THE HISTORICAL PLACE OF AND IN THE EUROPEAN CULTURAL SPACE

IN SEARCH OF A EUROPEAN CHRISTIAN IDENTITY

WIL VAN DEN BERCKEN*

The geographical East of Europe – Russia, Ukraine and – is more related to the rest of Europe than it may seem at first glance. The great dif- ferences in political and social development of Eastern and Western Europe and the ecclesiastical separation between Orthodox and Catholic Churches notwithstanding, Rus’ or Russia has during its thousand year history belonged to what I call, the European cultural space.1 It is sometimes a hidden relationship, less visible than the political and ecclesiastical differ- ences, but nevertheless, Russia and Europe stand in a common historical cultural context. Religiously and ideologically Russia has never been an oriental or Asiatic culture, despite its autocratic and sometimes despotic political system. It has developed its national identity on the basis of Christian political ideas which in turn have been shaped by (East) Roman imperial heritage. This heritage has played an important role in the formative phases of Moscovian and Petersburg Russia. Ukraine is a more complicated story: for three centuries (from the beginning of the fourteenth until the mid-seven- teenth century) half of this country has belonged to the central European sphere, and a smaller part of it, Galicia, even until 1939. But its history has also always remained closely linked to Russia. The common roots of Ukrainian

* Wil van den Bercken is professor of Russian Church History at the Radboud Univer- sity Nijmegen. This article is the elaborated version of an address held at a meeting with directors of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarussian theological institutes on 12 December 2004 in Nijmegen. 1 Rus’ (Rusà) is the name of the mediaeval princedom with Kiev as its capital (9th until 13th century). It is not identical with later Ukraine or Russia. The name Ukraina was used for the first time in 1187 in a Northern Russian chronicle. In 1355 the region is indicated by the Patriarch of Constantinople as Mikra Rwsia (Latin Russia Minor). Rossia (Rossiq) is the later name for tsarist Russia. 238 WIL VAN DEN BERCKEN and Russian cultures lie in mediaeval Kievan Rus’. So we start our survey there.

KIEV: CHRISTIANISATION IN A EUROPEAN CONTEXT

Christianity in mediaeval Rus’ started as an undivided church. The region was christianised in the same period as Hungary, , Denmark and Norway. Although christianised from different centres, and Constantinople, it was the same kind of Christianity. This extension of Christianity on the European continent around the year 1000 is sometimes called “the second wave of the conversion of nations” in Europe, after that of the Franks and the Anglo-Saxon peoples centuries earlier. It was a further step in the formation of a “Christian Europe”. It were emotional-aesthetical reasons rather than ideological (anti-Catholic) ones that brought of Kievan Rus’ into the Christian world in 988, as one can read in the chronicle Tale of Bygone Years: it was the Byzantine liturgy in the majestic church of the Hagia Sophia that overwhelmed the Kievan envoys. This is a romantic interpretation from a century after the event. The real reasons were more practical: the geographical vicinity of Constantinople and the fact that conversion was a condition for prince Vladimir of Kiev to marry the sister of the Byzantine emperor, Anna. But it was obviously not a choice against Latin Europe. Thirty years earlier Vladimir’s grandmother Olga had not hesitated to invite from the German king Otto I. He sent Adalbert of Trier, but his task failed because Olga died in 961. Vladimir’s support of the German missionaries who travelled through Kiev to preach Christianity to tribes east of Kiev, on which one can read in the letter of Bruno of Querfurt of 1008, offers further testimony for the uncom- plicated attitude toward Catholicism in eleventh-century Rus’.2 There was some kind of an awareness of a common Christian identity in the middle of the eleventh century, as becomes clear from the beautiful Ser- mon on Law and Grace by metropolitan Ilarion of Kiev. Ilarion praises his peo- ple’s joining of ‘the other Christian nations’, including the ‘the Roman land’.

2 In this article I frequently refer to documents that I have used in my book on religious imagery, Holy Russia and Christian Europe: East and West in the Religious Ideology of Russia (London, 1999). There I give a full indication of the sources. THE HISTORICAL PLACE OF RUSSIA AND UKRAINE 239

