The patriarch has tried to distance himself recently from the country’s political leaders, stressing his superiority in the relationship between Russia’s political and clerical power. At least two issues underscore a gap between Church and State, namely the response to the demographic crisis with monks criticised for being celibate, and the ban on organised prayers in private homes.
If various terms are used to describe the new generations, Russians today are increasingly seeing the ‘Putin generation’ emerge. One wonders what fate is in store, although in reality it is difficult to discern any real social and ideological convergence. They are rather reminiscent of the ‘silent ones’ of the Second World War years.
Proposals and ideas about ending the war are multiplying, but for Putin, any negotiations with Trump would only be an intermediate stage in an ongoing process. For Ukraine the situation is becoming increasingly grim, not only due to the uncertainties of Western aid but also to the decreasing participation of Ukrainians in the war effort.
Author Viktor Erofeev, from exile in Berlin since 2022, publishes a novel entitled Velikij Gopnik, illustrating how Putinism emerged from Russian subconscious and the backyards of Leningrad to reach levels of extremism towards its very soul, incapable of ‘accepting a normal life’.
It is not at all clear whether "homeland" means the same thing for Trump's followers or Putin's subjects, whether it indicates the nativism of "blood and soil" or rather the "spiritual" union of those who have a shared vision of state, region, or the whole world. For now, the newly elected president of the United States has promised a solution to the Ukraine war by 20 January, the day of his inauguration (coincidentally the Orthodox feast of the Baptism of the Lord).
Nostalgia for the Soviet simplification of the world, even shared by the opposition, is pervasive while ‘making America great again’ resonates in the Caucasus or Siberia as much as the infantilized world of Massachusetts.
The war in Ukraine is forcing the peoples of these countries to make a clear choice, against their own conscience. Moldovans want a place in the world, not just in the "Russian world", to which they already belong. Even more heart-wrenching is the choice Georgians have to make this weekend, deciding their country’s future in addition to picking their representatives in parliament.
In 1846 Nicholas I went privately to Rome to see Pope Gregory XVI to beg him not to give in to the liberal and republican temptations that were also taking hold in the Holy City. And the desire to ‘defend the values’ of Christian Europe led him to the Crimean War. Today, on the contrary, Pope Francis with the ‘humanitarian diplomacy’ mission of Card. Zuppi to Moscow sees the world's crisis in the light of the Gospel.
Russian economists insist on the prevalence of ‘locality’: a marketing strategy common to all sovereignisms, but one that works in a very limited way in Russia, being a country that is not exactly advantaged in its agricultural and industrial production capacities. And which - from gastronomy to so many aspects of social development - has historically always assimilated elements from abroad.
Putin is but the latest in a line of varjagi in Russian history, who tried to ‘bring civilisation’ to the lands across the border and around the world. Today, annexation is calculated not so much in square kilometres, but in sums of ‘traditional values’ such as the socialist revolution or the tsarist defence of autocracies might have been in the past.
The Faculty of Philosophy at Moscow’s main university held a forum on current events in Russia where speakers expressed positions that were not obvious and unambiguous. Without openly criticising the country’s power structure, philosophers show that they do not want to give up on the true dimension of the Russian soul, that of openness to all variants of the spirit.
Today, Orthodoxy in Russia is increasingly characterised as a separate religion, which retains the formal aspect of Slavic-Eastern rite Christianity, while at the same time increasingly extending to other ‘patriotic’ confessions, to the point of also associating Islam and Buddhism in the single expression of the trinitarian homeland.
Trying not to limit himself to the usual statements of state propaganda amid the universal conflict between Russia and the West, the Patriarch of Moscow spoke a few days ago in St Petersburg using philosophical and literary arguments to further explain the reasons why Russia today feels called to spread the “great values” that universal society has seemingly abandoned.
The first visit of a Russian leader to the then capital Karakorum took place in 1247, when the whole of Russia and the whole of Asia were subjugated to the Great Khan Baty, Genghis Khan's heir. Putin needs to show himself on international stages, and Ulan-Bator is a much more convenient location than China, where the Russian inevitably appears as a subject. As the troubled affair of the Siberia-2 gas pipeline shows.
Both the mouthpieces of Russia’s rulers and most opposition voices in Moscow reacted surprisingly as one to the arrest in France of Russian Internet tsar, to defend freedom of expression and communication. This is a sign that the ultimate weapon of war is not the assault drone or the nuclear bomb, but ideologies that distort reality.
