Religion and Politics in Contemporary Russia

Beyond the Binary of Power and Authority

Tobias Köllner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429755583
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Religione, politica e Stato

Based on extensive original research at the local level, this book explores the relationship between Russian Orthodoxy and politics in contemporary Russia. It reveals close personal links between politicians at the local, regional and national levels and their counterparts at the equivalent level in the Russian Orthodox Church – priests and monks, bishops and archbishops – who are extensively consulted about political decisions. It outlines a convergence of conservative ideology between politicians and clerics and also highlights that, despite working closely together, there are nevertheless many tensions. The book examines in detail particular areas of cooperation and tension: reform to religious education and a growing emphasis on traditional moral values, the restitution of former church property and the introduction of new festive days. Overall, the book concludes that there is much uncertainty, ambiguity and great local variation.

1 Introduction

Beyond the binary of power and authority: religion and politics in contemporary Russia

Introduction

We are still used to thinking in binaries of ‘either’ and ‘or’. This kind of thinking in dichotomies was very prominent in German philosophy during the Enlightenment. For example, it is at the root of Johann Fichte’s philosophy in which thesis and antithesis are necessary to develop a new synthesis. Similarly, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel adhered to the dialectical method in his works. Later on, these forms of dichotomous thinking seem to have had an influence on Max Weber’s notion of the ideal type. Although Weber himself did a lot to show the complex twists and turns of reality, he, nevertheless, created an ‘iron cage’ for himself and his thinking (Yanagisako 2002: 18). He was not able to leave this cage later, and it has continued to ensnare generations of sociological thought. In addition, this kind of thinking became more problematic later because “in hands other than his [Weber’s] . .. such concepts have tended to desiccate” (Verdery 1999: 25f.). Now it is time to move beyond simple dichotomies. This binary thinking limits, too much, our capacity for detailed analysis and critical engagement.

Weber’s differentiation between power and authority is a crucial one. It tends to form our understanding of politics until today. But to what extent can this binary be found in empirical data? This book answers that question by taking a micro perspective on the interrelation between politics and Orthodoxy in contemporary Russia. To be sure, a lot has been written on the contemporary relation between religion and politics in terms such as secularism, secularity and secularization – albeit, less in Russia than in other places. But too many of these accounts begin from binary ‘theories’ and not from empirical observation of either religion or politics. We need detailed accounts to fill these concepts. Whereas the micro perspective is widespread in anthropology, it is not equally relevant in other social sciences (see, for example, Sakwa 2008, 2009). Nevertheless, it is precisely within the everyday actions and interactions of ordinary people that the relationship between Russian Orthodoxy¹ and politics is enacted, embraced and articulated more concretely. Taking this into account, it becomes clear that we do not witness the reemergence of Orthodoxy in Russia as the successful implementation of a well-thought-out plan but that most of its situation is, as so often, “born out of chance and naiveté” (Powell & Rerup 2017: 332).

By looking ‘from below’, I follow an earlier call by James March who noticed, “history is not produced by the dramatic actions and postures of leaders, but by complex combinations of large numbers of small actions by unimportant people” (2008). Related to this is another line of thinking that was introduced by Michael Lipsky (2010 [1980]) who developed the idea of street-level bureaucracy with reference to state administration. Lipsky drew attention to the fact that despite the prominence of the state’s institutional hierarchies, those who work at the street level (such as police officers, office clerks or teachers) have significant room to maneuver in creative ways in dealing with clients and subjects (see also Tocheva 2017). Here the question arises as to whether the creativity of street-level actors is bound by Weberian categories or whether it produces another approach that makes our picture more complex.

The project on which this book is based emerged from a joint research proposal with other researchers at the Faculty for Humanities at the Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany.² The joint effort involved the application and reconsideration of Max Weber’s notions of power and its differentiation from authority (Weber 1990: 122–176). For Weber, power was the appropriate concept used for understanding loose political structures where every decision could be contested easily; the notion of authority referred to more structured political situations characterized by a belief in the legitimacy of the rulers (traditional and charismatic authority) or in a structured process of decision-making (rational-legal authority). The key difference between power and authority rested in the idea of legitimacy.

Based on these ideas, I sought to understand how Russia’s post-Soviet political changes and religious revival are related to one another. Initially, I perceived the socialist era as a time when political issues were quite settled and could be described with reference to Weber’s notion of authority. Since the 1980s, however, I saw that the situation had changed considerably. In that decade, increasing numbers of people questioned the legitimacy of the Soviet state, the fixed political structures gave way to more flexible and more competitive arrangements and the local level gained such considerable importance that the result has been compared to the emergence of ‘suzerainties’ within feudal states (Hann 1998: 12; Humphrey 2002: XXI; Verdery 1996). At the same time, religious issues gained ground and Russian Orthodoxy, formerly ‘domesticated’ (Dragadze 1993), became visible in the public sphere. Drawing on the simultaneity of these two processes, I intended to analyze the extent to which Russian Orthodoxy had an influence on the weakening of the socialist state and the demise of the Soviet Union. In addition, I was interested in the continued evolutions of power and religion: was the strengthening of the Russian state after Vladimir Putin became President of the Russian Federation in late 1999 related to the still growing importance of Russian Orthodoxy? In short, over shorter and longer time periods, how were Russian Orthodoxy and politics influencing, reinforcing, impeding, inhibiting and entangling with one another?

