The tragedy and the promise of Russia’s Church

The Baton and the Cross: Russia’s Church from Pagans to Putin
Lucy Ash
Icon Books
Oct. 2024
384 pages
ISBN: 978-1837731831

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Russia’s savage onslaught on the free people of Ukraine has made Moscow the focus of never-ending attention. The Baton and the Cross: Russia’s Church from Pagans to Putin, written by the longtime foreign correspondent Lucy Ash, examines the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the various Russian rulers, with a particular focus on how this religious institution has become an ideological bedrock of Putin’s regime. Ash was first posted to Moscow in the dying days of the Soviet empire, and her affection for much of Russia’s cultural and religious history is obvious.

The book is divided into two parts. After a lucid exposition of the historical background from Prince Vladimir’s baptism around 988, Ash focuses on the current Church-State relationship, where the two dominant figures are Putin as dictator and Kirill as Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia. Kirill’s name has deservedly become a byword for subservience, but this book makes clear that his leadership style is far from anomalous. Religion and political power in Russia have been interwoven since the start. The more important aspect of this relationship is not the Russian State’s love of Christianity, but the Russian Church’s abiding devotion to Caesar.

As Ash recounts, the Russian Church fared well following the Mongol conquest of much of modern-day Russia in the thirteenth century, being exempt from the taxation levied on ordinary Russians. As Russia emerged as a political power under the Tsars, a close working relationship developed. Although some strong-willed clerics posed problems occasionally, any prospect of the Russian Church developing into a truly independent social force vanished in the eighteenth century. Peter the Great, an irreligious despot inspired by the Protestant model of governance he had learned about during his Grand Embassy tour through Europe, established a “Most Holy Synod: – effectively an arm of the State which existed to control the Church.

The functional independence of the Russian Church would never be reclaimed, and Ash quotes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who wrote that Russian history would have been “incomparably more humane and harmonious” had Tsar Peter not gotten his way. Tsarist Russia grew over the subsequent centuries and its theological arm grew with it. The Bolshevik Revolution and the creation of a militantly atheistic regime complicated matters. After the persecution of the heroic Patriarch Tikhon in the early years, Tikhon’s de facto successor Metropolitan Sergius tried a new approach, declaring in 1927 that the Orthodox wished “to recognise the Soviet Union as our civil motherland, whose joys and successes are also our joys and successes.”

There have certainly been many Russian Orthodox martyrs who suffered for proclaiming the truth before their earthly rulers, and the author is careful to differentiate between a morally decrepit leadership and the many ordinary priests and believers who serve God faithfully. Surely the best example of an Orthodox leader who resisted the allure of power is Saint Philip II of Moscow. After denouncing the crimes of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, Philip was thrown in jail, where he was presented with the head of his beloved nephew before being smothered. In today’s ultra-nationalist and ostensibly Christian Russia, Ivan is admired as a strongman, to the point where a large statue of him has been erected.

Patriarch Kirill’s betrayal of his predecessors is shown in his public support for the statue; for now, Kirill has resisted calls for Ivan the Terrible to be canonised, on account of what the Patriarch delicately calls Ivan’s “methods of governing.” In recent years, Kirill appears to have acquiesced to Putin’s decision to minimise the scale of Soviet era crimes.This too is an enormous betrayal. At the height of Stalin’s Great Terror, the number of functioning churches in the Soviet Union which had been reduced to 100, down from 50,000 in 1917. All the monasteries and convents were shut down also, and in the decade between 1931 and 1941, 600 bishops, 45,000 priests and 120,000 monks or nuns were murdered or imprisoned.

Hitler’s invasion led to Stalin entering into an unofficial concordat with the Russian Church, which led to a major improvement in its fortunes. The modus vivendi which was arrived at provided for a limited degree of religious freedom under strict supervision. A key part of the corrupt bargain involved Russian Orthodox clerics promoting Soviet interests overseas by participating in ecumenical bodies like the World Council of Churches and assuring all who would listen that Christianity was not restricted inside the socialist utopia. Subtle government infiltration had long been practiced. In the early days of Bolshevism, Communist-sponsored reformist groups were used to promote division within Orthodoxy, with Orthodox believers who opposed these efforts being targeted by the secret police.

Another significant component of the Soviet approach was the process for overseeing seminaries. Applicants were only allowed to enter if they were known to be dutifully obedient to the State. When vocations increased to a worrying degree in the 1950s, Khrushchev era officials insisted that only students with poor academic records be admitted. This policy has arguably done more lasting harm to Russian Christianity than any material destruction to church buildings.

