Putin’s holy war on Ukraine – UnHerd
July 20, 2023
As the world watched the Wagner mercenaries make good on their mutinous threats and advance on Moscow last month, Vladimir Putin shot them down in a television address. Spitting with rage and refusing to utter Prigozhins name, he said that the leaders of the rebellion had betrayed their country, their people. Amid his invective of treachery and treason, Putin levelled another charge: apostasy.
Theres no more defining act of the latter years of Putins reign than the invasion of Ukraine, where the Russian leaders justification for the war has been as moral as it is material. In Putins address to the nation on the eve of the invasion last year, he spoke of needing to protect Russia from dangerous Western influences which were seeking to destroy our traditional values, and force on us their false values that would erode us, our people, from within. As with his charge against Prigozhin, it was a pointed signal to people both inside and outside of Russia that, to him, this was an issue far greater than mere borders. And this invocation of cosmic transgressions speaks to a deeper change happening within Russia, a tightening of the bond between the political and the spiritual.
Already registered? Sign in
In spiritual terms, the merger of Orthodox Church and Russian state began long before Prigozhin launched his ill-fated mission. Its a process that was memorialised in 2020, when the Cathedral of the Armed Forces of Russia opened in Moscow to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Soviet victory over Nazi Germany on the Eastern Front. The stained-glass mosaics on the imposing building fuse saints and military heroism, while its floors are made of melted-down trophies seized from the Nazis; every time a Russian walks on them, he is symbolically delivering a blow to the fascist enemy. The proportions of the church are deliberately encrypted with numerology: the height of 14.18 metres, for instance, corresponds to the 1,418 days of what Russians call the Great Patriotic War. It is, as Aris Roussinos described it, a statement of Russias neo-traditionalist state ideology for the next century.
A wartime leader calling on higher powers to fortify a nation is hardly new, but Putins regime appears to be increasingly leaning into the mystical as a source of its legitimacy. Last autumn, the bones of legendary commander Grigory Potemkin Catherine the Greats consort were returned to Russia from the fiercely contested Ukrainian city of Kherson. The remains of Prince Alexander Nevsky, the great warrior-saint of medieval Rus, have also been handed over from the St Petersburgs Hermitage Museum to the Orthodox Church. Then, in May this year, the icon of Saint Seraphim of Sarov, a widely venerated 18th-century hermit and confessor, was flown over parts of Russia susceptible to Ukrainian advances, in an apparent bid to ward off potential drone attacks. Putins message to the nation would seem to be that its traditions are its strength.
This is a country that is not yet fully mobilised, but firmly on a war footing, and one where people have been told that they must endure and suffer for the good of the motherland. The message is increasingly clear: Russia is not simply engaged in a physical battle, but a celestial one.
It was around 10 years ago that Putin began drawing heavily on Russias religious heritage for geopolitical reasons. This is, perhaps not coincidentally, around the time that Putin started tinkering with his borders in Crimea. He was trying to position Russia as this geopolitical democracy thats different from Europe and the West because [of its] religious values, explains Telly Papanikolaou, professor of theology.
The Russian Orthodox Church has backed itself into becoming nothing more than a department of the foreign ministry, he says, adding that the church is being used as a soft-power tool of the regime. And Putin has squarely aimed his rhetoric at those in the West who believe that traditional values are under threat from abortion, gay marriage and womens rights. But in labelling the mutiny as apostasy, Papanikolaou believes that Putin is looking inside rather than beyond his borders, attempting to weaponise religious heritage to eradicate dissenters.
When it comes to using the Russian Orthodox faith as a political tool, the state has a deeply fraught history. The church was central to Russian life before the Bolshevik revolution, before the Soviet state attempted to completely decouple Christianity from Russian identity. But it was impossible to unwind such a rich history. Earlier this year, declassified Swiss documents revealed that Patriarch Kirill, who has headed the Orthodox Church since 2009, worked for the KGB in the Seventies, suggesting a closer bond between church and state than is generally recognised in histories of the Cold War. And as the collapse of communism saw chaos reign, many Russians returned to religion.
During those years, however, the Orthodox Church faced serious competition for the first time. Western missionaries labelled by the then-Patriarch as spiritual colonisers had long been obsessed with reaching the godless communists. As a result, some groups, such as Jehovahs Witnesses, were persecuted by the state before being banned entirely.
