by Stefano Caprio

Pentecost and ‘Russia Day’ fell just a few days apart. ‘Where are you, my Church?’ asked Father Andrej Misjuk bitterly, calling for a return to a faith that ‘does not tolerate lies, does not bless those who cannot be blessed, and once again sets out on the path that leads from Jerusalem to the Eternal.’ Meanwhile, in his new ‘Fable,’ Vladimir Sorokin recounts a post-apocalyptic world.

Last Sunday, all Catholic and Orthodox Christians celebrated Pentecost, which in the Eastern tradition is combined with the celebration of the Holy Trinity, and which in Russia is called “the birthday of the Church”, born with the first proclamation of the Gospel after the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles in Jerusalem.

A few days later, on 12 June, Russia commemorated Den Rossii, or “Russia Day”, which dates back to 1990, when the Congress of Deputies of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, chaired by Boris Yeltsin, approved the Declaration of Sovereignty within the USSR, which was to fall the following year.

Yeltsin's text established the principle of the division of powers between the Soviet and republican governments, equal rights for all citizens and political associations, and paved the way for the expansion of regional rights.

Although the aim was not to leave the Soviet Union, but to “create a democratic state based on the rule of law within a renewed Union”, this first proclamation of sovereignty among the fifteen Soviet republics became a powerful stimulus for self-determination for all the others, and for the citizens of Russia themselves.

For several years, the holiday remained “Russian Independence Day”, associated with the collapse of the USSR, which caused inner turmoil for many people, until in 1998 Yeltsin himself changed the name to “Russia Day”, which was then celebrated in Vladimir Putin's Russia as a celebration of national identity rather than democracy or independence.

And today, in the context of the “war for identity” waged by Russia in Ukraine and against the whole world, Russian citizens are wondering what this country has really become, from a Soviet republic transformed into a federation, from the centre of a lost world to a loose cannon in a fragmented world.

This question is asked by those in favour of the war, in order to impose the new vision of the “Russian world” on everyone, as well as by the few who oppose it and have the courage to speak out, and the many who have ended up in camps or abroad.

The question becomes even more mysterious and dramatic if we ask ourselves what the Russian Orthodox Church is today: a simple structure serving the ruling power, or a “mother” of the believing people?

This is the question posed by Father Andrei Mishuk, 43, a priest of the eparchy of Saratov in southern Russia, who in September 2022 asked to be retired and has been writing for various websites and agencies, such as Novaya Gazeta, with an article entitled “Where are you, my Church?”.

In wishing ‘happy birthday, my dear Church,’ he admits that ‘if someone asks me now who you really are, I really don't know how to answer.’ The days of the happy rebirth of religion and the Church in Russia ‘are now so far away that one might think we were in another life,’ and on the other hand, ‘so little time has passed that it is truly frightening to see how everything has turned into a terrible nightmare that has overturned the whole world, into a kind of “non-life”, the opposite of life and faith.’

Father Andrei asks that the concept of the Church be separated from that of Russia: "I dare say, my dear Church, that you do not have a specific outward appearance, you do not sit in rich capitals with large administrative apparatuses, with offices and residences, you have no geographical title, you do not fight for a multipolar world and for victory in warlike competitions, whether socialist or sovereignist, you do not utter superstitious cries for the foundations and values of a legacy from a world of Mars, Jupiter or Venus".

And above all, the priest continues, “you cannot bear lies, you do not bless those who are impossible to bless, and once again you set out on the path that leads from Jerusalem, from the depths of hundreds of centuries, towards the Eternal, inviting each of us to follow you”.

Of course, Misjuk says, this ‘may seem like a naive and childish dream, but the Lord himself has reminded us how important the time of our childhood, of our purity and naivety, is.’

The priest expresses the sense of contradiction and guilt of many people in Russia who have returned to religion and the Church, only to find themselves instruments of a diabolical plan.

He concludes by repeating the question: ‘Who are you, O my Church? Where are you? Am I still part of you? How I wish I were not excluded from your borders.’

