50 russian politics and law

Russian Politics and Law, vol. 52, no. 5, SeptemberOctober 2014, pp. 5072.
2014 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. Permissions: www.copyright.com
ISSN 10611940 (print)/ISSN 15580962 (online)
DOI: 10.2753/RUP1061-1940520503

Aleksandr Verkhovskii

The Russian Orthodox Church as

the Church of the Majority
The author examines the evolution of relations among Church, state,
and society in Russia over recent years in the light of comparisons with
other predominantly Orthodox Christian countries.
Keywords: Church of the majority, desecularization, conservatism,
fundamentalism, pro-Orthodox consensus.

A great deal has already been written about relations among Church,
state, and society in Russia. In this article, therefore, I set myself a
modest taskto add certain points suggested by the transnational
comparison facilitated by the series of articles in the journal Pro et
Contra about the place and role of the Orthodox Church in countries
where Orthodox Christianity is predominant. In this context, I will
consider what kind of trend may be emerging in relations between
the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and Russian society after the
stormy events that began in December 2011.
In speaking of Russian society, I will refer throughout to the
entire aggregate of Russian citizens and not to the politically
active part of society, let alone to its oppositional component.

English translation 2014 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text 2013
Pro et Contra. Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov kak tserkov bolshinstva,
Pro et Contra, SeptemberOctober 2013, pp. 1730. Translated by Stephen D.
Shenfield.
50

septemberoctober 2014 51

In this article, therefore, I make only passing mention of the

passionate rhetorical clashes of left-wing and liberal oppositional
public opinion with the ROC and allies of its leadership in other
segments of society; quite a lot has also been written about these
clashes.
What can be discerned behind the figures
Insofar as it is possible to trust the social surveys of the Levada
Center,1 about half of the citizens of Russia consider on the whole
that the Church has little influence on the situation in the country
or on the public mood.2 Then what is it that citizens want from
the Church? Groups of approximately equal size (4344 percent
each) think that the Church should support public morality and
satisfy the spiritual needs of believers. In other words, almost half
of citizens support the role of the Church as a spiritual unifying
force (46 percent in 2008, 44 percent in March 2013, and even 50
percent in July 2012, at the height of the Pussy Riot trial), while a
similar proportion care about religious life as such (the trend is also
similar). About a third of respondents attach importance to Church
support for charitable work and assistance to the poor, and about
a third value the contribution of the Church to the preservation of
cultural traditions. The former can be understood in different ways,
including as the performance of a religious duty, while the latter
belongs, rather, to the same mission of spiritual unification.
Evidently this mission of the Church is very important for
Russians. Meanwhile only 18 percent assign the Church the task
of facilitating political accord. The only position less popular than
this (11 percent) is the view that the Church should not act or
intervene at all outside the sphere of its own affairs. The trend for
this parameter is very expressive: 15 percent in 2008; 13 percent
in 2012; and 11 percent in 2013.3
These last figures are a direct indicator of what is customarily
called desecularization4that is, the return of the Church to an
active role in public life. In contemporary societies this presupposes
the existence of a demand in society for the Church to play such a
role; it can be imposed only in the limited sense that the demand

52 russian politics and law

is a product of manipulation by the mass media or by the state

authorities, if they act as an organized collective manipulator.
Of course, successful desecularization depends not only on
demand but also on an adequate supply, which requires at least
two characteristics from the Church: an effective apparatus
and a significant number of good-quality grassroots Church
activiststhat is, people who in Russia are customarily called
churchified. It must be admitted that as yet neither of these
characteristics is very well satisfied; it can even be conjectured,
therefore, that supply rather than demand is insufficient.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to clarify a couple of points.
Shortage of personnel is an acknowledged problem of the ROC,
but it seems that as the young people who entered the Church at
the turn of the 1990s mature, this problem is gradually becoming
less dramatic. It has been said many times that the percentage of
churchified believers is rather low (specific figures depend on
the method of calculation), but is that really so important for the
role of the Church in society? After all, the influence of a political
party is not directly proportional to its size, and the number of
members of a party is usually small relative to the population as
a whole. The low level of churchification means only that not
so many people lead the way of life that they themselves consider
churchly, and the majority unreflectingly agree that this way of
life is the right one.
In assessing the role played in society by the institution of
the Church and by the specific form that it takes in the Moscow
Patriarchate, it is necessary to estimate not so much formal
quantitative parameters as the degree of citizens religiosity and
the influence of religious leaders on their behavior and attitudes.
In assessing the degree of citizens religiosity, it is obviously
insufficient to rely on how they present themselves in social
surveys, although one has to agree that this self-presentation cannot
help but have an influence on various situations involving themes
to which mass consciousness attaches religious significancefor
example, on the submission of draft laws about the feelings of
believers or nontraditional sexual behavior. And here the trend

septemberoctober 2014 53

is clearly in favor of the ROC.5 What effect this may have on the
authority of Church leaders regarding specific issues, as distinct
from their symbolic authority, is another matter. Analyzing the
experience of the 1990s and start of the 2000s, Boris Dubin
describes mass Russian Orthodox Christianity as a light burden:
confessional identity entails very little by way of obligation; in
particular, it does not entail any obligation to follow the political,
moral, or religious teachings of the Church leadership.6 But the
fact that the relations between the average Orthodox believer and
his Church are to a certain extent nonobligatory does not mean
that the Church has no influence at all on him.
Of course, this influence is not always easy to detect, inasmuch
as we are talking about rather distant relations. This is why
the temptation arises to talk not about all Orthodox believers
but only about the churchified, who presumably pay heed to
the voice of the clergy. The number of churchified believers
is estimated often and by various methods, but the number
attending church services once a week or once a month and other
similar parameters are also not very important in themselves:
it has already long been observed that the religiosity of people
in modernized societies, while retaining a general orientation
toward their own confession, has less and less connection
with Church communality.7 What is of interest to us here is the
influence of the Russian Orthodox Church and not the trend in a
given form of religious life. Nevertheless, these two themes are
systematically confused. There is in fact a correlation between
degree of churchification and agreement with the positions of
the leadership of the ROC, but this correlation is far from rigid.
Moreover, if we look at the trend from the start of the 1990s to
the middle of the 2000s, we find that over time the correlation
between the views of believers and the degree to which they are
churchified has only weakened and remains very marked only on
issues directly concerning religion.8 Not only canonically but also
politically, therefore, the Russian Orthodox Church should not be
considered solely as a community of the churchified.
Finally, many authors who write about religion see the

