Paradoxes of Patriarchy: Orthodoxy and Gender in Post-Soviet Russia

Paradoxes of Patriarchy: Orthodoxy and Gender in Post-Soviet Russia Nadieszda Kizenko Introduction Religious life in contemporary Russia illustrates a paradox familiar from other patriarchal religions: women fill Orthodox churches, even as the religion they practice espouses values, practices, and social policies that seem to keep women in a subordinate position. Scholars have analyzed this phenomenon in the contexts of contemporary Judaism, Islam, and Western Christianity.1 Women in post-communist countries generally, however, and Orthodox Christian women in post-Soviet Russia in particular, face a unique situation. Because of persecution and state-set limits on religious practice in the Soviet Union, and the impulse towards cultural preservation in the emigration, for decades Russian Orthodox Christianity seemed to have avoided the move- ment towards women’s greater participation in Church life observed in Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.2 After the fall of communism, however, bar- riers shifted. On the one hand, obstacles to many forms of religious practice vanished: church attendance no longer threatens one’s job or one’s chances for higher education; in politics, it is actually an asset. Many Orthodox women have taken advantage of post-perestroika opportunities to pursue a religious commitment, particularly in the rapidly expanding field of religious publica- tions (including blogs and social networks). Their presence and their voices are beginning to subtly alter Orthodoxy’s patriarchal tradition. On the other hand, many Orthodox Christians reject both Soviet and Western languages of equality as being hostile to Orthodox Christian values and damaging to Russia. They affirm the traditional gender roles increasingly rejected by their co-religionists outside post-communist space. Russian women who practice Orthodox Christianity, then, must negotiate a complex landscape. The goal of this chapter is to consider women as they negotiate their role and the Orthodox 1 See, for example, T. El-Or, Educated and Ignorant: Ultra-Orthodox Women and Their World (Boulder, CO, 1994). 2 R. Wallace, ‘Catholic Women and the Creation of a New Social Reality’, Gender and Society 2/1 (1988), pp. 24–38. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��4 | doi ��.��63/9789004�6955�_��7 Paradoxes of Patriarchy 303 Church in Russia as it forms new (or revives old) notions about women’s place in society.3 Patriarchy and Russian Orthodoxy The very word patriarchy applies more literally in Russia than it does in other Christian religious confessions. The ROC is headed by a man whose title is “Patriarch”; the leading publication of the ROC is called Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate. As in Roman Catholicism, the Orthodox ordained clergy is exclu- sively male. There are two significant structural differences, however. First, the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, like other Orthodox Patriarchs of national Churches, exercises authority over his canonical territory, but that is as far as it goes: there is no supra-national body or hierarch (like the Vatican or the Pope) to whom he must answer. A Patriarch’s religious powers are no greater than that of any other bishop; there is no Orthodox equivalent of papal infallibility. Thus Orthodox Church teaching does not rest upon a single individual, and any significant changes in direction are more likely to come from a Church council than the election of a “liberal”. Second, Russian Orthodox parish priests and deacons are encouraged to marry; as one cannot marry or re-marry after ordination to the sub-deaconate, finding a wife precedes taking on clerical office. This might seem to imply a greater Church recognition of, and greater validity given to, men with experiences of family life, rather than the experience of cel- ibates only. Married clergy, however, cannot advance in the Church hierarchy beyond a certain level: bishops, who must be celibate, come either from the ranks of monks or, more rarely, widowed clergy. In practical terms, in Russia, the chief consequence of married parish clergy has meant an ample supply of male candidates for the priesthood, thus rendering moot one of the arguments in favor of women’s ordination in both Roman Protestantism and Anglicanism. Church doctrine and policy in Russia, including the elections of Patriarchs, are resolved at Church councils. Participation in such councils remains over- whelmingly male. The last two such councils, however, included a 10% participation rate by women elected as representatives (the numbers include both nuns and laywomen): 38 women out of 317 delegates in 1990, and 72 out of 711 in 2009.4 As the number of lay participants at such councils is limited, and 3 See for a more developed version of these arguments N. Kizenko, ‘Feminized Patriarchy? Orthodoxy and Gender in Post-Soviet Russia’, Signs 38/3 (2013), pp. 595–622. 4 For information on the Council proceedings, see http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/document/ 530010/ (2009) and http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/document/525407 1990). .

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