Punsara Amarasinghe. Jadavpur Journal of International Relations. Volume 25, Issue 2. August 2021.
Introduction
The ideological emptiness faced by Russia in the aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR was a heavy one that kept the country’s spirit in the doldrums for a decade. The revered attitude that Russians were accustomed to Communism as an ideology was a unique one prevailed among them through state-imposed conditions, and it was not an easy task for such a society to embrace the winds of change. The economic stagnation followed by the Chechen War and the internal turmoil in the Russian society during Yeltsin’s period devastated the Russian consciousness, creating a major social crisis like the rapid increase of suicide rate in the late 1990s (Shleifer and Tresnamn 2005). The vacuum emerged from the demise of the Soviet Union, and its severe repercussions continued to torment the Russian society until Vladimir Putin stepped into Kremlin.
The revival of state affinity with the Orthodox Church became a salient factor under President Putin in Russia’s quest in search of a new ideology. In examining Russia’s romance with seeking an ideology, it was Orthodoxy that had dominated the Russian space in the pre-revolutionary era. The ideology pervaded in the Russian Empire before 1917 was confined to three essential pillars, such as Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationalism (Pravoslavie, Samoderzhavie, Narondaost), was a creation of Sergei Uvarov, the Russian Minister of Education in Tsarist Russia in 1833. Russia’s intellectual transformation in the nineteenth century took a crucial direction in search of an identity as the Russian avant-garde intellectuals sought the discontent of the Western modernity imposed upon Russia by Peter the Great. The twisted identity of Russia’s historical mission remained ambiguous even at the height of its imperial expansion under Empress Catherine, and they were aware of their incompatibility with Europe, while, at the same time, they knew that it would not be Russia’s destiny to be a part of Asian civilization. While expressing his sentimental views on Russia’s destiny in the global realm, poet Fyodor Tyutchev made his famous exclamation ‘Rationally Russia cannot be understood, one has to believe in it’, which symbolized the general attitude of the nineteenth-century intellectuals to distinguish Russia as a unique civilization from Latin Europe (Laqueur 2014).
The age-long dogma of considering Russia’s distinctiveness from both European and Asian perspectives came to the fore in the abyss created after the fall of Soviet Union. In particular, Vladimir Putin’s interest in reviving the longing for Russia’s imperial legacy is a notable factor since his second term as the President. For instance, his empathy on ‘spiritual development’ of the Russian society was rather visible before his ascendency to the premier post under Yeltsin in the troubled period of the late 1990s, especially when Putin was heading the National Security Council, he included the importance of spiritual development of the nation along with national security interests of the country (Anderson 2007). The new concept of imbuing spirituality with defense in post-Soviet Russia was ironic as the country’s Communist past had abhorred the religious identity, but Putin’s proposed national security concept was approved by President Yeltsin as one of his last decrees before he abdicated his position in December 1999.
In this article, I will examine the renewal of Orthodoxy as a part of President Putin’s strategy in inculcating Russia’s new ideology in post-Soviet space. This article will further identify the significance of Third Rome Doctrine as a historical narrative pervaded in Russian psyche that empowered the nation to seek their mission in global civilization and how it has been a geopolitical usage in modern Russia, claiming its sanctified mission as the preserver of the true faith. While examining the specific position of Orthodox Church and its theological uniqueness in modern Russia, I will discuss the way it has been used by Vladimir Putin for a national awakening to consolidate his authority, while emphasizing on the relevance of Russia’s uniqueness as a civilization that is neither Western nor Oriental. The conclusion that emerges from this article will unpack the nationalist rhetoric resurged by Putin as major instruments in bolstering his political project. Arguing that the affinity between the Putinism and Orthodox revival as a paramount factor in twenty-first-century Russia, which is antithetical to Western values and globalism, this article will unveil the philosophical roots that aspired modern Russian consciousness to re-embrace their traditional values.
