Journal of the European Society of Women in Theological Research 27 (2019) 279-298. doi: 10.2143/ESWTR.27.0.3286565 ©2019 by Journal of the European Society of Women in Theological Research. All rights reserved.

Elena Volkova

Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin’s Dystopia look like Trump’s Dream?

Abstract It is common knowledge that Trump admires dictators and lavishes praise on Putin who, as journalists counted, “he has discussed approvingly more than 80 times since 2013.” This includes gems such as “You have to give [Putin] credit that what he’s doing for that country in terms of their world prestige is very strong” and praising the Russian dictator’s “very strong control over [his] country.”1 This article offers a brief introduction into Trump’s dream – the authoritarian oppressive regime with a quasi-religious foundation, a hybrid of Communism and Christianity, that is ready to sacralise the leader and demon- ise his enemies, approve of any aggressions abroad or repressions within the country.

Zusammenfassung Es ist allgemein bekannt, dass Trump Diktatoren bewundert und Putin so überschwäng- lich mit Lob bedenkt, so dass Journalisten zählen, „seit 2013 wurde er [Trump] mehr als 80 Mal anerkennend diskutiert.“ Dazu gehören Bonmots wie: „Man muss anerken- nen, dass das, was er [Putin] für dieses, sein Land tut in Bezug auf das Prestige in der Welt, ist sehr stark“ und das Lob auf den russischen Diktator angesichts der „sehr starken Kontrolle über [sein] Land.“ Dieser Artikel bietet eine kurze Einführung in Trumps Traum über das autoritäre, andere unterdrückenden Regime mit einer quasi- religiösen Grundlage, mit einer Mischung aus Kommunismus und Christentum, bereit, den Führer zu sakralisieren und seine Feinde zu dämonisieren, und jegliche Attacken im Ausland wie die Unterdrückung im Land zu billigen.

Resumen Es bien sabido que Trump admira a los dictadores y elogia a Putin, quien, según cuentan los periodistas, “ha discutido aprobantemente más de 80 veces desde 2013”.

1 Kirsten Powers, “Donald Trump has always expressed love for authoritarian leaders, but we failed to listen,” in: USA Today, 20 June 2018 (https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/06/20/ donald-trump-authoritarian-leaders-north-korea--turkey-column/712221002, 3 December 2018).

279 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream

Esto incluye gemas como “Debe reconocer a [Putin] que lo que está haciendo por ese país en términos de prestigio mundial es muy fuerte” y elogiar el “muy fuerte control del dictador ruso sobre [su] país”. Este artículo ofrece una breve introducción al sueño de Trump: el régimen autoritario y opresivo con una base casi religiosa, un híbrido del comunismo y el cristianismo, que está listo para sacrificar al líder y demonizar a sus enemigos, aprobar cualquier agresión en el extranjero o represión dentro del país.

The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God… (Rev 12:6) Dr Marina Salye (1934-2012) was in her mid-sixties, when in 2001 she fled from Saint Petersburg to a remote village isolated by muddy roads. She was an eminent geology scientist and a popular democracy activist: “With a ciga- rette dangling from her lips, she could lead a crowd up and down Nevsky, stopping traffic,” a political opponent of hers recalled twenty years later. “I saw her do it once, and it made a very strong impression. No one had a chance competing with her.”2 In 1992, as an elected member of the City Council, she was the first in Rus- sia to accuse , then the head of the Committee for External Relations of Saint-Petersburg Mayor’s office, of corruption: Salye collected evidences to prove that he stole 92 million dollars from the city via legally invalid contracts with shell firms to export raw materials to Europe in return for food supplies. Oil, timber, cotton, rare metals were duly exported, but the city never received any food. The prosecutor’s office would not charge Putin and the City Council was dissolved. When in 2000 Putin was elected President, Marina Salye went into hiding after being threatened by a KGB officer whose name she never disclosed. A decade later, journalist Masha Gessen found Salye in the wilderness and described her story in her book about Putin. How many of Putin’s opponents have left cities or fled abroad to avoid his revenge? Nobody has ever counted, but there must be dozens of them. How many of them have been murdered within the country or beyond it? Nobody expects Russian secret police to release the full list of victims, so we can

2 Masha Gessen, The Man without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (Penguin Group: New York 2012), 96.

280 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream enumerate only those political murders and mysterious deaths that were demonstrative or came to light: – 2018: Sergei Scripal, former Russian military officer, and his daughter Yulia Skripal poisoned in Salisbury, England; – 2017: Denis Voronenkov, Communist politician who criticised Putin after fleeing Russia in 2016, shot in Kiev, ; – 2015: Boris Nemtsov, prominent liberal politician and protest leader, assas- sinated on a bridge near the Kremlin in ; – 2013: Boris Berezovsky, tycoon in exile, found dead inside a locked bath- room at his home in England; – 2009: Sergei Magnitsky, lawyer investigating a massive tax fraud, died in prison after being brutally beaten and denied medical care; – 2009: Natalya Estemirova, journalist and human rights activist investigat- ing abductions and murders in Chechnya, kidnapped and shot; – 2006: Anna Politkovskaya, journalist and human rights activist whose book Putin’s Russia (2004) accused the Kremlin leader and Federal Security Service of usurping the political power, assassinated in an elevator in her building on the day of Putin’s birthday. As Politkovskaya wrote, We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it’s total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial—whatever our special services, Putin’s guard dogs, see fit.3 – 2006: Alexander Litvinenko, former KGB agent and vocal critic of Putin, died after drinking a cup of tea with deadly polonium-210 in a London café; – 2003: Sergei Yushenkov, former army colonel and liberal politician gather- ing evidence to prove that Putin was behind the apartment bombing in Russia in 1999, gunned down outside his home in Moscow. Craig Unger dedicated his book House of Trump, House of Putin, The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia (2018), “In memory of Paul Khlebnikov, Alexander Litvinenko, Sergei Magnitsky, Anna Politkovskaya,

