Whither Russia?

The question seemed as pressing a century ago as it does today. Fyodor Dostoevsky, the famous nineteenth-century writer and social commentator, felt that Russia was on a headlong dash towards destruction even in the 1880s. In The Brothers Karamazov, he found the solution in the simple piety of a young monk, Alyosha. No matter whither Russia, Dostoevsky seemed to say, the Orthodox Church could bring it back.

The leaders of today’s Russian Orthodox Church have certainly done their reading. In response to a host of social ills—including high crime rates, increases in HIV/AIDS, economic turbulence, alcoholism, violent xenophobia, and a sharply declining birth rate—post- Soviet thinkers have conceptualized a new role for the Orthodox church in restoring Russia’s spiritual and cultural health. But despite the grand ambitions of these churchmen, the Russian Orthodox Church may ultimately be without the means to effect serious societal change.

The Orthodox Foundations of Culture

Like their pre-Soviet predecessors, the Church’s rising intellectuals are by most standards conservative. General William Odom, a longtime Russia expert, told the Globalist, “The Orthodox Church has always been anti-enlightenment.” Decades of Soviet rule hardly reversed this tendency, and today many within the Church argue that Western liberal ideals, especially with their focus on undirected human autonomy, have been a major cause of Russia’s social problems. A council chaired by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexy II, publicly declared, “It is unacceptable in pursuit of human rights to oppress faith and moral tradition, insult religious and national feelings, or jeopardize the motherland.”

With the Soviet values debunked and Western ideals inadequate, “The Church has attempted to re-establish a set of key national values centered on the mythology of a holy, Orthodox Russia,” Professor Paul Gavrilyuk, a scholar of Orthodox thought at the University of St. Thomas, told the Globalist. The Church’s efforts toward this end are most visible in the field of education. Two Orthodox universities and numerous seminaries and theological schools have been established since the fall of the Soviet Union. Local governments have established courses on the Orthodox foundations of culture as part of their secondary school curriculum—a move which has gained considerable attention and debate throughout Russia.

The Church’s success in shaping culture and national identity are difficult to judge in the short term. But there are concrete signs that the Church is reinvigorating and giving new direction to some segments of Russian society. The Russian Defense Ministry has shown that units served by Orthodox chaplains have lower suicide rates, and Professor Gavrilyuk noted that, in a country facing the challenges of a shrinking population, most practicing Orthodox hope to raise three or more children.

An Incomplete Resurrection

Recent polls by the Public Opinion Foundation show that the number of Russians who identify themselves as Orthodox has doubled since the fall of the USSR, rising from a mere 33% in 1991 to over 60% in 2006. But these numbers can be deceptive, as commitment to the faith remains low. In 2005, 14% of Russians intended to attend Mass on Easter, the holiest of Church holidays, and only nine percent kept the Church’s rigorous Lenten observances. That Orthodoxy is often no more than a cultural affiliation is readily apparent even to those within the Church. Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, a prominent Orthodox thinker, noted that the high proportion of Russians who affiliate with Orthodoxy “does not mean that they all go to church.” As he recollected, “I remember asking one teenager who came, together with her mother, to be baptized: ‘Do you believe in God?’ ‘No,’ was her answer. ‘Why then do you want to be baptized?’ I asked. ‘Everybody gets baptized nowadays,’ she said.”

In The Brother’s Karamazov, Dostoevsky gives us Fetyukovich, a great orator who admonishes those who fear Russia is headed to its own destruction. Deep within the Russian character, he argues, is a commitment to the “salvation and the reformation of the lost.” The Russian Orthodox Church is undoubtedly an integral component of Russia’s cultural order—any vision of an invigorated, thriving Russia can hardly ignore it. But the Church must be mindful of history: meeting the concrete spiritual and physical needs of Russian souls may ultimately be more productive than attempting to build a new cultural edifice for the Russian nation.

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