by Stefano Caprio

Putin's ideologues preach that the original principles of civilisation and traditional values alone can effectively edify the country's future. Meanwhile, Patriarch Kirill argues that it is necessary to strengthen “not only state sovereignty, but also spiritual sovereignty”. To make Russia “a universal ark of salvation” for all.

As every year, in the weeks following the January holidays, the 34th ‘Christmas Readings’, Roždestvenskye Čtenija, were held in Russia, a series of meetings and conferences in the ecclesiastical, social and political spheres to discuss the prospects of the Church and the country in the field of culture and education.

In the 1990s, these meetings brought together all those who saw Russia's religious revival as a field of great dialogue between the atheist past and the future of communities not only of the Orthodox Church, but also of other denominations and religions, and of different theological and spiritual approaches, while today they focus on the grand visions of Orthodox state patriotism.

One of the most popular events was the conference held at the Rossija National Centre in Moscow on the theme “Back to the Future”, organised by the ultra-conservative movement Sorok Sorokov, “Forty Forties” (a name reminiscent of the churches of Moscow's past) together with the Synodal Department of the Moscow Patriarchate for Relations with Society and the Media.

It was attended by over 60 speakers and thousands of listeners, members of the clergy and politicians, MPs and famous sportsmen, experts in the fields of demography, culture and education, to explore the theme proposed by one of President Vladimir Putin's latest decrees on the “National Development Goals of the Russian Federation”, drawing on Russia's thousand-year-old spiritual journey.

“Back to the future” is the definition of the fundamentalist approach that is to be reinforced in the consciousness of Russians, according to which only by basing oneself on the original principles of civilisation and the traditional values handed down by one's ancestors can one effectively build the future of the country in line with contemporary national goals.

Moderator Andrey Kormukhin, founder of the Quarantine movement, stated that “Russia is at the beginning of a great new journey to establish itself as a civilising country, at the centre of the poles of the multipolar world, great in its millennial bogotsentričnost [divine centrality]”.

In his opinion, only through the rebirth of this great history will it be possible to ‘correct the demographic situation, the ethical and moral climate, and social and economic life, moving from a consumer society that generates vice and corruption to a social relationship based on justice and solidarity.’

According to the vice-president of the Duma, Anna Kuznetsova, ‘we are called upon to achieve the goal of safeguarding the people [another neologism from narodosbereženie] as a national objective, which can only be achieved by a sovereign state that claims the right to do so’, above all to ‘guarantee a happy and stable future for our children’.

The governor of the Vologda region, the ultra-conservative Georgy Filimonov, presented the regional programme on "Family: the cornerstone of northern Russia,‘ which last year achieved for the first time the goal of increasing the birth rate of ’first children‘ thanks to ’abortion prevention," restrictions on the sale of alcohol and electronic cigarettes, and financial assistance for girls, including minors, who are willing to become pregnant.

The Archbishop of the Sakhalin and Kuril Islands in the Far East, Nikanor (Anfilatov), explained that Russia's role as a civilising country ‘is based not only on the rule of law, but above all on spiritual foundations’, and that the challenges of the present can be met ‘only by restoring moral law in people's hearts, in order to strengthen social harmony’.

The vice-president of the synodal department, Vakhtang Kipšidze, adds that ‘we must offer a Christian interpretation of current emergencies, such as artificial intelligence.’ He offers a comparison with 15th-century Russia, the period of rebirth after the Tatar Yoke, ‘when AI did not exist, but we saw how everything can change and we must prepare ourselves not to succumb to new technologies’.

The chairman of the Patriarchal Commission for the Family, Father Feodor Lukyanov, recalled Patriarch Kirill's appeal to fight against rituals of magic and occultism, which ‘spread radical and hostile feelings towards the ministry of priests,’ causing a spiritual degradation of society ‘with the obsessive advertising of these practices,’ which have always been widespread in Russia since the coexistence of Christian baptism and ancient pagan rites.

