(Vladimir Putin with Orthodox Patriarch Kirill. Picture supply: CEPA)
In some of the memorable scenes of the immensely widespread Father Arseny: Priest, Prisoner, Religious Father—the biography of a non secular chief (generally known as a “starets” in Japanese Orthodox Christianity) who spent a number of years inside a Soviet labor camp—the titular character tries to interrupt up a combat between two inmates. As punishment, he and one of many brawlers, Aleksei, are locked in an unheated cell for forty-eight hours with out meals or water. Whereas Aleksei slams in opposition to the door, making an attempt in useless to flee his imminent destiny, Arseny folds his fingers in prayer. At first, Aleksei—an atheist, like most individuals dwelling within the USSR—mocks the starets. Amazed on the calmness Arseny exudes despite their bleak predicament, Aleksei ultimately decides to hitch him. When the forty-eight hours move, the guards are shocked to be taught that each males have survived. Arseny is just not shocked, and—by now—Aleksei isn’t both. Having reconnected with God, he vows to depart his non-belief behind and grow to be the starets’ devoted pupil.
At first look, Father Arseny bears a hanging resemblance to a different widespread Russian textual content, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. Each turned unlikely bestsellers, recognized and browse all through post-Soviet Russia. Each categorical sympathy for folks the Kremlin thought-about criminals. Each describe the brutal situations of the Soviet penal system. And, each are informed from the angle of people who handle to transcend these situations by way of exemplary interior energy and unwavering belief within the teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church.
That, nonetheless, is the place the resemblance ends. Gulag Archipelago is taken into account one of many crowning achievements of illegally revealed samizdat, or dissident literature, that criticized the Soviet regime at nice private threat to its underground authors and publishers. Father Arseny, in contrast, belongs to a newer and altogether totally different literary custom—one which hasn’t been suppressed by Russia’s political institution, however celebrated.
First launched in 1993, two years after the dissolution of the USSR, the supposedly non-fictional story of Father Arseny (whose unverifiable existence has been known as into query by quite a few students) is without doubt one of the earliest and hottest examples of a wave of post-Soviet spiritual writing that continues to this present day. The final word purpose of this new style wasn’t to reveal and criticize the Soviet authorities’s abuse of energy, the way in which Solzhenitsyn and different samizdat writers had accomplished, however to reposition Orthodox Christianity as a cornerstone of Russia’s nationwide identification.
Within the course of, texts like Father Arseny—to not point out subsequent bestselling and culturally-defining books equivalent to On a regular basis Saints and Different Tales, the 2011 autobiography of Metropolitan Tikhon Shevkunov, the bishop of Pskov and Porkhov—performed a vital function in formulating the now-ubiquitous idea of Rússkiy Mir (“Russian World”), a conservative ideology that views Russian society as distinct from and superior to its western neighbors. Its origins hint again to the 19th century, when Slavophile intellectuals opposed calls to curb absolutely the energy of the czars and modernize the Russian Empire alongside the strains of Europe’s constitutional monarchies. Their modern-day counterparts take the same stance, justifying Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian and imperialist insurance policies by presenting the Russian Federation because the final bastion of Orthodox Christianity in an more and more secular and hostile world. Inspecting the consequences of this spiritual literature will subsequently give us a clearer understanding of Russia’s help for Putin immediately.
***
The political impression of latest spiritual writing in Russia could be partly attributed to the historic and literary contexts by which it first emerged. Within the Soviet Union, mainstream literature—like different artwork varieties—conformed to the requirements of Soviet realism, projecting an idealized imaginative and prescient of communist life that contrasted with on a regular basis actuality, stuffed with smiling, well-fed, and invariably patriotic farmers and employees. The USSR’s collapse gave strategy to experimentation with beforehand prohibited literary kinds like postmodernism. However whereas the primary traits of a few of these kinds—irony, absurdity, and relativism—had been current in samizdat writing for many years, they quickly fell out of favor with readers when the hopeful anticipation of Russia’s long-awaited democratization gave strategy to hardship and disillusionment.
