The myth of "traditional values" as the basis of the shameful servility of the leading confessions of Shvabrostan

Analysts have written a lot about the Orthodox Church (mainly the ROC MP named after Stalin) in post-Soviet politics, usually emphasizing the revival/birth not only of popular religiosity, but also of institutional power. Currently, we are observing a deep tendency towards decontextualization, almost complete deconstruction of Christianity as such in "Holy Russia" and the unification of rhetoric and politics with goals quite far from the ideals of the Gospel. It should be noted that the cancerous tumor of servility and other negative tendencies affects not only the ROC MP, but also other confessions in Shvabrostan.

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Church and state have always been intertwined in Russia: during the empire, God was inextricably linked with the tsar. For centuries, the leaders of Byzantium and Russia highly valued the idea of ​​harmonious joint work of the church and the state in a "symphony" - in contrast to their more competitive relations in some Western countries. However, in the early 1700s, Tsar Peter the First, in response to the fanaticism of some hierarchs, carried out reforms to strengthen control over the church — part of his attempts to make Russia more like Protestant Europe.

I am not a historian of Ukraine, but I got the impression that the Orthodox clergy of Ukraine has almost always been a pro-Moscow force. Even in the times of Khmelnytskyi and Mazepa. Perhaps they were afraid (not without reason) that without Moscow's support, sooner or later Ukraine would go to Rome. In almost all Ukrainian intrigues of the 17th and 18th centuries, the clergy supported the Moscow Party

The leadership of the church supported the monarch and his successors (usually following the whole Christian paradigm), and in return they received position, power and land. However, in 1917, when Emperor Nicholas II was deposed and a revolution loomed, the Bolsheviks under Lenin declared that there should be a separation of church and state in Russia. Lenin and others believed that the communist regime could not remain neutral in relation to religion, they had to eradicate it.

Church members became indignant at the interference of the state. They did not protect the monarchy in its last days during the February Revolution of 1917, hoping that its fall would lead to a "free church in a free state." And they miscalculated deeply. After all, the Bolsheviks, who seized power, adopted militant atheism as a state anti-religion (because no one has yet definitively proven the non-existence of God), striving to completely secularize society. They considered the church a threat because of its strong ties to the old regime. Attacks on the church ranged from "legal measures", such as confiscation of property, to executions of clergymen suspected of supporting the counter-revolution.

Patriarch Tikhon, later poisoned and canonized, the head of the Church during the revolution, criticized the Bolshevik attacks on the Church, but his successor, Metropolitan Sergiy (Starohorodsky), in 1927 made a declaration of loyalty to the Soviet Union (there were the words "your victories are our victories , your joys are our joys». This statement became a defining moment for church-state relations both in the USSR and after its triumphant collapse.

However, the persecution of religion only intensified when repression reached its peak during the Great Terror of 1937-1938, when tens of thousands of clergymen and ordinary believers were simply shot or sent to the Gulag. By the end of the 1930s, the Russian Orthodox Church was practically destroyed.

The Nazi invasion brought dramatic changes. Joseph Stalin needed popular support to defeat Germany, and he allowed the churches to reopen. But his successor (the conditional "liberal") Nikita Khrushchev intensified the anti-religious campaign in the late 1950s, and until the end of the Soviet period the church was under strict control.

So, if under the empire the church was a respected partner that was sometimes pinched (secularization of lands, penitentiary monasteries, etc.), which was generally loyal to the regime, then in the Soviet period the church became a beaten, raped masochistic maid who was used for " white PR" in foreign policy (then choruses of useful idiots shouted hysterically about religious tolerance and human rights and all that "Russian spirituality") and "black PR" in domestic politics, when believers began to be represented as social freaks, to marginalize them. And the church itself will be represented as a kind of hoard of "massovyka-zateynikov" for stupid old women. The last performance has remained relevant to this day on the territory of "highly spiritual" Shvabrostan.

The collapse of the Soviet Union led to another complete turnaround. The Church suddenly found freedom, but faced enormous problems after a decade of suppression. With the collapse of Soviet ideology, Russian society was left to its own devices. Church leaders sought to restore the ego, but faced stiff competition from new forces, especially Western consumer culture and American Protestant missionaries. After all, the image of their office as a marginal mass-starter did not contribute to missionary success.