The spiritual remit of the Putin era favoured the Orthodox faith, but was careful not to alienate the broad collection of religions in the Russian Federation, co-opting the Islam of the Caucasus as well as Judaism and Buddhism. Religious leaders all got the same message: domesticate your boys and be a part of the state apparatus, and youll be fine. Crack down on the gays and western decadence, and you, too, can be a patriotic Russian. Today, that extends to the war effort, which is a highly national project.
In fact, according to a paper published by Kristina Stoeckl last year, the concept of spiritual security has become Kremlin doctrine. It all began in the year 2000 shortly after Putin came to power around the same time that the European Unions Charter of Fundamental Human Rights enshrined right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
Spiritual security became a rival to the security offered by Nato and the EU, and in time, Stoeckl says, has become the justification for Russias war on Ukraine and, in an enlarged perspective, with the West. The amendment of the Russian constitution in 2020, Stoeckl notes, saw it launch a Declaration of Values, in which spiritual ideals were emphasised, in speeches by academics as well as religious figures. In the 2021 update to the document, the word spiritual was mentioned 24 times. Stoeckl believes that this is all part of giving the FSB, successor to the KGB, a moral mission.
The marriage of church and secret service was consummated in 2002, when an Orthodox Church was consecrated within the infamous Lubankya headquarters of the FSB by none other than Nikolai Patrushev, Putins attack dog who still heads the Russian Security Council and is reportedly positioning his son as a potential future leader of the country. At this point, Stoeckl says, church leadership and the government agreed that, among the tasks of the FSB, police and law enforcement, was the safeguarding of Russian identity and culture against undesirable influences. Spiritual values are discussed in terms of friends and enemies, with Russia defined always in relation to a West and a West that Putin feels is forever closing in.
At the same time, Russia is pushing issues that appeal to religious conservatives in the West most successfully with its emphasis on what are euphemistically known as traditional family values. That Russia remains the world leader in abortions per capita by some distance is an inconvenient truth. The Levada Center, considered Russias most reliable pollsters even in repressive times, recently found thatthe number of Russians who do not support homosexual relationships has grown significantly, from 60% in 2013 to 69% in 2021. Meanwhile, next year, Russian state hospitals will open clinics for LGBT conversion therapy a deeply held belief of the Putin regime.
The mirror image of this is playing out in Ukraine. Not exactly the natural home of LGBT allyship, Kyiv last month drafted a new civil union law that would give same-sex partnerships legal status for the first time. That Ukraine is increasingly becoming more accepting might be a political move to curry favour with the West, since those Ukrainians who might be most opposed to it are, in large part, currently occupied on the frontlines. For the Russian Orthodox Church, it is further confirmation since the Ukrainian Orthodox Church decided to break away in 2019 of the spiritual cleavage between the two nations.
There are now two distinct battlefronts: the horrific conflict raging beyond the Dnipro, and a culture war that has Russians making gains far beyond Bakhmut. Its a new East-West divide, Telly Papanikolaou says, a fight that has replaced the Cold War dichotomy of communism versus democracy. To the Russian state, and the Russian church, it is a question of supporting religion and traditional values against a godless, liberal, aggressively atheist West.
It would be simple to conclude that, in bringing back faith-based politics, Putin is dictating his peoples values. But the truth is not so straightforward. Because, as in the chaotic years after the end of the Cold War, Russians do seem to be turning to God of their own volition. A few years ago, a report from the Russian Academy of Sciences found there are around 800,000 faith healers in the country compared to 640,000 medical doctors. Two-thirds of women, and one-quarter of men, said that they had sought help from a psychic or a sorcerer at some point in their life.
Turning to God when the state fails is something that can be seen in Russias fellow BRIC economies, Brazil and South Africa. Emerging from similarly repressive regimes, a military dictatorship and apartheid respectively, their people rapidly took up Pentecostal Christianity, similarly doubling down on family values. For the millions who feel let down by the false promises of the new state, faith seems the only alternative. In Brazil, one study found that a downturn in the GDP had a direct correlation to increased church attendance.
