The relationship between Church and State
has not been an easy one and even
today the relaxation on open worship has its opponents

      The gradual rehabilitation of churches since the late 1980s, together with the congregations they attract and the growing number of novices entering the priesthood, constitutes something of a religious revival in Russia. Some see it as a triumphant repudiation of the propaganda drummed into Russians over four generations by State organs such as the Society of the Militant Godless. Others draw comparisons with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, a manifestation of confused societies dredging through their past for some kind of cultural anchor.
      Religion in Russia should not be equated with, say, Roman Catholicism in Poland, itself undergoing a renaissance. The latter is a more political and intellectual force, at loggerheads with everything atheistic Communism represented. Russian Orthodoxy, on the other hand, was never intellectualised as Christianity in the West was by the likes of Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. The Russian faith was and is rooted in worship, not scholastic theology, and it is not inconceivable that it could have contrived a modus vivendi with Communism as it did with tsarist absolutism.

Who goes to church?

      Visitors to a Russian Orthodox service will be struck by the highly orchestrated ritual. There are no books in evidence, but almost everyone seems to know the procedure. Even those who don't can cross themselves and bow at almost any time. The air is thick with incense, the richly coloured icons hold pride of place, and there is close interaction between clergy and congregation, communicating with one another through the medium of splendidly sonorous chant. Those familiar with the Greek Orthodox liturgy will see their common Byzantine source.
      Anyone who visited Russia in communist times will be struck not only by the large number of churches open, especially in Moscow and St Petersburg, but also by the age range of the worshippers. One or two Moscow churches even provide a carpet and toys for young children. Even in less accommodating churches, people feel free to come and go.

Closer acquaintance will reveal that nearly all middle-aged and younger Christians, at least in the cities, are well-educated, while poorer, working-class people are to be found only in the few churches that undertake serious social involvement, such as prison visiting and distribution of food and clothing. In addition, there are the sometimes bossy babushkas (grandmothers) and other elderly people who have maintained their faith through the decades of persecution.       Of course, the enthusiasm for getting baptised, a craze which started in the late 1980s, has produced many nominal Christians who no longer go to church; some of these, in particular, are inclined to look back to times before Bolshevism, with a view to reliving past glories of the Russian Empire. Russian culture is closely interwoven with Christian values and symbols, and even Communism could not conceal this. But nostalgic fantasy can lead to alarming ideas. One of these is a desire to restore an absolutist monarchy. A small minority of Orthodox church-goers are monarchists.

The role of Church and State

      The Russian Church had a peculiar role in society, because it never went through the process which eventually separated Church and State to varying degrees in the West. Ivan the Terrible directed arbitrary horrors against the church in the 16th century (for which he undertook exaggerated penances), but the Church was not finally subjugated until the early 18th century, as part of the westernising reforms of Peter the Great.
      Peter abolished the office of patriarch, and made the synod an organ of State, presided over by a government official - not necessarily a Christian - who had power to appoint and move bishops, and parish priests were even required to report to the police some of the things heard in private confessions. When their time came, the Russian communists regarded themselves as the ultimate spiritual authority, in exactly the same way as they assumed command of the armed forces.
      The messianic manner in which the Bolsheviks presumed to convert the whole world to Communism was uncannily reminiscent of the phenomenon of Moscow as "the Third Rome". (Constantinople became "the Second Rome" after Rome was overrun by barbarians in the early 5th century.) Although the Russian Church had progressively distanced itself from its Greek origins by adopting Old Slavonic for liturgical purposes (the Cyrillic alphabet was invented specifically to facilitate the translation of Byzantine Greek texts into Slavonic languages) and replacing its Greek bishops with native Russians, the bonds remained close, if only to counter the hostility of Western Christianity to the Eastern rites as a whole.
      The fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, just as Russia had emerged from the Mongol yoke, was therefore a devastating blow to the Russian Church, and Ivan III decided it was Moscow's sacred duty to become "the Third Rome", the beacon of the True Faith. This mission ultimately led to what were in large part religious wars with Roman Catholic Poland in which the latter was no less determined to win Russia for the Pope and Rome.