He recalls the luminous warmth of the Pentecost celebrations, when Russian faithful bring branches, herbs and flowers to decorate the icons according to their own tradition, and one wonders ‘whether the forest has grown inside the church, or whether it is the church that has grown in the forest. I wish my heart were adorned in the same way.’

The final greeting is ‘to all of us who are the Church, who are like beacons illuminating the night, happy birthday to all of us, to each one of us, let us continue on our journey, despite everything.’

The nostalgia for the rediscovery of faith in the 1990s is associated with similar feelings for the discovery of democracy, a dimension that was very little practised in Russian history and soon completely forgotten.

That Russia, liberal and in search of sources of spirituality, seems very distant indeed, much more so than the thirty years that have passed, giving rather the impression of a vanished dream, in the face of an increasingly grotesque and frightening reality.

One of Russia's greatest living writers, the 70-year-old post-modernist Vladimir Sorokin, has been describing this “anti-utopia” of Russia for years and has published a new novel entitled Skazka, “The Fairy Tale”.

His most prophetic book was published in 2006, Den Opričnika (“The Day of the Opričnik”, the imperial guard of Ivan the Terrible's time), in which he imagined a Russia separated from the rest of the world in 2028, with the construction of a Great Russian Wall after going through various phases of “Turbid Times” (Smuta, the conflicts reminiscent of the war with Poland in the early 17th century).

After the wars, the novel told of a “rebirth of Russia” under the leadership of the gosudar, the ruler Vasily Nikolaevich, who restored absolute autocracy in a climate of xenophobia, protectionism and fanatical patriotism, with systematic repression of all forms of dissent and an economy based on the transit of Chinese products to the rest of the world.

Given what has happened in recent years, Sorokin has been asked not to write anything more, to avoid the risk that it might all come true. However, he has written several other novels that are impressively prescient and describe a frightening, inner and universal world.

Sorokin now lives abroad, as his books are banned in his homeland because they denounce the absurdity of life in Russia today too clearly.

In his recently published “The Fable”, he describes a post-apocalyptic world where atomic war has already broken out, the state has completely disintegrated, and no one remembers what Russia was.

People return to living in caves, and all that remains of the past is a large rubbish dump, where a teenager called the “master of rubbish archaeology”, the orphan Vanja, wanders around investigating the lost civilisation and its remains, where “you can even find a jar of jam”.

Sorokin's rubbish dump is reminiscent of classic figures from Russian literature and cinema, such as the “Zone” of the Strugatsky brothers and Andrei Tarkovsky's film Stalker, a source of desirable objects that have remained magically accessible after total war, a place of dark forces that promises to fulfil people's most secret desires, but it is difficult to find the right combination to extract them from the shapeless mass.

Vanja tries to put them together, “at first I thought of building a plane to fly to warmer countries, then a ship to get to rich America, I thought about it a lot and in the end, surprisingly to myself, I just thought I wanted to live with my mum and dad in our house, with my grandpa, my dog Vipka and my cat Njulja”.

Thus begins the fairy tale, which recalls Father Misjuk's “naive dream” in his search for himself and his lost identity; Vanja's cave is reminiscent of Plato's cave, which holds man prisoner to his shadow, preventing him from going out to discover true reality.

There are no doors or windows in the cave, but the walls are not made of stone or brick, they are made of books stacked up to the ceiling, with titles eroded by time on their covers. In it, the little orphan tries to understand something about the meaning of his life, until he finds a collection of Pushkin's poems and begins to familiarise himself with authentic Russian culture, long buried deep in the cave-library.

The novel unfolds in the bleak and anxious atmosphere of Sorokin's masterful writing, but it offers a glimmer of hope, a possible future rebirth of Russia, a new Pentecost.

RUSSIAN WORLD IS THE ASIANEWS NEWSLETTER DEDICATED TO RUSSIA. WOULD YOU LIKE TO RECEIVE IT EVERY SATURDAY? TO SUBSCRIBE, CLICK HERE.

• Russian
• World