When Putin became the president of Russia in 2000, he inherited the remnants of the once formidable communist-atheistic imperial state and all its prejudices (including regarding religion, the church, etc.). Over the past 23 years, he has once again turned Russia into a pseudo-imperial state with global ambitions. One of his key tools in this transformation was the Russian Orthodox Church, which was transformed from a battered maid into a housekeeper, whose functions are also reduced to PR and propaganda, only not black, as before, but of other shades within the country and white for "useful idiots" outside of it.

Putin often mentions the Russian Orthodox Church in his public speeches, giving the church a much more prominent place in Russian political life than under his predecessors. But these appeals hardly seem sincere in a religious sense. Rather, he used the church to justify Russian expansion and attempt to discredit Western influence in Eastern Europe.

Putin deftly presented himself as a belligerent party in the culture war. At the same time, he appealed to some conservatives (who can also be used as another "useful idiots") in America, who have become skeptical of the liberal-democratic tradition inherited from the Enlightenment, which, in their opinion, contains the seeds of America's spiritual and cultural decline.

Putin has established himself as a defender of "traditional morality", for example, opposing homosexuality and LGBT in general, nominally denying divorce and supporting the "traditional family". He likes to pose for photo sessions with the Russian Patriarch Kirill and even published his calendars with traditional liturgical holidays.

Many Christians, and not only Orthodox Christians in the Russian Federation, express imperialist views. Orthodox identity is closely related to national identity, a sense of pride and cultural superiority, support for ties between national churches and governments, and views of Russia as a bulwark against the West.

Since Vladimir Putin became president again in 2012, in order to strengthen the political regime in Russia, the Kremlin began to widely use conservative ideology and promote traditional moral and social values, which the Church is considered to be the guardian of. This led to the establishment of closer relations between the secular power and the ROC named after Stalin, as well as to more active participation of the hierarchs and organizations of the ROC in matters of domestic and foreign policy. This situation exposes the Russian Orthodox Church to criticism for excessive involvement in politics, and in the long term to risks associated with the potential destabilization of the state system in Russia.

It is noticeable that among "traditional" believers, and not only in the countries of the ex-USSR, but also in Europe, there is a belief that an authoritarian dictatorship "stands on guard" of what is called "traditional values". And that is why they are ready to tolerate dictatorship. In its primitive form, it looks like this: "if there was an Orthodox tsar/Catholic Kaiser, he would not allow (an example of moral decay)" (I note that this post-modern ersatz has nothing to do with genuine monarchism, but few people are aware of this for example, England and a number of Protestant monarchies legalized same-sex unions). In a very primitive way, "here in Russia, Putin is a good man who prohibits LGBT." And from this it is concluded that the dictator is a supporter of Christianity.

Many seriously think that there are only two alternatives: Moscow and "Euro-Sodom", because the absolute majority of the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church, regardless of its geographical (dis)location, are grossly uneducated narcissistic degenerates. It is impossible for them to deal with all the intellectual complexities of "canonicity" and "gratitude". They can only repeat the clichés of ROC propaganda like worn-out records. There is no thought of one's own and nowhere to go. And this is a highly primitive and therefore completely false approach. I will explain why.

First. For the dictatorship, "traditionalism" is just a tool for keeping power in the hands of the ruling corporation. In the modern world, it is only necessary to justify the refusal to modernize control systems. At the same time, the set of ideological attitudes, in the name of which the dictator holds power, can be basically any. If it was politically advantageous for Putin to support LGBT people in order to retain power, the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation would already have an article "for homophobia", and all opponents of LGBT ideology would be persecuted.

Moreover, the beginning of the 21st century shows that a dictatorship can be completely without a clear ideological basis, just with attitudes in the form of a set of slogans. Now it is profitable for the dictatorship to parasitize on chauvinism, which means they will inflame chauvinism. Tomorrow will be favorable for internationalism, they will actively advocate for internationalism. At the same time, a dictator is no one's friend. He can't even have allies, or satellites, or enemies. Because union relations presuppose the equality of the parties.

