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ABSTRACT
This paper draws upon a number of official, semi-official and other public texts related to the current views of the Russian Church on social and political issues. Overall, in spite of a variety of opinions and nuances, a certain mainstream becomes apparent, as expressed through this body of texts. The most discussed topics include moral values related to the human body (such as abortion, euthanasia, reproductive technologies and sexuality) and issues such as blasphemy, juvenile courts and new technologies of personal registration for Russian citizens. ‘Traditional morality’ has become the signature discourse of the Russian Orthodox Church which is attempting to construct ‘tradition’ by drawing upon a partly imagined ethos of imperial Russia and the late Soviet Union. Traditional family values are central to the church’s rhetoric. The authors of these texts see a presumed decay of traditional values as the main danger that must be opposed. They usually trace the source of this danger directly to the contemporary West. By contrast, they see Russia as a protective shield against these global influences. Either consciously or involuntarily, they translate their religious language of traditional morality into a political rhetoric of solidarity and patriotism. Such ideological rhetoric has direct political implications and analogies in the agenda of Putin’s regime. This Russian appeal to ‘traditional values’, both religious and political, has recently acquired an extraordinary international relevance.
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Notes
1. For further discussion of postsoviet desecularisation, see the work of researchers such as Shterin (Citation2012) and Karpov (Citation2012).
2. The Inter-council workshop was created in 2009 to develop official views and documents to be then approved by Church Councils. The organisation includes about one hundred bishops, priests, nuns and laity who are divided into a few commissions, responsible for various themes.
3. Some of these texts go beyond purely administrative issues and are significant for the wider scope of believers’ identity, such as, for example, the long-awaited document entitled ‘On the participation of the believers in the Eucharist’ (Об участии верных в Евхаристии) (On the Participation Citation2015).
4. For an analysis of postsoviet politico-philosophical interpretations related to the formation of a new subjectivity, see Stoeckl (Citation2008).
5. In May 2016 the Patriarch said that, in contrast to western societies, the Soviet culture preserved Christian values: even the communist authorities of the Soviet Union did not dare ‘to explode the moral foundations of the social life’. He continued, ‘this saved us: our literature, fine arts were permeated with Christian ideas, and the people’s morality remained Christian’ (Ria Novosti, http://ria.ru/religion/20160525/1439347404.html. Accessed on 3 July 2016.)
6. Panchenko (Citation2011: 131ff) has shown a Soviet ‘genealogy of ethical techniques’, typical in collectivistic new religious movements, but a similar genealogy, in my view, can be found in the milieu of newly converted Orthodox. For further discussion of the Soviet genealogy of postsoviet moralities, see Steinberg and Wanner (Citation2009).
7. I deal more with this speech and the narrative of the continuous, millennial ‘Russian civilisation’ below.
8. An emphasis on the family was part of the late Soviet official doxa. Overall, the Soviet moral code inherited a certain revolutionary indifference to family matters. In the early decades of the USSR, the ‘working collective’ (трудовой коллектив) seemed to have been central to official moral rhetoric, defining the individual’s self-fashioning (see Kharkhordin Citation1999). However, in the late Soviet period, this emphasis evolved significantly towards a more family-centred system, in line with the rehabilitation of private life and values of ‘private happiness’ (see Cherepanova Citation2012; Kaspe Citation2009-10; Shlapentokh Citation1989).
9. For an analysis of the current Russian Orthodox approach to sexuality, see Mikhailov (Citation2013).
10. The UNICEF document in question is: Position Paper No. 9 (November 2014): ‘Eliminating Discrimination Against Children and Parents Based on Sexual Orientation and/or Gender Identity’. The norm referred to in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is Article 16.3. On the issue of LGBT rights, see Stoeckl (Citation2014).
11. See an overview and analysis of the debate in Rousselet (Citation2014).
12. The Inter-Religious Council is an NGO initiated by the Moscow Patriarchate and founded in 1998 to represent Russia’s four ‘traditional religions’ – Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism.
13. The documents refer to Chapters 13 and 14 of Revelation, which describe the coming of the Antichrist and the victory over him. In particular, Chapter 13 contains the reference to the ‘number of the beast’ (666). Since the late 1990s, there has been a concern that this number may be secretly contained in new registries. Such apocalyptic misgivings were typical to the groups fighting registration from the very beginning.
