If we want to speak about the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Kremlin’s propaganda and information war, then we should take a step back in history and have a look at the situation in the Soviet Union, where propaganda was an essential part of the regime’s activities. The early Bolsheviks had an agitation and propaganda department in the Central Committee of the Communist Party. During the years of the New Economic Policy (1921–1928) this otdel agitatsii i propagandy grew into a huge bureaucratic structure of more than thirty subdepartments for the press, education, science, theater, radio, cinema, training centers and publishing houses. All this was so well organized that it served as a model for Joseph Goebbels, when he became Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda. The Nazi propaganda even used Soviet posters, changing only the texts.
But what is the role of propaganda? Propaganda has a double role. First, it touts the blessings and the benefits of the regime. Second, it attacks the system and the policies of its adversaries. Propaganda contains a positive and a negative message. Both elements are important. In the Soviet Union the positive message was simple: The Soviet Union was the first country in the world where the proletarian revolution had succeeded. Therefore, the Soviet Union was a model. It was the vanguard of the worldwide liberation of the proletariat. The country had, as such, a universal mission. The negative message of Soviet propaganda was attack the “enemies of the working class,” which were the capitalist countries that exploited their working class and the people in the countries that they colonized. In this, Soviet propaganda narrative religion had no place. Religion was, in the words of Marx, “opium of the people,” and, in Lenin’s words, “opium for the people.” It was a false consciousness and it should, as such, be combated because religion, which promised heaven in an afterlife, prevented the workers from making the revolution. When, in 1961, Yury Gagarin was the first man to fly in space, he famously said: “There is no god up here.”
The demise of the Soviet Union changed all this overnight. The new Russia was no longer the vanguard of the world revolution. Communism had lost its appeal. Not only was the Soviet Union a far cry from the equal and just society it pretended to be, but it was also an economic model that showed state-run communism was a flagrant failure. Both the positive and negative parts of Soviet propaganda had lost its contents. Because how could the new Russia attack the capitalist countries at the very moment it was introducing a capitalist economy itself? And how could it present itself as the champion of colonized communities, when the Soviet Union was the last European country to decolonize?
In the new Russia of Boris Yeltsin, there was a complete ideological void. Old ideals and values had disappeared and new ideals and values had not yet been developed. It was in this situation of ideological confusion that Vladimir Putin emerged as a new power factor. In fact, one of Putin’s first activities was to repair this ideological void. In 1998 Yeltsin had appointed Putin as director of the FSB, the follow-up organization of the former KGB. As such, Putin also became secretary of the National Security Council of the Russian Federation. This council produced a new National Security Concept, which was approved by Yeltsin on December 17, 1999. It was one of the last decrees Yeltsin signed. Two weeks later, he would abdicate in favor of Putin. The concept was built around completely new ideas. For instance that safeguarding the national security of the Russian Federation should include “the spiritual renewal of Russia,” and that “the state should encourage the . . . spiritual and moral development of society.” This emphasis on spiritual values in a National Security Concept was completely new. As secretary of the Security Council, Putin had a considerable influence on this formulation. In an autobiographical book, titled First Person, published some months later, he said that he “would fight to keep our geographical and spiritual position,” and made the confession that he wore an Orthodox baptismal cross pendant around his neck. Putin knew exactly how he wanted to fill the ideological void: namely by giving the Russian Orthodox Church a central place in the new Russian identity. It was, in fact, a masterstroke. Why? Because his choice hit many birds with one stone. Making the Russian Orthodox Church the central ideological pillar of the new Russia had at least six benefits. The Church resembled, as it were, a Swiss army knife. A Swiss army knife has many functions. It has knife blades and other various tools, such as a small saw, a nail file, a pair of scissors, a screwdriver, and a can opener. The same seemed to be true for the Church. It had at least six benefits for the regime. What exactly were these six benefits?
The regime could benefit from the goodwill of the Church—inside Russia and abroad. Although only a small portion of the Russian population consisted of practicing believers, a majority of Russians saw the Church as a positive force in society and the Kremlin could benefit from this goodwill.
This rehabilitation of a central institution of pre-revolutionary tsarist Russia meant that the Kremlin didn’t have to invent a completely new state ideology.
There was the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church championed so-called “traditional values,” such as “family values,” “religious values,” and “cultural values,” which could be instrumentalized by the Kremlin in its ideological struggle with the “decadent West,” where the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community were recognized and defended. Both the Church and the Kremlin didn’t like Western democracy, didn’t like sexual minorities, and didn’t like universal human-rights regimes. Instead, they preferred authoritarian political solutions.
The Kremlin could instrumentalize the close ideological relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian nationalism. Unlike the Roman Catholic Church the Russian Orthodox Church is quite explicitly a Russian Orthodox Church. The Moscow Patriarchate considers Moscow as “The Third Rome”: the spiritual center for all Orthodox believers.