54 russian politics and law

weakness of the Orthodox Church in the fact that masses of

Orthodox believers follow rites that have not been legitimized
by the Church or even directly adhere to non-Orthodox views
(they believe in reincarnation and the like).9 As though all sorts
of prejudices and behavior not approved by the Church have not
characterized the majority of believers ever since Christianity
became a mass religion! This remark is also important for
the theme of this article: in denying on the basis of such
considerations the Orthodoxy of a significant proportion of
Orthodox believers, many authors excommunicate themas
it werefrom the ranks of followers of the Moscow Patriarch.
And yet, this is not only a very strange concern for a non-Church
authorto judge who is more Orthodox than whom; it also
deludes the reader concerning the role of the Church. No special
grounds exist to suppose that vices such as refusing to take
communion, believing in omens, being ignorant of the Gospels,
or even not believing in God prevent a person from sharing one
or another position of the leadership of the ROC.
Only in theory (and only in a rather simplified theology) is
the Church unshakably faithful to the canons and firm as a rock.
In reality, the milieu of believers is very pluralistic and quite
changeable. And the Church inevitably legitimizes changesthis
is done in various ways: by proclaiming a reform or by applying
the principle of ikonomia [pastoral dispensationTrans.] or
simply through silence. The attempt at the rapid modernization
of society undertaken with the start of perestroika was bound to
change believers themselves; the Russian Orthodox Church as
an organized community was bound to react, and it has reacted
and continues to react (quite naturally) in two wayspartly by
resisting changes and partly by adapting to them. This led to a
whole series of conflicts inside the Church, and over time also
made the ROC one of the main participants in public polemics.
Opponents of the ROC often demand that it should not take
stands on issues outside the sphere of Church affairs (a simply
inexplicableat least for liberalsexclusion from the ideal of
freedom of expression) or that it should at least acknowledge that

septemberoctober 2014 55

it is merely one religious association among others. The ROC,

however, always presents itself as the Church of the majority
and as a bulwark of Russian civilization. It is, of course, impossible
to arbitrate between the parties to this dispute, because they do
not share the same basic premises. But it should be noted that
the overwhelming majority of Russian citizens do not regard
the ROC as one among others. It is not only a matter of high
ratings of symbolic authority. The very fact that complaints
of various kinds are constantly leveled against clerics (mostly
concerning money grubbing or other moral defects) shows that
citizens are not indifferent toward the Church, that it is not alien
to them. Thus, in Russia, writers and other rulers of minds
may be called to account for their moral lapses, but people
care not a whit about the behaviorlet us sayof trade union
leaders. The very ideal of evangelical poverty, so actively used
in criticism of the ROC, is meaningful only if the critic adopts
the same Christian standpoint, albeit only while he is criticizing.
Moreover, everyone has probably heard clerics being blamed for
homosexuality by people who in general have nothing against
homosexuality but also do not regard themselves as members of
the ROC.
However, complaints against the clergy and the ROC as a whole
remain at a level that one feels compelled to call the resentment
of a child against an unworthy tutor: he is insincere, he loves
money, sometimes he does this and that. In Greece, where the
Church really is a very powerful institution, it is blamed not only
for its wealth but also for more substantive sinsfor instance,
for not wanting to pay property taxes at a time of economic
crisis, although in fact the Greek Church feeds many thousands
of poor people10 (and the food is tasty, as I can testify). We have
yet to mature to the point of making such grownup complaints.11
In other words, the return of religion in the 1990s did indeed
create a special status for the ROC in Russians minds, and this
status has not been shaken by the various changes of the past
two decades, although it does not convert into any specifically
political influence.

56 russian politics and law

With what baggage did the ROC approach December

2011?
The article by Svetlana Solodovnik enables me merely to add
certain considerations that seem to me important for the following
discussion of the changes that began in December 2011.12
The majority of our citizens, and especially those sympathetic
to the opposition, perceive the Russian Orthodox Church as an
appendage of the state. Therefore any changes, which are usually
called clericalization, are described as successes of the ROC.
Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that the bureaucratic
weight of the patriarch and of the entire organization headed by
him within the existing Russian authoritarian political regime is
incomparably smaller than that of real top-level figures. This is
especially clear when we compare Russia with other countries
with a dominant Orthodox Church. For example, schemes for
the privatization of real estate in favor of the ROC are much
less far-reaching than the schemes for which Abbott Ephraim
of the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos (well known in our
country thanks to the Girdle of the Mother of God) has ended up
in prison.13 The degree to which religious life is monopolized in
Russia is quite low by comparison with the situation in Moldova,
where no Muslim organization was recognized until 2011.14
All changes, including the involvement of the Orthodox
Church in the armed forces and in the education system, are above
all policies of the state, which in these instances has acceded to
longstanding requests of the ROC but in many other instances
has not done so. To a large extent preferential treatment of the
ROC depends on the subjective inclinations of officials. This is
noticeable at the level of the federal authorities: for example, the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs is for some reason especially inclined
to poke its nose into purely confessional issues (incidentally, it
even contrived to present the imprisonment of Abbott Ephraim
as a violation of human rights). But the same phenomenon is
discernible at the local level: one official refers a matter to the
Archpriest for his blessing while the idea of doing such a thing

