The ROC: The Church as a Symbol of Desired Wholeness

Abstract

While in 1989 Orthodox Christianity signified—even for nonbelievers!—individuality, law, and freedom, today it signifies adherence to the majority, passivity, and state power.

Keywords::

• collective self-identification
• the majority
• state power
• wholeness

This article is the republished version of:

The ROC: The Church as a Symbol of Desired Wholeness

Notes

^1. For relatively recent general analyses, see N. Zorkaia, “Pravoslavie v bezreligioznom obshchestve,” Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniia, 2009, no. 2(100), pp. 65–84 [for the English translation, see Natal-’ia Zorkaia, “Orthodox Christianity in Post-Soviet Society,” Russian Politics and Law, vol. 52, no. 3 (May–June 2014), pp. 7–37.—Ed.]; B. Dubin, “Vo chto veriat rossiiane? Komu i kak my sluzhim?” in Sluzhenie Bogu i cheloveku v sovremennom mire: Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-bogoslovskoi konferentsii (Moscow: Kul'turno-prosvetitel'skii fond Preobrazhenie, 2013), pp. 40–50. For the latest summary of the corresponding empirical data, see Obshchestvennoe mnenie–2012: Ezhegodnik (Moscow: Levada-Tsentr, 2012), pp. 160–69. The figures cited in what follows are taken from these sources.

^2. Taken from Zorkaia, “Pravoslavie,” p. 77 (www.issp.com).

^3. B. Dubin, “‘Legkoe bremia’: Massovoe pravoslavie v Rossii 1990–2000-kh godov,” in Religioznye praktiki v sovremennoi Rossii, ed. K. Russele and A. Agadzhanian (Moscow: Novoe izdatel'stvo, 2006), pp. 69–86; Zorkaia, “Pravoslavie.”

^4. Attempts were made, but constraints at the personal, staffing, group, and societal levels proved stronger at that time. This situation requires special and detailed analysis that I will not undertake here.

^5. For one of the preceding stages in this analysis, see B. Dubin, “Vektory i urovni kollektivnoi identifikatsii v segodniashnei Rossii,” Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniia, 2009, no. 2(100), pp. 55–65.

^6. N. Mitrokhin, Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’: Sovremennoe sostoianie i aktual'nye problemy (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2006).

^7. Among other sources on this, see A. Levinson, Prostranstva protesta: Moskovskie mitingi i soobshchestvo gorozhan (Moscow: Strelka Press, 2012); D. Volkov, Protestnoe dvizhenie v Rossii v kontse 2011–2012 gg. (Moscow: Levada-Tsentr, 2012) (www.levada.ru/books/protestnoe-dvizhenie-v-rossii-v-kontse-2011-2012-gg/); B. Dubin, “Manifestatsii publichnogo nedovol'stva v Moskve 2011–2012 gg.,” in Odissei: Chelovek v istorii. 2012 (Moscow: Nauka, 2012), pp. 428–47.

^8. See S. Solodovnik, “U Poiasa Bogoroditsy” (www.ej.ru/?a = note&id = 11511/). According to survey data from the Levada Center, Russians considered the presence of the Girdle of the Mother of God in Russia and the protests against dishonest elections equally important events of 2011; the two events were identified by 16 percent and 15 percent of respondents, respectively.

^9. Moreover, I have left aside the real diversity of religious and Church life beyond the limits of the “majority” of the population and the “general line” of the ROC. This diversity, as is usually the case, characterizes the activity of an active minority (or even, as in the cases of the protest meetings of 2011–12, “a minority of a minority”), and is therefore captured only to a slight degree by administering mass standardized questionnaires to nationwide population samples.

^10. B. Dubin, “Simvoly vozvrata vmesto simvolov peremen,” Pro et Contra, 2011, vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 6–22.