The Russian Triad of Past and Future
The famous formula of 19th century tsars, Autocracy-Orthodoxy-Nationality, is being reinterpreted today by Putin's ideologists as the new triad: Sovereignty-Traditionalism-Welfare State. Yet, it is precisely "moral and spiritual values" that are the least clear reference, incapable of going beyond the opposition to the “destructive and degraded” values of the West.
The year 2025 left deep marks on the quest for Russia’s future identity, as a consequence and sum-up of an entire two-decade "rebirth" of the empire, from the first utterances of revenge in 2004 to the aggressive actions of President Vladimir Putin starting in 2008 against the “invading” West, Georgia, Ukraine, and the many “traitorous” former Soviet republics.
The arrival of Putin’s friend Donald Trump on the American throne in January sparked a wave of satisfaction, culminating in the August summit in Alaska that consecrated the two emperors as the leaders of the great powers dividing up the world, the primary objective of Putin's many “special operations” of the catastrophic hybrid war of recent years.
To some extent, we can consider as mission accomplished the "ideological restoration" of the ruling Muscovite regime, which sought to bring back all the Russias of the past in the new Russia, from the mythological Kievan Rus' and the Third Rome of Ivan the Terrible to the Empire of Peter the Great and Joseph Stalin’s International Soviet.
The most complete expression of the many yearnings for "Great Russia" had until now been proposed by 19th-century ideologists: the famous "tsarist triad" of Autocracy-Orthodoxy-Nationality, now revived and renewed by the Kremlin’s new tsar.
The new triad may seem less effective and authoritative than that of two centuries ago, but it is asserted with even more obsessive dedication, celebrated in Sovereignty-Traditionalism-Welfare State, as evinced by the many documents approved this year by everlasting President Vladimir Putin, including an article on social processes published in the official Civic Education Notebook for November-December 2025.
Russia's sovereignty is the most obvious goal pursued through opposition to and war against the entire world, while the “sociality” inherited from tsarist populism is nothing more than a return to an increasingly Soviet-style economic system, with continuous nationalisations and five-year plans that point to the bright future of an autarchic and “Eastern-tilting” society.
The ideal that remains somewhat obscure is that of tradition and its "moral and spiritual values," which cannot be defined except to contrast the "destructive and degraded" values of Europe and the West.
It is not entirely clear which tradition is being referred to – Soviet vs Tsarist, westernising vs Slavophile, Kievan, Muscovite, or Petersburgian, since the Russias of the past are many and very different from one another.
The principalities of the original Rus’ were in constant conflict with each other, including the first cities of Novgorod, Kyiv, Pskov, Vladimir, and many others, such as the current "fratricidal" war between Russia and Ukraine, the conflicts in the Caucasus, in the lands of Bessarabia (Moldova and Romania), Hungary and above all with Poland – the real great historical rival for the conquest of and dominion over Eastern Europe – can also be considered a “tradition”.
In the 15th century, Muscovy had doggedly freed itself from the Tartar Yoke, which left an indelible Asian mark on the Russian soul, one that has now forcefully resurfaced. Grand Prince Ivan III the Great sought to reunify the Russian lands, becoming the model of communion among peoples, the co-operative community (собо́рность, sobornost) that today reasserts itself as Russia's "traditional" vocation.
His grandson, the first tsar, Ivan IV the Terrible, devised a plan to divide the Third Rome into two parts: the “land of the subjects” (земщина, zemshchina) and that of the “controllers”, (опри́чнина, oprichnina), members of the Imperial Guard who oppressed the people in the name of the "true faith”, galloping across the lands in black monastic robes, a grim vision of imperial religious Orthodoxy, itself once again highly topical under the menacing staff of Patriarch Kirill (Gundyayev).
Ivan IV had Metropolitan Philip (Kolychov) killed in his monastic cell where he was held for refusing to bless the tsar's wars. Today, Russian priests are excommunicated, imprisoned, or exiled if they fail to recite the litanies for victory in Ukraine, to re-establish in the 21st century the Russia of the 16th century.