This was the first and also the last time in Russian history that a Russian church leader refers positively to Rome. Not only religiously, but also politically there was still no East-West sep- aration: Vladimir’s son Yaroslav the Wise and his children married French, German, Polish, Swedish and Hungarian partners, and the last great leader of Kiev, Vladimir Monomach, married an English princess. Admittedly, these are far from major historical events but they are all symbols of how East and West met and were interrelated. This situation ended abruptly with the Mongol invasion of the Kievan territory in the mid-thirteenth century, after which Vladimir-Suzdal and Rus’ – the successor states of Kievan Rus’ – disappeared from the European horizon for nearly two centuries. Only the Western part of Rus’, Galicia-Volynia, whose prince Daniel accepted the king’s crown from Innocent IV in 1253, remained closely linked to Central Europe, to Polish and later to Habsburg history. Another part of what became known as Ukraine was conquered by in the fourteenth century and thus also became part of Central European history. During the dark ages of the Tatar yoke, from the beginning of the thir- teenth until the mid-fifteenth century, Moscow Rus’ or Russia was isolated from the cultural developments in Europe. However, there remained some kind of a hidden link. Unaware of each other’s existence, monks in Western and Russian monasteries were writing their chronicles, creating a common European literary heritage. Russian iconographic art and Italian panel and fresco painting had common roots in Byzantine art. The monks Fra Angelico and Andrei Rublyov were the last purely religious painters of mediaeval Chris- tianity. However, these indications of a common Christian identity must be put into the right perspective. The religious-ideological confrontation between Russia and the West, dates back from the mid-thirteenth century and the battle of Alexander Nevski against the Teutonic Order in 1242. This con- frontation has settled in Russian historical memory as its first success in stopping Catholic influence in Russia. The year of this victory has been commemorated by the Moscow Patriarchate in recent times. But the nega- tive image was built on the both sides. The Teutonic knights not only wanted to christianise the pagan Baltic tribes, they also considered the as targets of their zeal. And already one century earlier bishop 240 WIL VAN DEN BERCKEN

Matthew of Krakow had asked Bernard of Clairvaux to help him ‘extermi- nate the godless rites and customs in Ruthenia, which is at it were another world (quae quasi est alter orbis)’.3 The failure of the Council of Florence in 1439 had an even greater impact. The Moscow Metropolitan Isidor had accepted reconciliation with Rome but it was immediately rejected by the Moscow Grand Prince, and this event has determined the relations between Russian Orthodoxy and Catholicism until today. These latter events may have been much more decisive for the perception of the West in Russian historical memory than the marriages I mentioned above, but one cannot ignore that there have also been some positive moments in relationship between Eastern and Western Europe. It is to these that I now turn.

MOSCOW AND THE ADAPTATION OF A EUROPEAN POLITICAL-RELIGIOUS MYTH

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 was a major factor in creating an aware- ness of national identity in Russia. In several ways Moscow demonstrated that it stood in the European cultural sphere. Moscow considered itself the successor of the Byzantine empire: Grand Prince Ivan III took the Byzantine two-headed eagle as his arms, he used the titles autocrator and Caesar (not “Khan”), and married the niece of the last Byzantine emperor. Moscow thus placed itself in the European tradition and not that of the Mongols, under which it had lived for nearly two hundred years. Maybe more relevant still is the fact that the Kremlin, this supreme expres- sion of Russia’s political and religious identity, was rebuilt by Italian archi- tects: the Kremlin wall has the swallowtail crenellation of a North-Italian castello; the Faceted Palace resembles the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara; the main church of Russian Orthodoxy, the Uspenskii sobor, was built by the Bolognese Rudolfo Fioravante in authentically Russian style; and the Arkhangelskii sobor, the cathedral in which are buried the Grand Princes, has become a splendid combination of Russian style and Renaissance architec- ture thanks to its Milanese architect Alevisio Nuovo. All these symbols par

3 ‘Matthaei cracoviensis episcopi epistola ad s. Bernardum abbatem clarevallensem’, Mon- umenta Poloniae Historica, ed. A. Bielowski (Warsaw, 1960, reprint of 1864 edition), vol. II, p. 15. THE HISTORICAL PLACE OF RUSSIA AND UKRAINE 241 excellence of Russian power and glory have been built by Western masters. And the irony does not stop here. Both Russian and Western European rulers have come to use the same titles: “most pious” (piissimus or blagoverneishii), “Godloved” (Deoamatus or Bogolyubivyi), “Godcrowned” (Deocoronatus or Bogovenchannyi). But at the same time Russia put itself ideologically against Europe with the doctrine of Moscow as “the Third Rome”. It considered itself as the only Christian state: the first Rome had already fallen away from the true belief centuries ago; the Second Rome, Constantinople, had been punished by God in 1453 for its attempts at reunion with the ; and now there was Moscow, the Third Rome, and ‘there will never be a fourth one’. This also implied that the ruler of Moscow had become a ‘new Constantine’ (novyi Konstantin). But again we must point to history’s irony. In creating this political myth Russia used the same concepts and paradigms as did Western rulers in the Middle Ages: Clovis had already been called novus Constantinus, and so was Charlemagne who, moreover, called his capital Aachen, Roma Secunda. The German emperors of the Holy Roman Empire also considered themselves to be the successors of the Roman emperors. In the sixteenth century the King of Anglican England called himself defensor fidei, as did the Tsar of Ortho- dox Russia (khranitel’ very), and John Foxe compared Queen Elizabeth’s church policy to that of Constantine the Great, just as the Russians did with the religious policy of Ivan the Terrible. And there is more. For John Milton there existed an exclusive relation between God and the new Israel of the English nation, and the Dutch Protes- tants thought similarly about their own nation. All of this can be compared to what metropolitan Silvestr had done before by calling the Russian people novyi Izrail. These examples will suffice to demonstrate the following paradox: the ideology by which sixteenth-century Moscovian Russia differentiated itself from the West also confirmed that it stood in a European tradition of reli- gious-political myth making and of ideological thinking. In sixteenth-century Moscow also originated another religious cliché that later was frequently used to demarcate Russia from Europe: “Holy Rus”. But it is often forgotten that its inventor, Andrei Kurbski, used it without the religious ideology attached to it by later authors. For Kurbski it was just 242 WIL VAN DEN BERCKEN a nostalgic name for Russia’s Christian past. The Russia of Ivan the Terrible had lost its religious character and had become as unchristian as the rest of Europe. Kurbski combined criticism of Russia with that of Europe as a whole:

