by
Pozharskii, and this version continues as the common explanation. Yet
Pozharskii does not seem to have had any particular association with the
69
Burden or Blessing?
church. He was buried in the family resting-place, the Spaso-Evfim’ev

Monastery in Suzdal’. His will left bequests to 22 monasteries and 15
churches, some in Moscow and Iaroslavl’, but the Kazan’ church is not
mentioned among his beneficiaries, even though the church had been
completed and consecrated several years before his death.
Instead the building of the church seems to be a direct result of royal
patronage, part of an effort to secure the new Romanov dynasty. Tsar
Mikhail, like his predecessors on the throne, built churches to express
gratitude for heavenly assistance in the successful outcome of events
important to the state and the royal house. The timing of the temporary
transfer of the icon to a favorite Romanov church, probably in 1632, and
then the construction of the new church both suggest a connection with
the beginning of the Smolensk war with Poland-Lithuania and the desire
for the icon’s protection.
The new home for the Kazan’ icon was built where Nikol’skaia
Street enters Red Square. The original plan for a single-altar masonry
church was altered to include a side altar or chapel that directly
commemorated the Smuta victory. Kitai-gorod was freed from the Poles
after a decisive Russian attack on 22 October 1612, the feast day of St.
Abercius, bishop of Hieropolis, to whom the side altar was dedicated.
The church was consecrated on 15/16 October 1636, the eve of the fall
holiday of the Kazan’ icon. The church inventory of 1771 notes that the
local row of the iconostas included an icon of the Saviour facing the
venerable Mikhail Malein and the Hieromartyr Feodor of Perge in
Pamphylia, the patron saints of tsar Mikhail and his father, Patriarch
Filaret. The icons in the iconostas had fine silver frames, which testify to
the magnificence of the interior adornment. Following the royal example,
many distinguished families made donations to the church.
For Tsar Mikhail and his family it seemed increasingly clear that the
Kazan’ icon symbolized the protection of the Mother of God not only
over the Russian state, but especially over the new royal dynasty. At the
end of the 1640s Mikhail’s son Aleksei, who shared his father’s and
grandfather’s perception of the church as a focus of family pilgrimage,
added another side altar, the chapel of the Kazan’ miracle-workers Gurii
and Varsonofii. And the birth of Aleksei’s heir, Dmitrii, during the night
of 21-22 October 1648, on the eve of the icon’s holiday, was taken as
new evidence of the special protection of the Queen of Heaven over the
royal dynasty. On the heir’s first birthday Aleksei decreed that
henceforth the holiday would be celebrated in all towns, every year.
From that time widespread reverence for the icon spread throughout
70
A Symbol of Unity for Russian Society
Russia, but remained linked particularly to the Kazan’ church in

Moscow.
The church in Moscow was thus closely tied to the larger society. It
was located amidst government offices, royal menageries, and the herb
gardens of the Pharmacy Chancellery, near the trading rows and the
Lobnoe Mesto, site of public announcements, and near the courts. Just
down the street from the Kazan’ church, right beside the entrance to Red
Square, was the chapel built by the Resurrection Gates in 1669 for
another wonder-working icon, the Iverskaia Mother of God, which also
became a center of popular devotion in Kitai-Gorod. Notations from
numerous guidebooks to Moscow shrines and antiquities, as well as
memoirs, record that the Iverskaia chapel never closed and it was
possible to pray at the wonder-working icon at any time of day or night.
The Iverskaia icon frequently was taken out for prayer services, for visits
to private homes, and for religious processions. The church and the
chapel came to set off a sacred space that adjoined and served
governmental, commercial, and residential areas.
From the beginning the Kazan’ church attracted special attention
from both Muscovites and visitors. Services there were believed to play a
major role in ensuring divine protection for the population. Religious
processions “to the Most Pure Kazan’ [Mother of God]” were considered
“big” processions, with the patriarch and the tsar leading the way from
the Kremlin Dormition Cathedral through the Spasskie gates to the
Lobnoe mesto and then on to the Kazan’ church. At the Lobnoe mesto
small processions were separated off, which with the blessing of the
patriarch went around the walls of Kitai, Belyi, and Zemlianoi goroda.
They subsequently met the patriarch at the end of the liturgy in the
Kazan’ church and returned together to the Dormition cathedral.
Religious processions around the walls, with which all Moscow was
consecrated, continued until 1765, when they were suspended “until
further orders” because the walls were broken or walking was dangerous.
From that time processions marched only from the Kremlin to the
Kazan’ church. Until 1798 the holiday of the icon of the Kazan’ Mother
of God was only a religious celebration. On Oct. 24, 1798, Emperor Paul
ordered it also be a civil holiday, with no explanation except “as a sign of
long-due respect for the day.”
The transfer of the capital to Petersburg probably saved the church
from destruction. Even though the ceremonial use of the Red Square area
expanded in connection with coronations and other public processions,
the imperial insistence on parade spaces remained focused largely on the
71
Burden or Blessing?
northern capital. Over the centuries the church underwent renovation and
reconstruction. After the fire of 1737 its original appearance was lost.
The alterations of 1742-1743 included replacing the wooden roof with
iron. Instead of a tent roof over the west doors they built a bell tower.
The chapel of Gurii and Varsonofii was removed in the second half of
the 18th century, as part of a street-widening project. The Averkii chapel
was renovated in 1825, and the church in 1850. A 1917 guidebook to
Moscow reported that the exterior of the church offered “nothing in
particular.” The interior likewise contained nothing of any age. By the
time of the Revolution the seventeenth-century church was hidden
beneath later layers. Its spiritual legacy, however, had not dimmed.
Despite the close connection between the dynasty and the growth of the
cult of the Kazan’ icon, the church did not achieve its lasting fame as a
Romanov site. Instead it remained a parish church serving a much wider
community, and it retained its primary association with the Smuta,
national liberation, military victory, and the extension of divine favor
over the Russian land.
The year 1917 presaged significant changes in the life of the
Kazan’ church. That year marked the victory of the Bolshevik regime, by
definition an enemy of Old Russia. It also witnessed the beginning of a
fateful association between the church and the man destined to become
the century’s most celebrated restorer, P.D. Baranovskii.
Born in Smolensk region in 1892, Petr Dmitrievich Baranovskii
became devoted to Russian starina as a teenager, when he experienced
an epiphany upon viewing the Church of the Presentation at the nearby
Boldinskii Monastery. Determined to spend his life preserving such
beauty, Baranovskii moved to Moscow and enrolled at the city’s
Archaeological Institute just before World War I. But the events of 1917
cast a shadow on his calling. In its first years the Soviet government
made several moves inimical to cultural preservation, and its leaders
resolved to remove “monuments to the tsars and their deeds without
historical or artistic merit.” But the Central Restorers’ Workshop, with
which P.D. Baranovskii would be affiliated, was authorized to continue
its work. Upon his return from army service in 1918, Baranovskii took
on jobs in Iaroslavl,’ the Solovetskii monastery and the northern Dvina
region. He returned home to establish Russia’s first open-air museum of
architecture at Kolomenskoe in 1922 before beginning work on
prominent Moscow buildings.
The Kazan’ church continued to serve its neighborhood as a
working church, but it had changed so much over the centuries that its
architects would not have recognized it. Dismayed parishioners called on
72
Baranovskii to undertake its restoration. Baranovskii believed that