septemberoctober 2014 57

never even enters the head of another official. Here too there is an
acute shortage of comparative quantitative studies.
The ROC bears no resemblance to the Ideological Department
of the CPSU Central Committee for two reasons. First, the function
formerly performed by the latter is performed under the current
regime by different people altogether, who may at most make use
of working drafts prepared by the Church or perhaps outsource
some task to certain Orthodox Christian groups. Second, the
Russian Orthodox Church is too pluralistic, rather chaotically
organized, and simply too large an organism to assume the role of
an effective working and, most important, an effective controlling
element of the state machine. The control exercised over the ROC
even by the Soviet regime, let alone by the current regime, was
quite superficial. Attempts at fuller state control of the Church
have already proved completely ineffective in other countries: in
Bulgaria in the 1990s an attempt to forcibly de-Sovietize the
Church was a total failure (see the article by Toni Nikolov on
pages 4051 of this issue of Pro et Contra), as was the attempt by
President Yanukovych of Ukraine to turn the Ukrainian Orthodox
Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, initially loyal to him, into
an instrument in the political struggle with the opposition.15 The
current Russian authorities seem to understand the limits on what
they can achieve in this sphere (those who would like to reform the
ROC from without in a more liberal spirit also need to understand
these limits).
The ROC has its own ideological project, which may be called
for short the Church variant of Russian civilizational nationalism.16
On the one hand, the leadership and main representatives of the
ROC portray Russian nationalism as ethnocultural in nature, where
culture is defined by presumed confessional orientation; on the
other hand, this nationalism has a definite messianic streak, based
on the vision of a confrontation between Orthodox Christian
civilization and Western secular civilization. Orthodox Christian
civilization has its center not in Constantinople or Jerusalem but
in Moscow; as the last surviving institution of imperial scale after
the fall of the Soviet Union, the ROC lays claim to a leading role

58 russian politics and law

in Russias global mission, which the ROC sees as resistance

to secular liberalism. At the same time, the ROC acts inside the
country both as the Church of the majority and the leader of
the community of traditional religions that are called on to
support the same global mission. Finally, inasmuch as Western
civilization is a modernizing and self-modernizing civilization,
resistance to modernizationgoing so far as attempts to reverse
the modernization of societyis one of the foundations of the
ideology of the ROC.
The methods used to justify the ROCs claims to a leading
position in contemporary Orthodox Christianity are characteristic.
On the one hand, the modern democratic argument regarding
numbers is used (80 percent of the worlds Orthodox Christians are
in the ROC). On the other hand, upon its establishment, the Moscow
Patriarchate supposedly inherited the place in the Pentarchy (the
ancient system of five Patriarchates) that had become vacant after
the schism with Rome; by implication, therefore, Moscow may
lay claim to the leading role formerly played by Rome. And as a
result: We really are the spiritual unifying force and foundation
of that civilization that alone can converse with the world on an
equal basis.17
The specific nature of the nationalism of the ROC leadership has
numerous consequences. For example, Vladimir Elenskii mentions
the rhetorical games played by Patriarch Kirill with the concept
of ethnophyletism18 in his efforts to prevent the autocephaly of
Ukrainian Orthodox Christianity. Retaining Ukraine is a matter
of critical importance to the ROC not only on account of the size
of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), for autocephaly would
also entail the unification of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine and
this would make the UOC almost equal in quantitative terms to the
ROC. The principle itself is also important here: without Ukraine
the ROC would become just a national Church with a diaspora
(and Belarus would not change this impression).
Here too a serious problem awaits the ROC. Orthodox
Christianity is not associated with a pro-Russian and anti-Western
orientation in such a categorical manner. One might think that

septemberoctober 2014 59

it was after looking, for instance, at the situation in Moldova19

or in Belarus (see the article by Natalia Vasilevich on pages
8096 in this issue of Pro et Contra [translated in this issue, pp.
731]), but in Ukraine the picture is quite different: even the
UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate, let alone the other Orthodox
Christian jurisdictions, support the countrys integration into the
European Union and oppose the relatively moderate language
reform of Yanukovych.20 Possibly this is fraught with the risk of
the import of pro-Western attitudes into Russia. But it is much
more important and certain that Ukrainian autocephalyand,
consequently, a crisis in the imperial status of the ROCis only
a matter of time. And such a crisis may serve as an important
catalyst of internal modernizing shifts in the ROC.
Remarkably, the nationalism of the ROC is almost exclusively
an ideological and not a political phenomenon. While relations
with the ultra-right Golden Dawn are a big problem for the Greek
Church,21 and the Bulgarian Church has successfully overcome the
temptation of nationalist politicization and firmly distanced itself
from the Ataka (Attack) party (see the article by Toni Nikolov
on pages 4051 in this issue of Pro et Contra), the ROC simply
faces no such temptation: Orthodox Christian nationalist groups
are quite weak and gravitate toward the fundamentalist opposition
to the Patriarch inside the Church.22 Existing pro-Patriarch
Orthodox Christian nationalist organizations like the National
Assembly (Narodnyi sobor) are too ineffective. In 2007 there
was an attempt to support the Russian Doctrine project, which the
ultra-right organization Great Russia simultaneously proclaimed
as its own ideological basis, but the project was soon forgotten.
Contacts with ultra-rightists after the disorders on Manezh Square
in 2010 were clearly ephemeral. Some project like the reborn
Rodina (Motherland) party may again pose a similar temptation;
nevertheless, it is more natural for the leadership of the ROC to
deal with someone associated with the state authorities.
In general, this inclination to appeal to the regime rather than to
the public is one of the well-known weaknesses of the ROC. We
must suppose that it is also well known to the Church hierarchs