3 Anna Politkovskaya, “Poisoned by Putin,” in: The Guardian, 9 September 2004.

281 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream and the dozens of other journalists, investigators, and dissidents who lost their lives investigating Putin’s kleptocracy.”4 “To flee or not to flee” debates in protest circles often sound like “to be or not to be a true freedom fighter” – meaning the true one must stay in Russia to keep struggling – but the “place prepared by God” for refugees might be as insecure as Moscow or Chechnya. At Anna Politkovskaya funeral service, Father Georgy Chistyakov, a liberal Orthodox priest, spoke of

a new type of martyrdom, emerging beyond church walls, that may be called civil martyrdom, civil testimony. Because a martyr is first and foremost a witness who testifies to justice, fearlessly works for the sake of justice […] There are few people among us who tell nothing but the truth. Anya was such person, and she was killed for that.5

While Christian liberals see their martyrs as Christ-like figures, the state and church establishment manipulate with idea of Holy Russia ruled by God-sent leaders. For example, the trigger for the ’s “Punk Prayer” was the official announcement of Putin’s decision to become president for a third term and, particularly, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill’s hailing of him as a mir- acle sent from God to rectify the crooked path of Russian history.6

Clash of religions: Christianity vs Marxism-Leninism Under Communism, the policy of militant atheism excluded religion from the political scene, with faith being marked as either lack of education or a sign of opposition. Those who were disillusioned with the official ideology and the Church (which collaborated with the anti-Christian regime) were looking for an alternative religious way. They organised underground groups that gathered and distributed banned books, produced samizdat (hand-made) magazines,

4 Craig Unger, House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia (Penguin Random House: New York 2018). 5 Alexander Soldatov, “Бесстрашный свидетель [Fearless Witness],” in: Огонёк 27 (July/2007) (http://damian.ru/Actualn_tema/Chistakov/soldatov.html, 3 April 2019). Transla- tion here and throughout the article: Elena Volkova. 6 “Стенограмма встречи председателя Правительства РФ В.В. Путина со Святейшим Патриархом Кириллом и лидерами традиционных религиозных общин России [Transcript of Prime-Minister V.V. Putin’s Meeting with Patriarch Kirill and Leaders of Rus- sian Traditional Religions)]” in: Официальный сайт Московского Патриархата, 8 Feb- ruary 2012 (http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/2005767.html, 11 November 2018).

282 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream studied the Bible and the Church Fathers, and discussed religious aspects of Russian classical literature and philosophy. Some underground groups were apolitical; others criticised the Communist regime from a Christian nationalist or liberal perspective. Gulag literature exhibited the unbearable torments and unbelievable faith of imprisoned Chris- tians, some of whom saw the repressions as God’s punishment for the propa- gation of atheism, prison and labour camps – as a model of totalitarianism and considered their own sufferings as a personal Cavalry. Christian political pris- oner Zoya Krakhmalnikova saw democracy as “the child of Christianity, which places the highest value on the divine freedom of humanity, focused on goodness, honour and justice.”7 The Christian underground created a considerable diversity of retrospective and future-oriented concepts of Russia’s political development: its members either idealised pre-revolutionary Russia, dreaming of monarchy and theoc- racy, or hoped to reform Orthodox Christianity and build a Christian democ- racy. Some nationalist atheists (later identified as Orthodox atheists) accepted Russian Orthodoxy as an imperial ideology for the future monarchy.8 The Soviet totalitarian ideology of Marxism-Leninism was a typical political religion based on eschatological ideas of transforming the world, building a Communist paradise on earth and creating a new Soviet human being. The USSR Communist party developed a strong personality cult of Lenin and Stalin (as political messiahs), controlled the political, social and private life of Soviet people, and subjected traditional religions to severe massive repressions.

Hybrid of Religions: Communist Christianity The Communist culture used many forms of Orthodoxy for almost 70 years: Christian religious processions were replaced by Communist demonstrations, Christian relics by the Lenin mummy and mausoleum, the Orthodox liturgy

7 Zoya Krakhmalnikova, Слушай, тюрьма! [Listen, Prison!] (Moscow 1995), 134. 8 About the religious underground, see Nikolay Mitrokhin, “Русская православная церковь в 1990 году [ in 1990],” in: Новое литературное обозрение 83 (Moscow 2007) (http://magazines.russ.ru/nlo/2007/83/mi21.html, 8 April 2019); Olga Chepur- naya, “Неохристианская этика протеста советских интеллектуалов [Neo-Christian Pro- test Ethics of Soviet Intellectuals],” in: Неприкосновенный запас 6(32) (Moscow 2003) (http:// magazines.russ.ru/nz/2003/6/chep-pr.html, 9 April 2019); Mikhail Berg, “Неофициальная ленинградская литература между прошлым и будущим [Unofficial Leningrad Literature Between Past And Future],” in: ICCEES World Congress in Berlin (2005), (http://www.mberg. net/prbud, 9 April 2010).