Significance of Third Rome Doctrine as a Geopolitical Implication
Prior to any reflection on the importance of the Third Rome Doctrine, it is vitally important to understand the antecedents of Russian history before the famous Third Rome Doctrine emerged in the sixteenth century. According to the general belief in Russian history, Christianity was introduced to Russia in 988 ad, and it has been largely neglected to consider that blooming ground of Christianity was not Moscow but Kyiv, a lofty fortress where Grand Duke Vladimir secured the throne, and his acceptance of Eastern Christianity was an act propelled by Vladimir’s fascination toward the gaudiness of Byzantine Christian legacy. It is said that the religious restrictions of other faiths intensified Vladimir’s decision to choose Eastern Christianity as the faith of his kingdom, and besides, his emissaries were dazzled by Constantinople and its famous Church Hagia Sophia. They reported, ‘We no longer knew whether we were in heaven or on earth’ (Charques 1956, 91).
The Kyiv legacy faded into the oblivion when the city was sacked by the Mongols in 1223, and as the state disintegrated, the Russian leadership passed by increments to Moscow. Christianity in Moscow prevailed amid the chaos of Mongol invasion and continued to nourish, while keeping Constantinople as its spiritual aggrandizement, but then by the beginning of the fifteenth century, its position of dependence as a metropolitan district of the patriarch of Constantinople had become vulnerable since Constantinople itself was at bay under the Ottoman threat. On the other hand, Russians were bemused by Constantinople’s decision to unite with the Roman Church in 1439 at the Council of Florence, which they found to be an anathema for their staunch loyalty to the Orthodoxy.
Prior to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the emperor of Byzantium was considered the ‘Basileus of Romans’, which was akin to a fatherly figure who baptized all the Christians in Eastern Roman Empire. But the fall of Constantinople severely changed Russia’s veneration of Byzantium patronage that paved the path for new changes in Muscovy Duchy. Alexander Schmemann states
Byzantium was `the measure of Orthodoxy`, Russians could securely …develop their own state, it was effectively guaranteed by universal Byzantine Orthodoxy, its undeniable authority. But now with this measure gone, the authority collapsed. (Schmemann 1977, 34)
Given the situation filled with spiritual anarchy in the post-1453 context, Russia stumbled upon the necessity of new self-determination in the international environment. Indeed, this is the background which paved the path for the creation of the ‘Third Rome Doctrine’ by an obscure monk named Filofei in the sixteenth century. Filofi’s speculation of enthroning Moscow as the new custodian of the true faith was derived from the works of his predecessors like Metropolitan Zosima who described Moscow as ‘New Jerusalem’ and Simon Chizh (Siskin) likened Moscow to Rome. The epistles written by Filofei were sent to the Pskov representative of the Moscow Grand Prince Vassili III (1479-1533), to Vassili himself and to Ivan IV the Terrible (1530-1584). Monk Filofei’s claim on Moscow’s destiny as the ‘Third Rome’ was essentially an analysis he aptly portrayed while tracing Russia’s Orthodox tradition derived from Byzantium heritage (Klemenko and Yurtaev 2018, 45). Therefore, it is pivotal to admit the fact that Russia embraced Orthodox Christianity and the national culture, and all its riches inherited by Russia is linked to Byzantium. The most crucial passage of Filofi’s epistle states
I would like to say a few words about the existing Orthodox empire of our most illustrious, exalted ruler. He is the only emperor on all the earth over the Christians, the governor of the holy, divine throne of the holy, ecumenical, apostolic church which in place of the churches of Rome and Constantinople is in the city of Moscow, protected by God, in the holy and glorious Uspenskij Church of the purest Mother of God. It alone shines over all the earth more radiantly than the sun. For now, well, those who love Christ and those who love God, that all Christian empires will perish and give way to the one kingdom of our ruler, in accord with the books of the prophet, which is the Russian empire. For two Romes have fallen, but the third stands, and there will never be a fourth. (Van Den Bercken 1999)
Reaching beyond the task of defending Orthodox Christianity, Filofei justified the temporal mission of Moscow grand prince, and he made an enormous emphasis on evangelical virtues like holiness. Even though the ‘Third Rome Doctrine’ made no significance as the state doctrine in Russian history, its influences echoed in the Muscovy tradition, convincing Russia’s obligation to protect Eastern Christians (Klemenko and Yurtaev 2018, 45).