Second. The imposition of any ideology by means of state violence harms this ideology. Because under the tutelage of the state, any ideology begins to stagnate within itself ("Marx's teaching is all-powerful, because it is true"). It is cemented, dogmatized and turned into a set of slogans. And as a result, it cannot withstand free competition of ideas. If in order to defend the ideology you don't need to sharpen your arguments and expand your knowledge, it's enough to call a cop. Then no one will work on development.

When any complex of ideas becomes a social elevator, it instantly accumulates the most clueless and worthless people (the next generation of external and internal "useful idiots") who can do nothing else but repeat a set of slogans and write denunciations. Please note that "patriotic" organizations in Russia such as "NOD" or "Serb" instantly became havens for scumbags and moral degenerates of all stripes. Because where it is possible to commit unpunished violence and write denunciations, scumbags and losers incapable of any work immediately gather. Moreover, they actively oppress and wipe out those who really believe in this ideology. He really understands it and is able to theoretically develop it.

The third. When the dictator's power falls, and this always happens. The transformation of state institutions is the same natural phenomenon as the change of generations. There are no eternal states at all. Thus, a stagnant ideology cannot withstand the free competition of ideas and quickly loses any influence on society at all. The most vivid example of what fate befell communism. Out of almost 20 million communists, in 1991, not one of the CPSU came to the defense of this ideology. Traditionalism (love) in union with a dictatorship will suffer the same fate.

However, the policy of the Putin administration is more complex, and its support bases are more diverse than is usually recognized. In fact, as demonstrated by the opening of the Cathedral Mosque in 2015, the Russian federal government carefully maintained close ties with Muslim religious authorities, viewing Islam as a stronghold of "traditional" values ​​and a guarantor of loyalty to the Russian state and nation.

That is, they decided to spread that set of ideas regarding "traditional values" in order to subjugate to their influence another numerous religious group in the Russian Federation and, if possible, outside of it - Muslims. It is known that during the empire they supported the course of the "White Tsar".

And the results appeared relatively quickly. Since 2014, additional spheres of cooperation between the Russian state and Islamic spiritual authorities have opened up, and the stakes for Putin have become even higher. His administration attracted a number of high-ranking Muslim clerics to "legitimize" the annexation of Crimea by Russia. Since then, Muslim mediators from several Russian regions and the capital have been active on the peninsula, trying to convince the Crimean Tatars — a Muslim ethnic minority that has long been suspicious of the Moscow government, given its history of deportations and persecution during the Soviet era — that their interests will be better protected. in Putin's Russia than in Ukraine.

But many Crimean Tatars are still unconvinced by Putin's courtship, especially Tatar nationalists who, having renounced Russian citizenship, were expelled from the region by the Russian authorities. Some of these exiles later organized a blockade of the peninsula in September 2015. To counter their influence, the Kremlin involved local religious leaders of the disparate Crimean Tatar community, as well as representatives of Russian Muslim religious institutions in the campaign to grant religious sanction for the "integration" of the peninsula into Russia.

The tension around Crimea gave Russian religious authorities the opportunity to position the Russian Muslim community as a model for the integration of Muslims around the world. Having annexed Crimea, Russia sought to establish itself as a state with a special attitude towards Islam, which supposedly avoided the pitfalls that spoiled the relations of America and Europe with Muslim countries and their own Muslim population.

At the same time, the Kremlin supports the idea of ​​an originally Russian Islamic trajectory. Putin himself called on Russian Muslims to create "their own Islamic theological school, which would ensure the sovereignty of the spiritual space of Russia." At the opening of the mosque in 2015, he confirmed that the Russian state "will assist in the creation of a national Muslim religious school with its own system of religious education." The government emphasized the need to consolidate religious teachings that would serve state interests in order to protect Russian Muslims from foreign ideologies that may challenge the status quo or encourage loyalty to religious authorities abroad. But this is not the only ego goal.

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Martyn Skavronsky, Russian researcher for Newsky