restoring the church to its l7th-century appearance would reaffirm its
association as a smuta church for a new generation of Muscovites
emerging from their own time of troubles. “Without the past,” he often
said, “there can be no future.” He began work on the church in 1925,
ripping away the 19th-century exterior and touching up what turned out
to be the intact 17th-century core. He had achieved considerable success
by 1928 when representatives of the country’s new leader, Joseph Stalin,
forced him to stop.
The beginnings of the Stalin era augured ill for both Baranovskii
and the Kazan’ church. The five-year plan’s first targets were Moscow’s
monasteries and convents, then parish churches. Ominously, the Kazan’
church’s neighbor, the Iverskaia chapel, perished in this round of
destruction. These developments preceded the announcement of a master
plan for the “socialist reconstruction” of Moscow. After the December
1931 destruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the plan’s
provisions for improved public transport doomed several historic
churches, the venerable Sukharev tower and the 16th-century Kitai-
Gorod wall. Red Square would see the most significant change,
becoming a showcase of socialist achievements and a necropolis for the
regime’s fallen heroes. It would first be widened to serve the anticipated
hordes of demonstrators and Lenin Mausoleum pilgrims, a scheme that
imperiled St. Basil’s Cathedral, the Resurrection Gates, and the Kazan’
cathedral. In late 1930, the press launched an aggressive campaign
against the Gates. A delegation of restorers sought out Lazar
Kaganovich, Stalin’s man in charge of Red Square, to inform him that
the Gates’ removal would fatally distort the area’s aesthetics.
Kaganovich replied famously, “My aesthetic requires the
accommodation of multiple columns of demonstrators, crowding into
Red Square simultaneously to pay homage to the father of the
revolution.” The Gates came down in June.
The future of the Kazan’ church was clouded. It was closed after the
termination of Baranovskii’s restoration and had suffered the loss of its
unloved bell tower in the Militant Atheists’ campaign to silence church
bells. Yet it remained standing. At various times it served as a cafeteria
for metro construction workers, a storage space for the History Museum,
and even a communal apartment building. Throughout this period the
church was always supposed to be the next casualty. But the pace of
reconstruction inexplicably slowed and the church appeared reprieved.
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Burden or Blessing?
Baranovskii was not so lucky. While some colleagues made an

accommodation with the Stalinist assault on the past, Baranovskii
became a one-man crisis team. If he learned that an historic building was
under threat, he tried to forestall its destruction. Buildings, even parts of
buildings, had been moved successfully in America, he told the
authorities. When rumors reached him of the impending demise of St.
Basil’s cathedral, for centuries the most revered structure on Red Square,
he dropped everything to rush to the Mossovet (Moscow City Council)
headquarters. “This scheme is both idiotic and criminal,” he told the
assistant presiding officer. “You can do with me what you wish.” This
impolitic outburst won St. Basil’s an inexplicable reprieve, even as it
guaranteed Baranovskii’s arrest and banishment to a camp in Mariinsk.
Upon his early release in the spring of 1936, Baranovskii returned to
Moscow region. Forbidden to live in the capital, he settled in nearby
Aleksandrov. But he could not stay away from Moscow, where the fate
of the Kazan’ church remained unresolved. On his first visit, he
approached Red Square with trepidation. Cheered by a glimpse of the
church’s silhouette, he quickly realized that his enthusiasm was
premature. On the eve of its tercentenary the Kazan’ church was in a
pitiful state, partially collapsed and doomed. Baranovskii suffered the
cruel indignity of witnessing the purposeful destruction of his best work.
In the years that followed Baranovskii maintained a punishing
schedule, working on restoration projects throughout the USSR. His
activism played a key role in the creation of VOOPIK, the All-Russian
Society for the Preservation of Monuments of History and Culture, one
of the first citizen action groups in Soviet Russia. But he never stopped
thinking about the Kazan’ church. At his 90th birthday celebration, a
failing Baranovskii turned over his Kazan’ archive to O.I. Zhurin, a like-
minded young associate. Both men understood that Zhurin would use it
to rebuild the church if conditions ever permitted.
The rise of Gorbachev in 1985 offered hope. Talk of “perestroika”
of Russian society led to extensive discussion of the “perestroika” of
Moscow itself. Leading newspapers, notably Moskovskaia Pravda,
devoted several articles per week to historic streets and buildings,
acquainting Muscovites with what they had lost. Inevitably popular
attention focused on Red Square. Zhurin and other Baranovskii friends
gradually came to believe that they had a chance.
Their task would not be easy. The leadership of the Lenin Museum
also had plans. In December 1986 the director showed a journalist the
blueprint for an extension that would co-opt the entire space between 25
October street and Revolution Square. All buildings on the block would
74
be rebuilt or restored to reflect their original appearance and linked to the

expanded Museum. The extension was to be completed in 1995, in time
for V.I. Lenin’s 125th birthday.
Members of the Kazan’ church committee knew the score: if the
Lenin Museum succeeded, there would be no hope of reconstruction.
Early in 1987, led by the noted scientist I.V. Petrianov, they
brainstormed a campaign. With neither official sanction nor disposable
income, they relied on social capital. In Moscow S.V. Korolev organized
hundreds of Muscovites to deluge the city and federal governments with
letters requesting permission to restore the church. Other groups handed
out leaflets describing the project. The Moscow VOOPIK staged
“Baranovskii evenings,” highlighting the role of the Kazan’ church in the
life of Moscow.
The political climate increasingly came to favor the Kazan’ backers.
Gorbachev urged the country to remember its past, while the press
continued to highlight the damage inflicted upon Moscow’s historic core.
By 1989 even the venerable Mossovet acknowledged that previous plans
for the capital were no longer viable. A moral and spiritual renaissance
would be required for a truly “reconstructed” citizenry, and that could
only begin with the regeneration of historic Moscow, first and foremost
its old churches.
Once the Lenin Museum extension lost favor, Petrianov and
Korolev decided to secure official sanction. In early 1989, Petrianov’s
scientific renown gained him access to V.A. Medvedev, head of the
ideological division of the CPSU Central Committee, who had
jurisdiction over Red Square. Petrianov scored a major coup for the
Kazan’ project when he casually unveiled a portrait of the church as it
looked in the 17th century and told its eventful story. “Medvedev could
not hide his amazement at the history of this church,” Petrianov recalled
later. “He seemed stunned by it; he examined it from every angle and
asked many questions. “The fate of the Lenin museum did not come up,
but Petrianov believed that he and Medvedev “understood each other
perfectly.”
A few weeks later, the Moscow VOOPIK received permission to
start restoring the Kazan’ church. The committee quickly began the
essential task of raising the necessary funds, constructing a symbolic
wooden chapel and requesting donations. Money poured in from
throughout the country, mostly in small increments. Presently the
Moscow city government joined the bandwagon. Impressed by the
75
Burden or Blessing?
obvious popularity of the initiative, it pledged financing to offset any

shortfalls.
In November 1990 the city witnessed the laying of the church
cornerstone by Patriarch Aleksii II. Zhurin immediately went to work,
making full use of the Baranovskii archive. He finished in time for the
celebration of the winter Kazan’ feast day in November 1993 and
watched President Yeltsin and Patriarch Aleksii II preside over the
consecration of his handiwork. Truly, Moscow had resurrected its shrine.
The citizens who resurrected the Kazan’ church had a clear idea of
the significance of their achievement. They spoke of a triumph for justice
over injustice, of light overcoming darkness, of Holy Moscow’s victory
over another infidel invader. They waxed rhapsodic about a partial return
of sorok sorokov, the Moscow of countless golden-domed churches. And
they recalled Baranovskii, the spiritual father of the resurrected church.
However, a decade later its meaning for a new generation is uncertain.
Will it resume its former role as a smuta church, perhaps becoming the
physical foundation of a new Russian patriotism? Will it be viewed as a
testament to the power of an engaged citizenry? Or is it doomed to be the
backdrop of endless Kodak moments? These are the questions that will
inform the next chapter of the history of the Kazan’ church – and of
Russia.
76
CHAPTER 11
Orthodox Yarmarki as a Form of Civic Engagement

