Russian Ecclesiology: the stages of Russian Orthodox Historicism

The adoption of Orthodoxy by the Grand Duke of Kiev Vladimir was the starting point of Christian historicity, which covers almost the entire history of Russia - with the exception of the Soviet period and the era of liberal reforms. This historicity itself was a complex and multidimensional process, which it would be wrong to describe as a gradual and unidirectional penetration of Byzantine Orthodox culture into the popular environment, in parallel with the displacement of pre-Christian ('pagan') ideas. Rather, we are talking about different phases of the temporal synthesis between Byzantinism and East Slavic demetriac civilisation, phases determined by the different correlation of the main structures - Byzantine ideology at the elite level and the reception of Christianity by the people as such.

We can distinguish the following phases determined by the different configuration of this relationship.

1. The beginning of the synthesis and formation of the main core of the Russian-Christian perception (10th-12th centuries - Kievan centralism);
2. Primary differentiation in the formation of the Russian Orthodox tradition according to the poles of the Russian world fracture (centuries);
3. Formation of two poles of the Orthodox tradition in the Mongol era - Vladimir's Russia (Moscow) and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (centuries);
4. Formation of Moscow Orthodoxy (Moscow the Third Rome) - centuries;
5. Attempt to 'purify' Orthodoxy from 'pagan' overlays (Bogolyubtsy circle), modernisation and schism (century);
6. Modernist Orthodoxy, Western Russian influence and parallel formation of Old Believers in the Russian Empire in the 18th century;
7. Slavophilia and Orthodox conservatism (eldership, revival of Byzantinism) - late 19th century;
8. Sophistics, religious research of Silver Age figures and Unificationism projects - late 20th century;
9. Persecution and marginalisation of the Church in the Soviet period (1917-1991);
10. The abolition of normative atheistic ideology and a partial return to orthodoxy during the liberal reforms and the first decades of the millennium.

Each of these historical periods had its own semantics and place in the general structure of Russian history. At the same time, the relationship between popular faith and official ideology also changed, which created a special configuration of the proportions of Russian Orthodoxy in each of the phases.

The first phase was characterised by a rather loose correlation between Christian and pre-Christian elements, when the elites - including the Orthodox priesthood, led by the Byzantine episcopate and, more broadly, the Greek masters - were generally tolerant of popular beliefs and only resorted to repression when pagans directly challenged the new religion, calling for rebellion against it and a return to polytheism. This initial tolerance allowed the original core of Russian Orthodoxy to emerge, to build deep structures of correspondences and semantic homologies between the Indo-European (but especially peasant!) tradition of the ancient Slavs and the Christian religion in its Byzantine form.

In the second phase, this worldview, which had developed in general outlines and was common to all parts of Kievan Rus', began to partially divide, repeating on a cultural level the political geography of fragmentation. However, the religious and political homology was partial and relative, and the religious and cultural commonality in general prevailed over the gradual estrangement of Western Rus' (Galicia-Volhynia and Polotsk) from the growing strength of Eastern Rus' (Rostov-Suzdal, later Vladimir), as well as a certain isolation of Northern Rus' (Novgorod and Pskov). However, already in this period a stylistic division between the two poles of Russian Orthodoxy - the western and the eastern - was already emerging in a very rough and almost imperceptible manner. On the Western Orthodoxy, the neighbouring Catholic nations (primarily Poles and Hungarians, as well as Rome itself) exerted a much greater influence than on Vladimir's Russia, which remained more closely linked not only to Byzantium, but also to the core of Russian Orthodoxy formed during the first phase. It could be said that the very centre of the Russian Orthodox tradition already began to shift eastwards at this stage.