The thoughts that dominated the Russian intellectual space in the nineteenth century were linked to the inspirational gravity of the ‘Third Rome Doctrine’ as it enabled Russian state apparatus and the intelligentsia to justify the uniqueness in Russia as a different geopolitical space and a civilization with intrinsic roots different from both Europe and the East. The vision propounded by the nineteenth-century Russian diplomat F.I. Tyutchev was an offshoot of Filofei’s ‘Third Rome Doctrine’, and Tyutchev presented the vision on Russia as a continental project where Russia would triumph over Europe as the preserver of Christianity. In fact, his claim was bold and utterly idealistic, which contained three pillars of fulfilling Russian hegemony. The first stage envisaged Russia’s consolidation within its current borders. The second provided for the pan-Slavic project implementation (also called ‘Eastern Empire’) with the integration of Eastern Europe and the Balkans (Tyutchev 1992, 97). The third stage entailed a complete European reorganization under the aegis of Russia: absorption of Austria, Germany, and Italy; reunification of the churches with Orthodoxy established in Rome, and, consequently, papal subjection. Ideally, Russia would embrace ‘with the exception of China, the entire Eurasian continent, in particular the Mediterranean with a core Europe’.
Tyutchev’s utopian project of forming a grand Russia and the whole nineteenth-century Russian intellectual fascination of portraying Russia as a sanctuary for Slavs and Orthodox Christianity had derived from Filofei, and it pervaded the Russian consciousness throughout the nineteenth century as an indispensable factor in deciding their participation in geopolitical issues. In his ‘Writers Diary’, Russian author Dostoyevsky writes, ‘Russia is a natural magnet which irresistibly attracts the Slavs, thus keeping alive their integrity and unity’.
The geopolitical significance of the ‘Third Rome Doctrine’ in the Russia’s foreign policy, in particular, in the ‘Eastern Question’, was a notable factor even in a situation where Russia was coping with its internal chaos in the late nineteenth century. For example, when most of the European states stood along with Ottomans by considering Russia as a major threat in the aftermath of the Crimean War, Russia still clung to their traditional position of protecting Eastern Orthodox Christians. In 1867, the Russian Foreign Minister, A.M. Gorchakov, wrote a letter to Tsar Alexander II to convince him about the necessity for Russia to intervene in the ‘Eastern Question’. He writes:
We need to continue our mission as patron of the Eastern Christian nations, ensuring them that Russia is their only sincere, constant and unmercenary friend… It is only through Russia that the liberation of the Christian East can be achieved efficiently and durably. Only… Russia can become a link between these very different nations… Without Russia they may fall into confusion and anarchy.
However, the sociopolitical upheaval faced by Russia after the October revolution in 1917 reversed Russia’s geopolitical mission of protecting the Slavs and preserving the Orthodoxy by replacing it with Communism, which adopted atheism as a state ideology, leaving behind its history and withdrawing from the traditions embedded in Russian society. As Russia was engulfed by the new ideological and political transformation since the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1922, the ‘Third Rome Doctrine’ became diminished, but its influence did not completely fade away. Particularly, several Russian philosophers, notably Vladimir Solov’ev and Nikolai Berdiaev, argued that the notion of Bolshevism was rooted in Russian Messanism, which had been derived from the belief in the ‘Third Rome Doctrine’. In Peter Duncan’s Russian Messanism: Third Rome, Revolution, Communism and After, Duncan has aptly elucidated the messianism as ‘the proposition or belief that a given group is in some way chosen for a purpose’. Closely linked to this is the view that the great suffering endured by the group will lead somehow to the redemption of the group itself and possibly of all humanity. In particular, Filofei’s conception was used, following the greater needs of the Soviet Union in their struggle against Nazi invasion. The unique adaptation of the life story of Ivan the Terrible to a play by Aleksey Tolstoy in 1942 saw a systematic change of the Soviet attitude toward the ‘Third Rome Doctrine’ as a factor to boost the nationalist morale. In the opening scene of Ivan the Terrible, the tsar explains his mission to unify the Russian lands, destroy internal opposition, and defend the realm against the imperialist Germans. Ivan concludes his speech with a few boastful words from Filofei: ‘Two Romes have fallen, Moscow is the third, there will be no fourth, for I am absolute master of this third Rome, the Muscovite state’.