As Lina Shaw, a scholar of Slavic languages and literatures, notes in her 2018 doctoral thesis, “The Phenomenon of Orthodox Bestsellers in Modern Russia,” “the financial collapse, political instability, and lack of a collective ideological framework” throughout the late Nineties and early 2000s “created a requirement for literature that supplied certainty, ethical grounding, and a way of nationwide identification slightly than playfulness or skepticism.” Non secular writing that reintroduced Russians to their Christian heritage, resurrected from censorship-induced demise, proved notably adept at assembly this demand. Not solely insofar as its non secular themes of absolution and cosmic justice offered a welcome escape from real-world anxieties (Shaw describes the style as “heat,” “non-judgemental,” and conveying a “sense of therapeutic and peace”), but additionally as a result of its preoccupation with Russia’s nationwide identification—an identification it linked to Orthodox Christianity—spoke to widespread concern of social decay and want for a robust, unified state.
Typically this preoccupation was express, at different occasions implicit. On the floor, texts like Father Arseny don’t learn as open endorsements of the kind of society Putin has created, even when—on the finish of the day—that’s precisely what they have been. Even in essentially the most determined circumstances, its protagonist embodies humility, unconditional love, and non-violent resistance to evil—values that arguably run counter to the Russian Orthodox Church’s unequivocal help of the Ukrainian invasion, which it has declared a “Holy Struggle.” In conviction in addition to in apply—Arseny is parishless, increase a non secular neighborhood independently of the Russian Orthodox Church—the convicted priest arguably has extra in widespread with somebody like Leo Tolstoy, whose seek for God likewise operated exterior the realm of organized faith, than with Patriarch Kirill, the top of the Russian Orthodox Church and an in depth ally of Putin.
However in different methods, the concepts introduced in Father Arseny do certainly foreshadow Putin’s Russia. Shaw notes that, regardless of its “lifelike depiction of the tragic experiences of prisoners in labour camps…[it] by no means questions the social construction that’s constructed on totalitarian dictatorship.” Echoing Dostoevsky’s diagnoses in his 1862 novel Home of the Useless and 1865 novella Notes from Underground—which argued in opposition to the socialist causes the creator supported earlier in life, earlier than his personal arrest and imprisonment—Arseny doesn’t blame the Soviet management, however mankind as an entire: “I can not level a finger at our authorities,” he declares, “as a result of the seeds of faithlessness fell on the soil which we ourselves had ready.”
This assertion comprises two radical assertions, each of which abound in educational research of Dostoevsky and match squarely throughout the ideological framework of Rússkiy Mir. Firstly, it implies that society can’t be improved on a societal stage (i.e., via reform or revolution) however solely on a person one, by way of private, non secular growth. Secondly, and maybe extra importantly, it means that Soviet residents suffered not as a result of they lived underneath an authoritarian system, however a secular one, and that each one they wanted to do to reside higher, happier lives was to rekindle their relationship with God.
Father Arseny additionally aligns with Rússkiy Mir ideology insofar because it attracts a transparent ethical and political distinction between Russians and non-Russians. Not like in Gulag Archipelago, Soviet bureaucrats—together with the camp’s guards and secret police officers—are introduced in a surprisingly constructive mild: loyal to their regime, compassionate to the extent that their jobs enable, and above all, able to non secular redemption by way of their relations with Arseny, who—to the preliminary disbelief of a few of his followers—asserts they need to “not be held chargeable for the tragedy, as a result of they have been finishing up their duties, and so they did what they may to assist folks.”
Notably, the potential of salvation doesn’t prolong to the camp’s non-Russian characters, just like the handful of German POWs captured throughout the Nice Patriotic Struggle. As Shaw places it, these defeated, dissenting Wehrmacht troopers are portrayed, “in accordance with the social stereotypes of their time,” as cowards and collaborators, “enemies of the folks” whose betrayal of their very own nation and nationality contrasts unfavorably with the unassailable patriotism of ethnic Russians.
Regardless of its many humanistic themes, Father Arseny’s message is, because the tales concerning the German prisoners present, removed from common. Whereas cloaked within the guise of anti-establishment samizdat literature, the textual content is just not important however forgiving of the USSR’s political institution. Its conclusion, pointing right into a course reverse of Gulag Archipelago, could be summarized as follows: for Russians, true piety doesn’t take the type of unconditional love for all mankind a lot as unwavering help of 1’s personal nation and countrymen, regardless of how poorly they could deal with you.
***
The impression of latest spiritual writing is just not solely tied to the standard of its content material, but additionally the comfort of its type. Although impressed by obtuse and esoteric hagiographies from the Center Ages, the style makes use of uncomplicated, accessible language that—although largely dismissed by literary critics—significantly appeals to the common reader.