As is common in anthropological research, the initial ideas had to be revised considerably and the project had to be reformulated in situ. The notion of legitimacy in itself became problematic. In his seminal work, Weber defined three types of legitimate political authority based on his differentiation between power and authority: traditional authority, charismatic authority and rational-legal authority (Weber 1990: 122–176). Although the definition is eloquent and logically consistent, it has a problematic side effect. It leaves no room for other spheres of society to operate, except in relation to the political with its differentiation between power and authority. With Weber’s framework, there exist only two ways for conceptualizing the relation between religion and politics. One is that religion is a social force that provides legitimacy to political leaders. The second is that religion is understood as something that challenges the legitimacy of political leaders. This choice is problematic because it prevents a grasp of the inherent logic, ideas and notions of religious beliefs and practices.

It is only when one is able to address religion “in its own right” (see also Stoeckl 2016: 132) that it becomes possible to grasp the self-understanding of religious believers. Here I draw on the concept of ‘inherent volition’ (Eigensinn) as developed by Alf Lüdtke (2015) and applied successfully to the Soviet Union by Ulrike Huhn (2014). However, clear examples can be drawn with reference to the act of Muslims veiling in secular settings. To be sure, veiling has political consequences and is able to challenge a secular government. Nevertheless, as Saba Mahmood (2005) and Julie McBrien (2009, 2017) have aptly shown, veiling is first and foremost understood as a sign of personal piety, of women’s identity or as a moral claim. When women veil, most do not primarily mean to delegitimize a secular government or to criticize secular authority. Therefore, the political consequences of veiling (as a religious practice) have to be analyzed only after comprehending veiling in its more complete context.

Drawing on these findings, the relation between politics and religion in contemporary Russia will be described here as a complex and open-ended process of cooperation, negotiation, contestation and confrontation between two powerful actors. In this interplay, neither side is able to instrumentalize the other completely or permanently. Instead, the concept of ‘entangled authorities’ was developed to draw attention to the entanglements between both sides. Although an entanglement might look very much the same as the outcome of a close cooperation, the processes involved are complex, not straightforward, and include a great number of unintended results. Entanglements, thus, are not the glorious implementation of a well-thought-out plan but the result of social interactions, which might have had completely different goals and intentions. For this reason, the goal of the book is to analyze processes of secularism, secularity and secularization ethnographically and to provide more details by showing the actual workings of the interrelation between Russian Orthodoxy and politics on the local level in its relation to the regional and national levels.

Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted between 2013 and 2016 in the city of Vladimir and its surroundings. I built on previously conducted research here (Köllner 2012). In addition, I worked in the city of St. Petersburg in order to have a broader picture of Russian Orthodoxy and politics outside of the Vladimir region. I gained, too, from the observations of an assistant based in St. Petersburg. Nevertheless, the research itself was no ‘multi-sited ethnography’ (Marcus 1995: 79ff.). In examples and analysis, I draw almost exclusively on the more coherent ethnographic data from the Vladimir region. The findings from St. Petersburg were important primarily for testing generalizability; indeed, the data gathered there show a number of similarities to that from the larger set. During fieldwork I largely followed the ‘ethnographic research cycle’ (Spradley 2005) and grounded theory approaches (Glaser & Strauss 2009; Strauss & Corbin 2006). I started with very broad topics and focused on particular issues only after I was aware of the local situation, the discussions on the ground and the everyday practices. During the research, I conducted participant observation, 48 semi-structured interviews that have been recorded and a number of conversations without recording. Among my interlocutors were priests, monks, nuns, believers, politicians, teachers, journalists, scientists and people working in museums and planetariums.

Moving beyond the abstractions of the Weberian frame, the publication is going to analyze the historic development of the relation between Russian Orthodoxy and the state (Chapter 2), introduce religious education in public schools (Chapter 3), property restitution to religious organizations (Chapter 4), the establishment of new festive days having simultaneously religious and political notions (Chapter 5) and conservatism among adherents of Russian Orthodoxy and its impact on politics (Chapter 6).