Old Believers

      In the mid-17th century Russia was plunged into a religious dispute which, unlike the Reformation, was about ritual rather than doctrine. Nikon, a peasant monk who was a close friend of the Romanov Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, became patriarch in 1652. He decided to bring Church ritual into conformity with contemporary Byzantine practice. In effect this meant people crossing themselves with three fingers rather than two and a few changes in verbal formulas. These proposals were opposed by conservatives within the Russian Church who came to be known as "Old Believers".
      Nikon was an authoritarian and uncompromising character, and persecution was fierce and even cruel in some places. It continued into the reign of Peter the Great when the Old Believers refused to surrender their beards in the interest of bringing Russian society into line with Western Europe, where men were in the habit of shaving. Old Believers fled to remote areas rather than shave.
      Colonies of Old Believers exist to this day, and have at least two active churches in Moscow. When official persecution ceased, many Old Believers chose to remain in their remote colonies. They became famous for their hospitality, although if the visitors were not Old Believers any plates or glasses they used had to be smashed afterwards. Guests were expected to leave money for replacements.

Monasticism

      Russian monks could claim much of the credit for opening up vast tracts of the Russian interior. Taking after the desert fathers of Syria and Egypt, they went deep into virgin forests to find sites for secluded monasteries. The forest was their desert. The tireless energy with which they made these remote areas habitable was their undoing because they were trailed by peasants pleased to exchange their labour for the right to settle on the monastic lands as tenants.
      These arrangements were preferable to serfdom, and led to the monasteries becoming the biggest and richest landowners in Russia. Many monks were content to capitalise on their enterprise and become landlords, but others preferred to push the frontiers ever outwards and start all over again. The cycle repeated itself until monasteries ringed the White Sea and encroached on the fringes of Siberia.
      St Sergius of Radonezh (Sergei Radonezhskiy, 14th century) is the best known and most popular of the monks who simultaneously Christianised and colonised Russia. His tomb is revered at Sergeyev Posad monastery, 50km (30 miles) outside Moscow, probably the holiest shrine in the country. It resembles a walled fortress and contains no fewer than seven churches and one of the Orthodox Church's theological seminaries. There is also provision for visitors, with a museum and shops.

The Church under Communism

The tsar's abdication in February 1917 was welcomed by the Church which saw its opportunity to break free from State control and to restore the office of patriarch after a gap of two centuries.       Patriarch Tikhon, who had been metropolitan archbishop in North America, was elected. Some people welcomed the Bolshevik revolution and Lenin's decree of 23 January 1918 which separated Church from State and schools from Church. This separation turned out to be rather one-sided, as the State took over all Church property and placed obstacles in the way of free association and travel This was before serious persecution began. The famine of 1921-23 persuaded Patriarch Tikhon to hand over much of the Church's gold and silver plate, stipulating only that sacred vessels be melted down by Church authorities and handed over in the form of bullion.       This was done, raising enormous sums, but accounts show that all the money went into Party funds, and none, apparently, to the famine victims. The Party, or often just local officials, wanted to take everything. Tikhon issued an appeal to resist the theft of Church property, and the result was 1,500 "bloody conflicts", followed by exile to Siberia or execution for the culprits.       Tikhon was also arrested and ecclesiastical communist sympathisers usurped his position. They declared the patriarchate void and called on "every faithful churchman... to fight with all his might together with the Soviet authority for the realisation of the Kingdom of God upon earth... and to use all means to realise in life that grand principle of the October Revolution." The faithful proved to be unmoved by the call and stayed loyal to the patriarchate rather than the alternative "Living Church" offered to them. The Living Church derived from sincere moves for reforms within the Church dating back to the 1880s.

