Nationalism and Religion in Post-Soviet Russian Civil Society: An Inquiry into the 1997 Law “On Freedom of Conscience” (Part III)

Church, State, and Nationalism

Before signing the bill into law, A. Proptopopov, a representative of the Yeltsin administration, had consulted with leaders of the principal religious bodies in Russia: the Russian Orthodox Church, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Old Believers, Roman Catholics, Pentecostals, Seventh Day Adventists, and other groups.  Unfortunately for them, the administration had duped them, as attested by Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusewicz, the apostolic administrator of the Roman Catholic Church in European Russia: the new law “was not the one the interdenominational commission had been working on.”   He was surprised to discover that “another law was being drafted in parallel.  And this indicates that something was being done behind the backs of the religious confessions.”^[45]  What this meeting suggests is that the motives behind the drafting of the legislation were political and statist, rather than religious and nationalist, and that the state, rather than the Russian Orthodox Church, was the primary moving force.

One cannot help but be struck by the prominent role played by largely non-religious and atheist CPRF politicians in drafting and passing this legislation.  From the communist viewpoint, the Russian Orthodox Church fitted into their ideology of Russian nationalism and neo-Stalinist communism.^[46] The Russian Orthodox Church, however, was more ambivalent about entering into an alliance with the CPRF, for its main concern was not to become part of the institutional structure of the state, but instead coping with spiritual competition from abroad (e.g., Protestant missionaries and the Roman Catholic Church) and within (e.g., the rise of cults).^[47]  Therefore, even though communist and nationalist politicians and the Russian Orthodox Church might both support the legislation, they did not do so from the same motives.  For the politicians, the Church was a part of their nationalist vision for society, an institution to define Russian-ness; the Church, on the other hand, did not want to lose members to competing religions.

It still is not clear why Yeltsin capitulated to the demands of communists, nationalists, and the Russian Orthodox Church.  What is known is that Yeltsin did changed his position after a meeting with Patriarch Aleksii in August. Yeltsin seems to have been unwilling to take the political risk of opposing such a popular institution like the Russian Orthodox Church.  He also recognized that the Russian Orthodox Church could assist him in providing legitimacy to his political regime and his national ideology of liberalism.^[48]  Yeltsin, himself not personally a believer, viewed the Church as one of the “nationalist” institutions which he could utilize to support his policies.

Support for the passage of the “On Freedom of Conscience” legislation was not just limited to politicians and their political parties, but could be found in the general population as well, not because most Russians are religious believers, but because many saw the Church as an institution which could help to unite a fractured society.  The daily Russian newspaper, Nezavisimaya gazeta, had published an article by Aleksandr Morozov in its religious section:

“The role of the Church in the socio-political life of Russia is growing in colossal fashion . . . This thesis may seem unconvincing to many.  Usually such critics allude to various statistics: they point out that the number of communicants, that is, of “churched” people, waves between 0.5% and 6% of the Russian populace.  But in fact much more important to look at other figures.  In 1997, all public opinion polls showed that the army and the church occupied the two top places in terms of trust by Russians (rossiyan).”

Another point is also interesting.  To the question asked in a poll, “Should the Russian Orthodox Church enjoy privileges within the state?”  49% of the respondents answered “no,” but 27% answered “yes.”  And we have to consider what stands behind that 27% . . . the rating was maintained despite a torrent of anti-church publications, despite accusations of obscurantism, of engaging in illegal financial operations, etc.  The reason for this is obvious.  In Russia, there is no civil society; there is only the populace and the regime, while the regime does not enjoy the support of the majority of the populace.  And regional processes are such that the breakup of the Federation over the next twenty-to-thirty years seem inevitable to many analysts.  Under such conditions, the role of the Russian Orthodox Church as the sole state institution which conjoins all ethnic Russians (russkikh) is naturally growing.

Journalists can write about the fact that Luzhkov does not come forward to receive communion, but that does not alter the inevitability of a soldering together of the leaders of various political forces and the church.  The vote on the new law “On the Freedom of Conscience” should be viewed in this light.^[49] Boris Dubin of the polling organization, the Russian Center for Public Opinion Research (VtsIOM), provided statistical evidence to Morozov’s contention: the political influence of the Russian Orthodox Church continued to grow in spite of the fact that a majority of Russian Orthodox believers do not practice.^[50]  Thus, a distinction must be drawn between the Church as a body of committed religious believers and as a social institution.

