Kirill's dream, Putin's dream
My friend John Schofield from long-gone university days has asked for some thoughts on the Russian Orthodox Church’s attitude to war. I do so as a now-retired deacon in the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) in Belgium, of which I was an active member for 25 years until its flagrant disregard of the Covid regulations led me to distance myself well before the present crisis. I am also the husband of a well-known Russian iconographer and theoretician of art, herself an acute observer of the Russian church scene over the past 30 years.
A lot of quite sensible commentary is appearing daily on the web on the ROC’s position in the present crisis, so little of what I say is going to be terribly new.
If we look for a theological basis, the obvious place to start is Chapter VIII ‘War and Peace’ of the document ‘The Orthodox Church and Society: The Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church’. This wide-ranging document, covering the Church’s relationship to nation, state, politics, labour, crime and punishment, was published in 1997, with the present Patriarch Kirill, then Metropolitan of Smolensk and head of the Russian Church’s Department for External Church Relations. It can be easily downloaded in English via Google.
The key points on war cover little more than a page. Key quotes are:
- ‘While recognising war as evil, the church does not prohibit her children from participating in hostilities if at stake is the security of their neighbours and the restoration of trampled justice. Then war is considered to be necessary though undesirable means.’
- ‘In the present system of international relations, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish an aggressive war from a defensive war. The distinction between the two is especially subtle where one or two states or the world community initiate hostilities on the ground that it is necessary to protect the people who fell victim to an aggression. In this regard, the question whether the Church should support or deplore the hostilities needs to be given a special consideration every time that hostilities are initiated or threaten to begin.’
- ‘The Church has a special concern for the military, trying to educate them in faithfulness to lofty moral ideals’.
The document sets out the definition of ‘just war’ found in the Western Christian tradition and going back to St Augustine, even if its wording is unclear as to whether the ROC sees itself as being part of this tradition or not.
In short, pretty little to hold onto, and words which pretty much any Christian church hierarch could sign.
Even so, there are some points that could usefully be made:
1) This document is 25 years old, and its whole relatively liberal and ready-to-explain tonality is no longer that of the Russian Church, which has hardened and veered to the right in the past twenty and, in particular last 10 years. Indeed it can be argued that it is the fruit of a very exceptional period of Russian history, a ‘window of freedom’ that existed between the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and Putin’s second term of presidency starting in 2004, fifteen or so years during which Russia appeared to moving towards a democratic frame of mind and an open society on the Western model. An openness that is long past and gone.
2) If we take the long view of Russian history, starting with the brutal annexation of the Novgorod Republic in 1478 under Ivan III and the capture of Kazan in 1552 during the reign of Ivan IV the Terrible (1547-1584), through to the Russian Revolution, it is continuous story of expansion of frontiers, east to the Pacific, south to the Caucasus, and westward to Poland and the Ukraine and north-westwards to Finland. And, after the contractions forced onto Russia by the, for it, deleterious outcome of World War I, the process restarted in 1945 with the placing of the Eastern Block under the Communist yoke and the disastrous Afghanistan adventure. After a second contraction occasioned by the collapse of the Soviet Union and in particular the loss of the Ukraine, one senses that the same expansionist drive. All in the name of ‘security’ and ‘defence’, and with little material gain.
3) The ROC certainly exhibits a ‘special concern’ for the military and for military history. The Patriarch is frequently seen in military situations and in the company of high-ranking officers, where he is visibly at ease. The culmination of this cosiness was the building and consecration last year by Metropolitan Kirill, in the presence of the heads of the Russian Armed Forces, of the Cathedral of the Armed Forces an hour’s drive from Moscow. Paid for by supposedly voluntary subscriptions from armed forces members, its decoration glorifies Russia’s military past, with particular reference to World War II. Patriarch Kirill is its honorary dean. How much this ‘special concern’ is really for the souls of the military and how much for the firepower to support Kirill’s vision for Russia (see below) is an open question: notably at the consecration, no provision was made to give communion to the common soldiers standing for hours on parade inside it.
4) The question also arises as to who makes the judgements whether ‘to support or deplore’. On present form, the answer appears to be ‘The Patriarch, rubber-stamped by the Synod’.
5) As soon as we mention the word ‘theology’ in the Russian context, one is justified, in my view, in asking whether the Russian church really does theology at all. In my understanding, the role of theology in the Christian church is a constant and creative search for understand God’s working in His world and the part we are called to play in this, based on a deep consciousness of the Christian Gospel and the historical traditions of the Church and a serious private and communal prayer life. It is an exercise in which various points of view and hypotheses can be exposed, in the hope of arriving at some sort of consensus, which may or may not change the current ways of doing things and deepen the spiritual life of the church as a whole. From my observation, such theology does not exist in the Russian church, it is unwanted. What we have is not theology, but ideology, directed at maintaining the status quo. The only ‘creativity’ permitted is in the way of presenting the party line.
To understand the situation, we need to look wider afield.
Let me talk rather of two dreams, that of Patriarch Kirill and that of Vladimir Putin.
Kirill’s dream
Patriarch Kirill clearly has the sense of the Russian Orthodox Church having a duty to be a moral and civilizing influence, first within the Russian-speaking world, and also more widely in the general world. Russia is to be a Christian society and to present this as an example to the world to follow. A beacon of Christian civilization in a world that is otherwise morally falling apart.