The resurgence of Russian intellectual thoughts regarding the civilizational mission of Russia in the post-Soviet era saw a rapid increase, and the ideological vacuum created by the collapse of the Soviet Union bolstered the revival of Russia’s civilizational nostalgia. A concept of ‘state civilization’ proposed by I.V. Artemov in the mid-1990s had referred to the nation’s destiny as an interwoven part of its Orthodox legacy, suggesting the need to restore its importance in the state affairs. Artemov states:
Russian civilization is, no doubt, the Orthodox civilisation. Russian ethnos as a spiritual and cultural phenomenon took shape through the consolidation of disparate Slavic tribes with the adoption of Christianity. Russians managed to rise to the level of a nation capable of architecting a great world power through implementing, in the period of Muscovy, the Third Rome concept of the state as the guardian of eternal Christian truths. After the Byzantine Empire (the Second Rome) fell in 1453 under the crushing blows of the Ottoman Turks, Russian Muscovy remained the only world centre of Orthodoxy, assuming both the spiritual power of Byzantium and the state mission of the Roman Empire (the First Rome) […] – and emphasised -, this very notion shaped Russians into a nation fulfilling its historic mission till the end of days, protecting the Truth from the infidels and carry its Light to neighboring countries. This notion is what helped create a world Empire, since the Third Rome concept embraces the idea of nations gathering as its core, spiritually consistent principle.
Depiction of Moscow as the ‘Third Rome’ has undergone some revolutionary interpretations facing many ups and downs at the turn of the century. The two gospels that Russia reverently embraced in the twentieth century were Christianity and Communism. Both had used this doctrine for geopolitical motives, following their ideological significances, and its current portrayal of today’s Russia under Vladimir Putin seems to be an important cause of ascertaining where Russia is heading under the new guise of Orthodoxy. Also, it is important to note how the Russian Federation has aligned its foreign policy in Eurasia, primarily advocating the neo-Eurasianism and upholding Moscow’s supremacy in the interstate affairs.
Restoration of Orthodox Church Influence in Russian Sociopolitical Space
As I stated earlier, the longingness of Russia for its past and civilizational values were rooted in the chaotic period faced by Russia as in the post-Soviet space in the 1990s and the projection of Russian Orthodoxy was duly by Vladimir Putin at the outset. When the setback that persisted during the Soviet period for the functioning of the Russian Orthodox Church began to vanish after 1991, it resulted in the rapid increase of Orthodox followers that stood at 73.6% in 2006 (World Values Survey 2014). The growth of religiosity among Russians in the post-Soviet space as compared to other Eastern European states was an interesting factor from two sides. From one side, the renewal of the Orthodox faith brought the Church’s influence back to the political realm of Moscow, reminding how the Orthodox Church meddled in the state affairs in Russia’s imperial past. Putin’s predilection on Russian history was compatible with the Orthodox Church’s revival, and it is not an exaggeration to note that his references to Orthodox Christianity as the core of Russian value system regardless of the 1993 Russian constitution’s guarantee on the secular status of the Russian Federation has been one of interesting indicators that vividly shows his alacrity on bringing the religious tradition to Russian sociopolitical space, where religion remained a dead factor during the Soviet time. The blatant use of Orthodoxy in the state apparatus enormously helped President Putin prior to 2014 when Russia’s economy was much stronger with the high oil price in the world market, and in his annual address to Federal Assembly in 2014, Putin declared ‘Christianity was a powerful spiritual unifying force, In the creation of Russian nation and Russian state. It was thanks to this spiritual unity that our forefathers for the first time and forevermore themselves saw themselves as a united nation’.