Inna Naletova, Boston University
Today one can say without doubt that the old image of the Orthodox
Church as an institution drawing people away from social participation
does not reflect reality. In spite of decades of forced passivity, the church
is involved today in a wide range of civic initiatives. Even though the
Orthodox tradition emphasizes prayer and sacraments rather than
community life, Orthodox believers are not necessarily socially
withdrawn. Several studies conducted in recent years show that Orthodox
Christians are actively engaged in the life of local communities and are
concerned about social and economic processes in the country. There is a
noticeable positivism in their attitude toward traditional forms of
collective action, such as street festivals, public celebrations of state and
national holidays, and community projects. Through personal contact and
participation they influence their neighbors’ attitudes toward nature,
work, and community.
An example of this is the Orthodox yarmarka (fair) movement.
These fairs are places of exchange for goods and services that relate in
some way to Orthodox life in Russia today. But yarmarki are about more
than just trade, they provide a meeting place between different social
realms. As such, they have an important potential for establishing cross-
religious and cross-cultural bridges. Moreover, they show the civic and
cultural power of Orthodoxy and its ability to work outside the church’s
institutional framework. Finally, they also demonstrate an interest on the
part of the “outside” world to have religious beliefs openly present in the
public arena.
Such Orthodox fairs are not a new phenomenon. Fairs had been held
in St. Petersburg in the early 20th century, but ceased to exist after the
Revolution. The roots of this tradition can be traced back to the 13th
century, however, when the first rural fairs emerged at the intersection of
main roads, near city walls and monasteries. The fairs re-emerged at the
beginning of the 1990s. The range of products presented at an Orthodox
77
Burden or Blessing?
yarmarka spreads far beyond the typical objects of the church service.
One can find there various preserves, vegetables, homemade cheese, and
even beer and wine. Products from the villages are also available, along
with gardening tools, blankets, samovars, and many other items whose
connection to Orthodoxy is far from obvious. Everything offered for sale
at these fairs is connected in some way, however, to monasteries and
churches or to Orthodox tradition, history, or social life. The products
may also simply have been “blessed,” “approved by the church,” “made
by believers,” or even “passed through Orthodox hands.”
Today Orthodox fairs are a movement of national scale with a core
of regular participants, a recognizable set of symbols, and their own
civic/cultural traditions. These include rewarding the best participants
and giving donations for the poor and sick. They are also utilized to
promote educational, cultural and other civic activities. For example,
many activities are promoted and advertised at yarmarki, with many
materials and announcements posted on the walls inviting visitors to take
part in pilgrimages, church processions, building and restoration projects
and even summer camps.
Also of significance is the fact that the process of economic
exchange at the fairs serves the purpose of communication, dialogue, and
cultural exchange. Yarmarki offer to visitors an opportunity to learn
about the church, but in a very informal way, as visitors can engage in
conversations with priests, monks and nuns in a comfortable
environment, and there is no pressure for visitors to become Orthodox or
even believers of any other faith. One can freely come and go and take
an interest in the religious life of the yarmarka or stay indifferent to it. In
this way, the secular and sacred realms of society are able to
communicate with each other not as aliens or enemies, but as neighbors
and fellow-citizens.
Religious Practices at Yarmarki
Religious practices at Orthodox fairs are neither suppressed nor

concealed, and this is so despite the fact that the fairs take place in
secular settings, such as exhibition halls, outdoor markets, and cultural
centers. Working at the fairs, priests, nuns, and monks are their
traditional attire; priests in their brightly colored church garments with
crosses, nuns and monks in their long, black robes. Women parishioners
have their heads covered with kerchiefs, their dresses decorated in
traditional designs, an unusual sight in a city context. At the center of the
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Orthodox Yarmarki
market hall, a priest conducts prayer at the beginning and end of the fair.
The opening ceremony often culminates with a procession around the
market while participants are blessed with holy water.
While selling their products, sellers like to learn about customers’
needs and interests, and they may offer their customers a prayer to use or
an icon to buy. Also, in a friendly conversation, they might suggest to
visit a sacred place, to talk to an experienced priest, and even to visit an
elder. An important form of communication at the fair is the writing of
notes requesting prayer services. Customers may request prayers to be
performed by priests or by brothers and sisters in a certain monastery, in
front of a specific icon, at a particular time, and for a particular occasion.
There could be made specific requests related to the circumstances of
one’s life, for example prayers for love, for increased wisdom, for those
traveling by air or sea, etc. Prayers can also be read against alcohol
addiction, against thieves, and even against insects in the house.
Quite frequently one can see priests at fairs performing blessings
and anointments, and even in some cases accepting confessions. Several
times a day short prayers are read in response to customers’ requests with
the focus on their specific concerns. These practices are adjusted to the
market situation and require less concentration and less time than the
practices performed in churches, yet they are more individual, situational
and responsive to the neophytes’ sense of faith and also more sensitive to
a religiosity hidden in national traditions and customs.
An impression might be created that religious practices performed at
the fairs are “new,” “non-traditional,” or “unchurchly,” i.e. they deviate
from canonical norms. This is not true, however, as similar practices are
performed during Orthodox pilgrimages, church processions and other
occasions in which believers gather outside the church and the religious
tradition enters the public sphere.
Orthodox fairs are also known for wonder-working icons brought
there from monasteries and churches. The icon of Donskaya Mother of
God, for example, was brought to a Moscow yarmarka from the
Tretiyakov Gallery in 2003. Kept in the museum for several decades, it
was finally returned to believers, though only for a few days. The line of
people waiting their turn to venerate the icon did not cease during the
whole week of the yarmarka’s activity.
Every monastery or parish community brings for sale objects
representing their local religious tradition. These might be bottles filled
with blessed oil or water taken from holy springs, or even stones
collected from the top of saints’ graves. One can buy photographs of
famous priests and elders, records with their voices, and books about
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Burden or Blessing?
miracles happening near their graves. The objects of veneration might

not be always accepted in the common church veneration, yet they do not
contradict church practices but instead contribute to a common message,
offering an enriched sense of holiness.
Business Ethics
In order to see the specific features of the ethical environment created by