‘Where is Europe, rich in the wisdom of the true faith? Where is the famous city of Constantine, which through its piety was the centre of the whole world? Where are the shining lands of the Serbs and Bulgarians, new in the faith, their great power and prosperous cities?…And if we now turn the eye of our soul to the Western lands, let us look and carefully consider: where is the capital Rome in which the successor of the apostle Peter, the old [i.e., before the schism] pope lived? Where is Italy, that the apostles themselves converted; where is Spain, that the apostle Paul converted?… Where is the great Germany?’4

From the sixteenth century on we have to distinguish between Russia and Ukraine. As part of the Polish kingdom, western Ukraine politically belonged to Central Europe. Through the Church Union of Brest in 1596 it became more connected with Europe also religiously. Russia and Ukraine each went their own way. Ukraine did not become the mediator between Europe and Russia, nor did the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine create a bridge between Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

ST. PETERSBURG: SECULARISATION AND EUROPEANISATION

With Peter the Great Russia’s orientation towards Europe became fully explicit. Originally Peters’ choice for Europe was mainly motivated by the technical, commercial and political reasons. It was not a Russian variant of philosoph- ical , religious reformation or the emerging Enlightenment. Thanks to Peter the Great eighteenth-century Russia became acquainted with the major developments in European culture. Italian, French and German baroque and classicist architects created in St. Petersburg a new variant of a European city, not an imitation.

4 A.M. Kurbskiî, Sowineniq, pod. red. G. Kunceviwa (St. Petersburg, 1914). Ger- man trans. in H. Schaeder, Moskau das Dritte Rom (Darmstadt, 1957), pp. 124-125. Kurb- ski also deplored the loss of Christian faith in Northern Africa and in the Middle East. THE HISTORICAL PLACE OF RUSSIA AND UKRAINE 243

Not only through its architecture but also by its name, St. Petersburg became the expression of how Russia had its place in the European cultural space: “Sankt Peterburg” is a German name; the cathedral, St. Peter and St. Paul’s, was named after the apostles of Rome, not after the “Russian” apostle St. Andrew; the city’s coats of arms - two inverted anchors instead of keys – is a transmutation of those of the pope; the tsar now becomes the imper- ator, and his advisory college the senat. The new capital of Russia thus reflects again this constant fascination with classical Rome. In this, St. Petersburg was a forerunner of other European capitals later in the eighteenth and in the begin- ning of the nineteenth century. They all would use neo-classical architecture and symbols to enhance their political status (and as did the capital of the young United States of America). In St. Petersburg Russia had joined Europe. Oil painting and sculptures, which were absent in Russia before the eighteenth century because of religious restrictions, were rapidly becoming familiar items, as were secular literature and theatre. Catherine the Great, of German descent, introduced French culture into Russia and in her concept for a Russian con- stitution (Nakaz) explicitly declared that ‘Russia is a European state’. The Europeanisation of eighteenth-century Russia was limited to the intel- ligentsia, a new class that would change the social structures of Russia. For them Europeanisation also meant secularisation and accommodation to the changes that were taking place in Europe as a whole. The intelligentsia turned away from Orthodoxy and opted for Western phenomena like freemasonry, deism and atheism. The Orthodox church was reduced to an instrument in the hands of the state to control the peasants. To counter the Church’s anti-Western attitude, Peter imposed on her a Lutheran model of church leadership. Some of its leaders had been in con- tact with the West through Ukraine and Poland but they had no intention of modernising the church. Metropolitan Stefan Yavorski studied Roman Catholic apologetics to counter , while Feofan Prokopovich, who had studied in Rome, preferred Protestantism to Catholicism. Russian Orthodox theology thus became “contaminated” with Latin , but not to its advantage. Peter and Catharine’s anti-monastic policy followed the general anti-clerical attitude of eighteenth century absolutism. Catharine considered herself the chef de l’église in her state. Russia’s contact with Europe in the eighteenth century did not have any positive results for the Orthodox Church. Even more than in Western Europe, 244 WIL VAN DEN BERCKEN the Church remained uninfluenced by contemporary developments in art, science and philosophy. But in many other respects Russia grew closer to Europe, by its Academy of Sciences, its Academy of Arts and its first university (the latest in Moscow), its newspapers and book import. The Enlightenment may not have produced the same fruits as it did in the rest of Europe, but it meant a decisive break with the traditional Orthodox monoculture of the Russian state. In the political field Western influence ended in a dead way. Catharine can- celled her own Nakaz and was not inclined to implement the modern polit- ical ideas in Russia. A Western woman thus opposed the introduction of the social and political ideas of the Enlightenment in Russia on a moment when this could have been possible. One more paradox!

