The Church in the Service of the Fatherland

Abstract

The Russian Orthodox Church intensifies activities that it labels as patriotic activities and is an important participant in the patriotic education programmes organised by the state. Going beyond institutional types of discourse, this essay examines how believers experience patriotism in their daily lives, how religion nurtures the patriotic sentiment. Priests and the laity present themselves as being in the service of a country in combat. The Orthodox Church combines various moral values, which are at the heart of the patriotism of believers. Russian religious patriots have different relations with the state, and their patriotism sometimes diverges from the official calls. This essay draws on Church publications, interviews with priests and laity since 2008 and observation of religious events.

Notes

The author would like to thank Lina Molokotos-Liederman for translating this essay into English. This essay is the result of a French–Russian collective research project on ‘Patriotic practices in contemporary Russia’ undertaken between 2008 and 2010. This project was financed by an International Scientific Cooperation Programme of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and supported by the Center for the Study of the Russian, Caucasian and Central-European Worlds (CERCEC), the Centre for International Studies and Research (CERI), the Fondation-Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (MSH), and the Russian State Fund for Fundamental Research (Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Nauchnyi Fond—RGNF).

¹ On 14 January 1914 the Metropolitan Vladimir Bogoyavlensky had solemnly consecrated the cathedral in the presence of Tsar Nicholas II, many members of the royal family, the government and the Holy Synod. In 1932 it was shut down and converted into a dairy plant.

² ‘Otkrytie maketa khrama v aeroportu “Pulkovo”’, 19 November 2009, available at: http://feosobor.ru/parish/news/769/, accessed 16 July 2012.

³ Interview with a former Protestant who converted to Orthodoxy, St Petersburg, 2 June 2006.

⁴Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, available at: http://orthodoxeurope.org/page/3/14.aspx, accessed 12 July 2014. A Russian version (Osnovy sotsial'noi kontseptsii Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi) is available at: http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/141422.html, accessed 12 July 2014. It seems that the terms otechestvo (fatherland) and rodina (homeland/motherland) are used interchangeably. In the official English version of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate they are both translated as ‘homeland’. Moreover the idea of homeland seems to blend with that of nation, both as a citizenship nation (citizens of the same state) and as an ethnic nation.

⁵Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, available at: http://orthodoxeurope.org/page/3/14.aspx, accessed 12 July 2014.

⁶Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, available at: http://orthodoxeurope.org/page/3/14.aspx, accessed 12 July 2014.

⁷Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, available at: http://orthodoxeurope.org/page/3/14.aspx, accessed 12 July 2014.

⁸ ‘Patriarkh Kirill: Patriotism—sposob vyzhivaniya’, available at: http://top.rbc.ru/politics/28/01/2014/901979.shtml, accessed 12 July 2014.

⁹ See, for example, Za veru (2006).

¹⁰ Rostislav Kandaurov in an interview during the TV programme Pravoslavnaya entsiklopediya, 8 November 2003, available at: http://www.sedmitza.ru/index.html?sid = 320&did = 7869&p_comment = belief-site, accessed 1 November 2006.

¹¹ The database currently contains 3,418,428 names, including the 900,000 victims of the Leningrad Blockade and the 2.5 million victims of Stalinist repression.

¹² Excerpts from an interview with the confessor (dukhovnik) of the Kuban Cossack Host, Krasnodar, 11 October 2009.

¹³ The Chernobyl Union is the main organisation of those who were involved in the clean-up operation.

¹⁴ Interview with the rector of the church, Krasnodar, 11 October 2009.

¹⁵ Interview with Ivan N. Andreev, president of the Combat Brotherhood, Krasnodar, 11 October 2009.

¹⁶ Interview with Ivan N. Andreev, president of the Combat Brotherhood, Krasnodar, 11 October 2009.

¹⁷ Interview with the starosta (churchwarden) of the village parish, Kaluga region, 30 October 2008.

¹⁸ Interview, with the starosta (churchwarden) of the village parish, Kaluga region, 30 October 2008.

¹⁹ ‘Patriarkh Kirill prizyvaet kazakov stat’ ne tol'ko zashchitnikami, no i real'noi siloi', Interfax, 9 March 2010, available at: http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act = news&div = 34532, accessed 12 July 2014.

²⁰ As confirmed by Hege Toje: ‘A special feature of the Cossack organisation, both on local and national levels, was that only men could become members. The organisation operated with the criteria that a potential member should be male, Orthodox and have the “right attitude”. Descent was thus a possible, but not an essential criterion’ (Toje 2006, p. 1073). We do not know of any statistics allowing us to substantiate the claim made by the ataman we interviewed.

