Faith is only one of greater Russia's rhetorical resources
By B.C.
IF A new global project was proclaimed by Vladimir Putin in yesterday's speech at the Kremlin, what sort of project is it? Geopolitical, commercial, cultural, (by his own lights) moral, even religious? Two commentators have argued in the Washington Post that the religious dimension is more important than most people in the West realise.
According to Molly McKew and Gregory Maniatis, the striking thing about Mr Putin's rhetoric was its disavowal of the Soviet past, and its embrace instead of a much older dream: the idea of consolidating and expanding Russia as the heartland of an Orthodox commonwealth. As they put it, "in the long sweep of Russian history, the rise and fall of communism in the 20th century and the ensuring 20 years of turmoil are an anomaly for Putin. The preceding millennium of Russo-Orthodox expansion is the norm. His strategic vision is not bound by democratic election cycles; it is measured in centuries and glory."
By playing the Orthodox card, the writers say, Russia can expect to increase its influence in European countries way beyond the Soviet Union or even the Warsaw Pact: to Greece and Cyprus, where economic turmoil has revived anti-Western sentiment, and to Serbia whose "closeness to Moscow" remains a constant. The authors speak of "Putin's reliance on oligarch-princes to revitalise Orthodoxy in Russia and across Europe." (Perhaps they are thinking of the new Orthodox cathedral that is being built with Russian help in Paris.)
Are Ms McKew and Mr Maniatis right in their reading of Russia's past and likely future? Mr Putin's long speech contained only one direct reference to Christianity, albeit a resonant one for the few Russians who are really versed in religious history. He recalled that Prince Vladimir, one of the forefathers of the Slavs, was baptised in Crimea, before marrying a Greek princess and hence sealing a shaky politico-religious alliance with Byzantium. But anyone who sets out to demonstrate that Russian statehood and Russian religion are expanding in sync can cite plenty of other pieces of prima facie evidence. This month, for example, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow denounced as "enemies" those who wanted to "tear off the southern and western Russian lands from the single Russian land." On the other hand he also stressed that separate sovereign states could be part of a "single, spiritual space"—that seemed to imply that spiritual commonality did not always require subordination to the same earthly master.
I have thought a lot about the relationship between Russian Orthodoxy and Russian statehood. I don't believe the two are essentially connected, but I do think that as historical phenomena they have one important thing in common; they are both almost infinitely flexible in the way they co-opt partners and causes. And that has made it easy, at times, for them to co-opt one another. At different eras in its history, Russian statehood has expanded in the name of pan-Slavism, the divine right of emperors, Orthodox brotherhood, proletarian internationalism and, more recently, the rights of Russian-speaking minorities. As Benjamin Disraeli could tell you, no self-respecting empire uses the same slogan all the time. Orthodox Christianity, for its part, has in its earthly affairs shown a chameleonic gift of adaptation to almost all regimes, from Ottoman sultans to Soviet commissars, as long as its spiritual mission is not completely crushed. Orthodox history has its martyrs and its trimmers; both qualities have been needed.
It is this flexibility, I would argue, that has enabled Russian statehood and the Orthodox faith to march in step at certain eras in history, including modern history. But such partnerships are unstable. Among the ordinary Russian church-goers with whom I have spoken, there is (and has been since the Soviet collapse) a widespread belief that a mighty Russian state will one day re-emerge, in tandem with Orthodoxy. But eventually, they believe, that mighty state will turn on the Christians and persecute them more ruthlessly than ever. Perhaps this reflects a deep intuition that in earthly affairs, no relationship lasts for ever.
