by Stefano Caprio

Believing in Russia does not automatically mean believing in God and religious dogmas, belonging to the Orthodox Church does not necessarily mean attending liturgical celebrations, and supporting “traditional values” does not automatically translate into accepting the dictates of the catechism.

On the occasion of last week's People's Unity Day, the Kremlin's sociological centre Vitsom conducted a survey on the priorities for affirming the identity of Russian citizens, asking them which social or community group they mainly refer to, in practice “Who are you?”.

The results showed that the overwhelming majority gave the patriotic answer “a citizen of Russia”, while surprisingly, the recognition of “a believer in my religion” came last, with only 2% of responses (in fact, the percentage of Russians who attend religious services), even less than the response “a citizen of the world”, which obtained 3%.

One of the most common statements, at 60%, concerns “Russia as a multi-ethnic country”, which makes the country “much stronger”, although last year there were 5% more supporters of “multinationality”.

Vitsom experts explain that ‘when it comes to personal identity, citizenship always comes first, far surpassing other identity foundations such as gender, generation, profession, ethnicity and so on’. Patriotic recognition is the common factor that unites people regardless of gender, age, social status and region of residence or origin.

The most obvious contradiction concerns the relationship with religion, particularly Orthodox Christianity. A 2019 Vitsom survey reported that 63% of respondents declared themselves to be staunchly Orthodox, and it is not easy to explain the large gap between Russians' identity and religious affiliation.

Much depends on how the questions are formulated, which suggests that religious affiliation is a secondary component of patriotic identity, even for other “traditional” religions in Russia such as Islam, Buddhism and Judaism, and it is no coincidence that “traditional values” are always defined as “moral and spiritual”, placing the latter in dependence on the former, defined by the civil authorities and then confirmed by the blessing of the pope, rabbi, lama or mullah.

The religious affiliation of Russians is very formal, as confirmed by the low attendance at liturgies, often experienced more as a folkloric event at Easter and other major holidays, when people go to church to bless the sweets and gifts to be distributed to relatives.

Even participation in celebrations reflects an almost exclusively external formality: of the few who attend the Divine Liturgy, the Orthodox Mass, no more than 10% approach the sacraments of confession and communion, while the rest of the faithful limit themselves to lighting a candle in front of the icon of their favourite saint.

The religious revival of the 1990s, after the end of communist atheism, saw a spectacular transformation of 100 million “non-believers” into “devout Orthodox Christians”, with an initial sincere search for the rediscovery of religious values that soon became a process of votserkovlenie, the Russian term for “churchification”.

Baptism and religious marriage are the ultimate expression of this reintegration into ecclesial life, which then takes on particularly intense meaning only when combined with the monastic experience, lived in Russia as a radical form of identity with the “earthly and heavenly homeland” in the spirit of “escaping the world” experienced as “the end of the world”, not truly believing that life on this earth can conform to the eternal principles of religion.

For the vast majority of Russian “Orthodox believers”, questions of individual salvation, life according to spiritual ideals, moral imperatives, and even less so theological issues, do not matter much.

Orthodoxy is the historical confession of Russia, and one must be proud of it as a solemn part of one's citizenship, and this also applies to other confessions, achieving a “moderate Islam” not through in-depth interpretations of the Koran, but through the awareness of a “Russian Islam” that must not be contaminated by the radical Islam coming from the Middle East or other “unpatriotic” Muslim areas.

This also applies to the Muslim-majority countries of Central Asia, which maintain a self-awareness very similar to that of the old imperial masters.

Moreover, surveys also show that a very high percentage of Russian citizens do not indicate any reference to religious denominations, between 30 and 40% at least according to official statistics, and perhaps even more in reality.

Religious indifference is common to many other populations in traditionally Christian countries, in Europe and the rest of the world, and for Russia it is a factor similar to the adherence to Soviet ideology in the last century.

Party officials and various public institutions professed devotion to the principles of communism for the sake of social status and career prospects, but the vast majority of the population conformed to ideological principles only to avoid complications, despite the relentless propaganda of DiaMat lessons, dialectical Marxism-Leninism, and anti-religious lessons of “scientific atheism”.

Immediately after the end of communism, it was precisely the specialists in atheism who became the main teachers of religion, claiming to study it only ostensibly to counter it, when in reality they were the first to take an interest in it.

This could suggest a “reverse effect” of the current obsessive patriotic propaganda, from nurseries to universities and in every social sphere, which could quickly backfire as events change. Many sociologists warn that the current ideological conformism is fundamentally supported by the military operation in Ukraine, which requires the “mobilisation of consciences” even before the willingness to fight, often left to the smaller populations of the Caucasus and Siberia.

It is no coincidence that even in Soviet times, the most enthusiastic support for state policies came from the military, which also quickly became servants of the cult, due to the easy harmony between war and “patriotic” faith.

Believing in Russia does not automatically mean believing in God and religious dogmas; belonging to the Orthodox Church does not necessarily mean attending liturgical celebrations; supporting “traditional values” does not automatically translate into accepting the dictates of the catechism. It depends on the circumstances and the orientation of political leaders, supported by religious hierarchs.

One can believe in Russia's “divine mission” without having a clear idea of the evangelical mission of Christ and the apostles, and this makes Russia's return to religion even more harmful than the profession of militant atheism. It is no coincidence that explicit atheists in Russia today are subjected to persecution similar to that of believers in Soviet times, making them a particularly significant category for the defence of freedom of thought and religious profession “in reverse”.

According to various definitions, which are often turned into charges, atheists are “amoral” and “unworthy of citizenship”, they are assigned “mental dysfunction” and “poor comprehension”, they are accused of “ethical vandalism” and “disrespect for the homeland”, “feverish imagination”, “moral licentiousness”, “adherence to the principle of permissiveness” and other similar epithets.

Those who declare themselves atheists are not admitted to Russian identity because they transmit “non-Russian and foreign values”, as a result of propaganda and reverse preaching from foreign countries, and this in the very country that has achieved the greatest profession of atheism in the history of humanity.

Even in the most radical Islamic countries, in the Middle East and in various parts of the world, there is greater freedom of thought, despite the obligation to respect Muslim sharia law, which merely relegates citizens who do not profess the Muslim faith to the background, without expelling them from the national community, while Russia seems to be returning increasingly to the dark times of intolerance.

For Josif Volokolamskij, the greatest theologian of the fifteenth century, religion was the “foundation of the state”, an expression widely used today by Putin and Kirill, but not necessarily the foundation of conscience and one's own samobytnost, identity or “self-essence”, which easily dissolves in the whirlwinds of history.