The following is a review of Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy, a study of the role of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) in shaping the nuclear arms program for the Russian Federation written by Dmitry Adamsky and published by Stanford University Press (2019).
I approached this surprisingly accessible book with perhaps a unique
perspective. I have no background in the complexities and horrifying
potentialities of nuclear weapons and the political policies behind
their creation and use. My interest in this book was to explore two
quickly diverging paths of Orthodoxy. One path is that of the
statist—the Church in a collaborative relationship with government in
the “Byzantine model.” The other path is that of the stateless—the
Church existing in a polity but in a pre-Constantine relationship with
government. In his analysis of the relationship between the Russian
Orthodox Church (ROC) and the Russian nuclear defense community,
Professor Adamsky chronicles the alarming merger of the missions of the
Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Federation and its nuclear armed
forces.
Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy analyzes the
relationship between the ROC and the Russian armed forces in three
evolving periods: the Genesis Decade (1991-2000); the Conversion Decade
(2000-2010); and the Operationalization Period (2010-2020).
Each of these decades is reviewed from three perspectives: State-Church
Relations; Faith-Nuclear Nexus; and Strategic Mythmaking.
Icon
of St. Barbara, intercessor for those at risk of imminent death.
Declared by Patriarch Alexey as the patron saint of the Russian
Strategic Mission Missile Forces (RVSN). A huge icon of the saint (a
gift from the Moscow Patriarch) was hung at the Central Command Post
above the display showing the readiness of mobile missile and silo
launchers – next to a clock showing the time in Washington, DC. All of
the subordinate missile centers in the RVSN display icons of St.
Barbara.
The story begins with the break-up of the Soviet Union. During the
early 1990s the Russian nuclear weapons community had fallen on hard
times. Funding for programs was wiped out. Scientists and members of
the nuclear community were living on subsistence wages and suffering the
contempt of the civilian population—weary from Chernobyl and the Afghan
war. The Russian Patriarch enters this scene of collapse via a most
unlikely path. During the Soviet period the epicenter of Russian nuclear
development was a closed city called Arzamas-16. This town was known
before the Russian Revolution as Sarov, the home of the famous Russian
Orthodox ascetic, Saint Seraphim Sarovsky. In an effort to wipe out the
memory of St. Seraphim, the Bolsheviks had turned the Diveevo Monastery
into a munitions factory. In the 1940s the principal nuclear weapons
design bureau (KB-11) was located on the spot that was St. Seraphim’s
hermit cell. In 1991 Patriarch Alexey led a procession with the newly
discovered relics of St. Seraphim and brought the relics back to Sarov.
It was on that occasion that the Moscow Patriarchate committed to using
its growing influence to support the Russian nuclear weapons community.
During the “Genesis Decade,” a common narrative was developed—just as
Russia relied on its nuclear defense systems it also relied on Orthodoxy
for defense of its cultural identity. Both shared common ideological
and military enemies: the United States of America and the West. The raisin d’etre
for the Russian nuclear program was to be a defensive shield against
American aggression. The Russian Orthodox call to arms was to stand up
against the evils of Western secularism and the principles of liberal
democracy foisted on the world by the West with its obsessive fixation
on the rule of law and “so-called” human rights.
In the “Conversion Decade,” the nascent narrative fostered by the
Moscow Patriarchate was embraced in the year 2000 by the newly appointed
Vladimir Putin and further developed into a unifying national ideal:
“Nuclear Orthodoxy.” The scientists who ushered in Russian atomic age
were dubbed “Apostles of the Atomic Age.” Saint Seraphim inspired these
scientists as evidenced by the extremely brief period it took the
Soviets to get nuclear weapons. To ensure that the narrative of
“Nuclear Orthodoxy” was inculcated into the nuclear armed forces, a
cadre of Orthodox priests were assigned to nuclear weapons units. The
clergymen catechized the military, consecrated their weapons systems and
participated with recruits on training exercises. To support the
education of the clerics the ROC published books to strengthen the
narrative such as: Faith and Fidelity (2005), The Christ-Loving Warriors: Orthodox Tradition in the Russian Military (2006), and Science of Victory: Faith and Fatherland (2008).
In the “Operationalization Decade,” the ROC became an active foreign
policy player advancing the concept of “Nuclear Orthodoxy” abroad by
orienting the local churches affiliated with Moscow to view the West as
the common enemy. Russia was the military and theological shield
against liberalism and the decadence of the United States. The ROC
integrated this concept with its assertion that Moscow was the Third
Rome and the only true light to the world. The developments during this
period raise several questions. Among these questions was the impact of
the ROC’s integration into the “chain of command” and the possible break
down of civilian control of nuclear weapons deployment. Now that the
ROC has embedded itself in the nuclear command structure, what happens
if the ROC disagreed with the decisions of a weakened civilian
authority. Another unanswered question related to certain perverse
currents in Orthodox eschatology. As an illustration, Professor Adamsky
quotes an influential Russian journalist: “Orthodoxy is…a religion of
the Second Coming. The peculiarity of the Russian way in Orthodoxy is
the quest to make Rus witness to the Second Coming, to bring its
existence to such an eschatological threshold, where it meets its
Savior… For Russia, nuclear weapons are the guarantee…that at the moment
of the Second Coming the worldly Rus and the heavenly Rus will indeed
meet and that the existence of the worldly Rus will not be terminated
ahead of time. Thus, the development of nuclear weapons…serves for
Russia as a material guarantee of success in…a spiritual age, inherited
from the saint fathers, in particular St. Seraphim…We have no way but
Nuclear Orthodoxy.”
Theodore Theophilos is a member of Holy Apostles Church in
Westchester, Illinois and a former Chair of the legal committee for the
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese.
Public Orthodoxy seeks to promote conversation by providing a
forum for diverse perspectives on contemporary issues related to
Orthodox Christianity. The positions expressed in this essay are solely
the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of the editors
or the Orthodox Christian Studies Center.