Russian Orthodoxy, religious beliefs and practices

First, attention will be drawn to the particularities of Russian Orthodoxy as a part of Eastern Christianity. The characteristics of Eastern Christianity in general – and in particular in its post-socialist setting, where most of the Eastern Christians are located today – have to be taken into account. In-depth studies of Eastern Orthodox Christians have been demanded for some time (see Ghodsee 2009: 231f.; Hann 2007a: 403), but Orthodoxy remains a largely neglected subject that has only recently received more attention by anthropologists (Hann 2014; Hann & Goltz 2010; Köllner 2012; Kormina et al. 2006; Ładykowska 2016; Ładykowska & Tocheva 2013; Naumescu 2007; Pelkmans 2006, 2009; Rogers 2005, 2009; Rousselet 2013; Tocheva 2017; Zigon 2010, 2011). In particular, the anthropology of Christianity has little to say on this region and about Orthodox Christianity despite the fact that Orthodoxy itself claims to have about 300 million believers (Adams 2015; Pew Research Center 2017). Here, my work on Russian Orthodoxy can contribute a new perspective to discussions in the anthropology of Christianity, which have advanced in recent years (Robbins 2003, 2014; Cannell 2006; Keane 2007; Engelke & Tomlinson 2006). In itself, this account taking constitutes an important contribution to the anthropology of Christianity with its primary focus on Protestant and Catholic congregations (Robbins 2003, 2014; Cannell 2006; Keane 2007; Engelke & Tomlinson 2006). Nevertheless, the work is not related to the anthropology of Christianity alone. In a broader perspective, the book addresses an audience in neighboring social sciences, in theology, in history and in other humanities.

When analyzing the particularities of Russian Orthodoxy, attention has to be drawn to broader debates in the anthropology of religion. Talal Asad (1997: 48) has already criticized the wider anthropology of religion for its exclusive focus on notions of belief: “It is preeminently the Christian church that has occupied itself with identifying, cultivating, and testing belief as a verbalizable inner condition of true religion”. But the anthropology of Christianity still suffers from this over-focus: most scholars, like Asad, fail to attend to the particularities of Eastern Christianity. Eastern Christianity never emphasized the belief dimension as strongly as it was common in Protestantism or Catholicism (Porter-Szűcs 2013: 6). Instead, in Eastern Christianity the right belief is closely related to right practice and sometimes to notions of belonging to the religious community. Thus, it is primarily the right religious practice that is emphasized by Eastern Christians (Bremer 2016: 40f.; Hann 2012; Hann & Goltz 2010: 15f.). In addition, potential change in religious practice within Eastern Christianity comes under close scrutiny and debate because it might change related beliefs as well. This can be seen, for example, in the fission of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) during the 17th century. The fission was related, among other things, to the question of whether it was more correct to cross oneself with two or three fingers. An important part of the clergy and believers opposed this and other changes and split from the ROC to become known as Old Believers (Freeze 2006; Bremer 2016). The example shows quite well that it is the mixture of right practice, right belief and belonging to the community that characterizes Eastern Christianity (see Köllner 2020b). Therefore, many of the religious practices are comprehensible only when looking at the underlying beliefs (Porter-Szűcs 2013: 8f.).

The ‘axiological teachings’ of Eastern Christianity in post-Soviet regions, however, bear the imprint of a number of legacies from the socialist era.³ Ketevan Gurchiani (2017a: 514), for example, draws attention to the “continuation . .. of [priests’ participation in] Khaltura (moonlighting, ‘la perruque’) and social networks of mutual benefit – better known as ‘blat’ in Russian or ‘akhlobloba’ (‘closeness’) in Georgian”. Post-Soviet priests behave much the same as their flocks, adjusting their advice and guidance in right beliefs accordingly. Eastern Christianity has only a few written laws on pastoral handling. This empowers the local clergy in dealing with believers and allows for “prudent handling of all matters, and manoeuvering” (Gurchiani 2017a: 515). In the Russian context, for example, clergymen who serve as spiritual fathers to businesspeople abstain from too harsh a critique of their business-related practices; they show a lot of understanding for tax evasion, despite the ROC official position that this is a grave sin (Köllner 2013b). Such findings make it clear that the ROC is no monolithic institution but includes heterogeneous practices and has to be perceived as being more complex than it seems at first glance (see also Papkova 2011; Richters 2013; Stoeckl 2014; and Gurchiani 2017a: 515 for the Georgian Orthodox Church). As a result, it is possible to find a wide range of very different and sometimes almost contradictory interpretations and practices within Russian Orthodoxy. Nevertheless, if positively sanctioned by a priest or a bishop it is included in the local community of believers.

The substantial social transformations of the post-Soviet region are therefore leaving a considerable imprint on how religion is addressed and relates to society. As in the examples presented earlier, priests are particularly aware of the financial pressures associated with transition, carving out space for themselves (as ordinary men) and even for the most ‘corrupt’ economic players to be sincere in belief and practice. Despite an image of the Church as static and unchanging, localized pastoral handling allows Russian Orthodoxy to be more flexible than most of its practitioners and clergy like to acknowledge. In this way, Orthodoxy adapts to individual needs without changing its axiological teachings.

Despite evident flexibility and change, many believers depict not only the Church as static, but also ‘continuity thinking’ (Robbins 2007) in their own personal histories. In this case, believers emphasize enduring features in their life, in their moral underpinnings and in their surroundings. For most, this is possible because they ‘recycle’ (Luehrmann 2005) abilities from the socialist period and apply them to new situations. The transformation of ‘secular’ teachers into religious authorities has been particularly well studied by anthropologists (Ładykowska 2011, 2016; Luehrmann 2011). Similarly, some businesspeople draw on their previous experiences during socialist times when ...