60 russian politics and law

themselves and that this is why, although in each specific instance

it is more convenient for them to reach agreement with officials,
their speeches are increasingly often addressed to the public.
Indeed, it is precisely these speeches, formulated in a language
unfamiliar to people outside the Church and rebroadcast by
media outlets friendly to the ROC, that produce in many people
the feeling of some sort of aggression on the part of the Russian
Orthodox Church.
It is necessary to understand, however, that representatives
of the ROC perceive themselves as the defending side or
even as a persecuted minority. Their persecutors, of course,
are the liberal secularists. This harmonizes completely with
the global conception of a final battle of Orthodox Christian
civilization against the spiritual aggression of the West. As
a rule, the official leaders of the ROC do not indulge in directly
eschatological rhetoric of the kind used by the fundamentalist
opposition inside the Church; the eschatological passion that
they feel is nonetheless obvious. Here is a passage in which
Patriarch Kirill, who is usually cautious in his formulations,
gives voice to this passion:
Recently we have run into enormous temptations. In a number of
countries the choice in favor of sin is upheld and justified by the law,
and those who acting in good conscience fight against such minorityimposed laws are subjected to repressions. This is a very dangerous
apocalyptic symptom, and we must do all we can to ensure that on
the expanses of Holy Rus, sin is never upheld by the law of the state,
because this would mean that the nation was embarking upon the path
to self-destruction.23

It has to be understood that people who construct their

sociopolitical views on a religious foundation do not think in the
same way as those who develop them on a secular basis. It is
appropriate here to note an analogy with the concept of Serbian
martyrdom in the Serbian Orthodox Christian tradition, which
interprets the Battle of Kosovo not as an act of heroism and
national tragedy but as a national imitation of Christ.24 Of
course, due to the difference in historical experience there is no

septemberoctober 2014 61

literal counterpart to this sense of identity in the ROC, but the

similarity is striking.
And it is these people whofully in accordance with the
theory of public religion25go out to compete in the market
in religions. Here it is not a matter of exposure to the public:
the Church has always acted in public. Public religion should
be likened, rather, to a company that has gone publicthat is,
transformed itself from the property of a compact group of coowners into an open joint-stock company, interested not only in
its clients but also in minority shareholders and in stratagems
for the financial market. This compels the Church to enter into
negotiations with minority shareholders and into competition
with other religious groups on an increasingly equal basis,
thereby lending unprecedented dynamism to the constant process
of Church renewal. The only problem is that the task of running
the ROC under these conditions fell to the lot of people who are
not just very conservative but in most cases were swept into the
Orthodox Church on the post-Soviet wave of enthusiasm with
a restoration inspired by an image of premodern times. It is not
surprising that the ROC should have found it difficult to adjust
to the dynamic 1990s and even to Putins stagnant but markedly
secular 2000s.
The ROC, in conformity with its doctrine as described above,
speaks out against the process of modernization both at the
national and global levels. But it has to speak out within a milieu
that is already fairly modernized and in which the language of
restoration simply does not work outside the rather narrow circle
of churchified people. And in order to achieve something,
the Russian Orthodox Church makes increasingly active use
of concepts that essentially conflict with basic Christian tenets:
appeals to the number of supporters of one or another local
Church (see above) have no connection with the foundations of
ecclesiology; the ROCs highly effective doctrine of traditional
religions has greatly helped the latter, but somehow undermines
the exclusive claim of Orthodox Christianity to truth; instead of
condemning blasphemy, the Church demands protection for the

62 russian politics and law

feelings of believersand not only Orthodox believers; the

ROC is putting forward its own doctrine of human rights; and
so on. While fighting against modernization, the ROC itself is
undergoing gradual modernization from within, at least at the
discursive level.26
The role of the ROC in the political process since
December 2011
Just as the vague attempts at liberalization during the second half
of Medvedevs presidential term prepared the ground for the mass
protests that followed the elections of December 4, 2011, so did
they create the conditions for the activation of the role of the ROC.
The purpose of Medvedevs liberalization was clearly not to
strengthen democratic institutions but to expand the mechanism
for feedback between the ruling group and society, because these
mechanisms had almost ceased to operate during Putins second
presidential term. In this sense, the ROC is a quite natural partner
for the regime, as it is loyal and has broad, albeit weak, access to
various categories of citizens. Of course, subjective factors also
played their role: Medvedev is clearly closer to the Church than
Putin and, above all, Patriarch Kirill is much more inclined than
his predecessor toward an active, and even attacking, role for the
Orthodox Church in society. Nevertheless, I think that the need for
some reform of state governance is a more important factor than
the personal characteristics of top leaders. And, by the way, there is
no contradiction between a liberalizing trend and increased support
for the ROC: the closest analogy here may be developments during
perestroika; it may also be recalled that in Serbia active rapprochement between the state authorities and the Serbian Orthodox Church
began under the most liberal leaderZoran ini.27 Expansion of
feedback for the purpose of stabilizing a nonideological authoritarian regime has to encompass all ideological sectors.
Under Dmitry Medvedev, the ROC accomplished a serious
breakthrough: the process of the large-scale transfer of property
was legitimized; the concept of traditional religions was for the