In the Mongol era, this division, which had emerged in the second phase of Orthodox historicity, became even more pronounced, as Eastern and Western Russia found themselves in the context of two different polarities: the Golden Horde and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which joined Catholic Poland after the Krevsky Union. While the Mongols, whose rulers after Khan Uzbek (c. 1283 - 1341) converted to Islam, were tolerant or at least indifferent to the orthodoxy of their Russian subjects, Catholic Poland, on the contrary, actively sought to influence the Russian population and its religious ideas. This further exacerbated the differences, but did not lead to a loss of basic unity. At the same time, in western Russia the official ideology of the elites came closer to Catholicism, while the masses of the people - the peasants - remained firm adherents of the Orthodox tradition, which resulted in a particular tension between the official ideology and the worldview of the common people in this part of the Russian world. In eastern Russia during the Mongol period, this stratification did not occur, which fully manifested itself in the next phase.

The fourth phase manifested itself particularly vividly in Muscovite Russia, where after the end of the Golden Horde rule, a new ideology was formed: Russian Catechism (Moscow - the Third Rome), when the fall of Byzantium and the almost synchronous disappearance of the Golden Horde resulted in the transfer of the stronghold mission of universal Orthodoxy to the Russian state and people. In this case, the distinctiveness of Russian Orthodoxy (in its fundamental form, already Kyivan and preserved in eastern Russia) was realised as proof of eschatological election. Something similar we find a little earlier in the Bulgarians (in the First and Second Kingdom) and in the Serbian power, especially in the time of Dusan the Strong (1308 - 1355)[1], and to some extent also in the Wallachia of Vlad III (1431 - 1476) and Moldavia of Stefan cel Mare[2] (1429 - 1504). In this phase and especially in the era of Ivan IV (1530-1584), there is a harmonisation of popular and official Christianity, in a new turn that re-proposes the synthesis of elite and people of the early Kievan period. Here not only does Christian consciousness reach the highest depths of popular culture, but also the popular spirit rises to the highest heights of state power, influencing the personality of the ruler himself, who becomes the first Russian tsar in history (previously the supreme ruler of the Russian state was the Grand Duke).

In the next phase, comprising the Time of Troubles and the early Romanovs, the Moscow synthesis of the Age of the Terrible began to gradually weaken. The Bogolian circle, in which the leading figures of the coming schism, both Patriarch Nikon (1605 -- 1681) and Protopope Avvakum (1620 -- 1682), created around Alexis Michailovich (1629 -1676), set themselves the task of a new purification of Christianity from the deposits of popular tradition, which, however, received a different interpretation from the supporters of Nikon's revision of the books and ecclesiastical reforms and the Old Believers who sided with Avvakum. The former are in favour of a certain modernisation of the tradition in the spirit of the Russian-Western approach (for pragmatic purposes to facilitate Poland's conquest of Russian-Western lands), while the latter, on the contrary, hold firmly to Moscow Orthodoxy and its foundations, since they see in it the guarantee of the fulfilment of Russia's choice and catechetical mission. All this results in a split, in which the official Orthodoxy, which has won the victory among the elite, pursues the line of modernisation far more than Nikon himself, who had initiated the reforms, had foreseen, and the Old Belief spreads widely among the people, although it does not gain a decisive advantage (largely due to the repression of the Old Believers by the state). Thus the 'New Belief' takes an increasingly hostile stance towards 'popular orthodoxy', while the Old Belief tries to artificially fix the Moscow style, turning tradition into a conservative ideology. At the same time, the Old Believers initially link the 'apostasy' of Nikon and his supporters with the influence of western Russia, giving the religious disputes a geopolitical dimension, which we notice already from the era of fragmentation (second phase).

In the sixth phase, the transformations of Russian Orthodoxy continued along the trajectories traced by the schism. At the level of the elite, after Peter, the reconstruction of the Orthodox tradition continues in a modernist key, and not so much in a Western Russian key, as at the beginning of Nikon's reforms, and partly Greek (taking into account the role of the Greek patriarchs in the Council of 1666-1667), but directly Western European (here the Catholic and Protestant motifs strongly increase). This process is accompanied by secularisation and a clear separation of the ruling aristocracy from the core of the people. The peasant becomes an object and a commodity, no longer recognised. In response to this, Vetero-believism spreads among the people and numerous new apocalyptic and ecstatic sects arise, directly or indirectly challenging the official orthodoxy. In these trends, many pre-Christian motifs of the peasant civilisation, carefully preserved by the Old Believers in their Christianised form and which burst forth in new grotesque forms in the Russian sects, make themselves felt again. At the same time, Western Russian Orthodoxy also appears at some point more 'conservative' than the modernist and secular tendencies of the post-Petrine period (the 18th century), which further complicates the whole picture.