14. See an analysis of the paradox of personhood, in connection to anti-registry sensitivities, in Agadjanian and Rousselet (Citation2005, 33–35).
15. Other Orthodox actors may differ from this radical agenda of solidarity. For example, the Forum of Orthodox Youth, with all its strong support of ‘traditional values’, still calls for the creation of a competitive environment, free from state overregulation, to promote fair and successful businesses (Final Document Citation2014).
16. In his list of particularistic views, Kirill mentions, among others, ‘class’, but he symptomatically refers not to the Soviet communist particularistic ‘class morality’ but to a Nazi example. He spoke to the parliament with a communist party faction in the audience; but as we have seen and will see further, avoiding anti-communist rhetoric has deeper roots than mere political correctness.
17. Ibid. While speaking of the Revolution, Kirill bluntly refers to its foreign, alien sources, very much in conspiracy-theory mode, while still extracting a positive impulse of ‘justice’ revealed in the revolutionary years. ‘Solidarity’ is commonly linked to the Soviet experience. The link of postsoviet experience to ‘dignity’ is quite new and much less elaborated, although the concept of dignity has been prominent in recent debates about personhood and human rights.
18. In this paper, my task is not to discuss the institutional links between the state and the church and the vicissitudes of their real-political interaction. For such discussion, see Richters (Citation2012), where we can find an outline of relevant events and legislation (p. 77–84) and an account of patterns of the church’s political engagement (p. 60–77). See also the analysis by Pankhurst and Kilp in a special issue of Religion, State and Society (Vol. 41, No. 3, 2013).
19. The group’s website has not been updated since 2007. Yet, in 2007, the then Metropolitan Kirill endorsed the project.
20. This is also available online at: http://www.religare.ru/25_1012.html. The editor, Alexander Shchipkov, is a former religious dissident and a well-known religious journalist and official.
21. Although views of the volume’s various authors do diverge, I have taken the liberty to reconstruct the main building blocks across the volume.
22. I list only the legislation related to the topic explored here. Beyond this topic stand other legal acts favouring the church (as a generic ‘religious organisation’), such as the amendments to the Land Code (regulating ‘the right of permanent/perpetual use of land’), the Tax Code (full tax exemption), the Law on Cultural Heritage Objects (budget subsidies to certain church buildings) etc.
23. Towards the end of Putin’s 2013 Valdai speech, he referred to civil society and the civic participation of individual citizens mentioning the tradition of zemstvo, or local self-government; this adds a measure of ideological balance. The image of the ‘civic nation’ was still present, whereas we would not find such an emphasis in church rhetoric. Still, these elements were downplayed in comparison with the language of tradition. Since the Ukrainian crisis of 2014, references to civic and democratic values have significantly decreased in the official rhetoric.
24. A conservative moral agenda was the main contribution of the Russian Church in debates over the preparatory documents leading up to the Pan-Orthodox Council of 2016 (see Agadjanian Citation2016).
25. Catherine Wanner borrowed the concept of ‘ambient faith’ from Mathew Engelke (Citation2012), who elaborates it as a response to the elusiveness of the boundary between public and private religion.
26. For an analysis of the foreign policy implications of the religious factor, see Curanovic (Citation2012).
27. The degree of the church–state alliance is debatable. The famous symphonia, when applied to the modern situation, is, to my view, merely a misleading buzzword and an emotional metaphor (see also Hovorun Citation2016). As for the principle of separation as a constitutional norm, it obviously fluctuates with the continuing pressure of desecularisation. We do not know whether the Patriarch’s views have directly affected the evolution of political language and positions or the extent to which any personal religious convictions of Putin or his close entourage are of some significance, as some commentators speculated. Yet in no way and on no occasion did any top politician promote the idea of the establishment of the Russian Orthodox Church as the state confession, in violation to the constitutional principle of secularity and neutrality. And notwithstanding the Patriarch’s praises of the regime, he has never advocated for his church to become legally established as the state confession. I believe, therefore, that both sides have kept a certain strategic distance, an alliance at a distance; the church itself has developed a special term to describe it sorabotnichestvo (соработничество).