septemberoctober 2014 63

first time extended from rhetoric into law; pseudolegal methods

for protecting the ROC against criticism, previously used only in
exceptional cases, started to become routine; and so on. At the
same time, the public activity of representatives of the Russian
Orthodox Church greatly expandedthanks not only to their own
efforts, of course, but also to the access they were given to the
mass media. The opponents of the ROC also expanded their own
public activity correspondingly: even in 2011 a greater number
of protests of the most diverse kinds were registered, including
protests against the building of churches.28 It is important to recall
this now, because later events have overshadowed what happened
earlier, and many people have formed the impression that the
exacerbation of relations between Church and society is merely a
by-product of political confrontation.
In December 2011, Patriarch Kirill did not hesitate for long
and firmly took the side of the regime; this is not surprising in
light of his antiliberal convictions. But a much more important
circumstance is that the regime no less firmly relied on the ROC
as one of the bulwarks of the regime. This policy did not change at
all when Putin returned to the presidency. However, a fundamental
change did occur in the purpose of this policy (probably even
before the presidential elections, although that is not so important).
Previously, the ruling groupas a matter of principlehad
refrained from seeking any ideological legitimation and posed
as technocrats taking equal care of all citizens; relying on the
effectiveness of the administrative resource and the machinery
of suppression, they had felt no need for the political mobilization
of supporters. Now, with the emergence of a relatively massive
opposition, the ruling group feels the need to further strengthen
its positions (its fears of losing power may well be premature, but
these fears undoubtedly exist). This can be done in two waysby
intensifying repression and through the political mobilization of
supporters; at present the regime is combining the two methods
but giving preference to the latter. Political mobilization cannot
be of a purely negative character (against agents of the State
Department, etc.), but for a regime that is really nonideological it

64 russian politics and law

is also difficult to conduct a positive mobilization. The choice fell,

therefore, on the most accessible version of this sort of fragmentary
conservatismthe defense of traditional values known to be
popular among a sizable majority of citizens but unacceptable to
most of the opposition. In this regard, what could be better than
homophobia?29 Fear of migrants also fits the bill. But it is quite
possible to make similar use of both the great authority of the
Russian Orthodox Church and its traditional character. Thus,
the ROC, together with its ideas, serves simultaneously as an
object to be defended against the attacks of the opposition and
as an ally in the effort to mobilize political support.
Undoubtedly, this presupposes an increase in the social influence
of the ROC and probably even in its bureaucratic weighta
prospect that cannot be pleasant to a president who has always
striven to prevent the strengthening of actors who are in the least
independent. But acute political necessity compels him to take
this path. And the ROC, of course, tries to squeeze all that it can
out of the favorable political situation, which after all may not last
very long. During this period, the Church must seize as many new
bridgeheads of various kinds as possible. For example, the law that
criminalizes insults to the feelings of believers is an achievement
that will probably survive a change in the situation that weakens
the position of the Church.
The Pussy Riot case and everything directly or indirectly
connected with it sharply exacerbated relations between the ROC
and probably the greater part of the liberal and leftist public.
And, undoubtedly, this exacerbation will not pass without leaving
traces. But if we look at the opinion polls, we find that the ROC has
actually augmented its mass support. It is very interesting to see
how our compatriots have responded to the question of whether
Orthodox Christians should enjoy legal advantages over other
citizens. Positive answers peaked over the period from 1997 to the
beginning of the 2000s, when there were passionate discussions of
this theme, but after that, the level of support for this idea declined
markedly. Then in 201213 it rose againfrom 21 percent in
January 2012 (the same as in the preceding period) to 25 percent

septemberoctober 2014 65

in March 2013.30 Almost half of all citizens think that society

can now find the strength for the spiritual rebirth of the country
only by turning to religion and the Church, while in the past the
corresponding proportion rarely reached a third. Furthermore, 58
percent (as compared with under 40 percent in the past) now agree
that the Russian Orthodox Church must save the country as it did
in previous crises.31 It must be assumed that this is the visible
part of the successful conservative mobilization conducted by the
regime with the participation of the ROC. Moreover, many citizens
understand very well that this is essentially a political campaign and
not just a fight for morality: 56 percent of respondents attributed
the passage of the antigay law to the low level of morality among
adolescents, while 46 percent explained it in terms of the need
for religious prohibitions to resist the pernicious influence of the
West, which is destroying Russia.32 Naturally, different people
have different attitudes toward the political mobilization and this
further polarizes appraisals, but on the whole, support for the
ROC is growing.33 Appraisals of Patriarch Kirill himself have
also become more polarized and somewhat lower; nevertheless,
36 percent of respondents in a poll conducted by the All-Russian
Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) named him as
the leader of one of the religious organizations while 48 percent
called him the spiritual leader and moral guide of the nation.34
Turning now to the opponents of the spiritual leader, it would
be interesting to study the internal structure of protests against
the policy of the ROC, but as yet available data do not suffice for
such a study. Undoubtedly, these protests have been provoked in
part by the political choice of the Church leadership and then by
its aggressive stance in the Pussy Riot case (which has been very
important for the ROC in its efforts to embody the confessional
conceptual apparatus in law). But it should also be remembered that
protests against the ROC had begun to expand before December
2011. It would also be interesting to assess the extent to which
the protests have been fueled by deliberate propaganda efforts of
the opposition; complaints from the ROC concerning an antiChurch campaign are flagrantly exaggerated, but there has been

