Putin Personality Cult has Long had a Religious Dimension among Russians, Melnikov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 3 – The latest scandal involving the sale of “Putin icons” for enormous prices (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/02/putin-not-pleased-by-being-put-on-icon.html) is only the tip of the iceberg of a longstanding trend to give a religious dimension to Putin’s personality cult, Andrey Melnikov says.

            The editor of NG-Religii says that the relationship between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Kremlin, on the one hand, and priests and lay Russian believers, on the other, is complicated and contradictory with many of the former sending mixed messages about this cult and many of the latter developing their own ideas (ng.ru/ng_religii/2020-03-03/13_482_putin.html).

            In 2012, for example, there were reports from Nizhny Novgorod oblast about the appearance not just of an icon showing Putin as a saint but about the icon being a miracle-working one. And there appeared a certain Mother Fotinya who invoked God to predict a glorious future if Putin returned to the presidency.

            A year earlier, “a certain Vladimir Kosolapov” proposed an even more radical step. He said that there should be established “a Church of Putin – the Only God” and that all Russians should become its members. That attracted some media attention at the time, but Kosolapov and his “church” soon disappeared from sight.

            “In 2015,” Melnikov continues, “activists of the organization “The National Committee of 60+ which was devoted to the birthday of the president demanded that Patriarch Kirill include the chief of state in the ranks of the saints and include in divine services a special pro-presidential prayer.”

            The patriarch, however, did not respond; but many churchmen did and introduced such prayers to Putin in services in various parts of the country. But when Kirill interacted with Putin, he appeared to suggest that special prayers for the president were entirely appropriate and thus did little to slow the increase in this form of religiosity.

            Nor did the Russian media which often carried stories about the special relationship between Putin and the church. And this deification involved some nominally secular intellectuals as well. In 2013, shortly after he became an aide to Putin, Vladislav Surkov repeated his earlier assertion that Putin had been sent by God to save Russia.

            “To save Russia from being swallowed up by hostile forces,” Surkov said. “A white knight and in a very timely fashion. At the last hour, one could even say.”

            At the end of last year, the NG-Religii  editor continues, the situation became more serious when a certain Father Sergii told his followers that “some Russian elders have said that the anti-Christ will come from Russia. We say … that this will be a double of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.”

            This figure “will come at the age of 30 with a silicon face, masked as Vladimir Putin,” Sergii continues and goes on to explain that “He will speak as a false messiah, the king of the world, a beast from the abyss. And his name will be the Anti-Christ.” More apocalyptic than that it is difficult to imagine.