Fervent Christians: Orthodox activists in Russia as publics and counterpublics

ABSTRACT

In the post-Soviet context liberal publics in Russia often see the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate as a satellite of the state and its collaborator. Attempts by Church representatives, sometimes self-appointed, to enlarge the Church’s presence in public space are perceived by secular publics as violating certain principles fundamental to the functioning of the public sphere: individual membership and independence from the state. Consequently, individual religious activists and associations of believers – Orthodox brotherhoods and sisterhoods, charity projects and other initiatives affiliated with the Church – function as counterpublics which feel excluded from the common public sphere and form alternative public spheres. This contribution focuses on the public actions of a female religious activist in a big city in the Urals who presents herself as speaking on behalf of the church people, often aiming to establish or defend visible religious symbols in the city landscape.

KEYWORDS:

• Religious activism
• Russia
• right to the city
• Orthodox Christianity
• post-secular
• public sphere

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, which hosted the workshop ‘Religious Activism between Politics and Everyday Life: Mobilizing and Mediating the Religious in Eastern Europe and in the Caucasus’ in March 2020 where this paper was presented. My deep gratitude to the colleagues who helped this text to appear – the journal editors, Kathy Rousselet, and two anonymous reviewers. All remaining faults are mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The social media materials I used in this contribution were in the public domain. With respect to the reported conversations, I informed my interlocutors about the purposes of this research, secured their voluntary consent to provide their views, and assured their anonymity. I could not seek approval to conduct these conversations from a local ethics committee because according to national law it is not required.

2. https://azbyka.ru/teploxladnost.

3. The Great Patriotic War is a war between the USSR and Nazism, part of the Second World War (1939–1945).

4. The full name of the museum is the Museum of Sanctity, Confessorship (ispovednichestva) and Asceticism in the Urals in the twentieth century.

5. The term obshchestvennitsa appeared in the early Soviet period. It was the name of the journal (1936–1941) established by the People’s Comissariat of Heavy Industry for the wives of executives and leading engineers. The journal became the press organ of the movement of zheny-obshchestvennitsy who did volunteer work to help liquidate illiteracy, to control quality of food in canteens for workers and children, enlighten and educate other, unprivileged women (see Buckley 1996).

6. A classic example of a late Soviet obshchestvennitsa is a personage from the 1977 popular film Office Romance (Sluzhebnyi roman), trade-union activist Shura. She collects money for the burial of a colleague who (as it turns out) has not died and makes public the secrets of the private lives of other members of the collective.

7. Later, in Spring 2020, they partly restored their public reputation by providing medical equipment for the city in the COVID-19 outbreak.

8. https://www.facebook.com/ioksana. 09 February 2019. Since Facebook was banned by the Russian government in the beginning of the war against Ukraine, Xenia closed her Facebook page to the public. Only her ‘friends’ now have access to it.

9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oSsve7ZnyY.

10. https://www.facebook.com/ioksana. 23 February 2019.

11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq7_mexkA3s&t=124s. 17 February 2019.

12. The most vivid example is the arrest of Fr Sergei Romanov, a charismatic Orthodox elder from a large and famous nunnery near Ekaterinburg in 2020. He refused to follow COVID rules and publicly (in social media) criticised the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate for introducing COVID-related restrictions. In 2021 he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. In January 2023 the term was extended to seven years of imprisonment.

Additional information

Funding

The research was supported by grant of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research #19-59-22006.

Notes on contributors

Jeanne Kormina

Jeanne Kormina used to work as a Professor of Anthropology and Religious Studies at the Higher School of Economics, St Peterburg, Russia. Now she works at EPHE – GSRL, Paris, France. She has published extensively in Russian and English on Orthodox pilgrimage, veneration of saints, and other topics addressing the post-secular situation in Russia and beyond.