Orthodox fairs, one has to keep in mind the country’s grime social and
economic situation in which the fairs have emerged. Russian society
throughout the 1990s, as economists have described it, was depressed,
lacking solidarity, humanity, tolerance and trust, and having a weak
ability for self-organization and suffering from the predominance of a
narrowly utilitarian outlook. The economic reforms led people to the
expectation that they would always be tricked, and this created a
situation of extreme individualism and social irresponsibility. The market
turned into a political fight between mafia groups, and property was
perceived as nothing but theft.
Nevertheless, an ancient form of trade organization such as the
Orthodox fairs was able to gain popularity and compete with modern city
markets. The qualities that became most important for the fairs’ success
were a direct personal communication between producers and customers,
strong emphasis on the natural, village-type and hand-made products,
stress on national and cultural traditions, and the possibility to practice
Orthodoxy openly and publicly.
Many small and medium-sized business organizations are willing to
participate in the Orthodox fairs, but not everyone can use the authority
of the church to promote one’s business. A certain level of public
recognition is necessary to become a regular participant at a fair.
Trust is a distinctive feature of Orthodox fairs, and is supported by a
combination of two factors: relation to the church (the institution
perceived in Russia as having a high degree of trust), and the absence of
middlemen, since products are sold there by the producers themselves.
Communication and an atmosphere of respect also create a rich
potential for networking. The fairs help beginners to promote their
business, to get acquainted with colleagues and customers, and to
familiarize themselves with the market situation. Coming to the fair,
businessmen do not always expect to earn a significant profit, rather they
try to use the chance to make their products known to people and
establish a circle of clients. The fairs’ extensive cultural program
80
Orthodox Yarmarki
(particularly consultations with Orthodox specialists from different

fields) fits into the business context. Orthodox fairs can also be seen as
the religious world’s response to the need of modern individuals for
communication, for simply having someone to talk to and to share one’s
feelings with in a comfortable and friendly environment.
Mutual help is also promoted at the fairs, as people are encouraged
to care for the religious, cultural, and social needs of others. Nuns and
monks there carry donation caps. Large monasteries help smaller ones to
rent space at the market, while companies help local churches collect
money for reconstruction work. Meanwhile, city sponsors assist
provincial participants in exhibiting their products. It is usual for
participants to stay during the fair not in hotels but in churches or with
friends.
Since many of the fairs’ participants have to travel long distances to
attend yarmarki, they are performing a kind of pilgrimage. The
opportunity to visit historical sites changes the lives of the people who
otherwise have little chance to see the world. The map of business
contacts overlaps with that of sacred places and pilgrim roads. The spirit
of entrepreneurship connects Russia’s regions to each other. Regions
develop their unique local qualities and a sense of inter-Orthodox
connectedness in which the communities from the former Soviet Union,
Serbia, Greece, and even the United States are included.
Conclusion
Orthodox yarmarki are neither a coperation of business partners, nor a

well-organized structure like a department store. It is neither a bazaar,
nor a spontaneous gathering. It has little in common with groups of
formal membership, like clubs or parties. Rather, it is a broad cultural
and civic movement based on a sense of religious and national belonging
and a common cultural background. It is a movement of Orthodox
believers from all over the country willing to participate in a civilized
type of economic exchange in cooperation with business organizations
from outside the sphere of the church’s direct influence. To be a part of
church-oriented society is an important motivation to engage in an
Orthodox fair – more important than the motivation to gain profit.
Orthodox fairs have managed not only to survive in the modern
economy, but also to revive a traditional mode of economic exchange
and to offer to modern Russia an alternative system of business relations.
The rising popularity of the fairs during recent years, including their
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Burden or Blessing?
expansion from the capital to the provinces and their successful

development in different spheres of the economy – not to mention their
expressive religious atmosphere – together demonstrates the need in
modern society for such an alternative, church-based economic space.
Orthodox fairs also form a civic movement in the modern economy and
beyond. The movement is inspired by the need to organize an economic
environment based on civilized, cultured relations between people,
relations guided by religious values, cultural traditions, and ethical
principles.
At Orthodox yarmarki, the elements of piety and beauty and
practicality and profitability come close to each other. The realms of the
religious and the secular thus overlap, their boundaries become merged.
This environment spreads beyond the sphere of the economy. The fair’s
participants and visitors are involved not only in business exchange, but
also in exchange in a cultural and religious sense. Non-believers have a
chance to better know believers, while the latter (including those who
have chosen the monastic life) have to find a common language with
those who never go to church.
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CHAPTER 12
The Orthodox Church Seeks to Place Itself in Russian

Society
Philip Walters, Keston Institute
The Russian Orthodox Church is seeking to place itself in Russian

society. It is anxious to be where it wants to be or feels it should
naturally be, while avoiding being placed somewhere by others at their
choice. This study focuses on the Basic Social Concept of the Russian
Orthodox Church (hereafter, the Social Concept), adopted by the ROC in
2000. The Social Concept affirms a desire to engage with the world, but
this is constantly questioned in the text. The Social Concept is in fact
defensive in tone, in terms of defending a community; but it fails
adequately to define that community. I argue that this failure is
symptomatic of the existential crisis currently facing the ROC.
The predominant theme in the Social Concept is that contemporary
society is degraded as the result of the rise of irreligious individualism.
The Social Concept does argue for the uniqueness and dignity of the
individual; but this is subordinate to the main aim, which is the
protection of traditional identity (variously and inconclusively defined)
through resistance to globalization, liberalization and secularization.
The Church’s Place in Society, the State, and the Nation
The Social Concept sees the main goal of the ROC as religious and
moral and educational work, as a unifying and reconciling power in
society. In 1991, the ROC enjoyed the support of 75 percent of Russia’s
population – 2.3 times the percentage defining themselves as religious
believers. In 2002 62 percent of the population placed confidence in the
ROC, higher than the percentage accorded to state institutions, the mass
media, trade unions or political parties.
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Burden or Blessing?
The ROC continues to say that it does not want to become a “state
church” again. However, it seems that it has difficulty envisaging itself
fulfilling its responsible role in society without the support of state
structures, and cooperation agreements have been signed between the
ROC and various Russian national ministries. The section “The Church
and the State” in the Social Concept does not discuss the principle of
separation of church and state, and it may well be difficult for the ROC
fully to embrace this concept.
Even though the ROC is not involved in politics, politicians of all
kinds are nevertheless all too ready to use the ROC and its symbols in
support of their own programs. This tendency is reinforced,
paradoxically, by the extremely secularized nature of Russian society.
More Russian citizens claim to be members of the ROC than say they
believe in God. Given this faith vacuum the ROC today is very
vulnerable to appropriation for a variety of nonreligious ends, chiefly by
nationalist, chauvinist and protectionist groupings.
According to Orthodox doctrine, Orthodox churches are “local”;
that is, they serve a particular geographical area. The Orthodox Churches
have tended to become identified with particular nation-states; according
to Orthodox doctrine, however, maintaining that ecclesiastical
jurisdiction is determined ethnically rather than territorially constitutes
the heresy of “phyletism.” Does the ROC today see its religious
constituency in terms of an ethnic community or in terms of the people
(or peoples) living in a particular geographical area? The answer seems
to be that while there is pressure from “Orthodox” nationalists, the ROC
itself thinks primarily in terms of its “canonical territory.”
Others in Russia, however, seek to define Orthodoxy as a traditional
religion in terms which imply a systematic local association with
ethnicity. In Belgorod oblast’, for example, located in southern central
Russia, the home of traditional peasant piety, most Orthodox clergy
subscribe to the old tsarist formula for the ideal state structure:
“Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and National Identity.”
Defense of “Diversity” – But of What Kind?
The Social Concept, inter alia, undertakes a defence of the concept of