66 russian politics and law

such a campaignfor example, the story about the Patriarchs

watch was artificially hyped.*
The story of the watch is indicative in many respects. I will note
just two of them. First, it deliberately inserts the ROC into the
context of exposs of the party of swindlers and thieves [United
RussiaTrans.]in itself a populist rather than a liberal theme,
because corruption is obviously not the main irritant for liberal
critics of the regime. Second, it appeals to the ideal of evangelical
poverty. This is a traditionalone might even say ancienttheme
in criticism of the Church hierarchy. But not only is this theme
incompatible with the usual value system of the liberal opposition;
it has also demonstrated its limited effectivenesswere it
effective, the Church would already have lost all of its authority a
thousand years ago. Be that as it may, only 16 percent of citizens
try to explain the growing criticism directed against the leaders of
the ROC by reference to their deviation from the ideal of poverty,
while 51 percentrepresenting various points of viewsee the
reason in political and ideological disagreements.35
At present the liberal opposition does not pose a coherent or
effective challenge to the ROC. To some extent, undoubtedly, this
is connected with the fact that some people within the opposition
seek somehow to cure the ills of the Russian Orthodox Church
(many of them feel themselves to be inside the Church) while others
want to weaken the Church irrespective of its inner condition. And
there is as yet no way of estimating the relative strength of these
two currents within the liberal part of the opposition.
For whatever reasons, activation of the liberal challenge to the
ROC synchronizes with activation of the antiliberal rhetoric of
representatives of the ROC as the Church is drawn into the political
confrontation. And the more deeply the Church is drawn into that
confrontation, the more doubtful the prospect of preserving a
*This refers to a scandal over an expensive watch worn by the Patriarch; see
the article by Katarzyna Jarzyska, The Russian Orthodox Church as Part of
the State and Society, Russian Politics and Law, 2014, no. 3 (MayJune 2014),
pp. 8797.Trans.

septemberoctober 2014 67

plurality of worldviews inside the Church. The problem does not

lie in the sanctions imposed on individual clerics. The point is that
the leadership of the ROC is orienting itself more and more firmly
toward the conservative and antiliberal majority of Orthodox
believers, whether Churchified or not, and this is marginalizing
groups within the Orthodox Church that are opposed to this line
above all, the so-called Church liberals.
The opposite wing also has no cause to celebratethe Orthodox
Christian fundamentalists, who became well known to the whole
country ten to twelve years ago thanks to their campaigns against
Taxpayer Identification Numbers, bar codes, and the new passports
and for the canonization of Ivan the Terrible and Rasputin. These
extremes are of no use to the leadership of the ROC in its efforts
to broaden the support base and strengthen the influence of the
Orthodox Church in societylet alone to the state authorities,
who in general prefer to avoid all extremes. The activation of
groups like the one led by Dmitrii (Enteo) Tsorionov* is not a
very significant development: first, there have always been such
groupsit is just that their PR was not so good in the past;
and second, inside the ROC it is not they who matter but the
masses of believers who in one way or another follow the lead
of fundamentalist elders, priests, and activists. Restraining this
internal opposition remains one of the most important tasks facing
the Church leadership, and tackling it requires (inter alia) certain
rhetorical concessions to the fundamentalists. These concessions,
in turn, further complicate another difficult taskthe creation of
a conservative image of the ROC that will be acceptable to the
conservative majority of citizens.
Here it is important to explain one importantalbeit to many
also banalpoint: Church conservatism (even when actively
projected beyond the bounds of the Church) and fundamentalism
are altogether different things. Conservatism takes existing
*A student at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations; his group
of Orthodox Christian activists has attracted public attention by disrupting
cultural events that they consider blasphemous.Trans.

68 russian politics and law

attitudes and practices as its starting point: it strives to bring

them closer to the aspired-to ideal, but always keeps an eye on
the opinion of the majority in order not to destroy the existing
structure (including the Church structure) but to reform it as
needed. Fundamentalism, by contrast, is by no means simply the
pursuit of fundamental religious values or the idea of returning
to the sources of religion; it is always a complex of ideas and
methods that implies a real and total revolution for the purpose
of overcoming the modernization of society and building a new
city on the hill (in rhetorical termsreturning to an old city on
the hill).36 A striking example of fundamentalism in Russia is the
Salafi movement in Islam. Real fundamentalism also exists inside
the ROC,37 but currently there is no organized movement of the
kind that existed at the beginning of the 2000s, and this is perhaps
one of the results of the activation of conservative Church policy
that began around the turn of the century.
As a conservative policy is always constructed in relation to
present-day social reality, the future of Church conservatism
depends on how Russian society develops. Therefore, the ROC
will undoubtedly remain a conservative force but may greatly
change over time. (If it is unable to bear the strain of adapting
to sharp changes of some kind in society, the Church may even
split.)38
If, however, we proceed from the assumption that Russian
society will hardly change radically over the next few years, then
we can speculate that the current tendency in relations between
the Russian Orthodox Church and society will also continue.
And this tendency consists in the gradual consolidation of a sort
of conservative majority in society to match the rather similar
conservative majority that has already consolidated itself inside
the ROC. In general, until now the ROC has had difficulty
in bridging the wide gap that separates it from the majority of
citizens, which is a result of the archaic character of the Russian
Orthodox Churchits language, its structures, its day-to-day
practices. But the activation of political life and the deliberate
policy of Patriarch Kirill, aimed not only at the churchified
but also at sympathizers, are helping to narrow the gapif not

