Why Putin Goes to Church
Vladimir Putin makes no secret of his close affinity with the Russian Orthodox Church. Though he neglected to explicitly confirm his personal faith in an interview with Time in 2007, he is regularly captured by the media receiving Communion, maintains cordial relations with the Moscow Patriarchate, and at all times proudly dons the baptismal cross pendant given to him by his mother.
After decades of anti-religious repression under the Soviet Union’s policy of state atheism, this sudden rapprochement between the Church and State marks a stark departure from historical precedent. But Putin’s interest in Orthodoxy is no accident. Far from being a mere ornament to his public image, the Orthodox Church fulfils a crucial role in the President’s implementation of a deeply conservative political agenda designed to centralise power and fight the social progressivism of the West with a reactionary value system rooted in Orthodox morality.
Recent legislation, for example, decriminalised acts of domestic abuse which did not result in hospitalisation. The move was roundly condemned by activist groups and many European governments, but received wholehearted support from the Orthodox Church, which claimed physical punishment was a ‘right’ for husbands and that laws targeting domestic violence constituted ‘interference’ in the ‘sacred space’ of the family setting. With the Church’s backing, Putin is pursuing a return to archaic notions of domesticity, exercising misogynistic control over women to maintain a traditionalist, patriarchal social hierarchy suited to the paternalistic strongman image he wishes to project of himself.
The Church has alsoseen its hegemony grow significantly as Putin imposes increasingly draconian restrictions on the freedoms of fringe and minority religious groups. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, have been forced underground after being classified as an ‘extremist’ organisation at the behest of the Orthodox Church. And they are not alone. Vitaly Tanakov, a Pagan priest, was similarly punished for spreading so-called ‘extremist’ material, whilst the annexation of Crimea in 2014 has led to the systematic persecution of indigenous Tatars, in particular through the unlawful detention of journalists representing their independent media. The freedom to criticise religion has also come under sustained attack, most notably as a result of stringent anti-blasphemy legislation threatening heavy fines for those who ‘insult the feelings of religious believers’.
Thiscontinued consolidation of the Church’s influence in Russian society is a double-edged sword. Naturally, it enables Orthodoxy to snuff out its competitors and draw larger congregations to its services. But more importantly, when viewed in light of the increasing percolation of Orthodox principles into state legislation, the persecution of non-traditional religion can also be seen as a means of suppressing value systems incompatible with state ideology.
Putin is certainly not the first Russian leader to exploit the Orthodox Church to his advantage. In fact, Orthodoxy’s political dealings are well known, spanning almost all eras of Russia’s turbulent history. Emperor Nicholas I, for example, as a response to the Decembrist uprising of 1825, made Orthodoxy a cornerstone of his official ideology of ‘Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality’.With this pithy new axiom, the Orthodox Church became an agent of Nicholas’s ardent policy of centralisation, enabling him to extend his paternalistic political influence into the cultural sphere and thus merge political control of his subjects with their spiritual subjugation. Not just this, but Orthodoxy, with its historical ties to the very foundation of the Russian state, was also seen as part of a Russification drive that sought to curb the Europeanism that had inspired the Decembrist uprising in the first place.
Orthodoxy found an unlikely admirer in Joseph Stalin, too. Though ostensibly an advocate of Soviet-backed atheism (the notable exception being his easing of restrictions on the Church during World War II), much of his cult of personality drew heavily on Orthodox art and theology. Numerous agitprop posters of him interacting with children, as well as his oft-cited epithet ‘Father of Nations’, for example, insist on his role not just as a caring, generous father figure, but more subliminally as a central, authoritative male figurehead channelling the Orthodox Church’s own emphasis of the hierarchical importance of the patriarch. At the same time, his grandiose presentation in portraits as an idol for veneration, as well as the regular worship of his likeness at parades and state ceremonies, hint at a style of portraiture whose aesthetics and function directly mirror those of Orthodox iconography. Even within the state-sponsored Socialist Realistic artistic movement, the prevalence of teleological historical arcs – namely, the presentation of all history as an inevitable march towards communism – takes its inspiration from early Eastern Orthodox literature. The Tale of Bygone Years, for example, an early Eastern Slavic chronicle, describes a trip taken by St Andrew up the river Dnipro centuries before the establishment of Kyiv, grounding the city in historical Christian lore and therefore granting it legitimacy as a future centre for the Orthodox Church.
As the world succumbs to the homogenising influence of globalisation, one can understand why these teleological narratives, providing Russia with a distinct national identity anchored in history, would appeal so much to a modern Russian President desperately seeking to turn the tide on encroaching Western hegemony. And with its continued intrusion into the crafting of party policy and state legislation, it is clear that the Orthodox Church forms part of Putin’s long-term strategy for the future. Whatever its fate, it remains a steadfast pillar of Russian society, dominating the Moscow skylines with its towering onion-shaped domes and counting among its members almost two thirds of the Russian population. When Putin goes to church, then, he embodies the newfound religious zeal of an entire nation.