The title of Shaw’s thesis is just not tongue-in-cheek; many of those texts actually did grow to be real bestsellers. As early as 2001, the Los Angeles Instances reported Father Arseny had already bought greater than 400,000 copies in Russia alone. Since then, the e book has been reprinted greater than fourteen occasions. It has been translated into English in addition to French, Spanish, Romanian, Greek, Bulgarian, and Latvian. Indicative of its broad enchantment, it’s additionally obtainable in audiobook format and even impressed a 2003 album by singer-songwriter Aleksandr Marshal, reportedly made with Patriarch Aleksii II’s blessing.
One other mainstream spiritual textual content, Metropolitan Tikhon’s On a regular basis Saints and Different Tales—which recounts the creator’s non secular coaching on the Pskov-Caves Monastery in Pechory—achieved the same diploma of important and industrial success on the Russian market. It bought greater than 1,100,000 copies inside its first 12 months of publication, beating E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Gray for Russia’s best-selling e book of 2012 and successful first prize within the “Readers’ Votes” class of the annual Huge E book awards, one of many nation’s largest literary competitions.
Like Father Arseny, the ideological potential of On a regular basis Saints and Different Tales resides in its supposed innocence. Right here, too, there may be extra to the story than initially meets the attention. Idyllic descriptions of life within the city of Pechory, situated close to the Russian border with Latvia—of its “pretty small houses, with turrets and neat small lawns and little palisades,” everlasting and unchanging—don’t exist for their very own sake, however slightly set up a way of continuity between Russia’s previous and current. Equally palpable is the city’s air of natural oneness: a culturally and spiritually enclosed area the place, to make use of Shaw’s phrasing, “something ‘misplaced’ stands out as un-Russian.” In doing so, this seemingly mundane autobiography reaches far past its native, remoted setting, contributing “to the nationalist mission of forming and reinforcing nationwide consciousness with out overtly claiming that it’s doing so.”
Tikhon’s proficiency in mass media communication is mirrored in his skilled background. Earlier than enrolling on the Pskov-Caves Monastery, he studied screenwriting on the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, and joined the monastery when it functioned—at the beginning—as a Soviet-approved vacationer attraction, offering guests with a closely doctored, unrealistic impression of pre-communist historical past and faith. As metropolitan bishop, Tikhon remained concerned within the nation’s state-sponsored tradition sector, serving as secretary of the Patriarch’s Council for Tradition, member of the Kremlin’s Council for Tradition and Artwork, and editor of the Russian Orthodox Church-run literary journal Russian Home. Along with his 2011 autobiography, he has written a well-liked kids’s e book concerning the Orthodox saint Seraphim of Sarov, and serves as editor-in-chief of the net info portal Pravoslavie (“Fact”), a three way partnership between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Kremlin that—very like Putin’s personal speeches—characterizes Russia as an Orthodox nation threatened by overseas, secular forces. Recognized as a “pillar” of the Church’s “traditionalist camp” in political scientist Irina Papkova’s 2011 examine The Orthodox Church and Russian Politics, Tikhon incessantly accompanies Putin on diplomatic journeys, and is rumored to be his private confessor.
Befitting of his background, Tikhon has additionally written and produced a number of movies, together with the 2008 documentary The Fall of an Empire: The Lesson of Byzantium. First proven on the state-controlled tv channel “Russia” on the eve of Putin’s switch of energy to Dmitry Medvedev, it presents the Russian Federation because the non secular successor of the Japanese Roman Empire, the birthplace of the Orthodox Church following the Nice Schism of 1054 CE. As its narrator, Tikhon claims the Empire didn’t collapse on account of invasions or financial crises—as nearly all of historians have argued—however due to the imperial elite’s rising ties with the “coarse, ignorant, money-grabbing” non-Orthodox West. Paralleling 19th century Slavophile resistance to liberalization, the documentary, within the phrases of 1 researcher, passes off “emotionally charged, deeply agitating ideological propaganda” for public training.
Whether or not as a result of or despite its propagandic nature, Fall of an Empire—like On a regular basis Saints—made a robust impression on Russian widespread tradition. The documentary gained a Golden Eagle, the movement image equal of the Huge E book awards, and was praised by public figures just like the anti-globalist historian and politician Natalya Narochnitskaya, whose evaluation of the movie—revealed within the authorities newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta—waxed poetic of the West’s “indifference to different cultures” and ignorance of Christianity’s true heritage.