septemberoctober 2014 69

between the Church and society as a whole, then at least between

the Church and the conservative majority. Consequently, the term
Church of the majority is gradually acquiring a political and
not just a statistical meaning. However, the term pro-Orthodox
consensus, used until now by Russian political observers,39 is
ceasing to be applicable, because for the opposition, criticism of
the ROC is becoming not only permissible but also unavoidable.
Of course, this tendency remains quite fragile. First, the
conservative majority in society is currently maintained solely by
the manipulative power of the state-controlled mass media, and it
is hard to tell whether it will acquire any stable form. Second, we
do not know how effective Patriarch Kirills intra-Church policy
will be, which is in fact modernizing the Church in the course of
its expansion beyond its traditional limits. And, of course, over
the medium term we cannot exclude the possibility of serious
upheavals that redraw the entire map of religioussocial relations.
But if the current tendency does continue for some time, then it may
lead to two main variants (with, of course, numerous subvariants).
In the first variant, the existing political regime survives (possibly
in a somewhat milder form) while the political confrontation in
society becomes less intense. In that case, the conservative majority
in society still remains much more modernized than the ROC and
their continued rapprochement works further to modernize the
Church. In the second variant, the political regime grows harsher,
relying on ideologically stricter versions of antiliberal ideas. In
that case, the ROC, continuing to adapt itself to the regime and to
the conservative majority of citizens that supports the regime (or
possibly a conservative pro-regime minority, but a very substantial
one), may strengthen the most archaic elements of its practices
and ideological programs; given the prospect of the inevitable
destruction of the tightened screws, this is fraught with the risk
of a serious crisis inside the Church.
Notes
1. There exists an extensive critique of mass social surveys as such. This
critique is especially relevant when it comes to things such as religioussocial

70 russian politics and law

conflicts, which are so difficult for ordinary citizens to discuss. Unfortunately,

however, qualitative studies of religion have their own defects, the main one in
my view being the clearly nonrandom selection of groups for qualitative investigation. Somehow or other, the results of mass social surveys have to be used.
And as not a single organization or group specializing in religious studies has
conducted systematic research on issues important for this article and covering
a long period, including the past two years, data from unspecialized sociological
centers have to be used. Of such sources, the surveys conducted by the Levada
Center seem the most adequate to the task of this article.
2. Rossiiane o religii i tserkvi, Levada-Tsentr, October 11, 2012 (www.
levada.ru/11-10-2012/rossiyane-o-religii-i-tserkvi/).
3. Religiia i tserkov v obshchestvennoi zhizni, Levada-Tsentr, April
18, 2012 (www.levada.ru/18-04-2013/religiya-i-tserkov-v-obshchestvennoizhizni-0/).
4. This concept was originally formulated in reference to the non-Western
world; see the collection, Peter L. Berger, ed., The Desecularization of the World:
Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999). But
since the mid-1990s quite a lot has also been written about the transformation that
the already secularized societies of the West are undergoing. See in particular the
very important work, J. Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). See also V. Karpov, Kontseptualnye
osnovy teorii desekuliarizatsii, Gosudarstvo, religiia, Tserkov v Rossii i za
rubezhom, 2012, no. 2(30), pp. 11464.
5. See Rossiiane o religii i tserkvi.
6. B. Dubin, Legkoe bremia: massovoe pravoslavie v Rossii 19902000kh godov, in Religioznye praktiki v sovremennoi Rossii (Moscow: Novoe
izdatelstvo, 2006), pp. 6986.
7. G. Davie, Religion in Britain Since 1945: Believing Without Belonging
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).
8. K. Kaariainen and D. Furman, Religioznost v Rossii v 90-e gody XXnachale XXI veka (Moscow: Institut Evropy RAN, Ogni TD, 2006), pp. 7782.
9. For example, we may read that the Armenian custom of using willow twigs
on Palm Sunday has pagan roots and is therefore not altogether Christian. See
O. Ogannisian, Tserkovpostsekuliarnaia ili postsakralnaia? Pro et Contra,
MayAugust 2013, nos. 34(59), pp. 5974. [For the English translation, see
Ogannes Ogannisyan, The Church: Postsecular or Postsacral? Russian Politics
and Law, vol. 52, no. 4 (JulyAugust 2014), pp. 5373.Ed.]
10. A. Bogdanovskii, Grecheskaia tserkov: v ozhidanii dialoga s obshchestvom, Pro et Contra, MayAugust 2013, nos. 34(59), pp. 7589.
11. The point that most Russians have nothing serious to demand either from
the Church or from the state authorities was made recently at a seminar at the
Carnegie Center by Boris Dubin. See the brief note, Obraz pravoslavnogo
veruiushchego v sovremennoi Rossii, Sait Tsentra Karnegi, June 8, 2012 (www.
carnegie.ru/2012/06/08/obraz-pravoslavnogo-veruiushchego-v-sovremennoirossii/exey/).
12. S. Solodovnik, Rossiia: ofitsialnaia tserkov vybiraet vlast, Pro et
Contra, MayAugust 2013, nos. 34(59), pp. 626. [For the English translation,