Second, the increasing interest on Orthodox Christianity in Russia became a paramount factor in awakening Russian ethnic nationalism in the post-Soviet space. In fact, Putin seemed to have used it aptly in his political project by convincing Russians on their uniqueness in global history. As we are aware of the jubilation in the West after the disintegration of the USSR focused on the triumph of liberalism and a free-market order, which championed the USA as the omnipotent world power that would ensure individual liberty. A plethora of liberal slogans emerged in the Western society in the 1990s like the rise of LGBT rights activism and multiculturalism appeared to be attractive movements, illustrating the liberalism of the West wherein Putin realized the necessity of revving Orthodox Christianity as a dominant value in preserving Russian sociocultural space. In this context, the nostalgia for nineteenth-century Romanov slogans ‘Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationhood’ became Kremlin’s shield in its new mission to reform Russian society in the new millennium. Marcel van Herpn states in his work ‘The Slow Rise of the Radical Rights Regime in Russia’:
In the present situation Church is not a valuable ally to Kremlin, but it also provides compensation for the ideological void of Putin’s system by instilling ideas in the population about Russia’s unique vocation, the Russian Soul and Russian Spirituality -that are contrasted with the Western superficiality, Western Materialism and Western consumerism. These ideas are completely consistent with the ultra-nationalist goals of the Kremlin. (Van Herpn 2013)
Putin’s hobnobbing with the Moscow patriarch and other Orthodox leaders in the Russian Federation was not a notable factor in his campaign to consolidate power and uplifting his own personality in the Russian Federation. In his campaign for the second term, Putin built all his propaganda that contrasted the troubled 1990s in Russia, where people were impoverished, and Russian stability was in tatters as the war in Chechnya threatened to tear Russia apart. In harboring Putin’s campaign, the Patriarch Krill in Moscow Russian Orthodox Church openly praised Putin’s era, claiming his ascendance to power as a miracle of God to save Russia from a calamitous situation. Once Patriarch Krill stated ‘What were the 2000’s then? Through a miracle of God, with the active participation of country’s leadership we managed to exit this horrible systematic crisis’ (Bryanski ‘Russian Patriarch Calls’).
Nevertheless, there were several instances, which demonstrated the resistance of liberal public order, in Russia, criticizing the affinity between the Orthodox Church and Kremlin. In 2012, a group of women labelled themselves as “Pussy Riots” stepped into the Cathedral of the Christ the Savior in Moscow to denounce the Orthodox Church and Vladimir Putin’s politics, which was followed by the brutal arrest of the ‘Pussy Riots’ group and the performers of the group sentenced to 2 years in jail for their mockery where they beseeched Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Putin. The strategic alliance between the Orthodox Church and Putin cannot be entirely regarded as an act that sprang from political motives of Putin to fortify his power among the people. It has been significantly rooted in a deeper cause beyond the political power and the doctrine of ‘Third Rome’, which I discussed in this article becomes more relevant in ascertaining the modern-day renewal of Orthodox influence in the state apparatus of Russia. In examining Putin’s keenness on Russian history as an imbued factor that continues to affect upon his political projection, one has to understand how methodically he has been using Russian history as a ‘policy tool’, while having a conviction that his personal destiny is intertwined with Russia’s common fate (Hill and Gaddy 2012). In the state-sponsored mechanism that Russia has embraced under Putin is a sheer aggrandizement of its imperial past and traditional values mainly focusing on ‘Russian Spirituality’ and the role that Russia is destined to play in the global realm. It is, indeed, an interesting factor in the way Putin treats Russia’s tryst with Orthodoxy as he believes it as the country’s strength in grappling with global challenges mainly stemming from the West in the post-Soviet context. His claims on Russia’s moral superiority over American individualism in his public speeches have frequently referred to the country’s revered legacy of Orthodox Christianity. In 2011, when Libya and Syria were bombed by the USA and its allies, Putin made a statement referring to Russia’s moral duty by saying
We do not aspire to be some kind of a superpower understanding that as a claim to world or regional hegemony. We know there are ever more people in the world who support our position in defense of the traditional values that for centuries have formed the moral foundation of the civilization. (Anishchuk and Gutterman 2013)
