ROC MP a Symbol of Political Subordination Rather than a Source of Ideology, Luzin Says

Paul Goble

            October 28 – The main role of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate in Russia is neither financial nor ideological, at least in the narrow sense, Pavel Luzin says.  Instead, it plays a key role in reinforcing the subordination of the regions and of the former parts of the Soviet empire to the Kremlin.

            “In the absence of any other symbolic language,” the regionalist commentator says, “the Kremlin (in the broad sense of the word) is forced to use the dead language of the ROC MP, borrowed from previous eras and including the dead calendar” to support its “colonial” approach within Russia and beyond (region.expert/clericalism/).

            The patriarchal church is simply not large enough financially or in terms of active believers to be more than that, but its role in promoting the idea that the state is always right and that the population must subordinate itself to the political authorities perfectly corresponds to the political psychology of the leaders of Russia today, Luzin continues.

            At the same time, of course, “being a part of the Russian system of power, the ROC MP is forced to play by its rules and to compete with other subjects for additional resources,” that is, to try to acquire ever greater wealth and to demonstrate its power through its symbolic actions relative to the regions and foreign countries.

            That explains why conflicts over church building as in Yekaterinburg and over autocephaly as in Ukraine are so serious because they are not about faith but about money and about a demonstration of the power of the church relative to other components in the Russian political system, the commentator says.

            “The more often the authorities and their individual representatives turn to the symbolic language of Orthodox Christianity,” Luzin argues, “the stronger becomes the religious organization and its leadership,” not as a source of beliefs and ideological views but rather as an expression of the subordination of people to the powers.

            Economic motives in this case, he suggests, are “only a derivative of political motivations.”  And given the colonial nature of the Russian state, that explains why the ROC MP plays a bigger role outside of Moscow in the regions and outside of Russia in the former Soviet republics than it does in the capital.

            The conflict over the building of a new church in Yekaterinburg and the inability of the political authorities to mobilize more than a tiny fraction of that Urals city’s population in support of that idea highlight the weakness of Orthodoxy as a set of beliefs held by many but the importance of the ROC MP politically – to keep both the population and regional elites in line.

            Given the Patriarchate’s clear loss of face in the Urals city, one can expect the Kremlin to seek to strengthen its own position by seeking to strengthen the symbolic presence of the church generally and especially in the regions where regional elites are more ready to accept such an offer by the ROC MP to demonstrate their loyalty and “preserve their positions.”

            The upshot of this is that the citizenry will have to decide in each case whether to fall in line or show resistance. What has happened in Yekaterinburg and elsewhere suggests that that there will be real battles ahead, not so much about the church’s doctrines as about the ROC MP as a symbol of a conservative state which wants its population to remain subservient.