Moscow Patriarchate Divided about August 1991 Coup Plotters Because They were Divided about the Church, Soldatov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 24 – The leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate was and remains divided about the August 1991 coup plotters because the latter were divided about what to do with the church, some favoring the CPSU’s anti-religious line and others backing Orthodoxy as a potential replacement for communism, Aleksandr Soldatov says.

            The Russian journalist who specializes on religious issues draws that conclusion on the basis of a detailed examination of how the leaders of the ROC MP responded to the August 1991 events and how those who plotted the coup treated religious issues in the run-up to that event (gorby.media/articles/2024/08/27/etoi-ierarkhii-ne-nuzhna-svoboda).

            The ROC MP, Soldatov says, was very much divided in its assessment of the coup plotters and almost certainly came to back the anti-coup forces led by Boris Yeltsin less because they shared his views about religious life in Russia than because he won and he church’s caesaro-papist traditions meant that they wanted to back whoever was in power.

            But the church leaders were never entirely comfortable with the ideas of religious freedom or freedom in general and welcomed the restoration of an authoritarian regime by Vladimir Putin, the journalist says, as evidenced by their comments about the coup later after the Kremlin leader solidified his role.

            Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Soldatov’s latest article, however, is his insistence that the coup plotters were very much divided on religious issues. As he makes clear, while the coup leaders did not have enough time to broadcast a statement on religious affairs, they had in the weeks before the coup made it clear where they stood.

            Many of them did in fact support the communist line that Moscow must promote secularism and atheism, but what is remarkable – and here Soldatov’s article is especially important – many of them appear to have favored replacing Marxism with Orthodoxy as the chief ideology of the state.

            That is clear, he argues, from the June 23, 1991, declaration for the media that was signed by three of the coup plotters; and their arguments in this regard, while offensive to many hardline communists would have been music to the ears of many in the leading positions of the Moscow Patriarchate.

            What may be even more important for an assessment of the future of the Russian church and the Russian state is that Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill appear to have accepted in toto this part of the argument of the coup plotters in their development of a new “symphony” between church and state in Russia today.