      There was a general desire for change, but little agreement on detail. Various groups amalgamated and the communists saw this as an opportunity to split the Church. They favoured the Living Church with privileges, including free travel, while restricting everyone else. Gradually, believers saw through this trap and deserted the group, unfortunately leaving to this day the suspicion that moves for change are tainted with Bolshevism.
      Tikhon was arrested and urged to repent in order to resume his duties. "I was filled with hostility against the Soviet authorities," he said on his release in 1923. "I repent of all my actions directed against the government." Tikhon's confession reaffirmed the traditional solidarity of Church and State.

The Church moves underground

      More serious was the statement made by Tikhon's successor, Patriarch Sergei, in 1927, although the content was very similar to that of Tikhon. Assuming that both these confessions had been made under duress, elements of the Church went underground. Taking their cue from the communist cell system, they used passwords to make themselves known to one another. Priests in plain clothes would pop up unannounced in villages, administer to the faithful, and as suddenly disappear.

      In 1927, the year in which the first Five-Year Plan commenced, intellectuals and Christians were denounced as enemies of the revolution. Tax collectors swooped on churches and, if the sum demanded was not met, they were boarded up. Teaching religion to children under 18 was forbidden except in private houses and to groups of no more than three children at a time. Stalin relaxed the ban on Church activities during World War II in an attempt to lift morale. Everyone could see that the Germans were allowing churches to open in the territories they occupied, and after they withdrew the churches remained open by popular demand. When the war was over, however, controls were reimposed in the form of intense anti-religion propaganda in schools and general intimidation of anyone who aired religious convictions.
      Under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, many believers served terms in prison for holding prayer meetings or conducting baptisms - not because they were crimes as such, but because they constituted anti-Soviet agitation. The few officially registered places of worship were infested with KGB informers. Bibles and other religious texts were unavailable except on the black market. Persecution intensified in the early 1960s, and more churches were closed under Khrushchev than had been under Stalin.
      The communist state went to great lengths to discourage religious observance. For example, at Easter, the high point of the Orthodox calendar, state television would schedule a rare night of rock music. Those who went to midnight mass would encounter police and volunteer militia whose job was to stop anyone under 40 from entering the church. They were not actually forbidden to enter, but it was made clear that names of those attending "cult events" would be noted by the authorities.
      When Gorbachev introduced perestroika in the 1980s, Christians of all denominations sensed freedom, and took every opportunity to come into the open. The millennium celebration of Russian Christianity, held in 1988, was a big, international event. The present Russian constitution makes a fairer separation between Church and State, but today's politicians like to appear in public from time to time with an archbishop somewhere in the background.

Other faiths and denominations

      All religions suffered repression and persecution under communism. The Baptists, an active (though not so numerous) union of Protestants who trace their origins in Russia to 1870, were in turn tolerated and persecuted like the members of the Orthodox Church. Roman Catholics were totally suppressed. Islam had a marginally easier time because most Russian Muslims live in communities which are ethnically not Russian, and less easy to control from Moscow.
      There are Buddhists here too, and a well-established Buddhist temple can be visited in St Petersburg in Novaya Derevnya. Today, there are Pentecostal churches in many parts of Russia, missions from Mormons, and other sects, mostly from Korea and North America. The scale of this theological invasion has latterly   begun   to   alarm   both   Orthodox churchmen and some politicians.

Under pressure from right-wing nationalists, and with some support from the patriarchate, Boris Yeltsin passed laws which curb the religious activity not only of sinister sects such as Aum Shinrikyo (which allegedly gassed the Tokyo metro in 1995). However, fears that the laws would damage established denominations such as the Roman Catholics and the Baptists have so far been  unfounded. It seems, though, that the pendulum is swinging back again towards intolerance and persecution. Perhaps the struggle for religious freedom in Russia is not yet over.

Date of publication : 27-03-2006 (Viewings of article : 1075)
Published : Stolz