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: BECOMING A PART OF EUROPE

If the results of the contacts in matters of religion were meager indeed, there was one positive result that is worth mentioning. Tsar Alexander I was attracted to German pietism and tried to promote knowledge of the in Russia. He created a Russian Bible Society and started the translation of the Bible into modern Russian. This enterprise was stopped for some decades after his death. An interesting connection between Christianity and Europeanism was Alexander’s attempt at creating a political alliance with Austria and . Important is the fact that a Russian Tsar subordinated Orthodox exclusivity to Christianity as a common European factor. And although the Holy Alliance was not a great political success, it brought Russia, and its Tsar, an equal political position on the international scene as it became actively involved in European politics with the Napoleontic wars. Contrary to the eighteenth century, Orthodoxy now played an important role in the intellectual debate on Russian identity, mainly through individ- ual thinkers, the so-called Slavophiles. The debate started in 1836 with the publication of the first Lettre philosophique by Pyotr Chaadaev. This letter was a provocative formulation of the identity problem of Russia, of the question whether Russia belonged to the East or to the West. Chaadaev con- cluded that Russia belonged to neither. Russia had no identity at all, it was a no man’s land in the Eurasian continent. ‘Leaning on China with one elbow THE HISTORICAL PLACE OF RUSSIA AND UKRAINE 245 and on Germany with the other, Russia should have allowed the two great principles of human intelligence, imagination and reason, to come together in its own civilisation’. But Russia had learned nothing from either civilisation, it appeared to be an illegal child of history, without a past, and even forgot- ten by God.5 Chaadaev explains the unhappy fate of Russia by its choice for Byzantine Christianity against that of Western mediaeval European civilisation. Chaadaev had a quite romantic view on the Catholic Middle Ages, when ‘a life giving idea of unity was permeating all of Europe’. And although this unity was distorted by the Reformation, Christianity had had a permanent effect on the formation of a European identity.

‘The peoples of Europe have a common physiognomy, a family feeling [physionomie commune, un air de famille]. Despite the general division of these peoples into a Latin and a Teutonic branch, into southern and northern types, there is a common bond which unites them all in one and the same group, as is clear to anyone who has steeped himself in their general history. You know that it is not so long ago that the whole of Europe called itself Christendom [que toute l’Europe s’appelait la Chrétienté] and that this word had a meaning in public law. In addition to this common character, each of these peoples has its own special character, which is a matter of history and tradition, that form the legacy of the ideas of these peoples […] They are the ideas of duty, justice, law and order. They derive directly from the events which have made the society there; they form the building blocks of the social world of those lands. That is the atmosphere of the West; it is more than mere history or psychol- ogy, it is the physiology of the European man [la physiologie de l’homme de l’Europe]’.6

This is one of the first expressions of the idea of a common European identity, most remarkably formulated by a Russian. Chaadaev deplored the fact that Russia did not belong to that Europe, that Christianity had not

5 French and Russian text in: P.Q. Waadaev, Polnoe sobranie sowineniî i izbran- nxe pisàma, pod red. Z.A. Kamenskogo (Moscow, 1991). First letter, vol. I, pp. 86- 106. 6 Ibid., pp. 93-94. 246 WIL VAN DEN BERCKEN produced the same civil virtues and social values in his country. ‘Even though we are Christians, the fruit of Christianity has not ripened among us’.7 How- ever, Chaadaev was not blind for the bad sides of mediaeval Europe: super- stition, wars of religion, religious intolerance, all ending in ‘the imperfection, evil and lawlessness of present-day European society’. But all this notwith- standing, Europe ‘contains the principle of a continuous progress’.8 Chaadaev saw another essential difference between Russia and Europe in the absence of a philosophical tradition: ‘We all lack a certain method of the spirit and a certain logic, and the syllogism of the West is unknown to us […] We have not contributed to the progress of the human spirit in a single respect, and the progress that we have made we have spoiled’. In a letter to his favourite philosopher Friedrich Schelling, Chaadaev complained that European philosophy hardly reaches Russia and that Schelling’s latest work is not known there yet: ‘We belong to another solar system; a bright ray that comes from a star of your world must cover an enormous distance to reach our world and often gets lost on its way’.9 That is the opposite of the ex oriente lux. Chaadaev’s devastating criticism of his own country was exaggerated and did not do justice to Russia’s history. Chaadaev’s own personality was the best proof against his judgement. As a matter of fact, he was the very incar- nation of Russia’s contacts with Europe: he wrote in French, was familiar with German idealism, and an ardent anglophile. Moreover, during Chaadaev’s lifetime Russia was already beginning to enrich Europe’s literature with its own contributions, starting with Chaadaev’s friend Pushkin. And politically it enjoyed respect as an ally against Napoleon. Afterwards Chaadaev modified his negative views of Russia and managed to see a place for it in Europe: because Russia was a tabula rasa it could learn from Europe and avoid its mistakes, and thus offer a unique contribution to Europe’s spiritual development. In the end, Chaadaev even promoted a