Conclusion

After examining the evidence, it seems that the Russian Orthodox Church, as a church, is not an nationalist institution or symbol according to Voegelin’s “new science” of politics.  Despite how it may be perceived, the Church is not advocating a substitution of “Russia” in the place of God, nor compromising its claims to possess universal spiritual truth, accessible to all people, as opposed to something limited to ethnic Russians.  The Russian Orthodox Church’s support of the 1997 law “On the Freedom of Conscience” was not an attempt to transform the state into a church or to create a theocracy .  There is no evidence that the Church directly participated in the politics of the Russian state, e.g., the formation of a clerical political party, and in fact such attempts, to create a “church” political party have been firmly rejected by the Church leadership.^[51]

Instead, the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church appears to have been working towards a restoration of the Byzantine ideal of symphonia where the state enforces the church’s doctrine, dogma, and canon law, though the secular powers refrain from the formulation of the church’s theology.  Under this model, church and state cooperate in the management of their respective spheres of social life, the spiritual and the political.  However, the Russian Orthodox Church cannot be seen as an institution that supports a democratic civil society, one based upon pluralism and competition of ideas, because of the paradigm of symphonia in which it operates.

The problem with the paradigm of symphonia being applied to modern Russia is two-fold: 1) the conception that the leader of the state is not an agent of God but a democratically-elected representative of the people, subject to recall or replacement; and 2) the Russian Orthodox Church does not technically enjoy the status of the official state religion.  The principles of symphonia can only work if the president is not only a baptized Orthodox Christian but understands himself as a servant of God; otherwise, the Church lacks recourse to admonish the president.  Patriarch Aleskii may conceive of himself operating within this paradigm, but the paradigm does not correspond with the current political reality of a transitional society on the path to liberal democracy.  During its Bishops’ Council in 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church adopted a social doctrine which addressed questions of church-state relations.  After discussing the paradigm of symphonia, the bishops noted:

“The Orthodox tradition has developed an explicit ideal of church-state relations. Since church-state relations are two-way traffic, the above-mentioned ideal could emerge in history only in a state that recognises the Orthodox Church as the greatest people’s shrine, in other words, only in an Orthodox state. . . . In their totality these principles were described as symphony between church and state. It is essentially co-operation, mutual support and mutual responsibility without one’s side intruding into the exclusive domain of the other. The bishop obeys the government as a subject, not his episcopal power comes from a government official. Similarly, a government official obeys his bishop as a member of the Church, who seeks salvation in it, not because his power comes from the power of the bishop. The state in such symphonic relationships with the Church seeks her spiritual support, prayer for itself and blessing upon its work to achieve the goal of its citizens’ welfare, while the Church enjoys support from the state in creating conditions favorable for preaching and for the spiritual care of her children who are at the same time citizens of the state.”^[52]

While recognizing that in modern society the paradigm is no longer operable, the Russian Orthodox Church nonetheless does not see pluralism as the ideal basis for a new social order:

“The emergence of this principle testifies that in the contemporary world, religion is turning from a ‘social’ into a ‘private’ affair of a person. This process in itself indicates that the spiritual value system has disintegrated and that most people in a society which affirms the freedom of conscience no longer aspire for salvation. If initially the state emerged as an instrument of asserting divine law in society, the freedom of conscience has ultimately turned state in an exclusively temporal institute with no religious commitments.”

The adoption of the freedom of conscience as legal principle points to the fact that society has lost religious goals and values and become massively apostate and actually indifferent to the task of the Church and to the overcoming of sin. However, this principle has proved to be one of the means of the Church’s existence in the non-religious world, enabling her to enjoy a legal status in secular state and independence from those in society who believe differently or do not believe at all.^[53]

The conclusion therefore is the Russian Orthodox Church is, by its own understanding, neither a nationalist institution nor a nationalist political symbol.  Although other political parties and social forces may usurp the Russian Orthodox Church for its own ideological ends, e.g., the CPRF, the Russian Orthodox Church does not conceive of itself as a political entity; rather, it sees itself strictly as a religious body that requires the state to ensure its supremacy within the religious sphere of Russian society.  Yet the Church is not just a tool used by political elites to furnish legitimacy.  It conceives of itself as re-establishing the paradigm of symphonia.  The problem is this paradigm no longer corresponds with current political reality.  Thus, the Russian Orthodox Church is neither nationalist nor pro-democratic.  It is stuck in its own past.

Notes

^[45]  Reuters, 22 December 1997.

^[46]  Ibid.

^[47]  Poletayev, Mikhail and Yelena Tregubova.  Kommersant-Daily (30 July 1997), 3.

^[48] See Nikolas K. Gvosdev, “The Orthodox Church and Russian Politics,” Orthodox News 1(34), December 13, 1999.

^[49]  Nezavisimaya gazeta, 25 December 1997, 1, 3.  The results of the polls was published in Izvestiya, 9 August 1997.

^[50]  According to Dubin, television emphasized the patriotic aspect of Russian Orthodoxy, though only 3% of Russian men and 10% of Russian women out of 82-85% of self-identified Orthodox believers attend confession and receive communion once a year.  Boris Dubin, “Religiya tserkov’, obshchestvennoe mnenie,” in Svobodnya Mysl’, 11 (November 1997): 94-103.

^[51] Cf. Gvosdev, op. cit.

^[52] “Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church,” adopted 13-16 August 2000,  III(4), at http://www.russian-orthodox-church.org.ru/sd00e.htm.

^[53] Ibid., III(6).