283 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream by communist meetings, the Sermon on the Mount by the Moral Code of a Builder of Communism; battling heresies within the Church continued by persecutions against so-called revisionists within the Communist party. Even Special troika trials of the Great Terror (three-person commissions for extra- judicial punishment) may be seen as an ironic image of the Trinity and the Last Judgement. Stalin as the god of that political religion first almost died, but then resurrected and is respected if not worshiped in Russia even today.9 The Russian Orthodox hierarchy was almost all exterminated by the Com- munists, and the new Patriarchate, formed in 1943 personally by Stalin, was controlled and supervised by the KGB. Hence, the communist mentality persisted under religious robes within the Church for more than 60 years. Most hierarchs and some low clergy became KGB agents, and vice versa: special agents would come to church under cover as priest and make a career in several years. The opening of some KGB archives in August 1991 made available for the first time clear evidence of the subordination of the Orthodox hierarchy to the Soviet government. The Parliamentary committee determined the identities of bishop agents and their KGB nicknames: Drosdov – for the former Patriarch Alexiy II, and Mikhailov – for Patriarch Kirill. Fr Gleb Yakunin, a church dissident, published this information in Estonia and was consequently defrocked, called upon by Church authorities to repent, and later illegally excommunicated. Fr Gleb published several brochures, including “The True Face of Moscow Patriarchate” and “History of the Orthodox Taliban,”10 where he presented the “Orthodox Taliban Credo,” which included: (1) Retrospective worldview – sacralisation of the past. (2) Fundamentalist cult of the Julian calendar. (3) Forbidding the use of modern Russian in church service. (4) No changes in church texts allowed. (5) Lauding the idea of “Moscow as the Third Rome” and striving to restore Russian monarchy, empire and the so-called church-state symphony. (6) Militant anti-ecumenism. (7) Hostility towards other denominations.

9 Paul R. Gregory, “Russia’s Re-Stalinization,” in: Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 28 November 2018 (https://www.hoover.org/research/russias-re-stalinization, 10 December 2018). 10 Gleb Yakunin, Крест и молот [Cross and Hammer] (Blagovestnik: Moscow 1998); Gleb Yakunin, Подлинный лик Московской патриархии [The True Face of Moscow Patriar- chate] (Moscow 2000); Gleb Yakunin, Исторический путь православного талибанства [History of Orthodox Taliban] (Moscow 2002).

284 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream

(8) Anti-Western position against American and European political culture and NATO. (9) Utter rebuke of democracy, freedoms, and human rights. (10) Anti-Semitism and belief in global Jewish conspiracy.

In 1999, Metropolitan Kirill (now Patriarch of ROC) called human rights ide- ology the triumph of “idolatry in its most vicious form of man’s worshipping himself,” continuing to state that

Western Christianity […] having accepted a postulate of the freedom of man as the highest value of his earthly being, as a social and cultural given, sanctified the union of the neo-pagan doctrine with Christian ethics. For instance, Christian and pagan principles were combined (through Catholicism and Protestantism) in the process of the formation of the liberal standard. A certain influence was exerted by Judaic theological thought, which was considerably influential in the universities of West- ern Europe […] The whole complex of notions of the liberal standard of existence was formed in the 19th century. It was first constituted in the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen’ of the French Revolution and finally confirmed in the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ in 1948 […] The protest of the Orthodox against female and recognition of homosexual marriages is a protest against the very idea of certain priority of the liberal standard (which, as is known, has not only Christian roots) over the norm of the Tradition of the Church.11

In 2016, Patriarch Kirill called humanism a heresy:

Today we are [dealing with] a global heresy of worshipping the human, the new idolatry that removes god from human life,” Kirill was quoted as saying. “Nothing like that had even happened on a global scale before. It is specifically at overcom- ing this present day’s heresy, the consequences of which can become apocalyptic, that the church must aim the force of its protection, its word, its thought.12

In the early 1990s, Metropolitan Kirill sounded much more liberal to fit the democratic course of the Kremlin. The conflict between liberal and nationalist

11 Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, “The Circumstances of Modern Life. Lib- eralism, Traditionalism and Moral Values of a Uniting Europe,” in: NG-Religions, 26 May 1999 (and here, https://mospat.ru/archive/en/1999/06/ne906081, 28 November 2018). 12 Anna Dolgov, “Russia’s Patriarch Kirill: Some Human Rights Are ‘Heresy’,” in: The Moscow Times, 21 March 2016 (https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/russias-patriarch-kirill-some- human-rights-are-heresy-52213, 24 October 2018).

285 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream

Christians increased in the mid-1990s, but since the mid-2000s, liberal reli- gious voices have hardly ever been heard in the Russian Orthodox church: they have been drowned by the nationalist pro-imperial, pro-Putin or neo- Stalinist chorus. The Post-Soviet Russia has been living in an atmosphere of restoration, or retro-mania: radical church nationalists (supported by many clergy and lay people) even wanted to canonise Ivan the Terrible who, as they believe, was a devout Christian derided by the enemies of the Russian people; other poten- tial saints are Grigory Rasputin and Joseph Stalin (as a secret Christian). Sta- lin is portrayed as a defender of the state and of the Russian Orthodox Church (which he exterminated). The church canonisation committee at the Moscow Patriarchate regularly receives “hagiographic” applications regarding those three “holy people.” Websites, books, articles, icons, and prayers have been produced about them as saints.13 Icons of Putin exist as well, as does an all- female sect venerating him as a reincarnation of St Paul.14 One of the many Post-Soviet paradoxes is that Russian Orthodox Christians may venerate their own persecutors. The new Christian nationalist theology developed in the last 25 years, better known as the Russian World, regards the state, Russian army and Russian people as sacred phenomena and calls for the “holy hatred” of the enemies of Russia and Russian Orthodoxy. It supports the restoration of the integrity of the Russian Royal and Soviet empire and authoritarian political system, with the Russian Orthodox Church to be married to the State and playing a leading role in social policy, education and foreign affairs. Christianity mixed with Communist ideology is quite popular among those thousands of former communists who converted to Christianity en masse since