Its difficult to know the true thoughts of the Russian people, but there is strong evidence that Russians are losing faith in the states narrative and, equally, that the Putin regime is increasingly courting religion for its legitimacy. One survey found that, in the six months following the invasion of Ukraine last year, Russians watching state television fell from 86% to 65%. Russians appear to be losing faith in the special military operation, too.
Putin had a front row seat for the collapse of communism in East Germany; he knows all too well that when people stop believing in the system, it can be catastrophic. He also seems aware that Russians are looking to religion rather than nationalism for their moral nourishment. For now, it appears that the regime is robust enough to meet the Russian people where they are, spiritually. As Kremlin rhetoric increasingly turns to asking for suffering and sacrifice for the greater good deeply religious notions, as much as they are national ones those daring to challenge it will either be seen as saintly figures, or very stupid ones.
See the original post here:
Putin's holy war on Ukraine - UnHerd
- They brought a symbol of Cold War communism to the Triangle and made it run again - Raleigh News & Observer - July 16th, 2025 [July 16th, 2025]
- Ep. 1103 New Epstein Questions About Missing Minute, and Mamdanis Communism and College Controversy - Megyn Kelly The Devil May Care - July 14th, 2025 [July 14th, 2025]
- Zohran Mamdani Has a Disgusting Personality Flaw That's Even Worse Than Loving Communism and Hamas - freebeacon.com - July 10th, 2025 [July 10th, 2025]
- Communism Meets Reincarnation? How China Is Trying To Pick The Next Dalai Lama - Worldcrunch - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- The Secret Committee That Persecuted Black and Gay People In the Name of Fighting Communism - CrimeReads - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Communism For New York Grocery Stores - AM 870 The ANSWER - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Christianity, Islam and communism and the global conquest - The Hans India - June 29th, 2025 [June 29th, 2025]
- New York turns to full-blown Communism - Schiff Sovereign - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- Trkiye's answer to Disco Elysium just broke cover, featuring more lawyers, fewer cops, an indeterminate amount of communism and twin fistfuls of guilt... - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- A Cuban woman surprises the President of Madrid in Miami: I am here because of communism. - CiberCuba - June 24th, 2025 [June 24th, 2025]
- The essence of revolutionary communism: new introduction to the 'Classics of Marxism' - In Defence of Marxism - June 22nd, 2025 [June 22nd, 2025]
- Elicer vila and Destino exchange fire on social media: "Those of us who fled communism value the freedom of the U.S." - CiberCuba - June 22nd, 2025 [June 22nd, 2025]
- The progressive "West" and the ghost of monarchy - In Defense of Communism - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- 39th Congress of the Communist Party of Sweden (SKP): Statements on Palestine and the Ukraine War - In Defense of Communism - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- First Nations are mired in 'soft communism.' This leader has the fix - National Post - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- Reactions by Communist Parties on Israel-Iran War - In Defense of Communism - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- Czech Blog: Wine and War A Glimpse Into the Legacies of Communism - Global Atlanta - June 14th, 2025 [June 14th, 2025]
- Communist Party of Israel and Hadash stand against Netanyahu government's attack on Iran - In Defense of Communism - June 14th, 2025 [June 14th, 2025]
- Anticommunism in Kyrgyzstan: The world's largest monument dedicated to Lenin to be dismantled - In Defense of Communism - June 10th, 2025 [June 10th, 2025]
- Communism Survivor on Revoking Chinese Student Visas: Beware the Enemy Within - NTD News - June 1st, 2025 [June 1st, 2025]
- The specter of communism still looms over the Balkans - The Spectator Australia - June 1st, 2025 [June 1st, 2025]
- Campus Communism: How the CCP Compromised Harvard and US Higher Education - Hudson Institute - May 30th, 2025 [May 30th, 2025]