The Russian Orthodox Church had always supported panslavism—a movement based on the idea that all speakers of Slavic languages should live in one country—i.e. Russia. This idea fit in seamlessly with the Kremlin’s neo-imperialist policies vis-a-vis the new post-Soviet states, particularly vis-a-vis Belarus and Ukraine, which were denied their legitimacy as independent states.
The Church played a central role in the militarization of Russian society, becoming a pillar of the army and in particular of the Strategic Missile Forces, the nuclear deterrent of the Russian Federation, with which the Church entered into a symbiotic relationship.
The Russian Propaganda EffortPilly
How did this new cooperation between the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church work out in practice? This cooperation was for both sides in one word: excellent. In 2007, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov remarked that the Church and his ministry “worked hand in hand” . . . “doing together one big work very necessary for the country.” Already before the war against Ukraine, the Church played an important role in the war of nerves waged by Moscow against Kyiv before the outbreak of hostilities. In the summer of 2009, for instance, Patriarch Kirill made a ten-day tour in Ukraine, speaking a lot about the “common heritage” and “common destiny” of Russia and Ukraine. Viktor Yanukovych, who at that time was the leader of the opposition Party of the Regions, accompanied Kirill on a tour to Donetsk.
However, the cooperation between the Kremlin and the Church was not a one-way street. Already in September 2003 Putin had contacted Metropolitan Laurus in New York. Laurus was the leader of the ROCOR – the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia—a church founded by Russian émigrés who had fled Russia after the October Revolution. Putin’s proposal for a reconciliation between the two Churches was accepted and in May 2007 the Act of Canonical Communion was signed. This merger brought one million church members in thirty countries under Moscow’s control—in the US alone this included a network of 323 parishes and 20 monasteries. Soon after the Kremlin began to reclaim church buildings in Western countries, which led to many court cases—for instance in New Jersey, in California, but also in Biarritz and Nice in France, as well as in London.
Lavrov’s remarks that the Church and his ministry “worked hand in hand” could not be more true. This became also clear from the role the Church played in international fora. The foreign ministry arranged for instance that in March 2008 Kirill—who at that time still was head of the Department of External Church Relations—could deliver a speech before the Human Rights Council of the United Nations. In his speech, Kirill attacked abortion, euthanasia, and “extreme feministic views and homosexual attitudes.” He also pleaded for the installation of an “Advisory Council of Religions” in the UN. The installation of such a council would mean that the implementation of human rights would be subsumed under so-called “traditional values.” Kirill’s speech was a part of the Kremlin’s attack on human rights. One year before Lavrov had already proposed to set up such a “Council of Religions” in the UN with the task to defend “religious and traditional values.” The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, rejected these attempts to make human-rights dependent on so-called religious, traditional, or cultural values. “In no country,” she said, “any single woman, man or child ever stood to demand the right to be tortured, summarily executed, starved or denied medical care in the name of their culture.” This is interesting because the surprising ideological continuity between the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia—which mainly targets through ideological attacks liberal democracy, individual freedom, the rights of minorities, and universal human rights—remain essentially the same. The difference is that today these attacks are not made in the name of communism but in the name of true, traditional, Orthodox Christianity.
The Church not only supported the Kremlin’s ideological offensive abroad, but played also an important role in the increasing militarization of Russian society. The Church developed especially a very close relationship with the nuclear forces of the Russian army. In August 2009, Kirill visited the northern shipyard in Severodvinsk and went aboard a nuclear submarine. He presented the crew with an icon of the Virgin Mary. Kirill said that Russia’s defense capabilities needed to be bolstered by Orthodox Christian values. “Then,” he said, “we shall have something to defend with our missiles.” Kirill’s special relationship with the guardians of Russia’s nuclear deterrent bordered on a deep personal affection. In December 2009, in a ceremony during his visit to the Academy of the Strategic Missile Forces in Moscow, he presented the commander, Lt. Gen. Andrey Shvaychenko, with a pennant of the Holy Great Martyr Barbara, considered to be the heavenly protector of the Russian nuclear deterrent. The Patriarch said: “Such dangerous weapon can be given only to clean hands—hands of people with a clear mind, an ardent love to the Motherland, responsible for their work before God and the people.” Kirill showed not only a special affection for the guardians of Russia’s nuclear deterrent, but also for the deterrent itself. Under Putin, practices, such as the blessing of the president’s nuclear launch code briefcase and the sprinkling of holy water by an Orthodox priest on an S-400 surface-to-air missile during a ceremony broadcast on national television became commonplace. All over Russia military bases have their own churches and chapels.