13 “Сборник материалов о Святом Богоданном Вожде Русского Народа – «стальном императоре» Иосифе Великом (Сталине) [The Holy God-given Leader of the Russian Peo- ple – the “Steel Emperor”: Collection of Materials].” in: Москва – Третий Рим, 10 June 2012 (http://www.ic-xc-nika.ru, 20 March 2019); “Питерские коммунисты обратились к Патриарху с предложением канонизировать Сталина [The Communist party in St Peters- burg petitioned Patriarch to canonize Stalin],” in: NEWSru.com, 26 November 2008 (http:// www.newsru.com/religy/26nov2008/stalin.html, 20 March 2019); Aleksandr Prokhanov, “Победа – религия, Сталин – святой [Victory – a Religion, Stalin – a Saint],” in: Завтра 19 (546), 5 May 2004 (http://www.zavtra.ru/cgi/veil/data/zavtra/04/546/11.html 10 April 2019). 14 Andrew Osborn, “All-female sect worships Vladimir Putin as Paul the Apostle,” in: The Tele- graph, 12 May 2011 (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8509670/All- female-sect-worships-Vladimir-Putin-as-Paul-the-Apostle.html, 8 November 2018).

286 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream

1988. They tend to use Orthodox rhetoric but fill it with communist mentality: incorporating the spirit of superiority, selection, nationalism, anti-Semitism, and militarism, they try to cultivate the concept of Holy Russia (instead of Communist Russia) as a political slogan. This hybrid political religion of Communist Christianity is widely spread in propaganda and broadly satirised in social media. We should consider the difference between communist ideas and communist mentality. Mentality may absorb different ideas while transforming (some- times distorting) them. The typical dominant feature of communist (as, per- haps, of any totalitarian) mentality is that one knows the Ultimate Truth, which has many enemies. Everyone who dares to doubt it automatically becomes an enemy. People exhibiting the communist mentality are suspicious and ready to accuse. The quasi-Christian ideology developed in Post-Soviet Russia cre- ated its own list of enemies, including other-than-Orthodox denominations (particularly outlawed Jehovah Witnesses), Judeo-Masonic groups, Americans, Ukrainians, liberals, democrats, ecumenists, globalists, feminists, LGBTQI, and many others. Under Communism, thousands of people were executed or sent to gulags for their religious beliefs, while most of the church buildings were either destroyed or closed, because the totalitarian ideology was based on militant atheism. In post-Soviet Russia, the pendulum swung to the other side when the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) became an ideological department for the new authoritarian regime. In the 2010s, people risk being jailed for hurting religious feelings or “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” as was the case with Pussy Riot activists. Church officials preach traditional family values, prescribing women to remain silent in church, subject to their husbands and concentrate on mother- hood to improve Russia’s demography. Women undergoing abortions may be condemned as possessed by demons and raped women are blamed for having provoked the attack while perpetrators are justified. Feminists and LGBTQI activists are labelled anti-Christian blasphemers who are depraved by “Gay- ropa” (Gay Europe) and aim to destroy the so-called ethical foundation of Holy Russia. Reports issued by the World Organisation Against Torture claim that Russian legislation has neither specific mechanisms for prosecuting crimes with respect to gender, nor any legal definition of sex discrimination or laws addressing domestic violence, marital rape and trafficking of women. Women involved in politics and human rights activity may be threatened, attacked and murdered.

287 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream

NGOs are persecuted, registered as “foreign agents” and “anti-Russian” ­institutions.15 Church authorities provide a religious basis for gender discrimi- nation, violence against women and domestic abuse at times when, according to official reports, 14,000 women are being killed in their homes every year.16 In the terrible situation in Chechnya, women were tortured, raped and murdered during and after the two wars, while recently, Gay Purge reports told of “abduc- tions, unlawful detentions, torture, beatings and killings of men perceived to be gay or bisexual”.17

Art Protests and Anti-Artist Trials “Beware, Religion!” Moscow, November 2004. Old women in long skirts, heads covered by scarves, are chanting Psalm 68 in the hall of a Moscow district court:

May God arise, may his enemies be scattered! may his foes flee before him. May you blow them away like smoke— as wax melts before the fire, may the wicked perish before God.18

Suddenly praying turns into yelling: “Blasphemers! Anti-Christ! Dirty Jews! Sodomites! Go to Israel! To America!” Those in prayer are hurling insults at two women and a man walking to a courtroom. Those three under attack had been charged with inciting religious hatred against Orthodox believers for organising the art exhibition “Beware, Religion!” (2003). The modern art display, opened on January 14 in the Andrei Sakharov Center in Moscow, was destroyed four days later by a group of Orthodox Christian activists, who first

15 “Russian Federation: NGOs officially portrayed as ‘foreign agents’, ‘anti-constitutional’ and ‘anti-Russian’, what next?” in: OMCT. World Organization Against Torture, 23 November 2015 (http://www.omct.org 9 August 2018). 16 Christina Cauterucci, “Russia Decriminalized Domestic Violence With Support from the Rus- sian Orthodox Church,” in: SLATE, 8 February 2017 (https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/02/ russia-decriminalized-domestic-violence-with-support-from-the-russian-orthodox-church.html, 28 November 2018). 17 “End abuse and detention of gay men in Chechnya, UN human rights experts tell Russia,” United Nations Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner (https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21501, 10 December 2018). 18 Ps 68:1-2. New International Version.