Starting from the end of the 18th century, the reverse process gradually develops: Russian Orthodoxy (in its popular, Byzantine-Moscow dimension) gradually regains its position in Russian society as a whole. This process is linked to the revival of the Elders and the Athonite Hesychasm (in parallel in Moldavia and Russia) and, later, to the Slavophile movement, which criticised the modernisation and Europeanisation of the Petrine era and called for a return to the ideals of Muscovite Russia and a corresponding worldview uniting the two parts of Russian society: the westernised (but still monarchical and nominally Orthodox) elite and the Russian (peasant) people. Thus for the third time - this time as a project and understanding of the historical and religious destiny of the Russian people - a religious synthesis is attempted between the ruling elite and the common people. Slavophilism gradually became almost the official ideology of the tsarist regime and inspired the culture of the Russian Golden Age. Symbolically, the Unitarian Faith, which aims to unite the old rite and the official church hierarchy, was established exactly in 1800, marking a milestone in religious historicity.

After the Slavophiles, the problem of popular religiosity, its relationship with official orthodoxy and the state, was placed at the centre of attention during the Silver Age of Russian culture. In Vladimir Soloviev, the founder of Russian religious philosophy, the attempt to understand the distinctiveness of Russian Orthodoxy and its relationship with the Russian state, universal Christianity and the history of European societies led to the most important thesis of the unity and gestalt of the Holy Sophia as the key to understanding Russian identity and mission in world history. At the same time, the figures of the Russian Silver Age and the main representatives of sophiology - V. Rozanov, P. Florensky, S. Bulgakov, N. Berdyaev (1874 -- 1948), D. Merezhkovsky (1865 -- 1941), A. Blok (1880 -- 1921), A. Bely (1880 -- 1934), Vyach Ivanov (1866 -- 1949), etc. - were also the key to the understanding of the Russian identity and mission in world history. -- In this eighth phase, Orthodoxy itself is problematised in its relationship with Western Christianity (K. Leontiev (1831 -- 1891), V. Solovyov, D. M. Mukhtarov, D. M. Kuznetsov, etc.), and the Orthodoxy of the West (1880 -- 1934), D. M. M. Mukhtarov, D. M. Kuznetsov, etc.). Solovyov, D. Merezhkovsky, etc.), the peculiarities of the Russian Orthodox tradition (P. Florensky, S. Bulgakov, V. Rozanov, N. Berdyaev, etc.), and the differences - even opposing ones - between the fundamentals of the worldview of the Russian people and the Russian state (more fully developed in the work of Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), as well as in the work of the Narodniki and later the Social Revolutionaries). The people themselves, with the increase in the number of dissidents and the spread of popular education, gradually became involved in this dialogue, along with the aristocracy, creating a new situation - unique in Russian history - of the involvement of representatives of the common people in the conscious decision-making of matters of world perspective. The Russian poets Nikolai Klyuev (1884 - 1937), Sergei Esenin (1895 - 1925), Velimir Khlebnikov (1885 - 1922) and, to some extent, Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893 - 1930) are the most striking examples of this involvement.

The rise of the Russian people in search of their own identity, including the religious factor, took radical forms as the tsarist state weakened, culminating in the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks who, in accordance with their ideology, abolished Christianity altogether, seeking to destroy both orthodoxy and any form of religion. However, as Berdyaev[3], the Eurasians[4] and the National Bolsheviks[5] rightly point out, in Russian Bolshevism, under the guise of formal atheism, materialism and Marxism, one can discern the eschatological motifs of Russian sectarianism, which reflect precisely the most archaic depths of Russian identity. Here, the deepest layers - not only pre-Christian, but sometimes palaeo-European, matriarchal - of Russian identity, rooted in the Logos of Cybele and the civilisation of Tripoli, are awakened.