7 Chaadaev made this statement about Christian Europe independent from ’ Die Christenheit Europa. There are no signs that he knew Novalis’ posthumously pub- lished essay of 1826. Western scholars who have discussed this idea of Novalis never refer to Chaadaev (who wrote in French), which illustrates the one-sided perspective of much of the discussion. 8 Ibid., p. 103. 9 Vol. II, p. 77. THE HISTORICAL PLACE OF RUSSIA AND UKRAINE 247 slavophile concept of Russia’s mission to Europe. But his unique combina- tion of slavophilism with Catholicism did make him an untypical represen- tative of the Russian intelligentsia. Only Vladimir Solovyov in the 1880s drew attention again to the central role the Catholic Church should play in uniting Russia with Europe. His book La Russie et l’Église universelle (1889) is the work of a theologian, rather than of a romantic philosopher, and an ardent ecumenical plea for a reunion of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, with each Church keeping to its own traditions. But the time was not ripe for ecumenism and Solovyov’s political theory (cooperation between Pope and Tsar) was not the right way to achieve it. For a while Sergei Bulgakow also was an adherent of this idea of a Chris- tian Europe. In U sten Khersonesa [At the Walls of Cherson] he expressed a remarkably positive view on Christian Europe, quite in the spirit of Chaadaev and Solovyov. And although Bulgakov later rejected his pro-Catholic stand- point, he was historically correct in writing that when Russia originally accepted Christianity there was still no confessional division between East and West, and that therefore

‘with Orthodoxy Rus’ accepted the universal Christian faith and we became a branch of the one Ecumenical Church. As a result we were not only born to eternal life but also destined to a historical existence as part of the one Christian Europe in which Christian culture must be kindled. Here Russia is born as a Christian European land which had its particular way and particular fate, though these were indissolubly bound up with the fate of the whole of Christian Europe…The pagan and barbarian of yesterday becomes a homo christianus, and in the perspective of what was then a still mysterious and dark future that means at the same time a homo Europeus’. 10

Bulgakov’s position is interesting in that he shares Chaadaev’s idea of the one undivided Christian Europe, but without blaming Russia’s choice for Byzan- tium instead of Rome. The schism of 1054 happened without Russia’s own

10 S. Bulgakov, U sten Hersonisa, pod red. A.M. Mosina (St. Petersburg 1993), p. 11. Later on Bulgakov rejected his pro-Catholic stance in this manuscript of 1922, which he did not publish himself. 248 WIL VAN DEN BERCKEN doing and tragically ‘separated Russia from Christian Western Europe by a Chinese wall’.

THE SLAVOPHILES: THE PARADOXICAL PROOF OF BEING A EUROPEAN

Chaadaev inspired the Slavophiles, who further elaborated his idea of Rus- sia’s uniqueness in the other direction. Orthodoxy had not put Russia behind Europe, but on the contrary had saved it from Catholic despotism and Protes- tant anarchism. Aleksey Khomyakov, the most prominent representative of slavophilism in Russia, was the first explicitly to formulate the unique posi- tion of the Orthodox Church compared to Western Christian denomina- tions and to give a theological basis to Russia’s own religious character. Orthodoxy differed from Catholicism and Protestantism by ’, a feeling of Christian communality, the perfect balance of freedom and obe- dience. His qualification communions occidentales for Catholicism and Protes- tantism was typical of the slavophiles’ mixing ecclesiology with the geo- graphical and ideological East-West paradigm.11 This mixture of theology and slavophilism or patriotism directly and indirectly influenced Russian Orthodoxy’s views on Catholicism until today. Apart from ecclesiology another target of slavophile criticism were West- ern political ideas and values: the multiparty-system and the antagonism it created, legalism and formalism in the idea of justice, capitalism in econ- omy, and materialism and individualism in social behaviour. The Slavophiles already saw the United States as the summit of a materialistic and hedonistic society. Against the Western values as they had defined them, the Slavophiles put their romantic idealisation of the organic unity of Russian society, symbolised by the monarch, a non-formalist, natural concept of justice, the innate collectivism of the Russian people, that cor- responds to the Orthodox sobornost’, and the deep religiosity of the Russian peasant.

