Patriarch Kirill Increasingly Out of Step with Putinism Today, Soldatov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 7 – The rise of Metropolitan Tikhon in the eyes of the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church is as much about the fall of Patriarch Kirill as it is about the public relations skills of the Pskov churchman and his instrumental approach to religion, an approach he shares with Vladimir Putin, Aleksandr Soldatov says.

            “The ideology of Patriarch Kirill, inherited from his spiritual instructor Metropolitan Nikodim does not completely correspond with the ideology of late Putinism,” the Moscow commentator says. “On the one hand, Kirill is an advocate of a strong church in a strong state” but has lost Ukraine (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2018/12/06/78828-netihiy-tihon).

            “And on the other hand,” Soldatov continues, the patriarch is “all the same a Westerner who grew up in ecumenical congresses and has obvious respect for the Catholic tradition.” That is not something Putin now wants and it is very much at odds with the positions Tikhon has adopted about the need for Russian Orthodoxy to stand apart.

            Patriarch Kirill’s decision to “exile” Tikhon to Pskov has failed or perhaps even more backfired, the Moscow commentator says. Putin has visited him and supports both his church as a place of pilgrimage and his ideas on Russian national theme parks and the renaming of airports for Russian national heroes.

            But this is not the first time Kirill has made a mistake concerning Tikhon. A decade ago, Tikhon was among those who favored having the Russian church offer autocephaly to a Ukrainian church it would then be able to control. Kirill went for broke and now has completely lost. That has not gone unnoticed in the church or in the Kremlin.

            According to Soldatov, Tikhon’s real advantages over Kirill as far as Putin is concerned lie elsewhere. “One must not call Metropolitan Tikhon in the full sense ‘Putin’s spiritual advisor,’” he says. “The president isn’t so religious that he really needs such a figure. And Tikhon is not a preacher of such a kind of religiosity.” 

            The metropolitan’s religiosity is to a large extent “instrumental: it serves higher political tasks” and thus the relationship between Tikhon and Putin is a business one. “Tikhon is very useful (and perhaps irreplaceable) for the formation of Putin’s ideology, for presenting a ‘positive’ model of propaganda.”

            One can’t call Tikhon “’red’ or ‘white,’ ‘anti-Soviet’ or ‘Sergian,’” Soldatov says. “Historically, if you will, he is more drawn to ‘the anti-Soviet world,’ but with age, his values have balanced out.” He can’t bear “any ‘decline of historical Russia’” and he views the country as constantly surrounded by enemies who must be defeated – just as Putin does.

            At the same time, the commentator suggests, Tikhon is not excessively romantic. “In church politics, he acts as a pragmatist, ready to enter into even the most unexpected alliances.” One of those appears to be with Archdeacon Andrey Kurayev, the outspoken figure who often attacks the Patriarchate.

            Many in the church say, Soldatov reports, that Kurayev, “having converted himself into a Russian Savonarola is ‘Tikhon’s project.’”  That may be going too far; but it is a measure of the way in which Tikhon operates that people think so – and also a measure of how far he is prepared to go to transform the Moscow Patriarchate and to work with Putin to do so.