When Lucy Ash was escorted round the vast and numinous island monastery of Valaam, located in Lake Ladoga near St. Petersburg, she had an intriguing guide: a monk who introduced himself as Father Iosif but spoke fluent English in the tones of New York. He explained that his father, a Russian furniture tycoon, had sent him to an American business school in the hope of curing his adolescent interest in religion, but “as you can see, that didn’t work”.
So far, so charming. The conversation then took a tougher turn when the black-robed figure began holding forth proudly on the vast sums of money which had been spent on the monastery at the behest of Vladimir Putin — turning the island into a place where the president and his elite guests could make comfortable and high-profile visits. Ash couldn’t help asking her companion whether he considered the president a holy man. “Only God knows that,” was the artful reply. But the results of this high-level patronage were visibly impressive. As Ash notes, it has been calculated that $700,000 of taxpayers’ money has been spent on the island for every member of a brotherhood supposedly devoted to asceticism and prayer; and Russia’s federal grid has supplied the 200-strong community with enough power capacity to meet the needs of a small country.
The post-communist transformation of Valaam island — from a harsh, romantic outpost into a slick and ruthlessly administered showpiece of state largesse — is one of many arresting stories told by Ash in The Baton and the Cross about the trajectory of Russian Orthodoxy since the fall of the atheist regime. Around the time of the Soviet collapse, the resurrection of Christianity felt to its participants like a valiant and counter-cultural enterprise. But with every passing year, a de facto partnership between the Patriarchate of Moscow and Russia’s earthly powers became more evident — especially after 2012 when Patriarch Kirill, having initially kept a little distance from the Kremlin, emphatically swung behind Putin and helped to ensure his re-election. In return, hundreds of millions of roubles were made available for the construction of churches and other projects that burnished the Patriarchate’s prestige and property empire.
As Ash argues, Patriarch Kirill’s strident support for the war in Ukraine — and the harsh disciplinary measures applied to priests who question this line — are only the logical culmination of an ever-tightening relationship between Church and State. Church-state interconnections in the land of the eastern Slavs have taken a bewilderingly wide variety of forms, but there is a common theme. In every era of Russia’s evolution, not excluding the Soviet one, ways have been found for earthly rulers to turn the soft power of religion to their own advantage.
Ash is not, of course, alone in making that observation. The great Russian patriot Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn remarked that his country’s history would have been “incomparably more humane and harmonious in the last few centuries… if the church had not surrendered its independence and [had] made its voice heard among the people as it does, for example, in Poland”.
And yet, as a careful reading of her account will also make clear, Russian Orthodoxy does not — even today — begin or end with its use as a tool of state power. There is more to the story than that.
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SubscribeI can never understand why Russia is always compared to the West, when it couldn’t be more different. We don’t constantly compare China, Japan or India with the West. Russia is, like those countries, a world of its own. I agree with Milton Gibbon’s assessment below, and the comparison with the Byzantine empire. The problem is that we simply do not understand Russia, nor do we even try. We just repeat the same old things.
David Eades
Russia has at times masqueraded as a European country (even though it is patently obvious that it isn’t one).
The piece overlooks the glaring contradiction in its examples. The anti-establishment outliers don’t mask a pretty straightforward history of church-state intertwinement. The break with the past which the Soviet regime made was notable as the best exception but then if the government is avowedly atheist this isn’t exactly a break so much as a different category. The church-state relationship has always been far closer than in the West (partly due to foreign, non-Christian dominion during the medieval period) but then the Orthodox tradition comes out of a history of caesaro-papism which extended almost into the modern era. The Russian Orthodox church took on the mantle of this tradition after the fall of Constantinople and with the threat of outside forces it positioned itself as the other pillar of the state. It wasn’t nefarious or subtle about it. The writer is holding them to a Western European standard – like a Protestant bemoaning the luxury of the priestly/ascetic class of Rome. It would be better to see this “largesse” in the context of a restored tradition dating back to Constantine. While I am critical of certain aspects of this restoration (one of my favourite quotes being that the post-communist Russian Orthodox church is closer to “goldliness than godliness”) I am very happy it has taken place.
There’s also a strand of “mysticism” in Russian Orthodoxy which goes beyond even the Roman Catholic tradition. One might conclude that the greater degree of mystical veiling, the greater the attempt to “pull the (golden) wool over the eyes”.
Well, no – since many mystics are sincere and otherworldly people.
What other world? It’s just nonsense, and looks to have had the “desired effect”. There’s nothing ‘special’ about mystics other than their own inability to deal with the real world. That can be done whilst having a spiritual outlook on life.
Yes. Me too. Sad, though, too. The wolf put on the sheep’s clothes one feels only for being finer, much more impressive than his own.
While a sheep wearing wolf’s dentures, come to think of it, could only hope to look ridiculous?
The author recognizes that “any religion, passionately embraced, gives people a motive to sacrifice personal interests and even their lives; that is one reason why earthly rulers find religion’s use so attractive. But faith also gives people the courage to oppose state power, at vast personal cost, in ways that send a dazzling moral signal.” Would that we had allowed that dynamic balancing act in the West. Russia will benefit from the unity of Church and state, and we will continue to suffer from the liberal rebellion, the separation of the two. We will continue to have moral codes coming from everywhere and sputtering out long before they reach the human heart. Russia and Orthodoxy are sending a unified message to their people, and they stand a chance to win because of it.
Funny that Putin admires Catherine the Great, given that she had not a drop of Russian blood in her veins. Maybe Russia could have another German ruler.
Olaf Scholz ?
Pick a drunk lying under a tree in a German park. That person would be better than Putin on every metric.
Nevermind Orthodoxy – can Russia preserve her precious soul. “May bloodshed end,” and that’s my prayer ….
Does Russia even have a soul. The evidence suggests not.
Why despise Russia because of Putin and other Russian rulers ?
Indeed, Russians – like all men – are precious to God, may the actions of their leaders change for the good.
Because its people put those rulers there, and keep them in place.
You know therefore nothing about Russia, to say such a stupid thing.
Only a revitalised Orthodox Church can save and heal Russia, and Ukraine.
This reads like Kirili has 2 outcomes, should he, or any cleric, oppose Putin. 1. Resist pressure from the tzar and eventually be deported and killed, or, 2. Move to Paris and make alot of noise. Probably be surreptitiously poisoned, as are other expat enemies of the regime.
The primary, if not exclusive, objective of all religious organisations is the preservation and expansion of the organisation, and the powerbase of its elite; they develop symbiotic relationships with secular powers to further that objective. The founding principles of the religion can be invoked, adapted, ignored, or contradicted to fit. Thus Putin has promised the Russian Orthodox Church greater wealth, greater influence over selected non-political social and family matters, and an expansion of the Church’s empire over Ukraine. In return, Kiril offers Putin divine justification, and the support of his followers. The other religions operate in exactly the same way. But what the author is alluding to, and hoping for, is not the Russian Orthodox Church, it’s the few within it, as there are a few in all religious organisations, for whom religious principles and morality are more important than the organisation and its elite.
Given that the evangelical wing of U.S. Christianity just played a significant role in electing a convicted felon and serial liar, I don’t believe I can say anything about Putin’s paying for ecclesiastical blessings.
Huh? I have no idea what you just said.
Russia has never been a truly Christian country.
Though containing many inspiring Christians.
By name only
Is there any country you can say has been?
By what measure? Maybe it’s you who doesn’t understand Russia, or Christianity.