“diversity.” That it should do so seems counterintuitive. But what kind of
“diversity” do the authors of the Social Concept have in mind? The idea
of “diversity in danger” is particularly developed in the section of the
Social Concept dealing with international relations and globalization,
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The Church Seeks to Place Itself
which in the eyes of the Moscow Patriarchate is a secularizing

neocolonial agenda which will impose an unacceptable uniformity, based
on materialist consumerism.
There is an irony here: the “American” system thinks of itself as
nothing if not pluralistic and favouring individual self-realization; but the
Moscow Patriarchate perceives the “globalising” agenda as leading
inevitably to the erasure of all differences. However, the “diversity”
defended by the Social Concept is not diversity at the level of the
individual. The Social Concept calls for “efforts to protect the identity of
nations and other human communities.”
In the Social Concept the “uniqueness of personality” and the
“dignity of the human person” are asserted. However, these phrases are
absent from the sections dealing with the nation, the state and other
traditional concerns. Moreover, the discussion is not couched positively,
in terms such as “human rights,” but negatively: the individual is seen as
needing to be protected against an expanding godless civilization.
Incidentally, it should be noted that the Social Concept criticizes the
concept of “freedom of conscience,” which is seen as a symptom of
“society’s loss of religious aims and values, of mass apostasy and de
facto indifference to the activity of the Church and to victory over sin.”
This kind of understanding of “freedom of conscience” must raise
questions about the attitide of the ROC to a multiconfessional state.
Diversity is asserted, then, not at the level of the individual but at
the level of some form of community with its own coherent moral
structure. In the wake of September 11th, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk
spoke of the need for “a transition to the peaceful coexistence of various
value systems – religious, philosophical, cultural. There are many such
systems in the world… it cannot be permitted that only one of them
should dominate and be considered ‘pan-human’… .”
What, Then, is the Nature of the Desired Community?
It is not clear what kind of community represents the ideal for the ROC.
What is its size? What boundaries does it coincide with? Cultural?
Ethnic? Territorial? Denominational? All these definitions of the desired
community are invoked throuhout the Social Concept, frequently as if
they were synonymous and interchangeable.
The Social Concept and Russian Orthodox spokesmen frequently
refer to “cultures,” sometimes assigned to “various social groups” or
seen as determined by the historical period in which they are formed, but
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Burden or Blessing?
sometimes referred to as “national cultures.” Is, then, the nation the chief
repository of culture and therefore the community which is to be
defended, despite the fact that phyletism is a heresy? In the Social
Concept, the section on the nation comes second only to the introduction;
and the document does indeed seem to identify “local” churches with
nations: “The Orthodox Church, though universal, consists of many
Autocephalous National Churches.”
Nevertheless, the section ends with the rejection of nationalistic
excesses, and we have already seen that the ROC is not anxious to
identify itself too closely with Russian nationalists and does not claim
that the Russian Orthodox faith is exclusively for ethnic Russians. The
conclusion must be that the message of the Social Concept about the
relationship between Orthodoxy and national identity is confusing.
According to the Social Concept, in the world today the word
“nation” can mean either “an ethnic community” or “the aggregate
citizens of a particular state.” The Social Concept deploys both
meanings. As noted earlier, the ROC seems to want to avoid identifying
itself with a nationalist and chauvinist agenda, and (when objecting to
“proselytising,” for example) speaks in terms of “canonical territory.” It
would thus appear to be thinking of itself as the natural spiritual home
for all citizens of the Russian Federation rather than for ethnic Russians
alone. Nevertheless, the point remains ambiguous, as in passages such as
the following: “when a nation, in civic or ethnic terms, is fully or mainly
a mono-confessional Orthodox community, it may, in a certain sense, be
regarded as a community united by faith – as an Orthodox people”
(italics added).
The Russian Federation is home not only to a large number of
different nationalities but to a wide range of religious confessions. What
is the attitude of the ROC to this religious plurality? The ROC
champions the rights of “traditional religions” in Russia, and by these it
usually means Russian Orthodoxy, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism Some
clearly think of these ‘traditional religions’ in terms of their being
associated with a particular area (or areas) of “traditional compact
settlement” of their adherents. One suspects, however, that this is not the
main criterion, which would seem to be that so-called “traditional”
religions are in fact those that present no threat to each other. When we
hear the word “traditional” we should in fact think “non-competitive.”
The ROC fears proselytising or sheep-stealing, and particularly by neo-
Protestants and Roman Catholics. It is indicative that the denominations
the ROC feels happiest to live with are all non-Christian ones.
86
According to the Social Concept, “While respecting the worldview

of non-religious people and their right to influence social processes, the
Church cannot favor a world order that puts in the center of everything
the human personality darkened by sin… the Church seeks to assert
Christian values in the process of decision-making on the most important
public issues both on national and international levels.” The full pathos
of this passage becomes apparent when one considers that many in the
ROC consider a whole swathe of Protestant denominations as harmful
sects which might even come under the heading “non-religious”; it seems
that in the Social Concept the word Christian means, implicitly,
Orthodox.
How does the ROC believe that the “problem of proselytising,” as it
sees it, is to be resolved? According to Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk,
by “basing mission on the fundamental principle of early Christian
ecclesiology: the principle of the local church. This stipulates that the
church in a given place shall be fully responsible for its people before
God.” Once again, however, the implications remain ambiguous. In the
case of Russia, is it only the ROC which is the “local church,” or do
other Christian denominations share this responsibility too? Metropolitan
Kirill goes on to imply that they might – “missionary efforts from abroad
should be made in each place as support and assistance to the local
church or local churches” (italics added) – but the practical experience
of many non-Orthodox denominations in Russia during the 1990s would
give them ample grounds for believing that the answer is basically “no.”
The ROC and Internal Pluralism
I argue that lack of clarity in ROC utterances about the nature of the
community to be defended basically arises out of the failure of the ROC
to address the concept and consequences of religious pluralism, and that
one reason why it has failed to do so is that pluralism within the ROC
itself is discouraged. The ROC is run centrally by the Moscow
Patriarchate, and within that by the Holy Synod, which is in turn
organized by the so-called “Small Synod” – the patriarch and the four
metropolitans resident in Moscow. Thus it is that the real power to take
decisions in the name of the whole church rests in the hands of a four-
man informal body. The imposition of central control in the church is a
response to a feared lack of unanimity, and underlying this is fear of
schism in the church.
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Burden or Blessing?
Until 2000, the highest authority in the ROC was theoretically the
“Local Council” (Pomestny Sobor), a large assembly bringing together
bishops, priests and laypeople. Enthusiasts for a Local Council invoke
the Council of 1917-18, the last to be held before the Bolsheviks came to
power, and which took many decisions on church life including the
restoration of the Patriarchate. At the Bishops’ Council (Arkhiyereisky
Sobor) of 2002, however, the assembled prelates decided that Bishops’
Councils would henceforth be the ROC’s highest decision-making body.
Important issues affecting church life are thus no longer to be submitted
to open debate by representatives of the whole church membership. It is
also significant to note that it was the Bishops’ Council of 2000 which
promulgated the Social Concept.
What Happened to Sobornost’?
The doctrine of sobornost’ was developed by certain Russian Orthodox