Putin’s infatuation with traditional values and Russia’s spiritual heritage based on the Orthodox Church were not only confined to rhetorical statements used in political rallies for the electoral victories. On the contrary, he has carried out his vision of boosting the Russian morale from different perspectives, and the inclusion of a reference to God and the nature of marriage as a heterosexual union for Russian constitutional reforms in 2020 seems to be an audacious step taken by him, which would pave the path to alter the current constitutional structure adopted in 1993. Vladimir Putin emphasized the need to broaden the powers of the parliament to secure democracy in Russia in his annual state of the nation speech in January 2020, and within 3 months after his address to the parliament, the amendments he proposed to the parliament included the reference to ‘God’ in the constitution. The preamble to the current constitution in Russia, which was adopted in 1993, remains completely secular, preserving the multiethnic diversity in the Russian Federation, and it has excluded any references to spirituality by upholding the secular status of Russia under Article 14 to the constitution. But the growing influence of the Russian Orthodox Church as an ally to the politics of Kremlin had continued to uproot the secular status from the constitutional structure of Russia under the church’s antagonism of depicting Russia as another secular European state. The inclusion of God in the basic law by this proposed amendment embodies Putin’s eagerness to cling to Russia’s 1,032 years of Orthodox history and, on the other hand, it is very much akin to epitomizing the moral values insisted by Filofei in Moscow’s destiny as the ‘protector of the true faith’. In the proposed amendment to the Russian constitution, the unique privilege to Orthodox Christianity would be described in Article 67.2 in Chapter 3. It states:
The Russian Federation, united by a thousand-year history, preserving the memory of its ancestors, who gave us ideals and faith in God, as well as continuity in the development of the Russian state, recognizes the historical unity of the state. (Current Times 2020)
This proposed article to the constitution echoes the nineteenth-century Tsarist fascination on religion, which was properly articulated by Sergey Uvarov in1833 as ‘Orthodoxy, Nationhood, and Autocracy’ (Engelstein 2001).
Alongside the reference to God in the basic law, Putin’s proposed constitutional amendment has defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. This amendment should be fathomed in contrast to his denial of Western liberal values as constant threats to traditional values, which are intrinsic and unique to Russian space under its Orthodox legacy. From a vantage point, these changes can be regarded as Putin’s constitutional strategy to cope with the liberal challenges that have infiltrated into the Russian space in the post-Soviet era. For instance, Russia’s entry into the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in 1998 under Yeltsin’s administration was heavily supported by the Western leaders as they considered it to be a step taken by the Russian Federation to embrace liberal democratic values. Yet, in reality, the internal instability of Russia had reached its zenith, with the decline of the economy, followed by a rapid increase of crimes in Russia, which finally shattered Moscow’s euphoria to be a part of the club of the West, and the rapprochement with Western powers was replaced by a disillusionment. Moreover, Russia’s standing with ECtHR provided LGBT activists in the Russian Federation to seek justice, whereas the gay or lesbian marriages were not accepted under the Russian legal system. Zhdanov and others Vs Russia was a case heard before ECtHR in 2019, where the Strasbourg Court decided that Russia’s refusal to register three LGBT rights organizations were unjustified, and it had breached Article 11 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Taking into consideration that Russia’s traditional approaches on marriage and sexuality are at stake, the amendment proposed by Vladimir Putin to include the status of marriage as a union between a man and a woman in the constitution appears to be a protective mechanism propelled by the influence of Orthodox Church. It is rather a salient factor that the Russian Orthodox Church has always been hostile toward homosexuality, and its influence played a profound role in shaping the Russian legal system in 1999 to describe homosexuality as a mental illness. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church—Patriarch Krill—has been a vehement critique of homosexuality with his staunch conviction on protecting traditional values, and on one occasion, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church compared the laws detached from morality legalizing gay marriages and homosexual acts as laws enacted by the Nazi regime in Germany (Soloman 2017). Putin’s alacrity to safeguard the traditional values by the basic law of the country has not risen out of the blue, given the fact that trajectories around illustrating marriage as a heterosexual union in the constitution were heavily supported by the Orthodox Church in Russia.
In identifying Putin’s ideology or Putinism and its discontent with the West, Pat Buchanan has aptly remarked Putin’s mockery of the liberal values of the West and his ardor to promote the family values in Russia in a conservative way. Buchannan states:
Nor is (Putin) without an argument when we reflect on America’s embrace of abortion, on demand, homosexual marriage, pornography and the whole panoply of Hollywood values. Moreover, Putin asserts the new immorality has been imposed undemocratically. The ‘destruction of traditional values’ in these countries, he said, comes ‘from the top’ and is ‘inherently undemocratic’ because it is based on abstract ideas and runs counter to the will of the majority of the people. (Buchanan 2013)
As Pat Buchanan pointed out, Putin’s interest in Orthodoxy and preserving the traditional family values in Russia indicate how he has been persistent in maintaining Russia’s isolation from the Western liberal values.