288 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream were detained and charged with hooliganism, but soon after were released. Later, Church authorities honoured them for their pogrom:

Right at the beginning of the trial, the court room was taken over by a few hundred religious hoodlums who, with the tacit support of the Russian Orthodox Church’s hierarchy, have turned the court hearing into a staged rally for the suppression of any manifestation of non-conformist views on religion. Several supporters of the defendants, lawyers and witnesses for the defence were verbally harassed by this crowd in the courtroom, ante-chambers and corridors, their testimonies were shouted down. Anti-Semitic slogans (such as “Let’s hang all the Jews!” and “It’s time to start the new holocaust!”) were openly paraded and voiced in unison, although only a handful of the participants of the original show were Jewish. When one of the sympathizers of the defendants tried to calm down a vociferous old lady by saying that as a Christian, she should show more tolerance towards her enemies, she raised high her hand with a cross and shouted: “We will meet in Hell!”19

One might ask, who insulted whom? And who is filled with passionate hatred? If the artists fomented any religious hatred, that hatred was directed only against themselves. And clearly, it was the artists’ own dignity which was humiliated during the proceedings of the criminal case. Zinovy Zinik observed that

most of the exhibits were parodies, pop-art style, of the mass perception of religious doctrine and its iconography in contemporary Russia, where the influential Russian Orthodox Church has gradually replaced the old Communist Party of the USSR as moral arbiter and chief censor in matters spiritual and ideological. Perhaps the most striking work, to a Western eye, would have been the painting by Alexander Kosolapov, who added the sacramental slogan ‘This is my blood’ to a Coke label.20

The artists mostly delivered a postmodern mix of the sacred and the profane which mocked some clichés of common religiosity. More importantly, some of them satirised religion as a political and commercial tool of the state. One of the three defendants was feminist artist and poet Anna Alchuk (a pseudonym of Anna Mikhalchuk). Alchuk believed that “by saying ‘Beware, religion!’ a modern artist calls people to keep a critical distance towards the Church, which has lost its independence from the state and gives its blessing

19 Zinovy Zinik, “The Neighbour’s Fence (On Russian Self-alienation),” in: Музей и общественный центр имени Андрея Сахарова (http://old.sakharov-center.ru/museum/exhi- bitionhall/religion_notabene/zzinik2004.htm, 23 May 2016). 20 Ibid.

289 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream to violence.”21 A popular new icon of the soldier martyr with a gun in his hand, said Alchuk, accurately represents the Russian Orthodox Church. She referred to a new cult of the Russian soldier, allegedly killed while a captive in Chechnya, resisting conversion to Islam. Anna took part in protests against the war in Chechnya because she saw it as a war crime performed by the Rus- sian government. In her Nobel lecture “On the Battle Lost”, Belorussian writer Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel laureate for 2015, claims that Russians in the “were taught to love the man with a gun,” because they “lived in a country where dying was taught to us from childhood. We were taught death. We were told that human beings exist in order to give everything they have, to burn out, to sacrifice themselves.”22 Alchuk’s own installation presented at the exhibition on trial had little to do with religion, but her call for artists to criticise the church-state marriage could be one of the reasons why she was picked out of the thirty-nine other partici- pants, together with two organisers of the display, to be charged with a blas- phemous act. Anna Alchuk was found not-guilty, unlike the other two who were fined. Later in 2008, however, her body was found in a river in Berlin, Germany. According to her husband, philosopher Mikhail Ryklin, she com- mitted suicide, having been deeply humiliated and traumatised by libel, slan- der, and death threats during and after the trial.23 Anna Alchuk became the first artist martyr in what Anya Bernstein called Post-Soviet Art Wars:24 art exhibitions and theatre performances, books and films, museums and street art attacked as blasphemous by radical Orthodox activists backed by church and state authorities.

21 «’Осторожно, религия!’ Предваряющие выставку, тексты участников проекта [‘Beware, Religion!’ Preceding texts by project’s participants],” in: Музей и общественный центр имени Андрея Сахарова (http://old.sakharov-center.ru/museum/exhibitionhall/reli- gion_notabene/hall_exhibitions_religion3.htm, 3 April 2009). 22 Svetlana Alexievich, “On the Battle Lost,” in: The Nobel Prize Organization (http://www. nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2015/alexievich-lecture_en.html, 5 May 2017). 23 Mikhail Ryklin, Пристань Диониса. Книга Анны [Dionysus’ Harbor. Book of Anna] (Logos: Moscow 2013). His books about the trial: Свастика, крест, звезда: искусство в эпоху управляемой демократии [A Work of Art in the Era of Managed Democracy] (Logos: Moscow 2006); German edition: Mit dem Recht des Stärkeren. Russische Kultur in Zeiten der »gelenkten Demokratie (Suhrkamp Verlag: Frankfurt am Main 2006). 24 Anya Bernstein, “Caution, Religion! Iconoclasm, Secularism, and Ways of Seeing in Post- Soviet Art Wars,” in: Public Culture 26:3 (2014), 419-448.

290 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream

Pussy Riot: “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, become a feminist!”25 On 21 February 2012, a group of young women dressed in bright costumes of garish colours, their faces covered with balaclava masks, entered the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in the centre of Moscow, climbed the ambo (platform in front of the iconostasis) and asked Virgin Mary, Mother of God, to put Putin away, become a feminist and join their protest. The punk-prayer, as they called it, was composed of two different styles: the prayer itself, in which they crossed themselves and prostrated during the liturgical music of “Hail, Mary” by Rakhmaninov, and the punk rock hard-edged rhythm and dance in which they accused the Church. Their performance was later praised as “the forty seconds that shook the world” for they were heard throughout the country and abroad.