thinkers from the 1840s. It is based on the insight that human social
relationships are analogous to the relationship amongst the three Persons
of the Trinity. It has been explicated as “individual diversity in free
unity.” It is also translated as “conciliarity,” and has been invoked in the
context of calls for the convening of a Local Council as a distinctively
Orthodox organ. Orthodoxy, it is said, resists the vertical authority
structure of the Roman Catholic church, and, likewise the horizontal,
individualistic pietism of the Protestant church.
One feature of the Social Concept is particularly puzzling.
Sobornost’ would appear to be an obvious and potentially very useful
conceptual tool to use in the shaping of an Orthodox social doctrine. Yet
no reference is made to it. Why should this be? One reason would seem
to be that the authors of the Social Concept felt it inopportune to give
prominence to a doctrine which endorses the legitimacy of the Local
Council the ROC seems to have decided never to convene. A deeper
explanation, however, lies in the very fear of pluralism and schism
referred to above.
There are various different interpretations of the implications of
sobornost’. According to most Orthodox theologians, conciliarity is
ultimately hierarchical. The three Persons of the Trinity are interrelated
in a way which is the model of conciliarity, but nevertheless the Father
presides, as the origin of Trinitarian life; the Son and Spirit are like his
two hands.
88
In the 1920s, the schismatic Renovationist movement in the ROC

was to a large extent a movement of the lower (“white”) clergy seeking
to take church leadership from the higher monastic (“black”) clergy. In
this endeavour they sought to reinterpret sobornost’ in terms of collective
decision-making at the clergy level. The experience of the Renovationist
schism caused deep trauma in the ROC and its spectre continues to haunt
the hierarachy today.
The 1917-18 Council of the ROC included not only “black” and
“white” clergy but laypeople, too. In Russia today there are numerous lay
political and social movements which claim to be Orthodox in
inspiration; some of them are “owned” by the ROC. Yet there is fear
among the hierachy about pressure for democratization within the
church. Again, the concept of sobornost’ is invoked. Some theologians
argue that Khomyakov’s sobornost’ was modelled on rural peasant
collectives, and that lay representation at Council level is an aberration,
creating the impression that the laity have different interests than clergy.
In exile in the 1930s, Nikolai Berdyayev, Fedor Stepun, and others
developed a type of Orthodox personalism, interpreting sobornost’ to
emphasize individual freedom and creativity, so that the concept was
opposed to “impersonal collectivity.” This was in line with contemporary
Existentialism and in response to the sweeping collectivistic conformity
of Bolshevik Russia.
At the other extreme, sobornost’ is invoked by churchmen and
laypeople alike in Russia today who are opposed to “Western”
individualism. The conservative and chauvinist Metropolitan Ioann of St.
Petersburg (who died in 1994) held that “the honeyed lie of ‘pluralism’
and ‘freedom’ … conceals within itself a deadly poison that destroys the
spirit of conciliarism (sobornost’) of the Russian people as well as the
power of the State.” The leader of the Communist Party, Gennady
Zyuganov, has argued that “Russia is the keeper of the ancient spiritual
tradition: its fundamental values are sobornost’ (collectivism), the
supreme power of the State, sovereignty, and the goal of implementing
the highest ‘heavenly’ ideals of justice and brotherhood in earthly
reality.” He thus unites within a single sentence phrases imbued with
religious meaning, words taken from the vocabulary of nationalists and
key words from communist jargon.
Russia: A De Facto Pluralist Religious Environment
A prevalent assumption in ROC discourse is that Russian history and

culture have been shaped exclusively by Orthodoxy. The reality is rather
89
Burden or Blessing?
more complex: one has only to recall the role of Lutherans and
Lutheranism in Russian public life since the sixteenth century. What is
indisputable, however, is that the Russian religious landscape today is
increasingly pluralistic. To highlight just one development, in Siberia
and the Far East Protestant denominations are proliferating.
The Social Concept contains no sections dealing with pluralism,
civil society or ecumenism. In my view the ROC cannot deal coherently
with these and similar issues because its impliict understanding of the
nature of “the Church” makes this impossible. Throughout the Social
Concept and other discourse by the ROC one is constantly aware of the
presence of the “default” understanding that in Russia “the Church”
means “the Russian Orthodox Church.”
In the words of one commentator in 2000, “In principle Orthodoxy
cannot consent to play the role of just one component in a global
postmodern system and submit to its ideology: this is against the spirit of
the Church…” Symptomatic is the ROC’s concern about “proselytising,”
which cannot be an issue in open civil societies, where democracy, with
its “organised uncertainty,” is based on citizenship rather than national
identity and tested by its attitude to minorities.
The Social Concept is the first effort by an Orthodox Church to
articulate its position and role in society, and as such to be welcomed,
but it seems to me that its major weakness is a failure to recognise the
fact that the ROC is just one element in an increasingly pluralizing
society.
90
CHAPTER 13
Religiosity, Politics, and the Formation of Civil

Society in Multinational Russia
James Warhola, University of Maine
The connection in Russia between the formation of a civil society, the

country’s multinational character, and religion is exceedingly complex.
Each of these issues is multifaceted, and since each represents a major
dimension of Russian identity, that complexity is only compounded.
Concern for the political unity and stability of post-Soviet Russia had
been a persisting theme. Yet aside from the doleful yet exceptional case
of Chechnya, the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation now
appears quite solid. What role has religion played in Russia in this
regard? And what of the connection between religion and the formation
of civil society and democracy in post-totalitarian Russia?
President Putin offered revealing commentary during a visit to the
Solovetsky Monastery in August of 2001. There he remarked on the role
of religion in multinational Russia, in which the principle of equality of
all nationalities:
must be made the backbone of Russia’s domestic and foreign

policies. “God has saved all nations,” Metropolitan Illarion once
said. If so, all nations are equal in the eyes of God. This simple truth
has been the nucleus of the Russian state system, making it possible
to build a strong multi-ethnic state.
Evidence shows that these sentiments enjoy a broad base of popular

support. This is all the more remarkable given the seven decades of
concerted state-sponsored efforts to eliminate religion from Russia. But
do these sentiments translate into a firm base for the emergence of civil
society? Inasmuch as the religious aspect of civil society was perhaps the
domain in which Soviet totalitarianism most directly attacked traditional
91
Burden or Blessing?
Russian society, religion may likewise now be the key to the

entrenchment of civil society.
Identity, Religiosity, and Civil Society
Although the predominant locus of religious identity in Russia is with

Russian Orthodoxy, this identification does not necessarily possess a
theological or even religious character. Sociologists Furman and
Kaariainen explain that:
Eighty-two percent of all Russian respondents called themselves