Ideological Influence Behind the Creation of Putin’s Renewed Interest Toward the ‘Orthodoxy’
While writing his analysis on Putin and Putinsm as a serious issue to be discussed in the Western political order, Mark Galeotti has denied the notion that Vladimir Putin was influenced by a specific school of thought none other than his own political opportunisms according to the situation (Galeotti 2017, 123). But there is ample evidence to construct a contention that Putin’s high interest on reviving Orthodoxy and maintaining an affinity with the Orthodox Church was propelled by the characters he adored in modern Russian school of thoughts.
I have analyzed in the first half of this article that how an obscure monk from the periphery presented a fervid doctrine on treating Moscow as ‘Third Rome’, which would ultimately be the last resort for the true faith of the Orthodox Church. The Russian longingness for rejuvenating its place as the sanctuary for Orthodoxy was intensified by the new ideological discourses in the post-Soviet space. In particular, the ideas of Alexander Dugin cannot be ignored as his famous ‘neo-Eurasianism’ has made a tremendous impact in Moscow’s political space. Dugin dwells in the idea of promoting his main thesis ‘neo-Eurasianism’ as a global phenomenon, which he anticipates to be a counter-movement against Atlantic power of the USA, embodied by the maritime power and free markets. Dugin’s attitude toward Moscow as an idea was entirely attributed to the historical significance derived from the ‘Third Rome Doctrine’ and his text ‘Fourth Political Theory’, where he insists the geopolitical mission bestowed upon Moscow, while signifying its religious purity. He states:
The world of Sea, beginning with Carthage and ending with the modern US, embodies the pole of the merchant regime, the ‘market civilization.’ This is the path of the West, the path of technological development, of individualism and liberalism. It is dominated by dynamism and mobility, which bodes well for modernization and progress in the material sphere. The civilization of Sea has over the past few centuries acquired the name of ‘Atlanticism’, seeing as how bit by bit its main stronghold has moved in the direction of the Atlantic Ocean, up to and including the ascension of the US. The modern North-Atlantic Alliance is a strategic expression of this civilizational model.
It is opposed by the world of Land, the world of Tradition. This is the ‘heroic civilization’, the reality of loyalty to ancient ways. Here, progress is not so much material as it is spiritual; the moral dominates the physical, honour dominates benefit. From Ancient Rome through Byzantium, the geopolitical history of Land inches towards the Eastern Bloc, which opposed the west during the ‘Cold War’. At the center of this Eurasian space is Russia, which the greatest British theoretician of geopolitics and one of the founding fathers of the discipline, termed Heartland. And once again, the centre of Russia is Moscow, as an encapsulation of all terrestrial spaces, as a synonym of the civilization of Land. (Dugin 2012, 126)
Dugin’s policy of viewing Moscow’s spiritual significance as the paragon of Orthodoxy and his views, which are antithetical to the values imbued in the West, have become new boosting factors in post-Soviet Russia filled with nationalist rhetoric, in particular in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea in 2014. His echoing voice played a predominant role during Russia’s military involvement in Ukrainian separatist movement by proclaiming the inevitability of the war between Russia and Ukraine, which he regarded as the path for ‘Novorossiya’ or New Russia, and this word, derived from Russian imperial past, was used twice by Putin prior to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 (Tolstoy and MecCaffray 2015).
