‘RUSSIAN WORLD’ IS THE CIVIL RELIGION BEHIND PUTIN'S WAR

                                 
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow performs a divine liturgy at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour to mark the feast day of Our Lady of Kazan, Moscow, Russia, Nov. 4, 2021 Photo: Mikhail Tereshchenko/Zuma Press
The Wall Street Journal
By Francis X. Rocca March 17, 2022 1:59 pm ET
The Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church see Ukraine as part of a cultural dominion to be protected from the values of an encroaching West
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, recently described the war in Ukraine as nothing less than an apocalyptic struggle between good and evil. Its outcome, he said, will determine “where humanity will end up, on which side of God the Savior.”

Some Ukrainians—those whom President Vladimir Putin claims Russia is liberating with its invasion—have rejected “the so-called values that are offered today by those who claim world power,” the patriarch explained. Those values are exemplified by gay pride parades, he said, which serve as admissions tests “to enter the club of those countries,” by implication the European Union and more broadly the West.

The Russian Orthodox Church has taken an active role in forging the ideology that undergirds Mr. Putin’s geopolitical ambitions. It is a worldview that holds the Kremlin to be the defender of Russia’s Christian civilization, and therefore justified in seeking to dominate the countries of the former Soviet Union and Russian empire. According to the Rev. Cyril Hovorun, a Ukrainian-born theologian and former adviser to Patriarch Kirill, these ideas emerged in the aftermath of communism’s collapse, when the Russian state sought to fill an ideological void at the same time that the long-persecuted Russian Orthodox Church asserted itself in a newly open public square.



That confluence of interests inspired what Sergei Chapnin, a former official of the Moscow Patriarchate, calls the “post-Soviet civil religion”: the concept of Russkiy mir (“Russian world”). The term dates back to the 11th century, referring to the East Slavic lands that included much of today’s Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. According to a 2015 article by Marlene Laruelle, a political scientist at George Washington University, the modern usage of Russkiy mir was introduced in 1999 by writers at a Kremlin-associated think tank to mean the whole Russian-speaking world, including Russians living abroad. Mr. Putin, who became president the next year, invoked the term in 2014 to justify the annexation of Crimea, which he said reflected the “aspiration of the Russian world, of historical Russia, to re-establish unity.”



For Mr. Putin, Russkiy mir refers to Moscow’s rightful sphere of influence, which includes the territories of the former Soviet Union and the Russian empire before it. “Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space,” Mr. Putin said on Feb. 21, three days before Russia invaded Ukraine. The Russian Orthodox Church embraced the term and lent it a religious character, within which Ukraine also played a special role. The Russian Orthodox Church traces its origins to the 10th-century mass conversion in Kyiv known as the Baptism of Rus’.

In Ukraine, however, the religious conception of Russkiy mir, like the political one, has encountered resistance. Many of the country’s Orthodox believers belong to a Russian-led Orthodox Church, but the country is also home to a sizable Catholic community as well as a Ukrainian Orthodox Church that has sought autonomy from Moscow. In 2019, the global Eastern Orthodox Church’s spiritual leader, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, granted that autonomy.

The decision led to a serious schism within the Eastern Orthodox world. Different national churches have taken sides with Moscow or Constantinople. Patriarch Kirill has suspended communion with Patriarch Bartholomew and lamented that the latter is now helping to “mentally remake Ukrainians and Russians living in Ukraine into enemies of Russia.” Mr. Putin accused Patriarch Bartholomew of doing the bidding of Washington.

Inside Russia, Russkiy mir has found deep religious resonance, especially in the military. According to Dmitry Adamsky, an expert on the Russian military and professor at Reichman University in Israel, Orthodox clergy build troop morale and encourage patriotism. Each of the three parts of Russia’s nuclear force structure—land, sea and air—has received a patron saint. The church has also enthusiastically promoted Russia’s role in Syria’s civil war as a crusade to protect Christian minorities, Mr. Adamsky said.



The Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed forces near Moscow, consecrated in 2020, furnishes a spectacular display of the fusion of the military and the religious. The cathedral commemorates Russian military action, above all in World War II—its floors are paved with metal from melted-down German weapons and tanks—but also in more recent conflicts in Georgia, Crimea and Syria.

Russia’s official National Security Strategy, approved by Mr. Putin last year, devotes several pages to “the defense of traditional Russian spiritual-moral values, culture and historical memory.” According to a study for NATO Defense College by Julian Cooper, a British scholar, the values in question are a mostly generic list including life, dignity, patriotism and strong families, but they are framed in contrast to those of the West, which encroach on Russia’s “cultural sovereignty.”

In a speech last fall, Mr. Putin deplored what he identified as prevalent cultural trends in Western Europe and the U.S., including transgenderism and “cancel culture.” “We have a different viewpoint,” Mr. Putin said. “We believe that we must rely on our own spiritual values, our historical tradition and the culture of our multiethnic nation.”

The Kremlin and the patriarchate have framed Ukraine’s western ties and aspirations for membership in the EU and NATO not only as a geopolitical concern but as a threat to the spiritual integrity of Russkiy mir, according to Regina Elsner, a theologian and researcher at Berlin’s Center for East European and International Studies. A video posted last month on the website of the World Russian People’s Council, a Moscow think tank headed by Patriarch Kirill, makes the connection explicit: “If the actions of our president to recognize [separatist regions in the Donbas] relate to the political, military sovereignty of Russia—that is, we are trying to stop the advancement of NATO, missiles on our borders—then the moral problems associated with the protection of traditional values are aligned, and they are no less important than political and military aspects.”



Vladimir Legoyda, a spokesman for Patriarch Kirill, responded to a request for comment by affirming the religious unity of the “Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian nations” and stating that “the Russian Orthodox Church prays every day for the restoration of peace.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could be undermining the very ideology that inspired it, however, by dividing the people it purports to unite. Since the invasion, some of the Orthodox clergy in Ukraine affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate have ceased to pray for Patriarch Kirill during their liturgies to protest his support for the war, and some clergy have spoken of withdrawing their allegiance to Moscow.

According to Kristina Stoeckl, a professor of sociology at the University of Innsbruck, the war undermines Mr. Putin’s campaign for traditional values, which had drawn the support and admiration of some conservative Christians in the West.

Or as Olivier Roy, a French political scientist, put it in a recent interview: “Putin sacrificed all the soft power he had acquired over the last 20 years, which allowed him to be a global player, for a purely territorial vision of Russian power.”

Write to Francis X. Rocca at francis.rocca@wsj.com