septemberoctober 2014 71

see Svetlana Solodovnik, Russia: The Offical Church Choosees the State, Russian Politics and Law, vol. 52, no. 3 (MayJune 2014), pp. 3866.Ed.]
13. Bogdanovskii, Grecheskaia tserkov.
14. V. Sprynchane, Bog v zonakh pogranichia, Pro et Contra, May
August 2013, nos. 34(59), pp. 4558. [For the English translation, see Vitalie
Sprinceana, God in the Border Zones, Russian Politics and Law, vol. 52, no.
4 (JulyAugust 2014), pp. 3452.Ed.]
15. V. Elenskii, Ukrainskoe pravoslavie i ukrainskii proekt, Pro et Contra,
MayAugust 2013, nos. 34(59), pp. 2744. [For the English translation, see
Viktor Elenskii, Ukrainian Orthodoxy and the Ukrainian Proejct: The Churches
and Unforeseen Statehood in an Age of Religious Revival, Russian Politics
and Law, vol. 52, no. 4 (JulyAugust 2014), pp. 733.Ed.]
16. For a more detailed discussion see: A. Verkhovskii, Natsionalizm rukovodstva Russkoi pravoslavnoi tserkvi v pervom desiatiletii XXI v., in Pravoslavnaia
tserkov pri novom patriarkhe, ed. A. Malashenko and S. Filatov (Moscow:
Rossiiskaia politicheskaia entsiklopediia ([Rosspen]), 2012), pp. 14169.
17. Sviateishii Patriarkh Kirill: Ukrainskaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov obladaet dukhovnoi siloi i sposobnostiu obediniat ves narod, i to, chto ia vizhu
zdes, obshchaias s liudmi, menia v etom ubezhdaet, Russkaia Pravoslavnaia
Tserkov: Ofitsialnyi sait Moskovskogo Patriarkhata, July 30, 2009 (www.
patriarchia.ru/db/text/707283.html).
18. Elenskii, Ukrainskoe pravoslavie.
19. Sprynchane, Bog v zonakh pogranichia.
20. Elenskii, Ukrainskoe pravoslavie.
21. Bogdanovskii, Grecheskaia tserkov.
22. I have written about this in detail. See A. Verkhovskii, Politicheskoe pravoslavie: Russkie pravoslavnye natsionalisty i fundamentalisty, 19952001 gg.
(Moscow: Tsentr SOVA, 2003).
23. Patriarkh Kirill: Priznanie odnopolykh soiuzov vedet chelovechestvo
k kontsu sveta, Korrespondent.net, July 21, 2013 (http://korrespondent.net/
world/russia/1583475-patriarh-kirill-priznanie-odnopolyh-soyuzov-vedetchelovechestvo-k-koncu-sveta).
24. M. Falina, Serbskaia tserkov i natsionalnaia ideia, Pro et Contra,
MayAugust 2013, nos. 34(59), pp. 90101.
25. Casanova, Public Religions.
26. For a more detailed account, see A. Verkhovskii, Ideologiia patriarkha
Kirilla, metody ee prodvizheniia i ee vozmozhnoe vliianie na samosoznanie
Russkoi pravoslavnoi tserkvi, Forum noveishei vostochno-evropeiskoi istorii i
kultury, 2012, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 88105 (www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forum/
docs/forumruss17/04Verchovskij.pdf).
27. Falina, Serbskaia tserkov.
28. For more detail about all of this, see O. Sibireva, Problemy realizatsii
svobody sovesti v Rossii v 2011 godu, in Ksenofobiia, svoboda sovesti i antiekstremizm v Rossii v 2011 godu (Moscow: Tsentr SOVA, 2012), pp. 6792.
29. See the level of support for the law on propaganda of nontraditional sexual
relations and at the same time for the law on insulting the feelings of believers:
Rossiiane o novykh konservativnykh zakonakh, Levada-Tsentr, July 3, 2013

72 russian politics and law

(www.levada.ru/03-07-2013/rossiyane-o-novykh-konservativnykh-zakonakh).
30. See Religiia i tserkov v obshchestvennoi zhizni.
31. See Rossiiane o religii i tserkvi.
32. See Rossiiane o novykh konservativnykh zakonakh.
33. Therefore, relying on data from the Levada Center, I am compelled to
disagree with Svetlana Solodovnik, who takes the view that the influence of the
Church is declining (see Solodovnik, Rossiia: ofitsialnaia tserkov). Nor does
this conclusion follow from the survey results from the All-Russian Center for
the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) that Solodovnik cites in her article. First,
VTsIOM registered not the actual influence of the Church but how citizens appraise this influence; second, the index for 2012 was lower than the index for 2010
but higher than the index for 2008and in general the fluctuations were small.
See Tserkov, partii, SMI, profsoiuzy: rol i vliianie v nashem obshchestve,
VTsIOM, June 22, 2012 (http://wciom.ru/index.php?id=459&uid=112842/).
34. Patriarkh Kirill: chetyre goda tserkovnogo sluzheniia, VTsIOM, February 6, 2013 (http://wciom.ru/index.php?id=459&uid=113626/); Fevralskie
reitingi odobreniia, doveriia i polozheniia del v strane, Levada-Tsentr, February
21, 2013 (www.levada.ru/21-02-2013/fevralskie-reitingi-odobreniya-doveriyai-polozheniya-del-v-strane).
35. Rossiiane ob RPTs i gruppe Pussy Riot, Levada-Tsentr, May 2, 2012
(www.levada.ru/02-05-2012/rossiyane-ob-rpts-i-gruppe-pussy-riot/).
36. See the conclusions of an ambitious transnational study conducted as
early as the 1990s: G.A. Almond, E. Sivan, and R.S. Appleby, Fundamentalism:
Genus and Species, in Fundamentalisms Comprehended, ed. M.E. Marty and
R.S. Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 40514.
37. I tried to systematize various descriptions of it at the time in the chapter
titled Russian Orthodox Fundamentalism in Verkhovskii, Politicheskoe pravoslavie, pp. 25176.
38. The prospect of a schism within the ROC has been discussed many times,
but at present does not seem likely. In theory, Orthodox Christianity in the atypical situation of the absence of a Church monopoly can develop in a somewhat
different manner (see Elenskii, Ukrainskoe pravoslavie).
39. The term itself was proposed and applied to mass attitudes by Kimmo
Kaariainen and Dmitrii Furman; it meant that the majority of those who do not
consider themselves believers or even Orthodox Christians nonetheless support
the ROC. In politics, up to the almost complete neutralization of real politics
during Putins second term, this assumed the form of a negative pro-Orthodox
consensus: political parties, even if in practice they ignored the Church, avoided
criticizing the Church in any way. See I. Papkova, The Russian Orthodox Church
and Political Party Platforms, Sait Tsentra SOVA, December 15, 2006 (www.
sova-center.ru/files/religion/papkova.doc).

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