11 See the series of articles ‘Quelques mots par un chrétien orthodoxe sur les communions occidentales’, in A.S. Khomiakoff, L’Eglise latine et le protestantisme au point de vue de l’Église d’Orient (Lausanne, 1872; reprint Farnborough, 1969). Khomiakov wrote these articles in response to the Archbishop of Paris who in 1855 had called for ‘a crusade against the Pho- tians’. The latter name is much less friendly than Khomiakov’s indication of the Catholic Church as a ‘Western communion’. THE HISTORICAL PLACE OF RUSSIA AND UKRAINE 249

The Slavophiles were no narrow-minded nationalists. On the contrary, they studied and travelled in Europe, were well acquainted with German ide- alism and French traditionalism, and introduced European romantic con- cepts in Russia using them for their own expression of its national identity. In fact their involvement in the revival of national culture and re-evaluation of national history was entirely in accordance with the nationalist mood among all European peoples in the nineteenth century. Just as was the case with the “Moscow-Third Rome” doctrine, the confirmation of Russia’s samobytnost’ (“uniqueness”, the Russian translation of German Eigentüm- lichkeit) is once again a paradoxical proof of its being tributary to the wider European tradition. Criticism of atheism and individualism was of course not an exclusively Russian phenomenon; it existed in Western Christianity as well. And Niko- lai Danilevsky’s panslavist philosophy of the end of Western civilisation resem- bles Spengler’s vision of the Untergang des Abendlandes. Even the anti-mod- ernism of the Byzantinophile Konstantin Leontyev was just one brand of reactionary thinking in Europe at that epoch. The ambiguity of the theme of Russia’s uniqueness becomes clear with Dostoevsky who pointed at the ‘spiritual cemetery of Europe’ but at the same time called it ‘our second fatherland’ and urged his compatriots to integrate Europe’s culture into Russian “panhumanity”. It was Vladimir Solovyov who succeeded best of all in this integration pro- ject and who was the most conscious European Russian. His devastating crit- icism of slavophilism and Byzantinophilism also made him a passionate advo- cate of Christian universalism. By his thoroughgoing dialogue with Western philosophy, Vladimir Solovyov is the best example of Russia’s intellectual integration into Europe. We are now in a better position to see that Russian intellectual life of the nineteenth century was part and parcel of the European cultural space. It was not only the “Westernisers” – the revolutionaries, anarchists, socialists, parlementarists and liberals – who were oriented towards Europe. They built on Montesquieu, Saint Simon, Comte and Marx. But the Slavophiles too found some of their inspiration in the West when formulating their views and visions with the help of Herder, Hegel, Schelling, and De Maitre. The whole debate between Russophiles and Occidentalists showed how freely educated Russians moved in the European intellectual space, in which they created a 250 WIL VAN DEN BERCKEN new sub-identity. They were not imitating Europe, they were just one more kind of Europeans along with the Greeks, the English or the Spanish who also differed much among each other.

ARTISTIC ENRICHMENT OF EUROPE

Apart from the theoretical and sometimes artificial debates between slavophiles and “Westernizers”, there were also more spontaneous developments of Rus- sia’s culture that gave evidence of its place on the European cultural scene. In a quite natural way, nineteenth- century Russia was adding its own con- tribution to European culture: on the tree of European culture grew a new branch, a Russian one, and it began with literature. It was a younger one than the English, German or French branches, but for that reason also one of the highest. In a remarkably short time, Russian literature became most promi- nent in European literature. In an explosion of literary vitality Russia com- pensated for its delay: Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov and others helped create another great national literature in Europe, equal to the French, German or Italian literary traditions. Also in other fields, Russia opened its great potential to the world. Since Tschaikovsky (the European writing of his name has even overruled Russian orthography) classical music has been constantly enriched by Russian com- posers, such as Rimsky-Korsakov, Moesorgsky, Strawinsky, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Shostakovich. In painting nineteenth-century Russians contributed to all major tradi- tions, from romanticism, to realism and symbolism. It is sometimes difficult to define the style of a certain painting as “typically” Russian, Italian or French: they all belong to a pan-European art. At the beginning of the twentieth century Russian avant-garde paint- ing played a pioneer role. Sergei Diagilev brought Russian art to Paris, the cultural heart of Europe, and French painters visited Moscow to dis- cover the roots of painting in Russian iconography. This most fruitful period in Russian art was halted after the communist takeover. But abroad Russian artistic tradition continued to flourish in the oeuvre of Kandinsky and Chagal. The intense connections of modern Russia with Europe in the arts only made more apparent that in politics it lagged far behind. The freedom of mind THE HISTORICAL PLACE OF RUSSIA AND UKRAINE 251 which had created Russian culture in the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century had no effect on political and social thinking.