Orthodox…. This shows that the number of Orthodox is much
greater than the number of believers (42 percent). Fifty percent of
nonbelievers called themselves Orthodox and 42 percent of atheists
did the same…. it is clear that such “ideological” Orthodoxy has
only a very indirect relation to religious faith.1
This seemingly incongruous blend of characteristics regarding identity is

nonetheless consistent with Russia having the lowest level of attendance
at worship services of any country in Europe. While the proportion of
religious believers has increased significantly, attendance at worship
services has increased much less.
Nikolas Gvosdev has discerned an important connection between
President Putin’s regime of “managed pluralism” and the role of religion,
particularly Russian Orthodoxy, in Russia’s identity. This connection
occurs within a social context characterized by a rather tolerant,
accepting spirit that is very much consistent with the norms of civil
society. Anti-Islamic sentiments are not particularly widespread in the
Russian Federation, despite the Chechen conflict, the USSR’s
involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and the highly selective but
substantial engagement of Russia with the Bush administration’s “war on
terrorism.” Research by Furman and Kaariainen indicate that over 60
percent of the population of Russia expresses a “good” or “very good”
assessment of Islam, despite an “Orthodox consensus” of values and
identity across nationality groups and across religious orientations. Other
religious groups tend to be either positively assessed or are regarded
rather neutrally. Recent sociological data suggest that an attitudinal basis
for civil society in Russia exists regarding religious tolerance and
acceptance. Some religious groups (such as Baptists or Jehovah’s
92
Religiosity, Politics, and the Formation of Civil Society
Witnesses) tend to be viewed negatively by the public, but this does not
necessarily signify a culture of intolerance or religious disrespect.
The connections among religion, ethnicity, and the emergence of
civil society in Russia are highly complex. In assessing them, therefore,
it is useful to distinguish between positive and negative aspects.
The Positive
Russia is generally characterized by religious freedom. In terms of the

broad sweep of Russian history, there is a greater plane of religious
freedom today than ever before, except perhaps the period from 1991–
1997. That era culminated in passage of the “Law on Freedom of
Conscience and Religious Association” in October 1997, which some
view as a legal foundation for governmental interference. Indeed the year
2003 witnessed governmental treatment of religious matters that would
almost certainly not have happened in a Western democracy: the
expulsion of a Roman Catholic bishop and four priests, the restriction
and/or expulsion of several scores of religious workers, etc. The U.S.
State Department’s Annual Report on Human Rights was critical of
numerous violations of religious liberties, although that report was
disputed by the Russian government. Perhaps most importantly,
however, these cases do not reflect an anti-religious disposition of the
political regime that is specific to an ethno-religious group, nor do they
represent the same magnitude of challenge to religious freedom posed by
either the Soviet or the tsarist regimes.
Furthermore, a “stabilized” religiosity has emerged in Russia. Far
from being politicized in a manner that would directly threaten civil
authority’s claim to sovereignty or threaten national unity, religion in
Russia appears to be having the large-scale effect of reinforcing a sense
of civic unity. Furman and Kaariainen further argue that this
“stabilization” has been simultaneous with a political stabilization, with
the two trends integrally connected. Although one could dispute their
finer points, the fact is that with the obvious and important exception of
Chechnya, Russia has largely avoided inter-communal (ethnic or
religious) violence, fragmentation, and religious warfare.
This stabilization is also characterized by a remarkably high level of
public trust in religious institutions, particularly the Russian Orthodox
Church. In and of itself this does not indicate the emergence of a civil
93
Burden or Blessing?
society, but if religious institutions embrace and foster the values

essential for a civil society, and those institutions are deeply trusted and
respected, then the prospect of those values being further entrenched is
obviously enhanced.
An ecumenical spirit regarding tolerance and acceptance of others’
faiths is also in evidence, although one might call it “hegemonic
ecumenism” by the Russian Orthodox Church. This spirit also generally
manifests itself in a willingness to work with the leadership and
followers of other faiths for the common good. The Second Inter-
Religion Peace-Building Forum in Moscow (2-4 March 2004) is
emblematic of this spirit. President Putin noted the significance of the
forum for fostering a harmonious spirit among the various nationalities
and religious groups of the region, as did (then) Foreign Minister Ivanov.
The formation of the new Interreligious Council of CIS may well
augment this ecumenical spirit and indirectly contribute to the
strengthening of civil society. Some have dismissed or minimized such
activities as reminiscent of the ostensibly church-sponsored “peace
movements” of the USSR but the evidence can be interpreted otherwise.
It would seem that an institution with the deep well of citizens’ public
trust and goodwill such as that held by the Russian Orthodox Church
might in fact have a decisive influence on the overall social climate
regarding the maintenance of inter-ethnic and inter-confessional peace.
Conversely, such a widely respected and trusted institution could have an
immensely powerful influence on the population in terms of fostering a
spirit of animosity. Fortunately, the Orthodox Church and other major
religious institutions have chosen the former path, and if the population’s
high level of trust and respect for the Church is because of that stance,
then that speaks very well for the mass psychology regarding the
strengthening of civil society. Finally, recent surveys also reveal an
ecumenical and civic spirit by Protestants toward their Orthodox co-
believers.
Another positive aspect is that Russian political leaders consistently
emphasize the importance of religion as a source of social and political
virtues. This is obviously a complete reversal from the Soviet period, and
is done even by leaders of the Communist Party. While emphasizing the
principle of a secular state, politicians of nearly every political camp
have been remarkably similar in their public pronouncements on the
positive, socially constructive influences of religion. Perhaps this is
political opportunism, as they are keenly aware of the public’s
overwhelmingly positive disposition toward the Orthodox Church. But in
any case their public declarations of support for the higher principles of
94
civility embedded in the major religious traditions of Russia would seem

to augur well for the entrenchment of civil society regardless of short-
term political motives.
Finally, ethnic conflict has not been the norm in Russia since 1991
despite the obvious exception of Chechnya. During the Yeltsin years and
into the Putin administration, ethnic relations were complex and were
handled much differently than they had been under the USSR. Yet
Yeltsin’s handling of ethnic relations largely by means of bi-lateral
treaties, and Putin’s “reassertion of vertical authority” have each been
done in a manner that managed to avoid violent confrontation, again with
the obvious exception of Chechnya and related acts of terrorism
elsewhere in Russia. Ethnic conflict had been in general global decline
during the 1990s despite cases of particularly horrific communal warfare
(Rwanda, Bosnia, etc.). According to Gurr, whose research tracks
patterns of ethnic conflict, a global “regime of managed ethnic
heterogeneity” began emerging in the 1990s, which “consists of a widely
articulated set of principles about intergroup relations in heterogeneous
states, a repertoire of strategies for institutionalizing the principles, and
agreement on both domestic and international policies for how to best
respond to ethnopolitical crises and conflicts.”2 Can such a “regime of
managed ethnic heterogeneity” emerge in Russia, despite the Chechen
conflict? For the time being, the positive forces of religiosity in the
Russian Federation noted above appear to have the upper hand in helping
to create a climate of tolerance, civility, and even national unity
elsewhere in the country.
The Negative
Of course, Russia also faces monumental social problems that are

thwarting the further entrenchment of civil society. Recent evidence
suggests that criminality, and particularly organized crime, are getting
worse despite the Putin regime’s best efforts to contain them, and these
are perversely intertwined with “managed pluralism.” Both are also
integrally related to ethnicity and oligarchic politics, particularly at the
regional level, and especially in the ethnic regions. Further, substance
abuse, domestic violence, inadequate health care infrastructure,
homelessness, and neglected children all abound in Russia and
undermine prospects for an entrenchment of civil society.
95
Burden or Blessing?
Russia’s declining birthrate is not as bad as was predicted prior to