At least that’s the message outside Russia. If we seek to draw a picture of Patriarch Kirill’s dream is for Russia, it is a society in which everyone considers themselves Orthodox, attends church regularly, goes to confession every time they take communion, takes part in the ritual, and reads the appointed prayers at home morning and night. Virtue is derivative of this, or rather virtue lies in the practice of it. Morality as we understand it in the west, arising out of personal conviction, comes in pretty second place: with sacramental confession and absolution easily available in the case of shortfalls. As for any personal experience of meeting with Christ, this is even more distant. Not to mention the fact that average church attendance in Russia is today no higher, and possibly lower, than in Western Europe or the United States.
Not that Russians are immoral. One encounters in Russia, in particular outside the cities, a sense of morality and a sense of common decency that feels very much like 1950s England or modern small-town America, even if, like all moralities, it tends to shape itself to the practicalities of the situation: Russian public discourse is very anti-gay, but much more ‘merciful’ on abortion or alcoholism than the English or US equivalent.
A fundamental and very thorny question here is to know whether this morality is a child of the institutional church, which likes to see itself in the role of moral judge and definer of moral law, or whether it is born elsewhere. Some point to the relatively high moral level and sense of justice and human decency of ordinary society in the late Communist period – for example, as played to in popular films of the period – , achieved in a supposedly atheist society. I am tempted to speak of a ‘Christian’ mentality inherent in the common people, born of the simple need to exist together in society, whether in a village or a communal housing block, and pretty much independent of the presence or absence of institutional church and its priests. A mentality that, along with a certain sense of ‘Russianness’, the institutional church, with its onion-dome towers and its long, poorly understood rites, symbolizes and comforts, but which it ultimately does little to further or deepen.
When it comes to morality, one certainly senses double standards: while Patriarch Kirill fulminates against gay parades and Metropolitan Hilarion promises God’s release from homosexuality if you pray hard enough, the dalliances of certain bishops with pretty seminarists, and equally, the failure or tardiness in taking appropriate action are an open secret. Not to mention the fact that the higher echelons of the church do well financially, being much wealthier than would be deemed decent, especially for bishops in monastic vows, in most other countries. Most bishops have apartments in Moscow, many have properties outside the country. Patriarch Kirill is purported to be a rich man. In writing this, I am very conscious that there are exceptions to the rule, bishops who place the welfare of their flocks higher than their own social status and financial security – one of whom is a friend and I respect greatly. I fear he is an exception.
Putin’s dream
Putin’s creed can, it seems to me, be best described as a sort of ‘divine right of kings’ without coronation – that certain people are entrusted by God with leading the affairs of nations, a situation that puts them above, or makes them into, the law. Nations defined, in his case, very much on an ethnic-cum-linguistic basis. My Russian nation, Holy Rus, for which I am responsible, is Russian-speakers wherever they live, as well as places where they once lived, which it is my duty to defend and uphold. And if this happens to be in other states, whether the Ukraine, Estonia or Latvia, too bad.
Critically, in this context, we need to see the political mind of Putin and his like as Asian, rather than European. And even if Putin currently draws to himself many comparisons with Hitler – including accusations of megalomanic delusion – his brand of despotic ‘state feudalism’ is closer to that of the Mongol Horde than to Western civilization.
These dreams have met
For ensuring this Russian identity, Putin needs the Russian Orthodox Church, both for a sense of ‘Russian continuity’ which he sees it as providing and for some sort of moral underpinning. Some argue that it is Patriarch Kirill who has provided Putin with the language and theological/ideological framework for putting across his vision of Holy Rus – expressed in decidedly religious language – and his and the ROC’s role in it. It is certainly true that both Putin and Metropolitan Kirill share strong hierarchical top-down mentalities, and however charming they can be externally, make it clear that they are in charge, and do not expect people to think, either politically or religiously, for themselves. It is in the Russian Church that I personally have learned how despotism works.
In this situation I would suggest that most Russians are not prone, either by nature or circumstances, to fanaticism, whether political or religious. Most just want to get on with their lives, and to carve out individual spaces of freedom in which they can do their own thing. Which is probably why Putin has got away with his steady hollowing out of democracy in Russia.
It is, nonetheless, tempting to speak of a certain servility in the Russian character, or at least in the common people (
narod) part of it. A servility which is understandable in a country in which serfdom was officially abolished only in 1865. A servility which, one can argue, the church has played and continues to play a major role in upholding. If we take the language of popular preaching, from the institution of the Russian Patriarchate in the sixteenth century onwards, it is a constant message of penitence, humility, passivity, obedience, of salvation by presence at ritual, ‘mystical’ practices, of the ecclesiastical structure as the only purveyor and guarantor of salvation, and of Orthodoxy as an island of godliness and blessedness surrounded by a sea of enemies. How well this matches genuine Christian gospel, I leave to my reader to decide.
Until when? Russians have traditionally been pretty resistant and able to pull in their belts, and are remarkably able to deal with situations like food shortages or lack of spare parts for their cars. Perhaps this is no more than a common feature of any people used to living a hard life, and who, from this position, also can be more easily persuaded to go to war. Whether this will still hold true in modern Russia, which would appear to be living in a ‘consumerist frenzy’, at least in the major cities, is unclear. As is whether a tech-savvy young generation of conscript age will accept to be cut off from outside sources of information. Or whether people will continue to be ready to believe official accounts as the likelihood of a young man in one’s own circle returning in a body bag rises. We are entering uncharted waters ….
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Photo Credit: Andriy Tod |