A chapter is dedicated to Vladimir Putin, but as to his actual faith, there appears to be little to write. Irreligious Russian politicians who liked to be seen at Christmas and Easter services in the 1990s were jokingly referred to as podsvechniki – candlesticks. Putin has tied himself more to the Russian Orthodox Church than any leader since Tsar Nicholas II and often engages in theatrical displays of piety. His long service in the KGB casts suspicion on his sincerity, as does the fact that he never bothered to wed his longtime wife Lyudmila in a church, prior to divorcing her.

Of the two St Petersburg Vladimirs who sit atop Russian society, Patriarch Kirill (born Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev) is far more intriguing. He too has a KGB past – the plum role he acquired early on within the delegation to the World Council of Churches would not have been possible without sign-off from the security services and ongoing contact with them. Ash writes that one of his achievements in that ecumenical role was blocking an amendment in the 1980s which would have condemned the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Kirill has profited politically from the status he acquired in his current role, and long before that he and many of his colleagues had profited financially from various questionable business schemes, one of which led to the Patriarchate becoming Russia’s biggest supplier of foreign cigarettes. This and generous donations from Russia’s kleptocratic elite has feathered Kirill’s nest comfortably. The unfortunate incident when he was photographed wearing a $30,000 Swiss watch forms part of a comical overall pattern. Kirill’s vocal support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is vastly more serious, and his actions appear to be closely coordinated with those of the Kremlin. His claim that Russian soldiers who fell in battle would be making a “sacrifice [that] washes away all the sins” came at a point when Putin’s army badly needed more recruits. Kirill has also been swift to sack those few clerics who took a dissenting view of Putinism or the invasion; a priest who dared to read prayers at the grave of Alexei Navalny was immediately suspended.

Overall, this is a terrific book, although it would have been better still had Ash spent more time explaining the theology of Russian Orthodoxy and how this relates to Christianity more generally.

Considering the book in its totality, five lessons stand out.

Firstly, Russia’s Church advances alongside Russia’s army and government. This is why the memory of a deviant like Ivan the Terrible can be cherished by the Orthodox; by winning more land, Ivan expanded the Church’s domain, as did Peter, Catherine and others. The expansion of the Russian Church in Africa in recent years – where hundreds of parishes have opened – is as significant as Russia’s other activities on that continent.

Secondly, and related to this, the war against Ukraine is indeed in some ways a religious struggle. Patriarch Kirill wishes to again have Orthodoxy in Ukraine within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, just as it was up until autocephalous status was granted in 2018. Kyiv’s ongoing efforts to ensure that Ukrainian Orthodoxy is completely detached from Moscow will continue to be a major flashpoint in the coming years.

Thirdly, Russian Orthodoxy has been and continues to be self-consciously anti-Catholic in its identity. A central episode in the rise of the Russian Church was the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and during the period leading up to this, Russian clerics fought viciously against ecumenical efforts to unite East and West in order to save that fortress of Christendom. This book is littered with statements and actions by senior Russian clergy which suggest that whatever the similarities in theology or ritual, Russian Orthodoxy will only ever really see Catholicism as a rival.

Fourthly, Russian Orthodoxy and Russian nationalism move against their rivals as one. In the time of Catherine the Great, this collaboration was demonstrated in the war against the Catholic Uniate Church in the newly-conquered territories: a persecution which led to millions of Catholics converting to Orthodoxy. This process was repeated in the 1940s under the direction of Stalin, with Uniate and Greek Catholic churches being stolen by Russian Orthodox clerics. Low-level persecution of the Catholic Church in Russia following the fall of the Soviet Union also owes much to demands from Russian Orthodox figures for tougher action, and this has reduced the Catholic population there significantly. Any Catholic who doubts the need to arm and support Ukraine – including Pope Francis himself – should ask themselves a question: what would have become of Ukraine’s four million Catholics had Russia’s forces not been stopped by heroic resistance?

Finally, for all its flaws, there is something within Russia’s Church which is truly Christian, for it is in essence the Russian people gathered in prayer.

At the height of Stalin’s terrorism, the Soviet census of 1937 asked every citizen if they believed in God. Remarkably, 57% answered Yes, knowing that that answer was an act of subversion with potentially lethal consequences. The people truly believed. Russia’s Church embodies much of what is both good and bad about the country itself: damaged but not quite broken in Soviet times; deeply traditional and excessively nostalgic; luxuriously rich in Moscow but still poor in the peripheries; far too willing to trust the Kremlin and far too quick to distrust the outside world.

If Russia is ever to truly recover as a society and as a nation on the world stage, there will need to be both a religious and national revival. That will not happen until Putin and Kirill are long gone.