Authors

Discussion

For much of the post-Soviet period, the institution of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), as embodied in the Moscow Patriarchate, has attempted to position itself as supporter of the Russian government but nonetheless independent from it. This positioning persisted, although in a diminished state, even after the annexation of Crimea by Moscow in 2014.

However, with the formation of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine in January 2019 through the intervention of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the primate of the ROC, Kirill, began to chart a very different course, one much more overtly nationalist and political. 

This paper explores how the ROC’s positioning vis a vis the Russian political authorities has changed in recent years, and makes the argument that the civilizational competition trope advocated by Putin is one that originally has its roots in the thinking of the ROC. As such, the idea that Russia represents a unique civilization standing in opposition to Western decadence and hedonism is one that came to be embraced by both the secular and the sacred in Russian society. Specifically, utilizing content analysis and interviews, this paper interrogates how the ROC and Kremlin moved closer to one another since 2014 for largely pragmatic reasons. 

The topic is both timely and important, as the war in Ukraine has been justified by the ROC in explicitly religious terms, picking