***
Discussions concerning the relationship between faith and politics in up to date Russia typically current the Orthodox Church as subordinate to the Kremlin—a trusty propaganda service that bends spiritual doctrine till it aligns with Putin’s objectives. In fact, the Church has incessantly marched forward of the state of their shared battle for public opinion, not behind it, with spiritual writers having helped to create the very sentiments that Putin now depends on to keep up his maintain on energy.
Father Arseny was first revealed seven years earlier than the Russian president entered workplace in 2000. Roughly the identical time period stands between the discharge of Fall of an Empire and Russia’s occupation of Crimea. When, early in his profession, Putin was actively making an attempt to determine relations with western leaders and combine into the European political economic system, Orthodox and Orthodox-affiliated writers like Metropolitan Ioann Snychov and Igor Shafarevich preached that western liberalism was inherently anti-Russian, and that autocratic terror was one of the best ways to control the Russian folks. Putin, briefly, didn’t set the stage for his personal authoritarian backsliding; he merely noticed the street the Church had cleared for him and determined to take it.
These up to date spiritual or religious-adjacent narratives aren’t information of their time a lot as they’re record-setters. They’re, as Shaw concludes, “speech acts… [that] produced historic penalties slightly than described them.”
In post-Soviet Russia, Orthodox literature has accomplished greater than rehabilitate Christianity after a long time of state-sponsored atheism. By providing readers a imaginative and prescient for a brand new nationwide identification, one totally different from and irreconcilable with the nation’s European neighbors, it resurrected the campaign of nineteenth century Slavophiles. Offering an ideological justification for Putin’s break with the West, Orthodox literature and media bears accountability for ushering in a brand new Chilly Struggle and changing Soviet dictatorship with a brand new type of authoritarianism, one older and arguably extra resilient than its secular predecessor.
Tim Brinkhof is a Dutch journalist and researcher based mostly in Atlanta. He studied historical past and comparative literature at NYU’s Gallatin College of Individualized Research and has written for JSTOR Every day, Historical past As we speak, Jacobin, New Traces, and Movie & Historical past.
(Vladimir Putin with Orthodox Patriarch Kirill. Picture supply: CEPA)
In some of the memorable scenes of the immensely widespread Father Arseny: Priest, Prisoner, Religious Father—the biography of a non secular chief (generally known as a “starets” in Japanese Orthodox Christianity) who spent a number of years inside a Soviet labor camp—the titular character tries to interrupt up a combat between two inmates. As punishment, he and one of many brawlers, Aleksei, are locked in an unheated cell for forty-eight hours with out meals or water. Whereas Aleksei slams in opposition to the door, making an attempt in useless to flee his imminent destiny, Arseny folds his fingers in prayer. At first, Aleksei—an atheist, like most individuals dwelling within the USSR—mocks the starets. Amazed on the calmness Arseny exudes despite their bleak predicament, Aleksei ultimately decides to hitch him. When the forty-eight hours move, the guards are shocked to be taught that each males have survived. Arseny is just not shocked, and—by now—Aleksei isn’t both. Having reconnected with God, he vows to depart his non-belief behind and grow to be the starets’ devoted pupil.
At first look, Father Arseny bears a hanging resemblance to a different widespread Russian textual content, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. Each turned unlikely bestsellers, recognized and browse all through post-Soviet Russia. Each categorical sympathy for folks the Kremlin thought-about criminals. Each describe the brutal situations of the Soviet penal system. And, each are informed from the angle of people who handle to transcend these situations by way of exemplary interior energy and unwavering belief within the teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church.
That, nonetheless, is the place the resemblance ends. Gulag Archipelago is taken into account one of many crowning achievements of illegally revealed samizdat, or dissident literature, that criticized the Soviet regime at nice private threat to its underground authors and publishers. Father Arseny, in contrast, belongs to a newer and altogether totally different literary custom—one which hasn’t been suppressed by Russia’s political institution, however celebrated.
First launched in 1993, two years after the dissolution of the USSR, the supposedly non-fictional story of Father Arseny (whose unverifiable existence has been known as into query by quite a few students) is without doubt one of the earliest and hottest examples of a wave of post-Soviet spiritual writing that continues to this present day. The final word purpose of this new style wasn’t to reveal and criticize the Soviet authorities’s abuse of energy, the way in which Solzhenitsyn and different samizdat writers had accomplished, however to reposition Orthodox Christianity as a cornerstone of Russia’s nationwide identification.