The attempted coup that led to the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, the consecration of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in 2000, the 2004 Beslan children's massacre:Three summer anniversaries that are forcing Russians to rethink the uncertain evolution of their destiny.
Rereading its long history, the conquest of the “thousand square kilometers” of the Kursk region by the Ukrainian army also has symbolic significance, even before the military or diplomatic gains that might result. It is a way of reaffirming Kiev's historic superiority over Moscow. Just as the Russians open a grand new complex in Sevastopol in Crimea.
For the philosopher Nemtsev, a latent tendency towards violence has become a pivotal tool to regain what has been lost. Civilians become "quasi-soldiers", who engage in ad hoc individual and group training. Even everyday clothing comes with a war theme, like tactical gloves and protective knee pads. War is a key aspect of Russian literature, art and culture.
In Sevastopol, celebrations for the feast of the Baptism of Kievan Rus' have provided an opportunity to cover the unity between Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia with a Trinitarian aura. Likewise, the date has allowed Moscow to pull off a sensational exchange of political prisoners with Germany and the United States to rid Russia of its most notorious "foreign agents" who "disturbed internal peace" even from their prison cells.
While the average Russian is not in support the current state of action, neither can they counter it, imobilized by dread at the possibile outcomes of the war: defeat would result in panic, but victory could destabilise social relations. The incognito of the post war period, whatever the outcome of the current events.
For the historian of ideas Mikhail Maiatsky, Putin's Russia has "erased philosophy", replacing it with a pseudo-scientific patriotic ideology, based on the arbitrary rereading of Russian and universal history. A focus on existentialist thinker Ivan Ilyin is not meant to reflect on the meaning of ongoing tragedies. An “aesthetics of renaissance” on which Alexei Losev wrote in the 1980s is more urgent than ever.
Just as the bombing was underway on the treatment site for young Ukrainian cancer patients, the exhibition extolling 'Russia without end' closed (to reopen in permanent form) in Moscow. While internal successes are praised, external extermination is commented on with cynical indifference: 'It's war, there's nothing special about it'.
In Moscow, one can frequently hear people ask: “Are you with Biden or Trump?”, not to so much for ideological or geopolitical reasons, but for a mysterious sense of attraction and repulsion towards the great enemy, which in many respects is perceived as a Big Brother.
Against all odds, Russia's GDP is growing at a fast pace. There is no longer any need to put something aside for the 'dark times', which have already arrived. Everything is pouring into immediate consumption, and of course the main bulk of the money ends up in the war industry, around which the various groups in an endless supply chain are growing.
Like Crimea, Korea is key to destabilising Asia as well as Europe, amid permanent tensions and growing winds of war elsewhere. This seems to be the real purpose of Putin's visits, which from China and Uzbekistan to Korea and Vietnam are part of a plan for a new "world order" while trying to instil fear in both East and West.
June 12 June again this year marks the most important national holiday in post-Soviet Russia. But in order to avoid conflicting interpretations over its origins, Putin goes as far to refer to Prince Rjurik, the mythological Variegus chieftain who, according to ancient chronicles, started the history of Rus' in the year 862 in Novgorod, even before the foundation of Kiev
Many people in Russia tried to honour his memory on June 4, his birthday. His Anti-Corruption Foundation remains an important legacy, transcending the capabilities of his followers or the prestige of his wife Julia, and may still have a role to play even in a Russia now locked in neo-Soviet totalitarianism.
A series of video-documentaries circulated by Maša Pevčik, one of Naval'nyj's best-known contributors, shift all the blame and responsibility for what is happening today onto the bandits and corrupt people who prevented the development of a free and democratic society in the 1990s. Putin propagandists and opposition publicists, older and the younger generations, all cloaked in guilt and resentment, speak to those years.
An in-depth analysis by Meduza's Signal column assessed the real level of popular support for the war. The “majority of Russians” and poll respondents in polls are not the same, and the sample is becoming less and less credible. Surveys are a means of “manipulation” and “information”. The "average Russian male", who repeats patriotic slogans, is an example.
The first decree approved as soon as the ceremony for the start of his fifth term is about the ‘Fundamentals of Historical Education Policy’. The anxiety to rewrite history is the sentiment that stirs Putin's conscience most of all, as well as that of the entire generation afflicted by the resentment of the end of the Soviet Union. And it is this global and eschatological vision that Putin is now also trying to embody side by side with Xi Jinping in Tiananmen Square.