However, Lev Gumilev’s celebrated concept of ‘Eurasianism’, which continued to flourish among Russian hardliners and intelligentsia, seems to have bolstered Putin’s civilizational narrative of portraying Russia’s orthodox legacy at a significant level. Gumilev’s empathy, highlighting the sui generis harmony of the communities and tribes of the Steppes in Eurasia for centuries, had invoked the yearning for Eurasianism by indicating how ‘Heartlands’ in Central Asia is perpetually fated to encounter Atlantic oceanic powers, an empire that was first Venetian and Genoese, Portuguese, British, and now American empire. The gravity of this idea has become rather an appealing one in post-Soviet Russia and Putin’s frequent references to Gumilev as a nurturing figure of unique Russian ideology denotes the importance of his influence in the Russian state apparatus. The sudden usage of Gumilev’s term passionarnost by Putin at a public gathering was akin to bring the dead poet’s legacy back to the power politics in Kremlin. While offering a clue on the awaited future political uncertainties in Russia, Putin emphasized:
I would like all of us to understand that coming years will be decisive. Who will take the lead and who will remain on the periphery and inevitably lose their independence will depend not only on economic potentials, but primarily on the will of each nation, on its inner energy which Lev Gumilev termed passionarnost: the ability to move forward and embrace changes. (Akhmatova 2016)
The overarching influence laid down by the abovementioned two thinkers have made obvious impacts in Putin’s jubilation for Orthodox values and Russia’s unique identity in global affairs. As I elaborated as a salient fact regarding Putin’s abhorrence of the Western liberal order and the way he reiterates the spiritual values imbued with Slavs or Russian civilization have been mainly culled by the philosophical discourses that I discussed in this section.
Conclusion
In examining the course of history of Russia since its imperial past to the fall of the Romanovs, one can comprehend the portrayal of Orthodoxy as an impetus of most of the historical trajectories in Ruskimir. Starting from Filofi’s letters that described Moscow as the Third Rome or the sanctuary of the true creed to the idea propounded by Count Sergy Uvaraovin in 1832 during the reign of Nicolas 1 on ‘Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationalism’, the affinity between the state and Orthodox Church has fundamentally been a crucial one. The Russian poet Tyutchev once stated:
Russia is above all a Christian empire. The Russian people is Christian not only because of the Orthodoxy of its beliefs, but also because of something even more intimate than belief. It is Christian, because of the capacity for renunciation and sacrifices which serves as the foundation of its moral nature. (Riasonovsky 1961, 42)
The concept of locating Orthodoxy and the Russian nationalism attached to each other was bolstered by the development of philology, creating the Russian race as the natural champion of the other Slav races. Given the impoverished conditions and other miseries of the Slavic nations, Russia always felt that it was the chosen destination of the nation to lead Slavs and preserve Eastern Christianity (Guins 1950, 444).
The rapid growth of state patronage toward the Church and the persistent endeavors shown by Putin in recent years have galvanized the position of the Orthodox Church in Russian political, space and its aura is extended to Russia’s foreign affairs. However, it is an evident factor that the Russian state embodiment of protector’s status of Orthodox Christianity has not always been reciprocated in the Orthodox world and the split of Ukrainian church from the yoke of Moscow patriarch last year was a blow on Russia’s orthodox supremacy. The formation of the new church in Ukraine in December 2018 was a decisive moment in the post-Soviet period, which significantly reduced Russian soft power influence in Ukraine. Yet, Putin’s ardor on keeping a rapport with the Orthodox Church and emphasizing the Orthodox values as an intrinsic feature of the Russian civilization continues as a predominant part of his stances against the West and its liberal order. As a matter of fact, the concept of ‘Orthodoxy’ under Putin provides a fascinating picture of the revival of the imperial mantra that existed in the pre-revolutionary period and its efforts to trample Russia’s connectivity with the Latin Christendom. Today, Russia and its foreign policy are heavily viewed by the West as hostile toward them, mainly Russia’s relations with the European Union (EU) began to shrink after the Crimean crisis in 2014. In that context, Putin’s predilection of Orthodoxy is likely to become a new trend of cultural shift, which would further drift Russia away from the European space.
In writing his famous thesis on ‘Clash of the Civilizations’ in 1993, Huntington saw how Russia was vacillating between a European and Eurasian orientation and strongly insisted Russia should look for the West against blazing Islam and booming China. He further mentioned that in return to Russia’s alliance with the West, the Western world should accept Russia’s leadership as the leader of the Orthodox world rather than persuading to interfere with Russian influence space in Eurasia (Huntington 1993). However, the trajectories since the new millennium have shown growing skepticism between the West and Russia, rapidly paving the path for a new form of a clash of civilizations. In such a situation, Putin seems to have been using Russia’s purest and spiritual legacy, as an aggrandizement of Russia, in his confrontation with the West and its values.