The phantom of liberty is in heaven Gay pride sent to Siberia in chains

They sang, raising their voices against the illegitimate symbiosis of church and state, the discrimination toward women and lesbians, gays, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.

The head of the KGB, their chief saint, Leads protesters to prison under escort In order not to offend His Holiness Women must give birth and love.

Pussy Riot’s feminist protest started more than a year before the punk-prayer. In October 2011, and Ekaterina Samutzevich gave a talk on punk in which they expressed their indignation with an official ROC speaker, priest Vsevolod Chaplin’s claim that women wearing mini-skirts and clown-like make-up are likely to provoke men rape them. The feminist petition, backed by more than 1,300 signatures, urged the Patriarch of ROC to condemn discriminatory remarks made by the clerics about women. In dramatic irony, the following year women dressed like clowns came to the cathedral to defend their rights. Before that, Pussy Riot presented two anti- sexist songs, “Kill the Sexist” and “Kropotkin Vodka”, in which sexist was

25 Authorised lyrics in: Pussy Riot, Pussy Riot! A Punk Prayer for Freedom: Letter from Prison Songs, Poems, and Courtroom Statement, Plus Tributes to the Punk Band That Shook the World (The Feminist Press at the City University of New York: New York 2013),13-14.

291 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream rhymed with Putinist, because their protest addressed the chauvinist culture as well as the patriarchal political hierarchy.

Patriarch Gundyaev believes in Putin Bitch, better believe in God instead The belt of the Virgin can’t replace mass-meetings Mary, Mother of God, is with us in protest!

Pussy Rioters created a new image of the Holy Virgin as feminist protester, which was contrary to the Orthodox icon of the Mother of God as heavenly protector of the Russian State. An alleged relic of Virgin Mary – Her belt (Cincture of Theotokos) – was brought then to Moscow from Mount Athos as part of Putin’s presidential campaign. Many women venerated the belt, touted as a miraculous aid to help women give birth. Pussy Rioters believed that no miracles can help women improve their lives, but their own protest movement blessed by the Virgin Mary. Their major feminist influences, as one of them said, were Simone de Beauvoir, Andrea Dworkin, Emmeline Pankhurst, Shu- lamith Firestone, Kate Millet, Rosi Braidotti, and Judith Butler. The Pussy Riot fervent prayer can be interpreted as a feminist version of Pater Noster (Our Father) – Mater Nostra: it begs God to deliver Russia from the evil of dictatorship and blames the Church for blasphemies, including Tsar Idolatry, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary, manipulating sacred things and ideals, favouring corruption, and political loyalty.26 In a sermon given by New Zealand pastor Glynn Cardy in 2012, he states that the conflict between the Pussy Riot group and the Russian Orthodox Church revealed a “clash of Gods”:

the Pussy Riot prayer […] asks the fundamental, scandalous question about who owns God. Is God just a puppet toy belonging to the Church, a toy for the State to manipu- late the strings and enhance its own power? Or is God a subversive power, out among the people, always working fearlessly to promote justice, mutuality, and equality? […] Christian clowns, girls with guitars and foolish knitted hats, not men with guns, head a revolution against authoritarianism and the betrayal of the Church by its leaders.27

26 Elena Volkova, “Mater Nostra: The Anti-blasphemy Message of the Feminist Punk-Prayer,” in: Religion and Gender 4 (2) (2014), 202-208. 27 Glynn Cardy, “The Power of a Prayer: Pussy Riot Tries the Church,” in: St Matthew-in-the- City Anglican church, 19 August 2012 (https://www.stmatthews.nz/sermon-12/i1ib1qya273/ The-Power-of-a-Prayer-Pussy-Riot-Tries-the-Church, 15 March 2019).

292 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream

What Cardy calls a “clash of God” may also be seen as a “clash of Marys,” behind which lies a conflict between gender resistance (the Human Rights Mary) and repressive patriarchal machinery driven by the Russian State and Church (Theotokos of Vladimir). Three prosecution experts found Pussy Rioters guilty according to the Church Councils in Trullo (692 CE) and Laodicea (363-364 CE), which had no legal power in Russia. The video of the punk prayer was banned as extrem- ist, while the lack of the blasphemy law was later filled in with a new legisla- tion (article 148) against inciting religious feelings. Some people called for burning the Pussy Riot group at the stake; others didn’t approve of the performance, but found the punishment too heavy, while a small group of supporters inside Russia organised protests against the show trial, wrote petitions and articles, held seminars, and produced theatre perfor- mances. In 2014, a special issue of the journal Religion and Gender was published under the title “Pussy Riot as Litmus Paper: Political Protest and Religious Culture.” Authors Katharina Wiedlack and Nasha Neufeld argued that the Western interpretation of Pussy Riot representing pop culture and the queer- , as well as punk identity, may be misleading, because the Russian context represents a different perspective.28 The Pussy Riot controversy was concerned mainly with the violation of the sacred space and the sacrilegious manner of protest. They didn’t deny religion as such and made reference to the Gospels to prove their views. Their advo- cates appealed to the tradition of Folly for Christ’s sake and the Gospel’s episode of Jesus Christ cleansing the Temple (Mathew 21, 12:13), as well as to Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque counterculture. By the end of the trial, the Pussy Riot women became international celebrities known as punk rebels and feminist martyrs protesting religious fundamentalism and political dictatorship. In 2018, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia must pay three activists around $50,000 for violating their human rights.29

28 Katharina Wiedlack and Nasha Neufeld, “Lost in Translation? Pussy Riot Solidary Activism and the danger of perpetuating North/Western Hegemonies,” in: Religion and Gender 4 (2) (2014), 145-165. 29 “Case of Mariya Alekhina and Others V. Russia (Application no. 38004/12),” in: European Court of Human Rights, Judgement, Strasbourg, 17 July 2018 (https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng #{%22itemid%22:[%22001-184666%22]}, 29 March 2019).