In the tenth phase, Russian Orthodoxy (both New Believers and Old Believers, as well as outright sectarianism) became the victim of targeted repression and, when it subsided (from the early years of the Great Patriotic War), existed on the periphery of society, having little or no influence on the prevailing communist worldview shared by the majority of the Soviet population. Although surprisingly, even at this stage the basic core of the Orthodox tradition is preserved (at least as it existed on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution), the intensive introduction of the Soviet materialistic ('scientific') worldview does not go unnoticed, and even within the Orthodox milieu, scientific-natural materialism, as well as the ideas of progress, development, etc., are not unnoticed.

When the USSR collapsed and the dogmas of atheism were stripped of their normative status, Orthodoxy began to regain its position in Russia. The anti-communism of the liberal reformers of the 1990s was initially quite aggressive towards the Orthodox Church, which they saw as 'a reactionary institution that hindered social progress, modernisation and the westernisation of Russian society', but since the main opponent was communism, it did not lead to the methodical repression of Orthodoxy. The Orthodox Church took advantage of this to strengthen its influence in society, which became particularly evident in the early 2000s.

This time, however, Orthodoxy reflected neither the ideology of the ruling elite nor the natural worldview of the masses, which had been fundamentally influenced by Soviet education. Hence the uncertainty and uncertainty of contemporary Russian Orthodoxy as to which phase to take as a model for a revival of the Church. All the previous nine moments of religious historicity had different structures and orientations. Consequently, the question remains open to this day, and the tenth phase itself - the current one - is a time-extended solution to this fundamental question.

Practically all positions are represented in one way or another in contemporary Russian society, especially if we consider the religious processes taking place in the western part of the Russian world - in Ukraine and Belarus. Thus, in modern Orthodoxy one can find modernists, supporters of progress, natural-scientific materialists, evolutionists, fundamentalists of the Moscow period (who sometimes proclaim the need to canonise Ivan the Terrible), and ideologues of the Old Believers, and revivalists of Unificationism, and Suphiologists, and Eurasians, and National Bolsheviks (who justify Stalin and are sympathetic to the position of Patriarch Sergius), and extreme anti-communists (both monarchists and liberals), and those inclined to Gnosticism and sectarianism, and the Uniates (who are particularly characteristic of western Russia), and the Ecumenists (who advocate the unification of Orthodoxy with western Christian denominations), and the narrow nationalists, and the Panslavists and traditionalists (who seek a common platform with the believers of other religions in opposition to modernisation, secularisation and post-modernism), and conformists (ready to accept any ideology), and purists (who insist on the 'purity of Orthodoxy'), and the most diverse sectarians. At the same time, none of these versions clearly dominates, and the general structure of the tenth phase in which Russian society lives today cannot be unambiguously defined. But in order to understand this tenth phase, it is necessary to dismantle and correctly understand all the previous ones, because it is the result of them, and it is still uncertain and has not brought the elements of Christian historicity, which are, however, obviously present in contemporary Russian society, to a unified and defined structure. This is why most 20th-century Russian theologians agree that the primary and still unresolved problem of modern Russian Orthodox theology is the problem of ecclesiology, i.e. understanding the historical paths of the earthly Church - in the case of the Russians, it goes without saying, especially the fate of the Russian Church.

[1] Dugin A.G.Noomakhia. Eastern Europe. Slavic logos: Balkan Nav and Sarmatian style.

[2] Dugin A.G.Noomakhia. Non-Slavic horizons of Eastern Europe: The song of the ghoul and the voice of the abyss.

[3] Berdyaev N.A. Origins and significance of Russian communism. M.: Nauka, 1990.

[4] The foundations of Eurasianism.

[5] Ustryalov N. National Bolshevism. M.: Eksmo, 2003.

Translation by Lorenzo Maria Pacini