Death of an Arch-KGBishop

The death of Russia's archbishop Alexy II was a deep personal blow for Putin. After all, “the patriarch, like the Prime Minister, was a former KGB agent codenamed Drozdov, according to Soviet archives opened to experts in the 1990s”.

In fact, when Putin gave him a medal for Services to the Fatherland, it was not the first time the Patriarch was honoured by an old agency hand: in February 1988, Agent Drozdov was awarded the Certificate of Honor by the KGB chairman for his services to the USSR. 

Such weirdness is par for the course in the decidedly un-spiritual and kafkaesque romance between the Orthodox church and the post communist Russian state; one that saw the church hawk cigarettes, bless submarines, and even support Saddam.

A CHURCH-STATE BEARHUG
The story stretches back to the early 1990s, when both Yeltsin and the chuch were haemorrhaging public support amidst the socio-economic crisis unleashed by the market reforms.

Yeltsin and the Patriarch realised that they could use each other to retain their faltering grip on the nation.

At that time, religiosity enjoyed popularity among doctors, teachers, and in less liberal and rural circles, a blind spot for Yeltsin, many of whose policies impacted negatively these groups.  The Church also enjoyed the popularity of nationalists who called for a strong army and greater control over the former empire.  These elements were the majority in the population, and bore the brunt of Russia's economic and political decline.  However, many were being lured away from the Church by foreign missionaries who had access to more moeny and media. Yeltsin, whose popularity was falling even more rapidly than that of the church, reached out. 

He would ensure that the Church retain its monopoly on religion if it helped him retain his monopoly on power.

He began to appear on television accompanied by the Patriarch, and in Paris in 1992, he said: "We treasure religion…The Church feels freer in our country".

HOLY SMOKES! 

In addition to returning Soviet confiscated church buildings to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), the government in 1994 granted the Moscow Patriarchate the right to import 10% of total foreign cigarettes duty free, as humanitarian aid, earning an estimated $40 million by 1997.

At that time, only between 2 and 5-8% of the Russian population could be defined as regularly practicing believers.  Not an unprofitable cigarettes to followers ratio!

That year, the Moscow government alone contributed $2.1 million to refurbishing churches.  The federal government also granted the Patriarchate 40% shares in a state oil company that handles 6-8% of Russia's total exports, generating around $2 billion annually. Moreover, defense minister Grachev visited the Patriarch and personally negotiated the construction of churches near army barracks, and the training of chaplains.

Ever since then, Alexy had blessed the un-blessable, everything from submarines to fighter jets to supermarkets.

As a result, Yeltsin's popularity was enchanced to the extent that other politicians, even Communists, started courting the ROC, and the Church-State-Army relationship continued to strengthen. 

Sometimes this has produced almost bizarre results, such as the Patriarch speaking out in solidarity with Saddam Hussein and labelling foreign evangelists terrorists.

Indeed, the foreign policies of the ROC and the Russian state are virtually identical, indicated by the two agencies being in concert on criticising the spread of Western influence while fostering Russia's eurasian impulses.

Thus, the government has used the church to spread Russian influnce in Estonia and the near abroad. The Church's strongest role has been in criticising the Baltic states for allegedly marginalising the ethinc russian population.  

Putin's new authoritarian nationalism had further improved state relations with, and the popularity of, the ROC.  He used the power of the state monopoly over the news media to promote the status of the Patriarch and the Church.   After Yeltsin's resignation, one of Putin's first acts was to ask Alexy II for his blessing as interim president, and in 2002 he made a pilgrimage to Orthodox holy sites. 

Putin has stated that religion, alongside patriotism and history, should be one of the basic values of Russia, has repeatedly spoken of his conversion to Christianity, and can be seen prominently wearing a cross over his bulging chest muscles.

The Church, meanwhile, added its prestige to his struggle to forge a new national consciensness built on patriotism, foreign prestige and domestic order. 

THE THREE LEGGED STOOL

Under tsarism, the Church composed, together with the army and the king, the infamous three-legged stool of brutal sociopolitical control.

Under Yeltsin and Putin, it has called for a roll back of religious freedoms for other faiths, served to consolidate the position of the ruling elites and pushed for greater influence over the CIS, including lending strong backing to Putin's union with Belarus.  It is now closely involved in creating a national identity of an Orthodox patriotic Russia, notwithstanding that Russia is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious Federation. 

Yet for all its monolithic strength, Alexy's orthodox church was a very personalised instituion, a sort of pet project.  And while his passing is unlikely to augur an era of church independence and religious pluralism, without his charisma and personal conneciton to the Kremlin, how long can the ROC continue holding up its leg of the stool?

by Vadim Nikitin