Within the course of, texts like Father Arseny—to not point out subsequent bestselling and culturally-defining books equivalent to On a regular basis Saints and Different Tales, the 2011 autobiography of Metropolitan Tikhon Shevkunov, the bishop of Pskov and Porkhov—performed a vital function in formulating the now-ubiquitous idea of Rússkiy Mir (“Russian World”), a conservative ideology that views Russian society as distinct from and superior to its western neighbors. Its origins hint again to the 19th century, when Slavophile intellectuals opposed calls to curb absolutely the energy of the czars and modernize the Russian Empire alongside the strains of Europe’s constitutional monarchies. Their modern-day counterparts take the same stance, justifying Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian and imperialist insurance policies by presenting the Russian Federation because the final bastion of Orthodox Christianity in an more and more secular and hostile world. Inspecting the consequences of this spiritual literature will subsequently give us a clearer understanding of Russia’s help for Putin immediately.
***
The political impression of latest spiritual writing in Russia could be partly attributed to the historic and literary contexts by which it first emerged. Within the Soviet Union, mainstream literature—like different artwork varieties—conformed to the requirements of Soviet realism, projecting an idealized imaginative and prescient of communist life that contrasted with on a regular basis actuality, stuffed with smiling, well-fed, and invariably patriotic farmers and employees. The USSR’s collapse gave strategy to experimentation with beforehand prohibited literary kinds like postmodernism. However whereas the primary traits of a few of these kinds—irony, absurdity, and relativism—had been current in samizdat writing for many years, they quickly fell out of favor with readers when the hopeful anticipation of Russia’s long-awaited democratization gave strategy to hardship and disillusionment.
As Lina Shaw, a scholar of Slavic languages and literatures, notes in her 2018 doctoral thesis, “The Phenomenon of Orthodox Bestsellers in Modern Russia,” “the financial collapse, political instability, and lack of a collective ideological framework” throughout the late Nineties and early 2000s “created a requirement for literature that supplied certainty, ethical grounding, and a way of nationwide identification slightly than playfulness or skepticism.” Non secular writing that reintroduced Russians to their Christian heritage, resurrected from censorship-induced demise, proved notably adept at assembly this demand. Not solely insofar as its non secular themes of absolution and cosmic justice offered a welcome escape from real-world anxieties (Shaw describes the style as “heat,” “non-judgemental,” and conveying a “sense of therapeutic and peace”), but additionally as a result of its preoccupation with Russia’s nationwide identification—an identification it linked to Orthodox Christianity—spoke to widespread concern of social decay and want for a robust, unified state.
Typically this preoccupation was express, at different occasions implicit. On the floor, texts like Father Arseny don’t learn as open endorsements of the kind of society Putin has created, even when—on the finish of the day—that’s precisely what they have been. Even in essentially the most determined circumstances, its protagonist embodies humility, unconditional love, and non-violent resistance to evil—values that arguably run counter to the Russian Orthodox Church’s unequivocal help of the Ukrainian invasion, which it has declared a “Holy Struggle.” In conviction in addition to in apply—Arseny is parishless, increase a non secular neighborhood independently of the Russian Orthodox Church—the convicted priest arguably has extra in widespread with somebody like Leo Tolstoy, whose seek for God likewise operated exterior the realm of organized faith, than with Patriarch Kirill, the top of the Russian Orthodox Church and an in depth ally of Putin.
However in different methods, the concepts introduced in Father Arseny do certainly foreshadow Putin’s Russia. Shaw notes that, regardless of its “lifelike depiction of the tragic experiences of prisoners in labour camps…[it] by no means questions the social construction that’s constructed on totalitarian dictatorship.” Echoing Dostoevsky’s diagnoses in his 1862 novel Home of the Useless and 1865 novella Notes from Underground—which argued in opposition to the socialist causes the creator supported earlier in life, earlier than his personal arrest and imprisonment—Arseny doesn’t blame the Soviet management, however mankind as an entire: “I can not level a finger at our authorities,” he declares, “as a result of the seeds of faithlessness fell on the soil which we ourselves had ready.”
