The Russian World

The Kremlin is trying to fill the void left by the decline of ideologies with the cult of the Great Victory. While "Putinism" and fascism share some features, with echoes from Hitler, stressing their similarities tends to obscure their distinctive features. Putinism rejects socialist ideas and scorns the pursuit of equality, while making the messianism of the Russian Orthodox Church a fundamental part of its politics.

From Vladivostok to Vilnius, priests are being reduced to the lay state. In a book published in Paris, where he has been reinstated by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Father Aleksej Uminskij recounts receiving confused letters every week from former colleagues across the country. Many Orthodox priests find it impossible to pray for the war, but fear denunciations and ecclesiastical judgement.

For many years, Moscow has been engaged in a two-pronged process regarding the definition of citizenship. The first involves reducing the number of people who can be considered true Russian citizens, while the second involves narrowing the very meaning of the concept of "citizen", the actions that define it and those that citizens are allowed to undertake.

There is a growing popular demand for ‘left-wing’ politics. Among the demands is a tax on the super-rich in response to social inequality. Young people are joining radical left-wing groups in search of the ‘truth’ and clashing with Nazis on the streets. In a climate of weariness, any demand holds great potential. The steady, though not yet catastrophic, decline of United Russia and Putin.

The resignation of Archbishop Paolo Pezzi of the Archdiocese of the Mother of God at Moscow marks a delicate transition for Russia’s Catholic community, a process that will also affect relations with Russian authorities and the Orthodox Patriarchate. Citing health reasons that currently make it impossible for him to administer the large diocese, the prelate, who has led the local Church since 2007, calls for unity. Now succession becomes a major issue.

The Synod has elected the three candidates to succeed Ilia II, who had led the Georgian Church since 1977. The candidate with the most votes was the 57-year-old Metropolitan Shio, who had in fact already served as regent alongside the elderly patriarch for ten years. But this transition is extremely delicate, because in a deeply polarised country and against the backdrop of the clash between Moscow and Constantinople, the Georgian Orthodox Church is not merely choosing a person or a development programme for its future.

For Russian philosopher Epstein, a new electronic and digital "Iron Curtain” is upon us. With the collapse of the Soviet totalitarian system, a new, immense and enveloping virtual system has emerged. Today's wall is not easily controlled by a centre of absolute power, but efforts are underway to plug the holes and sever connections. Putin's challenger is no longer Navalny, but Durov, founder of Telegram.

On extraordinary display in the Cathedral of the Holy Saviour, the icons of the Mother of God of Vladimir, also known as the ‘Madonna of Tenderness’ (Umilenije), and the one known as Donskaya are both symbols of Russian victories. They hark back to the great confrontation between East and West that gave rise to Rus’, and has continued to underpin the various ideologies in power in Russia to this day.

Russians were promised a high-tech future. What they got instead is a form of total control, not authoritarian, but totalitarian, reflecting the Kremlin's definition of “the sum of technologies”, namely missiles and drones, as well as surveillance and monitoring equipment.

A Russian online platform is currently broadcasting a series of documentaries entitled ‘The Living Word’, dedicated to great figures of Orthodoxy who were killed in the years following the Bolshevik Revolution. These figures remind us that one can give one’s life for ideals that unite religious faith, evangelical charity and love for one’s homeland – not to destroy the enemy, but to build a new world.

Earlier this month, a series of laws came into effect aimed at changing not only the behaviour but also the outlook on life of Russians. Works such as Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman, Gogol's Dead Souls, and Chekhov's satirical tales have been banned from schools because they are "unacceptable for a correct understanding of traditional values."

The death of the patriarch who had led the Georgian Orthodox Church since 1977 and the fiftieth anniversary of the episcopal consecration of the patriarch of Moscow: two stories celebrated in the ‘Russian world’ as ‘heroism of faith resisting heresy’. Yet they also reveal the continuity between present-day Russia and the Stalinist era.