Orthodox Christian Tatars Need Their Own Autocephalous Church, Sidorov Says

 Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 12 – Ever since the Ecumenical Patriarch extended autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Moscow, civil and religious, has been worried that Orthodox in other former Soviet republics would seek to become independent of the Moscow Patriarchate in this way and thus weaken Russian influence in them.

            (For background, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/03/kirills-description-of-ukraine-and.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/08/moscow-increasingly-worried-about.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/08/moscow-patriarchal-church-in-belarus.html.)

            Now, there are signs that interest in autocephaly may have spread to places closer to home, to non-Russian areas within the Russian Federation where many of the members of the Russian Orthodox Church are non-Russians who are highly offended by Moscow’s increasingly bombastic Russian nationalism.

            As is often the case, Tatarstan is the bellwether of such non-Russian attitudes. There, Kharun Sidorov, a Prague-based analyst of ethnic and religious affairs in the Russian Federation, says, the Moscow Patriarchate’s statements and use of a notorious Russian nationalist ally are offending ever more Orthodox Tatars (idelreal.org/a/31650511.html).

            The situation among Orthodox in Tatarstan has deteriorated both for the general line the Moscow Patriarchate and the Kremlin have taken and because of the decision of the Patriarchate to deploy the Worldwide Russian Popular Assembly, a creature of the Russian church, to attack critics in Kazan, Sidorov says.

            The Assembly asserts that “every Russian must recognize Orthodox Christianity as the basis of his national culture” and that “the denial of this fact or even more the search for a different religious basis of national culture testifies to the weakening of Russian identity, putting it at risk of complete loss.”

            “In other words,” the Prague-based analyst says, “from those who desire to be Russia is required that if they are not Orthodox then they must recognize Orthodoxy [alone] as the foundation of Russian culture,” something that challenges the multi-national nature of the Russian Federation and is highly offensive to non-Russians even if they are Orthodox.

            The notion that those who are Orthodox even if they do not feel themselves to be Russian must think and act like Russians and thus serve Moscow as its agents of influence wherever they find themselves explains why the Ukrainians sought autocephaly in order to retain their faith without sacrificing their national identity.

            And he suggests a similar situation is arising in Tatarstan and likely other non-Russian republics within the Russian Federation, with Orthodox Christians who are not ethnic Russians increasingly resentful of the ways the Moscow Patriarchate working hand in glove with the Kremlin is seeking to use them to advance ethnic Russian goals.

            As a result, Sidorov says, for Tatars, “it would be more logical in the future to have their own Orthodox Church of Tatarstan, oriented not toward the Russian Church but toward the Ecumenical Church of the Constantinople Patriarchate,” exactly the choice Ukrainians have already ade.

            It is uncertain how widespread such feeling are, but they are a reminder that the more the Moscow Patriarchate promotes the centralist and Russian imperialist line of the Kremlin, the more non-Russians even if they are Orthodox Christians as many Tatars are will resent that and will start thinking about autocephaly, the very thing Moscow most fears.