This assertion comprises two radical assertions, each of which abound in educational research of Dostoevsky and match squarely throughout the ideological framework of Rússkiy Mir. Firstly, it implies that society can’t be improved on a societal stage (i.e., via reform or revolution) however solely on a person one, by way of private, non secular growth. Secondly, and maybe extra importantly, it means that Soviet residents suffered not as a result of they lived underneath an authoritarian system, however a secular one, and that each one they wanted to do to reside higher, happier lives was to rekindle their relationship with God.
Father Arseny additionally aligns with Rússkiy Mir ideology insofar because it attracts a transparent ethical and political distinction between Russians and non-Russians. Not like in Gulag Archipelago, Soviet bureaucrats—together with the camp’s guards and secret police officers—are introduced in a surprisingly constructive mild: loyal to their regime, compassionate to the extent that their jobs enable, and above all, able to non secular redemption by way of their relations with Arseny, who—to the preliminary disbelief of a few of his followers—asserts they need to “not be held chargeable for the tragedy, as a result of they have been finishing up their duties, and so they did what they may to assist folks.”
Notably, the potential of salvation doesn’t prolong to the camp’s non-Russian characters, just like the handful of German POWs captured throughout the Nice Patriotic Struggle. As Shaw places it, these defeated, dissenting Wehrmacht troopers are portrayed, “in accordance with the social stereotypes of their time,” as cowards and collaborators, “enemies of the folks” whose betrayal of their very own nation and nationality contrasts unfavorably with the unassailable patriotism of ethnic Russians.
Regardless of its many humanistic themes, Father Arseny’s message is, because the tales concerning the German prisoners present, removed from common. Whereas cloaked within the guise of anti-establishment samizdat literature, the textual content is just not important however forgiving of the USSR’s political institution. Its conclusion, pointing right into a course reverse of Gulag Archipelago, could be summarized as follows: for Russians, true piety doesn’t take the type of unconditional love for all mankind a lot as unwavering help of 1’s personal nation and countrymen, regardless of how poorly they could deal with you.
***
The impression of latest spiritual writing is just not solely tied to the standard of its content material, but additionally the comfort of its type. Although impressed by obtuse and esoteric hagiographies from the Center Ages, the style makes use of uncomplicated, accessible language that—although largely dismissed by literary critics—significantly appeals to the common reader.
The title of Shaw’s thesis is just not tongue-in-cheek; many of those texts actually did grow to be real bestsellers. As early as 2001, the Los Angeles Instances reported Father Arseny had already bought greater than 400,000 copies in Russia alone. Since then, the e book has been reprinted greater than fourteen occasions. It has been translated into English in addition to French, Spanish, Romanian, Greek, Bulgarian, and Latvian. Indicative of its broad enchantment, it’s additionally obtainable in audiobook format and even impressed a 2003 album by singer-songwriter Aleksandr Marshal, reportedly made with Patriarch Aleksii II’s blessing.
One other mainstream spiritual textual content, Metropolitan Tikhon’s On a regular basis Saints and Different Tales—which recounts the creator’s non secular coaching on the Pskov-Caves Monastery in Pechory—achieved the same diploma of important and industrial success on the Russian market. It bought greater than 1,100,000 copies inside its first 12 months of publication, beating E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Gray for Russia’s best-selling e book of 2012 and successful first prize within the “Readers’ Votes” class of the annual Huge E book awards, one of many nation’s largest literary competitions.
Like Father Arseny, the ideological potential of On a regular basis Saints and Different Tales resides in its supposed innocence. Right here, too, there may be extra to the story than initially meets the attention. Idyllic descriptions of life within the city of Pechory, situated close to the Russian border with Latvia—of its “pretty small houses, with turrets and neat small lawns and little palisades,” everlasting and unchanging—don’t exist for their very own sake, however slightly set up a way of continuity between Russia’s previous and current. Equally palpable is the city’s air of natural oneness: a culturally and spiritually enclosed area the place, to make use of Shaw’s phrasing, “something ‘misplaced’ stands out as un-Russian.” In doing so, this seemingly mundane autobiography reaches far past its native, remoted setting, contributing “to the nationalist mission of forming and reinforcing nationwide consciousness with out overtly claiming that it’s doing so.”