The most ambitious project is the construction of the “Victory Church,” built by the Ministry of Defense in Moscow’s “Patriot Park.” This cathedral, ninety-five meters high, will be ready on May 9, 2020, on the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the victory of the Great Patriotic War. It will be the third-highest Orthodox church building in the world. Its official cost is almost three billion rubles, which is more than $45 million. However, according to Novaya Gazeta. the real cost is expected to explode to an estimated $120 million or $8 billion rubles—which is a lot of money to spend on one church building in a country where a quarter of the children live under the poverty line. One thousand workers are permanently employed in this pharaonic project, which is supported by defense firms, such as the company “Kalashnikov,” which provides more than 1.1 million bricks. The new army’s cathedral will be adorned with frescos featuring war scenes—including those of the Soviet era. Wea[pms will be exhibited in the entrance of the church. The Novaya Gazeta calls this “war cult,” exhibited in the church, “especially shocking” and calls it a “Church of Mars” instead of a church of Christ. This is only one example of the mutual embrace of the Church and the army. Because this close cooperation can also be observed in the role, played by Orthodox priests, who are incorporated in the army units, tasked to enhance the country’s “spiritual security.” While Putin compared religion with a nuclear shield, Kirill called the nuclear deterrent the ultimate defense for Russia’s “traditional values.” The views of the Kremlin leader and the church leader seemed to coincide completely.
Churches in the West emphasize the need to promote peace and are in general in favor of nuclear disarmament. However, the Russian Orthodox Church takes a quite different position. The Church does not criticize the new nuclear arms race. Instead, it supports the development of new strategic weapons. The motto of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces: “после нас тишина” (After us—silence), with its implicit reference to the end of the world corresponds completely with the apocalyptic worldview of the Orthodox Church, for which all means are permitted to defend Holy Russia and its traditional values.
The question is: how should Western governments react? In dealing with the Russian Orthodox Church, one should always be aware that one has to do with a “hybrid Church.” On the one hand the Russian Orthodox Church is a church like most other denominations; it has its true believers and it has devoted priests and monks. In September 2019, for instance, 182 Orthodox priests and church dignitaries signed an open letter, published in Pravoslavie i Mir, in which they demanded to reconsider the years-long prison sentences issued against some protesters who were arrested during the pro-democracy rallies. This support was a surprising initiative. However, this is only one side of the medal. After all, the Russian Orthodox Church is at the same time an instrument in the hands of the Russian government and is used by the Kremlin to expand its influence abroad, to attack democracy, to undermine universal human rights, and to bully its neighbors. The aggressive stance of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine against the Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate is a clear example. When, in January 2019, the Ukrainian efforts to establish an autocephalous church were met with success and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the Moscow Church broke its contacts with Constantinople. For the Ukrainians, this was not only a religious victory; it was first and foremost a geopolitical victory.
For this reason Western governments should not be naïve and treat the Russian Orthodox Church as if it were a normal church. Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, for instance, was naïve when he allowed Moscow to buy the building of the French Meteorological Institute at the Quai Branly near the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Moscow wanted to build a religious center and Orthodox church on this plot of 8,400 square meters. Also, Canada was one of the candidates to buy the building. There followed an aggressive lobbying by the Russian ambassador, Alexander Orlov, who was assisted by Vladimir Kozhin, an ex-KGB officer. Kozhin was the head of the Kremlin’s Presidential Property Management Department, a bureaucracy which employs fifty thousand employees. This department, which was headed by Putin before he became director of the FSB, is not only tasked with the management of state property in Russia, but also with the property of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad. For the operation “Paris Cathedral” the Russians hired a French lobbying firm, ESL & Network, which had access to the highest echelons of the French government. Moscow won the open tender with an offer of seventy million euros. The French magazine Le nouvel Observateur, suspected that the Russians had benefited from privileged information. The new building was situated not far from the Palais de l’Alma, a building in which the postal service of the French president and sixteen apartments of the presidential staff are located. The French counterintelligence advised against selling such a sensitive building to a church of which one knows its links with the FSB. Despite these warnings, the project was completed.
The project fits in with the Kremlin’s plans to make the Russian Orthodox Church a “global” church. Communism was a global creed and it was this global reach of communism that gave the Soviet Union, the leader of this movement, a disproportionate influence in Third World countries and Western countries such as France and Italy, where powerful communist parties existed. The merger of the Russian Orthodox Church with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia was only the first step in the Kremlin’s plans to give the Russian Orthodox Church a global reach. Russian oligarchs play an important role in this strategy—in Russia as well as abroad—financing the construction of new churches or restoring existing church buildings. It is a question of whether this strategy will work. In the modern industrial world the communist utopia was more attractive than so-called “traditional values.” But we should not underestimate the Kremlin’s endeavors. “Traditional values” have become the rallying cry of extreme Right populist parties, which are sponsored by Moscow in its effort to undermine Western liberal democracy and universal human rights.
*The information and views set out in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official opinion of the IPE Club. Neither the IPE Club nor any person acting on it behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein.