This is precisely what Boris Rapoport, deputy head of the Presidential Directorate for Monitoring and Analysis of Social Processes , writes in the introduction of Civic Education Notebook: “State policy must be based first and foremost on Russia's historical experience.”
Therefore, every choice must somehow reaffirm and contradict previous ones, like during the Time of Troubles in 17th century Russia, which saw repeated social, political, military, and religious schisms. Or in 18th century Russia, at the time of Peter the Great and Catherine II, that saw a succession of empresses and their lovers, amid shifting German and French influences, only to be terrorised by the revolution of 1792 and Napoleon's imperial ambitions.
Russian tradition corresponds to the Orthodoxy of the Tsarist triad, the Christian faith that in the original Kievan period overlapped with the various variants of Scandinavian and Caucasian paganism, leaving behind a “dual faith”," the typical Russian dvoeverie (двоеверие), not to be shared with anyone else and which encompasses all other faiths.
The correlation between Moscow's rebirth with Constantinople's ruin gave the Russian religion a particular missionary impetus, from "state-building force" to bastion of the true faith against any heretical rival or invader, to the point of inspiring the Soviet world revolution and the construction of the ideal communist society, all of which today is summarised in the task of proclaiming the "just multipolar world”, the new heavenly kingdom on earth.
Even in the theological and ascetic fields, there is no concern over juxtaposing completely contradictory ideologies and structures, such as the westernising empire that abolished the patriarchate or the atheist regime that restored it to serve its own interests, or reintroducing a grotesque "symphony" of Church and State in the Russia of the "two Vladimirs" from St Petersburg, President Putin and Patriarch Kirill.
In Rapoport's introduction, the new Orthodoxy is not simply a “dual faith”, but presents a triple extension: “We have three faiths, because we believe in the Fatherland, we believe in those close to us, and we believe in the future.”
Traditional moral and spiritual values connect those of the "Orthodox faith" with those of "typically human" values – never mind if one contradicts the other somehow, such as marital fidelity and the necessary "multipolarity" of every family, like the president's own very diverse family, or, according to some recent reports, that of the patriarch himself, who apparently managed to hide his wife for decades, suggesting that he had other preferences.
In any case, the full definition states that “traditional Russian society is constituted by the family of families in the continuity of generations, fidelity to what is handed down, and to moral and spiritual orientations,” and it is further specified that “traditional society is not a form of stagnation, but an unstoppable development, which draws nourishment from its own roots.”
Data from a Vitsom poll seem to back the official ideological conception, with only 2 per cent of respondents who believe that Russia should focus on the economy. Technological development is not even mentioned, while the emphasis is on the need to “defeat all weaknesses”, expressed with the ambiguous term of “anti-fragility” (Антихрупкость, antikhrupkost), to address and overcome “all the geopolitical and ideological challenges of the contemporary world.”
Religious terms are also used to describe this concept, from Russia's development to its "transfiguration and ascension" and everlasting glory. Meanwhile, the Pushkin Institute in St Petersburg, the highest authority on the Russian language, has declared “Victory” (Победа, pobeda) to be the word of the year 2025.
“Victory” – much hoped for but postponed so far, perhaps until this (new) year, due to the ongoing war – was celebrated to mark the 80th anniversary of the glorious end of the Great Patriotic War, an event celebrating every Russian tradition.
If we wish to identify the decisive Russian word of Putin's last quarter-century, we must certainly extol the necessary premise of Victory, namely War (война, voyna) and its affiliates, from the "anti-terrorist operation in Chechnya" at the dawn of Putin's reign, to "peace coercion" in Georgia, the "Russian Spring" in Crimea, and the special military operation (SVO) in Ukraine (Специа́льная вое́нная опера́ция, CBO), since "war" is a term that only Patriarch Kirill can utter from the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, understood as “holy war”.
In Russia, war encompasses all ideological triads – economic, societal, political, religious – and all the terms that fill the daily news, especially in the year just ended, from "drones" to "negotiations," which are intertwined: the more negotiations are underway, the more drones are launched to mark the New Year.
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24/06/2016 17:54
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