the 2002 census, but it is nonetheless viewed as problematical by
political and religious leaders. President Putin mentioned the issue in his
very brief 2003 end-of-year address, although couching the data in
positive terms: “One particularly pleasing fact is that more new Russian
citizens were born this year in comparison with last year. This is a good
sign.” Patriarch Alexii II has also addressed the issue publicly, tying it in
with the issue of abortion, which will probably not assume the divisive
proportions it does in America, but could if the official line of the
Orthodox Church were taken as a political stance by the majority of the
population who are nominally Orthodox.
Thus the degree of civil society in Russia is problematical.
Alexander Domrin considers that there is no civil society in Russia
because of the “human crisis of monumental proportions.”3 William
Odom sees a “path-dependency” in Russia’s development that makes
Russia a “sick bear” with little possibility of transition to fully developed
civil society and democratization. Others, such as Christopher Marsh and
Nicolai Petro, see much evidence for the potential, at least, of a vibrant
civil society, and in fact some evidence that such has been occurring. It
seems to this author that a significant measure of civil society has in fact
emerged in Russia, and religious institutions have been an integral part of
this process, even if the pluralism of Russia is somewhat “managed” by
the Kremlin, and religion is characterized by a “hegemonic ecumenism”
of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Finally, the matter of trust among citizens has long been viewed as a
critical indicator of the well-being of society, particularly its capacity to
self-govern. Recent surveys indicate that the population of Russia
expressed the least amount of trust in their respective parliament of all
the countries of the “new Europe.” Furthermore, trust in other political
institutions was not much higher, reflecting perhaps a shallow basis for
civil society. The 2002 official Census itself was marked by a climate of
a basic lack of trust in the regime. Fortunately, however, this pervasive
lack of trust does not appear to be ethnic-specific. Further, the Russian
Orthodox Church is the most trusted institution in Russian society.
Furman and Kaariainen recently offered that “Russian Orthodoxy not
only is the leading religion, but also is the most trusted organization
compared to other community and government institutions … This is the
direct expression of the ‘pro-Orthodox’ consensus that has arisen in the
society.” The question is whether this “pro-Orthodox consensus” will
serve as the basis for a vibrant civil society; despite the negative trends,
96
the positive traits of Russia’s intersection of religiosity and ethnicity

noted above certainly give grounds for hope.
Conclusion
Four scenarios regarding the future of Russia appear most likely. First,
the emergence of a vibrant civil society, coupled with political
institutions favorable and sufficiently flexible to settle the ethnic issues
that are part and parcel of governing a large, diverse modern country.
Moreover, the continuation is likely of a “stabilized” religiosity that is
tolerant and increasingly characterized by mutual good-will and
flexibility in working with other faiths on resolving Russia’s
monumental social problems. Ethnic and/or religion-based political
parties are probably not very useful in this process, although ethnic
and/or religious associations are crucial to a vibrant civil society; the key
factor is of course civility among such groups and also toward the state,
and here the role of religious virtues could be critical.
Secondly, if Furman and Kaariainen are accurate about a
“stabilization” of religion and politics, then entrenchment of managed
pluralism and hegemonic ecumenism by the Orthodox Church is
probably the most likely scenario. Russia’s current economic robustness
may well reinforce this.
Another possible scenario is the emergence of “semi-
authoritarianism” similar to that of most of the post-Soviet republics
(e.g., Central Asia, Belarus, Ukraine). Such regimes possess some
democratic characteristics, but “rely on authoritarian practices to
maintain power.”4 Given the “anti-terror” climate of the early 21st
century, such regimes have ample pretext for governing in this manner,
and Russia may follow suit.
Finally, Russia could experience a descent into classical
authoritarianism, with little if any civil society, and a reversal of the
gains made in democratization. To the extent that the political culture of
Russia is incurably “state-centric,” then a return to an authoritarian
approach to religion by could be seen not so much as a reversion to the
viciously anti-religion disposition of the Soviet regime, but rather to a
longer-term pattern of an imbalanced “symphonia” in which the state is
the more influential force. Such a regime, however, would not function
effectively in the post-modern world. In any case, the positive traits
97
Burden or Blessing?
outlined above give little reason to believe that such a course lies ahead
for Russia, with “hegemonic ecumenism” by the Russian Orthodox
Church within a context “managed pluralism” the much more likely
outcome.
Notes
1
Dimitri Furman and Kimmo Kaariainen, “Orthodoxy as a Component of
Russian Identity,” East-West Church and Ministry Report 10, 1 (2002).
2
Ted Robert Gurr, People Versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New Century
(Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2000), 277-78.
3
Alexander N. Domrin, “Ten Years Later: Civil Society and the Russian State,”
Russian Review 62, 2 (2003): 193-211.
4
Marina Ottaway, Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semi-Authoritarianism
(Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003).
98

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Part 1 Conceptual Apparatus

The Ambivalent Role of Orthodoxy in the

The range of obstacles that have been identified by scholars,

for example, have identified positive attributes in Russia’s religious

Orthodoxy and its Relationship to Civil Society, the Market, and

The actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin following the massacre

for democracy and freedom in Russia. The fate of democracy in Russia,

Civil Society in Russia

Civil society can be understood as the relatively autonomous realm that

Russia’s Market Transition

As if the challenges facing the development of civil society in Russia

As the above discussion indicates, Russia emerged from the ashes of

social institutions may alleviate economic hardship, they do not

The Question of Democracy

Perhaps our primary concern here is with Russia’s transition to

groups, that attempt to influence the government by competing in

Civil Society, Russian Orthodoxy, and Democracy:

The idea of civil society remained in the background of political theory

Shortcomings of the Literature

Political scientists seeking to understand the social, cultural and political

of Orthodox Church attendance indicated widespread indifference

to restore some balance in assessments of the Church and

Re-Emergence of the Term

The concept of civil society re-emerged in Eastern European literature in

activities of non-governmental organizations,17 just to name a handful of

“Three Spheres” of Civil Society

society: the religious field. The success of the Patriarchate’s campaign in

services is pertinent because it reveals how demands to change the

The resurgence of the concept of civil society in political discourse has

Failing Freedom: Parties, Elites and the Uncertainty

By most accounts, Russia is loitering somewhere in the muck of

and cultural-religious expansion of neighboring states into the Russian

group under the supervision of Nationalities Minister Vladimir Zorin and

Religious Discourse and Parties

One might wonder why the Russian administration fails to offer a

who advocate the adoption of consociational arrangements to contain

The Case of Russia

committee posts in return for their support. The KPRF became

depends on the position of religious freedom that they endorse, both as

Unity in Diversity: Civil Society, Democracy,

The above title is derived from a letter written in 2003 by Patriarch

Democratic institutions cannot take root in a society that views

The Orthodox Church and Civil Society

Orthodox Christianity – like Talmudic Judaism and Sunni Islam – is a

can adapt and reshape traditions if authoritative figures promote the

Christian socio-governmental ethics demands that a certain

The Church has also accepted that political power in Russian

Yet the church endorsed no one platform or candidate. It instead

Russian Democracy or Managed Pluralism?

Universal morality is often best expressed, in the church’s view, through

genuine political competition. Nonetheless, the Church has played an

Orthodoxy and the Societal Ideal

In the years following the demise of totalitarian regimes, Russia and

Democracy Can Further the Mission of the Church

Having experienced totalitarianism and state-imposed atheism, Orthodox

Orthodox social organizations have caused significant changes in the

The Orthodox Societal Ideal and the Issue of State Governance

Numerous Western politicians and scholars have rightly argued that

system rather than a societal ideal. Due to the recent resurgence of

be a people of God, a Church community which has the right to protect

On the Threshold of the Values Debate

Western colleagues have repeatedly tried to convince members of the