²¹ This is how this ataman from Krasnodar explained the attraction of the uniform: ‘Broadly speaking people look for what they are used to, for what they know best. It is very difficult for a man who has served in the army to understand what it means to serve his country. He does not understand that there are different sides to the concept of service. A civil person understands that service also includes voluntary service at a hospital, financial help and other things. These young people think of voluntary service only as a service for the fatherland and when one has served the fatherland in uniform he knows only one thing: security, order, borders and what goes together with these things. Most of these young people come and say: we want to become Cossacks because we want to have the uniform. … We want the uniform, we want to look handsome, we want to be useful’ (14 October 2009).

²² Interview with an ataman, Krasnodar, 14 October 2009. This ataman is referring to members of the official Kuban Cossack Host. But Cossackdom can also be considered a particular cultural group or even an ethnic group; some ‘Cossack descendants’ belong to non-Orthodox Cossack communities (for example, some are Old-Believers, Muslims, Buddhists and even Neo-Pagans).

²³ Interview with the confessor of the Kuban Cossack Host, Krasnodar, 11 October 2009.

²⁴ Interview with the confessor of the Kuban Cossack Host, Krasnodar, 11 October 2009.

²⁵ Interview with pilgrims, Ekaterinburg, 16–17 July 2008.

²⁶ This has led to significant disputes within the Church since the early 2000s (Rousselet, forthcoming).

²⁷ ‘Pozitsiya Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi po reforme semeinogo prava i problemam yuvenal'noi yustitsii’, available at: http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/2774805.html, accessed 30 October 2014.

²⁸ Protopriest Aleksei Masyuk (St Petersburg), ‘Bogoslovskaya otsenka protsessa tsifrovoi identifikatsii i prisvoeniya INN’, presentation during a panel in the Duma on 23 January 2001, ‘Globalizatsiya: lichnye kody kak problema mirovozzrencheskogo vybora sovremennogo cheloveka’, available at: http://protivkart.org/main/3204-bogoslovskaya-ocenka-processa-cifrovoy-identifikacii-i-prisvoeniya-inn-protoierey-aleksiy-masyuk.html, accessed 21 May 2012.

²⁹ Interview with protopriest Aleksei Masyuk, St Petersburg, 3 June 2009.

³⁰ Interview with protopriest Aleksei Masyuk, St Petersburg, 3 June 2009.

³¹ Interview with a parishioner from the Church of St Nicholas in Pyzhi, Moscow, 24 February 2011.

³² Interview with Father N^**, Krasnodar, 12 October 2009.

³³ Natalia Sidorina notes that Kolchak and his army went all the way up to Irkutsk, where the admiral was shot. Although the churches in the city were pillaged, the icon was saved in a Buddhist monastery before it was recovered by a private collector. The admiral is now considered a national benefactor who died in martyrdom.

³⁴ Interview with a priest from Pushkino who was at the fair, Moscow, 20 February 2012.

³⁵ Leaflet distributed at the Orthodox fair of Moscow, 20 February 2012.

³⁶ Interview with the fish seller, Moscow, 20 February 2012.

³⁷ They follow classes such as foundations of Orthodoxy, history of the nation, military rules, training to march in close formation, shooting and tactical training, topography, mountaineering, military health, radio-use training, survival in extreme situations, engineering and physical conditioning.

³⁸ A kind of boxing reputed to be of old Slavic tradition.

³⁹ Viktor Afonchenko, who was a passionate diver, became very frail after a serious work accident while diving in Finland. He died 10 years later. Those who knew Afonchenko describe him as a man of great passion and dedication. He was passionate about archaeology and spent considerable amounts of time initiating adolescents to rukopashnyi boi, climbing, parachuting and swimming activities using an aqualung. He was a diving instructor in a unit of the elite Sofrino brigade at the Ministry of the Interior and he also trained the Special Purpose Mobile Units. In Serguiev Posad he was involved in the restoration work of architectural monuments using various climbing techniques. See ‘Viktor Ivanovich Afonchenko’, 5 March 2005, available at: http://www.peresvet-lavra.ru/node/5, accessed 12 July 2014.

⁴⁰ Interview with the confessor of the Peresvet Club, 27 February 2011.

⁴¹ Interview with I., an educator from the Peresvet Club, 27 February 2011.

⁴² Interview with N., an educator from the Peresvet Club, 27 February 2011.

⁴³ Interview with the woman in charge of the cooking and craft workshops at the Peresvet Club, Moscow, 27 February 2011.