AFTER COMMUNISM: DEFENDING THE CHRISTIAN ROOTS OF EUROPE

The Bolshevik revolution put an end to the openness towards Europe. Stal- inism isolated Russia entirely from Western Europe, and Asiatic despotism came instead. But Soviet communism also was as much a European phe- nomenon as it took its inspiration from a German philosopher and in many ways resembled Western fascist regimes. A paradoxical effect of the revolution was that Russian religious-philo- sophical thinking came into contact with Western traditions after 1917. , Sergei Bulgakov, Simeon Frank and Lev Shestov reflected on their Orthodox heritage within the broader framework of modern Euro- pean philosophical and theological thinking. Russian philosophy left behind its traditional ideological East-West paradigm. Russian theology regained a trans-national character in the works of George Florovsky and other exile theologians of the so-called neopatristic school. In turn, the West became acquainted with Russian Orthodoxy through translation in French or English of the works of the Russian emigrants. And since the demise of communism Russian theology as developed in the West has returned home and plays an important role in the development of the- ology in Russia. This brings us to the current situation. In its search for a new national iden- tity after the collapse of communism Russia is not only constructing various religious-nationalistic ideologies, but also rediscovering its Christian roots. This is again paradoxical and therefore, as we have seen, characteristic for the entire history of Russia’s relationship with Europe. The Orthodox Church plays an active role in the recent debate on the relation of Russia and Europe. The debate is twofold: it has to do with the attitude towards the West in the context of globalisation and towards the European Union in particular. With regard to globalisation, the Russian Church opposes Western hedo- nist culture which has been spreading rapidly in Russia through television and commerce since the 1990s. The contrast with the austerity of the commu- nist era has shocked clerics and neoslavophiles alike. They consider Western materialism as a threat to traditional Russian values. Morally speaking they 252 WIL VAN DEN BERCKEN may be right, but sociologically it is not the right diagnosis. Striving for mate- rial welfare is not limited to Western societies only. Moreover, it is not just a cause of concern for Russia. Catholic and Protestant churches in the West have the same worries, and anti-globalist tendencies exist also in Western conservative circles. Instead of seeking an answer to modern hedonism in neoslavophile religious thinking, it would be a more realistic approach and more in accordance with the spirit of Christianity to cooperate with Catholic and Protestant churches in countering excessive materialism and the negative effects of globalisation such as cultural egalitarisation and national alienation. With regard to the European Union, the is indeed engaged in religious cooperation. As a member of the Conference of European Churches (CEC), she has actively participated in the assemblies of the CEC in Basel (1989) and Graz (1998), and she will be present at the next one in Sibiu in 2007. The meeting in Sibiu is also meant to express the Christian responsibility for Europe of all the Orthodox churches in Eastern and South Eastern Europe. That brings us to the position of the Moscow Patriarchate with regard to the recent discussion of the European Constitution. In 2003 Patriarch Aleksi II and Metropolitan Kirill, head of the Department for External Church Relations, have argued on several occasions that the Christian character of European culture should be mentioned in the new European Constitution. On 14 February 2003 Metropolitan Kirill wrote an open letter to Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the chairman of the Draft Commision for the European Constitution.12 He criticized the decision of the commission not to make any reference in the outline for the constitution to Christianity as one of Europe’s cultural roots. Kirill compared the draft text on this point to the way Soviet ideology used to deal with religion. In both, religious convictions are regarded as a private matter that have no impact on the social level. On 27 May 2003 the Department for External Church Relations reacted to the published “Draft Treaty Establishing the Constitution of the Euro- pean Union” and regretted that Christianity is not mentioned. The State- ment points to ‘the historical incorrectness’ in the Draft Preamble of only naming the Greco-Roman heritage and the Enlightenment as the sources of European civilisation. By that the Draft

12 http:/www.russian-orthodox-church.org.ru/ne302143.htm THE HISTORICAL PLACE OF RUSSIA AND UKRAINE 253

‘completely ignores the historical period from the 4th to the 18th centuries when Christianity was the dominant influence in the development of the European nations. How the presence of the magnificent cathedrals in Europe and the reasons why great composers, artists and writers used bib- lical and church subjects in their creative works can be explained to the younger generations of Europeans? The approach in the Draft means a reshaping of history according to certain ideological patterns. We know only too well from the history of Russia what the dictate of one particu- lar worldview implies. Unfortunately, a special reference to the philosophical currents of the Enlightenment also reveals an ideological bias of the Draft. A reference to the ideas of the Enlightenment is no more ideologically neutral than a reference to a particular religion’.13