293 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream

FEMEN: Nudity as Liberty On 17 August 2012, when Pussy Riot were being sentenced in Moscow, a topless activist from the radical FEMEN group sawed down a large wooden crucifix in Kyiv in a gesture of solidarity with the Russian feminists standing trial. The group called on people to “saw out of their heads” all the religious prejudices that provided foundation for dictatorship and restricted women’s freedom.30 The cross was erected in commemoration of the victims of Com- munist repressions, but since repressions were revived and blessed by ROC, FEMEN activists decided to remove it. However, Maria Alyokhina of Pussy Riot repudiated this act of solidarity on the grounds that Pussy Rioters were not anti-religious and would never appear nude.31 The FEMEN campaign movement aims to fight in its three man- ifestations: sexual exploitation of women, dictatorship, and misogynistic reli- gious institutions. FEMEN activists use nudity (“sextremism”) as a weapon against sexism and a living placard featuring such slogans as “Fuck Putin!’ or “Religion is Slavery.”32 In 2013 five activists from Ukraine, Germany and Russia painted anti-Putin slogans on their chests and backs, jumped over the fence in the Hanover airport and ran towards Putin screaming “Fuck the dicta- tor!” “It was non-violent women protesting against the most dangerous dicta- tor in the world”, their leader Alexandra Shevchenko said.33 FEMEN members rang church bells in Kyiv protesting anti-abortion legisla- tion; appeared topless with “Kill Kirill” painted on their backs and attacked the Moscow Patriarch Kirill while he was visiting Ukraine. Since there is no blasphemy law in Ukraine, FEMEN protesters were charged with hooliganism and desecration of state symbols.34

30 “Femen Activists Cut Down Cross in Kyiv,” in: RadioFreeEurope RadioLiberty, 17 August 2012 (https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-femen-cross-pussy-riot/24679942.html, 29 March 2019). 31 Elena Masyuk, ”После приговора: интервью с Марией Алёхиной [After the Sentence: Interview with Maria Alyokhina],” in: Novaya Gazeta, 21 August 2012 (https://www.novay- agazeta.ru/articles/2012/08/21/51092-posle-prigovora, 29 March 2019). 32 , “We are Femen, the naked shock troops of feminism,” in: The Guardian, 10 April 2013 (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/10/femen-naked-shock- troops-of-feminism, 29 March 2019). 33 Kate Connolly, “Femen activist tells how protest against Putin and Merkel was planned,” in: The Guardian, 12 April 2013 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/apr/12/femen-activ- ist-protest-putin-merkel, 12 June 2018). 34 “Ukraine’s Femen Group Protests Abortion Bill,” in: RadioLiberty, Ukraine, 10 April 2012 (https:// www.rferl.org/a/ukraine_femen_protest_abortion/24543934.html, 11 April 2019); Jeffrey Tayler,

294 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream

“Russian World” as Anti-Ukrainian Theology of War Since its foundation in 1993(!), The World Russian People’s Council (WRPC), headed by Patriarch Kirill, has been developing ideas of aggressive national- ism, monarchism, Orthodox superiority, the biopolitical right of “the Russian people to be reunited,” and their geopolitical struggle for control over former Soviet republics.35 In 2006, a utopian “Russian Doctrine” project was approved by the WRPC:

Adherents to the Neo-Imperial or Neo-Soviet concept see the resurrection of the old Empire or the building of a new one as the main goal of Russia’s existence. This school, along with more moderate calls to take account of the “unconscious Sovietism” that survives in a large portion of the population includes radical appeals to create an “unconventional Empire, a world of worlds, or the USSR II.”36

In February 2007, Putin equated Russia’s “traditional confessions”, meaning Russian Orthodox Church, to its nuclear shield: both, he said, being “compo- nents that strengthen Russian statehood and create necessary preconditions for internal and external security of the country.”37 On 4 September 2007, Putin’s nuclear theology was developed by the ROC: a church service was held in Christ the Saviour Cathedral to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Russia’s nuclear complex: the service included prayers to St Seraphim of Sarov as a holy protector of the nuclear weapon. The two-shield idea of Russia was soon ironically mocked as Nuclear Orthodoxy.38

“Femen, Ukraine’s Topless Warriors,” in: The Atlantic, 28 November 2012 (https://www.theatlan- tic.com/international/archive/2012/11/femen-ukraines-topless-warriors/265624, 11 April 2019). 35 “Обращение I Всемирного Русского Собора ‘О понимании национальных интересов России и русского народа’ [Statement of the I World Russian Council ‘On the Understand- ing of the National Interests of Russia and the Russian People’],” in: Всемирный Русский Народный Собор, 26-28 May 1993 (https://vrns.ru/documents/54/1270, 23 October 2018). 36 “National Identity and the Future of Russia: Valdai Discussion Club Report,” in: Valdai Discussion Club, Moscow, February 2014 (http://vid-1.rian.ru/ig/valdai/Identity_eng.pdf, 8 December 2018). 37 Daniel P. Payne, “Spiritual Security, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Russian Foreign Ministry: Collaboration or Cooptation?” in: Journal of Church and State Vol. 52, No. 4 (Autumn 2010), 712-727. 38 Aleksandr Soldatov, “Атомное православие [Nuclear Orthodoxy],” in: Огонёк 37, 16 Sep- tember 2007 (https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2299531, 30 March 2019); Dmitry Adamsky, Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy: Religion, Politics, and Strategy (Stanford University Press: Stan- ford, California 2019).

