by Stefano Caprio

With the golem mired in the swampy mud of "serving, praying, and giving birth”, it is impossible to trust sociological surveys with increasingly less accessible statistical data. As the rift between Russia’s optimistic majority and a significant pessimistic minority persists, the prevailing view is that "everything will remain as it is today”. Kirill voices an apocalyptic perspective while the fight continues against the "demon" Bartholomew.

 

On 14 January, Russia celebrated the "Old New Year" (Старый Новый год, Staryy Novyy god), the New Year based on the Julian calendar, which gives Russians two opportunities to forget the past and foresee the future, or – in line with the Russian spirit – forget the future by returning to the past.

Under the heavy snowfalls of recent days, which buried Moscow under an impenetrable blanket of frost, preventing anyone from seeing what is happening in the many countries around the world ravaged by riots and invasions, Russians await the solemn conclusion of Christmastide (святки, svyatki), filled with masquerade celebrations from Christ’s birth to his baptism on 19 January, when the masks are off and people take a dip in the cross of the open waters of frozen rivers and lakes, to drive away the demons that threaten the future.

The double euphoria of the new year multiplies the opportunities to express one's dreams and desires, and Russian sociologists and analysts have unleashed their talents with surveys and polls, to see what image is developing among people watching the course of events.

The most widespread feeling is that Russia currently lacks any real "vision of the future”, given that, four years into the invasion of Ukraine, it is impossible to understand the true intentions of the country’s political and religious leaders, who are focused solely on the destruction of the present in the name of mythologies of the past.

The course of the Russian war oscillates between the complete destruction of the evil West and the military occupation of a few kilometres of countryside in a ravaged Ukraine, between a "holy war" and a "special military operation”.

The country's economy is said to be thriving and innovative, but ordinary Russians are forced to tighten their belts and shell out their remaining roubles to pay ever-increasing taxes to support military spending. And even if the holy special operation were to be completed this year, it is unclear what might happen after Putin’s long-awaited pyrrhic victory.

The impression, according to what ordinary people and ruling elites say, is that if military action stops, Russia will remain frozen, as in these days of snow and vodka between New Year's Eve celebrations and the sacred sub-zero plunges.

The country will lock itself into the new reality of a forcibly altered demographic structure, an economy geared towards war, and harsh, repressive laws. And, as if that were not enough, it will dazzle neighbouring countries with garlands of "traditional values" and nuclear warheads.

The golem, mired in the swampy mud of "serving, praying, and giving birth,” will unlikely move forward with any particular vigour.

Likewise, it is not a given that many Russians – even those who for one reason or another, whether fanaticism or money, have devoted themselves to the war against their neighbouring cousins ​–  really want to spend their entire lives dressed in khaki.

The only thing experts and analysts agree on is that it is impossible to trust sociological surveys in today's Russia, even if in rare cases they coincide with increasingly less accessible statistical data from official agencies, or with first-hand observations by researchers.

In  light of the situation, Novaya Gazeta decided to avoid predictions for the new year or the next decade, asking instead respondents how they imagine Russia in 50 years, when the current leaders will certainly no longer be in power and the world could be radically different.

The results of this "extreme survey" add no particularly favourable sentiments, remaining focused on the rhetorical images of a “great Russia led by the strong hand of an autocrat and populated by large families.”

All around are robots painted like Russian-style Gzhel (Гжель) ceramics and a sovereign, man-made network, trained on the texts of Dostoevsky, Dugin, and the medieval code of moral behaviour (Домостро́й, Domostroy) from the times of the Third Rome, a future in which the darkest past shines.

According to the results published on the paper’s website, 56 per cent of the population believes Russia will continue to expand territorially, 53 per cent believe its population will significantly increase, 59 per cent believe its global influence will grow, and a full 73 per cent are confident there will be enormous technological growth.

Nonetheless, a sign of concern is actually indicated by 23 per cent of respondents, who believe that the Russia of the future will have a much smaller population than today.

Similar results are found between the optimistic majority and a significant pessimistic minority regarding the standard of living in Russia's future: 49 per cent believe it will be higher, 25 per cent believe it will not exceed the current level, and 14 per cent see continued impoverishment. Among the most sceptical are business people, wrecked by the military policies of recent years.

The most challenging question posed by pollsters concerns Russia's civil and political liberties in half a century, to which over 20 per cent said they "don't know what to answer”.

Of those who answered, 34 per cent believe there will be greater freedoms, the same percentage say they will be the same as today, and 12 per cent believe there will be even less. The most optimistic are young university students, while the most pessimistic – unsurprisingly – are business people.

Overall, amid various tendencies, the one prevailing is: “Everything will remain as it is today," the state will continue its bellicose and repressive policy, and the population will continue to submit and adapt.

It would be strange, in fact, for anyone to believe today that radical changes could occur in both short and long term: The impression is that Russia will not show any new face by the end of this century, while the typically endless winter “frost” will remain in place and last before any sudden "thaw” and very brief springs.

The fact that most Russians do not see a bright future for the country, however, does not mean that what they imagine coincides with what they desire.

In recent years, as a legacy of centuries-old traditions, Russians have learnt to keep their most genuine desires to themselves, or express them with great caution. The last one to speak explicitly of a "happy Russia of the future" was Alexei Navalny, killed by the freezing cold of a concentration camp almost two years ago, on 16 February 2024.

Hope for the future is indeed a key component of religious beliefs, and many of the predictions are influenced by the Orthodox Church's threats from hell, accompanied by the "devil himself”, which many Russian Orthodox recently identified in the Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew (Archontonis).

The apocalyptic outlook preached by his great adversary, Patriarch Kirill (Gundyaev) of Moscow, has been part of every vision of the present and future since before the rise of Tsar Putin, as religious affairs expert Vita Tatarenko, advisor to the Ukrainian presidency, noted. In fact, in Russia, “holy war” propaganda was already underway in the 1990s, albeit soft-pedalled and implicit, but already geared towards future aggression.

One of the most heartbreaking predictions for Russia's future concerns the clash between the two Orthodox Churches in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC) and the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU).

Legally, the former no longer exists in Ukraine; yet, despite the transfer of approximately 1,500 communities to its rival, it is still twice as big, and the comparison highlights the symbolic dimension of the clash of civilisations and future scenarios.

Ukraine was slow to react, not so much on the ground in 2022, but at the altars in 1992, when Metropolitan Filaret (Denisenko) deluded himself into believing that he could settle the issue by proclaiming himself Patriarch of Kyiv, an "honorary" title he retains in his Soviet-era palace at the age of 97, a supreme example of a contradictory past that refuses to disappear.

Ukraine’s ideological "denazification”, the official justification for the war, is a derivative of the "de-Orthodoxification" decided together with the now demonised Patriarch of Constantinople, and visions of the future cannot ignore the religious vision that fuels predictions and hopes by "higher" motivations.

What Orthodoxy, what Christianity will there be in 50 years in Russia, Ukraine, Europe, and the entire world? This question is not included in the polls of various specialists and agencies, but truly concerns the consistency and identity of peoples in the future.

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• russia
• ukraine
• war
• winter
• christmastide
• new year
• surveys
• future
• past