Metropolitan Kirill, the author of the Statement, correctly pointed out that the Enlightenment indeed contained a strong antireligious element. So the only objective way of presenting the evidence, the Statement concludes, would be ‘to mention Enlightenment along with Christian inheritance and perhaps that of other religions visibly present in Europe’. Beside historical arguments the Russian Church also uses moral arguments in her defence of a Christian Europe. They are less convincing than the his- torical arguments, but they are understandable from the Orthodox as well as the Catholic position. After the adoption of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the European Constitution in Nice, Patriarch Aleksi II spoke about these moral values in a letter from 14 December 2003 to Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens and to Pope John Paul II. Aleksi appreciated the emphasis on human rights in the Charter, but he added that the ‘spiritual and moral basis of human dignity is insufficiently expressed in it’. The document only confirms ‘humanist values in European heritage which are not absolute priorities in an integral religious view of life’. This is the case with giving equal rights to different ‘sexual orientations’.14 The Russian Orthodox Church has a great interest in the spiritual and cultural developments that take place within the European Union, and this not only because some of its members are citizens of the Union (not only in 13 http://www.russian-orthodox-church.org.ru/ne306061.htm 14 http://www.russian-orthodox-church.org.ru/ne012141.htm 254 WIL VAN DEN BERCKEN the Baltic states), but also, I think, because the Russian Church considers itself to be a part of the European religious-cultural space which does not fully over- lap with the political-economic space of the EU. As proof of its commitment to the EU and to foster a dialogue with the European Institutions the Moscow Patriarchate has established in 2002 an offi- cial Representation of the Russian Orthodox Church to the European Insti- tutions in Brussels. Its head is Bishop Ilarion Alfeyev of Vienna. He has started in 2003 the e-bulletin Europaica (www.orthodoxeurope.org) which publishes essays in English, French and German. Bishop Ilarion actively prop- agates Orthodox, and in fact also Catholic, social and ethical value systems against liberal humanism, ethical relativism and militant secularism. He calls for Catholic-Orthodox alliance in this field. Ilarion especially criticises the “militant secularism” in the Draft of the European Constitution, which like former Soviet “militant atheism” denies Christianity its role in European culture. Ilarion explains the ‘pathological laic- ité’ of the French and their opposition to any reference to Christianity as the result of the country’s traumatic experiences with the Roman Catholic Church. In Orthodox countries, however, there is no such religious trauma, Ilarion says. Therefore he considers it to be a duty of the Orthodox countries in the EU, Greece, Cyprus, and the new members Bulgaria and Romania, together with the Catholic Church, to try to preserve the place of Christianity and other religions in the European public sphere. Bishop Ilarion pleads for an active role of the Churches in European policy to preserve the Christian character of Europe while fully recognizing the separation of Church and State.15 The Russian Orthodox Church wants to protect the Christian identity of Europe not only against the increasing secularisation of Europe, but also against the growing influence of Islam in Europe. Although she acknowl- edges the right of existence of Islam in Europe, the Russian Orthodox Church joins the Roman Catholic Church and many Protestant Churches in their opposition towards granting Turkey full EU membership. Not surprisingly Greece takes the lead in the course of action. In a speech to European deputies in Brussels on 8 October 2003, Archbishop Christodou- los of Athens has explained that it is necessary to add a reference to Christianity

15 See the issues of Europaica in 2004 and 2005 (www.orthodoxeurope.org) and an arti- cle by Bishop Ilarion in the Moscow Church messenger Cerkovnxî vestnik, no. 283 (March 2004), p. 8. THE HISTORICAL PLACE OF RUSSIA AND UKRAINE 255 in the Constitution as one of the pillars of the European spirit, along with Greek paideia, the Roman concept of civil justice, humanism and the great political currents, to identify the character of European civilisation. Turkey is not a part of this civilisation and should therefore be given only ‘the great- est possible degree of cooperation’. Christodoulos emphasised that he was not ignoring the meaning of Islam and other religions but merely ‘asking that the European does not feel a stranger in his own home and preventing the political assassination of the European spirit’.16 There is a more practical element in the Orthodox, c.q. Christian, argu- mentation with regard to Turkey. In a statement of the Conference of Euro- pean Churches on Turkey of February 2004 it is said that the EU must not be based solely on geopolitical interests and economical cooperation, but European integration should lead to ‘a community of shared values’, includ- ing human rights. As long as religious minorities do not have the right to organise their own theological education, Turkey does not comply with the right of religious freedom of its citizens. The Turkish government should also reopen the Greek Orthodox seminary in Halki which was closed in 1958. Also the fact that the Turkish government does not recognise the title of “Ecu- menical Patriarch” for the patriarch in Istanbul and restricts his functioning, is called a violation of the right of religious freedom.17 The Russian Orthodox Church does not exclude the possibility that as a EU member Turkey could function as a bridge between Europe and the Islamic world, but she argues that EU membership would create the insolv- able problem that other mediterranean Islamic countries could claim the right of EU membership on the basis of their common history with Europe. The fear for the Islamisation of Europe has not prevented the Russian Orthodox Church from defending the right of religious freedom for Muslims in Europe. A spokesman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate called the decision of the French government to ban Islamic dress in schools, ‘a desperate act of a secularised civilisation’ and ‘a restriction of the right of publicly expressing religious conviction’.18

16 Europaica 26 (November 2003). In Europaica 41 (May 2004) Christodoulos gives a rather nationalistic and unscholarly historical view on the Christian identity of Europe. 17 Europaica 45 (July 2004). 18 Service Orthodoxe de Presse, Sept.-Oct. 2004, p. 11. 256 WIL VAN DEN BERCKEN

CONCLUSION

In defending the Christian values in the debate about European identity, the Orthodox Church shares the same historical, cultural and ethical arguments as the Roman Catholic Church. The two churches discovered this common interest only recently. For centuries Christian religion has played a formative role in the creation of a European identity and has left an indelible mark, even though Christianity was theologically and ideologically divided. When toute l’Europe s’appelait la Chrétienté (at least formally), the churches never really cared about this European identity. In the twentieth-first century the idea of a Christian Europe has largely gone and the various churches now seemingly can do no more than trying to keep alive its memory and its rich cultural heritage. But Christianity is after all a universal religion, and not just the product of European civilisation.