295 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream

A few years later, Patriarch Kirill presented the war in Ukraine as a reli- gious one. It was him and other church-speakers who developed ideas of Crimea as the Cradle of Russian Orthodoxy and Ukraine as a Russian canon- ical territory, and preached the Russian World that would embrace all the countries where Russian-speaking people live.39 It was the Church that pro- vided the state with this ideological foundation for a military aggression in Ukraine. Moscow Patriarchate started developing their aggressive theology long before the annexation of Crimea. However, since 2014, Russian Orthodox Theology of War has been dis- guised as a peace-making mission, which somehow approves of the so- called holy war waged to defend the alleged true Orthodox faith and the Russian people abroad. The Russian World ideology became the founda- tion for Putin’s neo-colonial crusade aimed at the restoration of the Soviet empire. The Russian World project is about exerting control not only over former Soviet republics but also over states of the former Eastern bloc. It is about territorial and exterritorial control. During the autocephaly debate, Moscow Metropolitan Hillarion (Alfeev) was enraged at the Constantinople decision to give autonomy to Ukrainian Orthodoxy, which would make it canonical and, hence, independent of the Moscow Patriarchate. Giving an angry inter- view, he repeated the word “territory” three times but did not mention any Gospel. His hidden message sounded like a threat: we do not occupy the territory of Ukraine with Russian military forces, but from a religious per- spective, Ukraine is our canonical territory, occupied by ROC since long ago. Hillarion spoke the language of war, uttering phrases like “It seems that the means of church diplomacy have been exhausted by now,” and “when Constantinople in such an aggressive and cynical manner is interfering in the affairs of another Local Church […]”. When he enumerated thousands of parishes and alleged millions of the Russian Church lay people, he reminded a general speaking of his big army.40

39 Patriarch Kirill, Семь слов о Русском Мире [Seven Words on the Russian World], (Всемирный Русский Народный Собор: Moscow 2015). 40 Metropolitan Ilarion (Alfeev), “Нынешняя ситуация грозит расколом Вселенскому Православию [Current Situation Threatens to Split the Universal Orthodoxy],” in: Русская Православная Церковь. Официальный сайт Московского Патриархата [Russian Orthodox Church: Official website of the Moscow patriarchate], 8 September 2018 (http:// www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5264464.html, 10 December 2018).

296 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream

In April 2014, Moscow Patriarchate speaker, Father Vsevolod Chaplin, said that

[T]here are direct instructions from God to get armed. It is better for a Christian to die for what he venerates than let the sacred be blasphemed. It is better to go to war than to allow someone to deprive your neighbours, your people, holy things and the true faith. The war is good for people to start a new life. People should live short lives, because the better part of it is in heaven.41

Conclusion Ideological hybridisation of Russia could have been considered as a funda- mental character of postmodernism, as Ihab Hassan saw it,42 had it not been an attempt to create another political religion which would once again work as a totalitarian ideology. Communist Christianity, a doctrinal collage and lived culture, inherited repressive and aggressive practices of both Russian Royal and Soviet empires. Communist Christianity sounds like an ambivalent term, meaning both the Orthodox ritual legacy embedded into the anti-Chris- tian policy of Soviet Russia, and a hotchpotch of Communist and Christian traits in the post-Soviet culture. Religious nationalist rhetoric replaced the Marxist-Leninist language of the Soviet propaganda, but the political system remained very much the same: with personality cult in its centre, the Kremlin and Church authorities sacralise the leader and the land, the nation and its nuclear weapons. They demonise the opposition and subject protesters to ruthless repression. They violate the constitution, according to which Russia should be a secular state. They deny basic human rights, discriminate and persecute religious and sexual minorities. They impose strict religious censorship on art, having waged the Art Wars. Along the 20th century, Russia passed through two utopias that turned into dystopias: The Communist utopian project led to the unprecedent totalitarian regime that exterminated millions of people; the Post-Soviet democratic utopia ended up as an authoritative Putin regime, which developed the third utopian idea of Holy Russia, that is the Russian World, called upon to save the world at large. The Russian Federation being a multi-ethnic and multi-religious state,

41 Vsevolod Chaplin, in: “Разбор полета [Debriefing],” in: Радио “Эхо Москвы” [Radio “Echo of Moscow”], 28 April 2014 (https://echo.msk.ru/programs/razbor_poleta/1307108- echo, 19 March 2019). 42 Ihab Hassan, “Pluralism in Postmodern Perspective,” in: Critical Inquiry, vol. 12, no. 3 (1986).

297 Elena Volkova Communist Christianity as Russian Political Religion: Does Putin's Dystopia look like Trump's dream the Orthodox nationalist ideology struck a dystopian chord from the very moment it was created, for it could do nothing but provoke another collapse of the imperial remains. However, it is Putin’s absolute power and his nation- alist nostalgia for the imagined glorious past that magnetise Trump and crown the two as world champions for making their countries great again.

Elena Volkova has a PhD in American Literature (1989) and Religion, Literature and Culture (2001). A professor at Moscow State University, she has taught courses in Comparative Literature and Culture, Religion and Literature, Bible and Culture. In 2011 she resigned from MSU in protest against ideological control. Nowadays she operates as an independent expert, blogger and researcher.

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