The conference was divided into various thematic areas, the first of which was “Family: overcoming the egocentric mentality and regenerating the sobornost mentality [from the concept of sobornost, 'universal communion”]', with many experts in demography and family policy, emphasising that ‘the family crisis is largely a crisis of meaning’ and therefore requires ‘the restoration of the hierarchy of values, putting shared responsibility and loving sacrifice in place of personal comfort’.

For this reason, state subsidies for families should not only be material aid, but ‘support for the spiritual framework’. The other sessions addressed the themes of ‘Orthodoxy and sport’, ‘Family, home and children’ in the field of urban and rural family housing, ‘The future of youth’, ‘The rebirth of Holy Rus' in the field of culture’ and ‘The role of traditionalist entrepreneurs in the rediscovery of Holy Russia’.

The highlight of all the Christmas Readings initiatives was the speech by Patriarch Kirill (Gundjaev) of Moscow at the plenary session of the Duma and the Federation Council, an “institutional” variant introduced into this event only in recent years to emphasise “the joint effort of the Church and representatives of the legislative power, who share responsibility for the fate of the people”, as the patriarch pointed out.

It is necessary to “strengthen not only state sovereignty, but also spiritual sovereignty, so that the people may grow morally in the expression of their intellectual, cultural and creative potential”, proclaims Kirill, in order to achieve a salvation that does not refer to a future Kingdom of Heaven, because “it begins here, on earth”. And if, on the other hand, man ‘has hell in his soul and his conscience lives in darkness,’ this miserable state will continue for all eternity.

The Patriarch explores the theme of the Church's role in collaboration with the State, ‘certainly with those representatives of power who agree with the defence of traditional values’, even if the Church does not participate directly in political struggle, but ‘does not shy away from the struggle to affirm divine truth, even in open discussion with those who contest it’.

In the “symphony” of powers, therefore, the Church must intervene to explain and defend the “spiritual sovereignty” that is beneficial not only to state institutions, but “to the whole of civil society and to all true patriots of Russia”.

Added to these are the many citizens of other states who wish to move to Russia because in their own countries ‘to defend moral principles they risk losing their jobs or even ending up in prison’, and therefore Russia must take on the responsibility of representing ‘the universal ark of salvation’ for all. Kirill assures us that ‘this is not my own thought, an image that formed in my mind while I was writing this text, but things that have been reported to me by people living in Western European countries’.

The patriarch thanks God for President Putin's decision in August 2024 to sign a decree welcoming foreigners who share Russia's values and ‘disagree with the neoliberal ideology imposed on them.’

Cooperation between the Church and the State is therefore particularly necessary in the current times of the special military operation, the Patriarch assures us, ‘when our soldiers on the front line face death every day and must answer the fundamental question for every human being about the meaning of life, heroically defending the fundamental values of our people, those of truth, goodness and justice.’

Remembering their sacrifice, ‘we have no right to give in to fear and laziness, as unfortunately happens to a significant part of our population,’ alluding to the widespread policy of indifference to everything that happens, typical of the citizens of Moscow and St Petersburg and all the big cities of Russia, where there is a feeling of already being in the Kingdom of Heaven. The Patriarch then recommended that politicians resolve the issue of the status of military chaplains, ‘indispensable for the commitments of the special military operation’, often marginalised by ‘military circles involved in training and education’, while ‘who else can find the right words to comfort those facing death?’.

To justify this insistence on the presence of the Church in the army, Patriarch Kirill recalled ‘the entire history of the Russian armed forces,’ going back to the warrior monks sent by St. Sergius of Radonezh to accompany Prince Dmitry Donskoy in the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380, when the Russians defeated the Tatars for the first time, highlighting the salvific role of Holy Russia.

The last topic he addressed was the need to exclude vulgarity from the common language of Russians, which seemed like a veiled criticism of the “street” expressions typical of President Putin, which are also a legacy of the Russian language of the past (almost all of the most frequent Russian swear words can be found in the 16th-century letters of Ivan the Terrible). The Church and the State in Russia are therefore seeking to go back into the future, but also forward into the past.

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