Tikhon’s proficiency in mass media communication is mirrored in his skilled background. Earlier than enrolling on the Pskov-Caves Monastery, he studied screenwriting on the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, and joined the monastery when it functioned—at the beginning—as a Soviet-approved vacationer attraction, offering guests with a closely doctored, unrealistic impression of pre-communist historical past and faith. As metropolitan bishop, Tikhon remained concerned within the nation’s state-sponsored tradition sector, serving as secretary of the Patriarch’s Council for Tradition, member of the Kremlin’s Council for Tradition and Artwork, and editor of the Russian Orthodox Church-run literary journal Russian Home. Along with his 2011 autobiography, he has written a well-liked kids’s e book concerning the Orthodox saint Seraphim of Sarov, and serves as editor-in-chief of the net info portal Pravoslavie (“Fact”), a three way partnership between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Kremlin that—very like Putin’s personal speeches—characterizes Russia as an Orthodox nation threatened by overseas, secular forces. Recognized as a “pillar” of the Church’s “traditionalist camp” in political scientist Irina Papkova’s 2011 examine The Orthodox Church and Russian Politics, Tikhon incessantly accompanies Putin on diplomatic journeys, and is rumored to be his private confessor.
Befitting of his background, Tikhon has additionally written and produced a number of movies, together with the 2008 documentary The Fall of an Empire: The Lesson of Byzantium. First proven on the state-controlled tv channel “Russia” on the eve of Putin’s switch of energy to Dmitry Medvedev, it presents the Russian Federation because the non secular successor of the Japanese Roman Empire, the birthplace of the Orthodox Church following the Nice Schism of 1054 CE. As its narrator, Tikhon claims the Empire didn’t collapse on account of invasions or financial crises—as nearly all of historians have argued—however due to the imperial elite’s rising ties with the “coarse, ignorant, money-grabbing” non-Orthodox West. Paralleling 19th century Slavophile resistance to liberalization, the documentary, within the phrases of 1 researcher, passes off “emotionally charged, deeply agitating ideological propaganda” for public training.
Whether or not as a result of or despite its propagandic nature, Fall of an Empire—like On a regular basis Saints—made a robust impression on Russian widespread tradition. The documentary gained a Golden Eagle, the movement image equal of the Huge E book awards, and was praised by public figures just like the anti-globalist historian and politician Natalya Narochnitskaya, whose evaluation of the movie—revealed within the authorities newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta—waxed poetic of the West’s “indifference to different cultures” and ignorance of Christianity’s true heritage.
***
Discussions concerning the relationship between faith and politics in up to date Russia typically current the Orthodox Church as subordinate to the Kremlin—a trusty propaganda service that bends spiritual doctrine till it aligns with Putin’s objectives. In fact, the Church has incessantly marched forward of the state of their shared battle for public opinion, not behind it, with spiritual writers having helped to create the very sentiments that Putin now depends on to keep up his maintain on energy.
Father Arseny was first revealed seven years earlier than the Russian president entered workplace in 2000. Roughly the identical time period stands between the discharge of Fall of an Empire and Russia’s occupation of Crimea. When, early in his profession, Putin was actively making an attempt to determine relations with western leaders and combine into the European political economic system, Orthodox and Orthodox-affiliated writers like Metropolitan Ioann Snychov and Igor Shafarevich preached that western liberalism was inherently anti-Russian, and that autocratic terror was one of the best ways to control the Russian folks. Putin, briefly, didn’t set the stage for his personal authoritarian backsliding; he merely noticed the street the Church had cleared for him and determined to take it.
These up to date spiritual or religious-adjacent narratives aren’t information of their time a lot as they’re record-setters. They’re, as Shaw concludes, “speech acts… [that] produced historic penalties slightly than described them.”
In post-Soviet Russia, Orthodox literature has accomplished greater than rehabilitate Christianity after a long time of state-sponsored atheism. By providing readers a imaginative and prescient for a brand new nationwide identification, one totally different from and irreconcilable with the nation’s European neighbors, it resurrected the campaign of nineteenth century Slavophiles. Offering an ideological justification for Putin’s break with the West, Orthodox literature and media bears accountability for ushering in a brand new Chilly Struggle and changing Soviet dictatorship with a brand new type of authoritarianism, one older and arguably extra resilient than its secular predecessor.
Tim Brinkhof is a Dutch journalist and researcher based mostly in Atlanta. He studied historical past and comparative literature at NYU’s Gallatin College of Individualized Research and has written for JSTOR Every day, Historical past As we speak, Jacobin, New Traces, and Movie & Historical past.