- How the Portuguese Communist Party assesses the negative electoral result of 18 May - In Defense of Communism - May 30th, 2025 [May 30th, 2025]
- The shadow of communism still looms over the Balkans - The Spectator - May 30th, 2025 [May 30th, 2025]
- Texas House Advances Bill Requiring Schools to Teach History and 'Atrocities' of Communism - The Texan - May 24th, 2025 [May 24th, 2025]
- Bill teaching children dangers of communism passed in the Texas House - Washington Examiner - May 24th, 2025 [May 24th, 2025]
- Communists in Greece block trucks with ammunition heading to Ukraine - In Defense of Communism - May 24th, 2025 [May 24th, 2025]
- Communist Party of India (Marxist) condemns the killing of 27 Maoists by state forces in Chhattisgarh - In Defense of Communism - May 24th, 2025 [May 24th, 2025]
- Dr Oz Ridiculed for Urging Parents to Feed Their Kids 'Real Food': 'When Michelle Obama Said This It Was Communism' - Latin Times - May 24th, 2025 [May 24th, 2025]
- Bill to teach Texas kids the dangers of communism but not fascism OK'd by House - WOAI - May 22nd, 2025 [May 22nd, 2025]
- Bill to teach Texas kids the dangers of communism but not fascism OK'd by House - The Texas Tribune - May 22nd, 2025 [May 22nd, 2025]
- Poland: Don Streich, another victim of communism, will be beatified - Exaudi - May 22nd, 2025 [May 22nd, 2025]
- Can degrowth communism save the world? - resilience.org - May 19th, 2025 [May 19th, 2025]
- "You blocked the system": A Cuban asks a robot with artificial intelligence when communism will fall in Cuba, and this is what it said -... - May 19th, 2025 [May 19th, 2025]
- Joint statement by the KKE, AKEL, PCP and KSM in the European Parliament against anti-communist initiative - In Defense of Communism - May 17th, 2025 [May 17th, 2025]
- The Pope Who Foresaw the Horrors of Communism - RealClearMarkets - May 17th, 2025 [May 17th, 2025]
- Communist Party of Turkey: NATO Foreign Ministers are unwelcome in Antalya! - In Defense of Communism - May 17th, 2025 [May 17th, 2025]
- East vs west? Romanias biggest vote since the fall of communism - Channel 4 - May 17th, 2025 [May 17th, 2025]
- Nazi collaborator's name initially engraved on the Victims of Communism memorial - Yahoo News Canada - May 17th, 2025 [May 17th, 2025]
- Communist Party of Turkey on the dissolution of the Kurdish PKK group - In Defense of Communism - May 17th, 2025 [May 17th, 2025]
- 80th anniversary of the Anti-Fascist Victory: When the Communists saved humanity from the Nazi monster - In Defense of Communism - May 11th, 2025 [May 11th, 2025]
- Communist Party of Pakistan: Down with chauvinism and war hysteria, long live proletarian internationalism - In Defense of Communism - May 11th, 2025 [May 11th, 2025]
- Shen Yun brings 'China Before Communism' to Proctors Theater for two-night performance - WRGB - April 23rd, 2025 [April 23rd, 2025]
- BBC accused of giving children 'dishonest' view of communism after failing to mention mass killings - GB News - April 23rd, 2025 [April 23rd, 2025]
- FSU Shooting Suspect Was Forced to Leave Political Club After Insisting Communism Was 'Ruining America', Student Says - Latin Times - April 23rd, 2025 [April 23rd, 2025]
- Blushing Bolsheviks! Not even fathers of Soviet communism did what Colorado may do to parents by sanctifying transgenderism - Read Lion - April 23rd, 2025 [April 23rd, 2025]
- Blushing Bolsheviks! Not even fathers of Soviet communism did what Colorado may do to parents by sanctifying transgenderism - The Heartlander - April 23rd, 2025 [April 23rd, 2025]
- Partisans for Peace: On the 80th anniversary of Italy's liberation - Against rearmament and imperialist war - In Defense of Communism - April 16th, 2025 [April 16th, 2025]
- 'Red Scare' revisits the fear of Communism that gripped post-WWII America - KNAU Arizona Public Radio - March 18th, 2025 [March 18th, 2025]
- Republican U.S. Senators Introduce Bill to Teach Students the Dangers of Communism - Sierra Sun Times - March 18th, 2025 [March 18th, 2025]
- A bill in the U.S. seeks to teach the dangers of communism in schools - CiberCuba - March 18th, 2025 [March 18th, 2025]
- Letter to the editor: What happened to being anti-Communism? - Pierce County Journal - March 18th, 2025 [March 18th, 2025]
- Beyond The Iron Curtain: How Polish Posters Subverted Hollywood Under Communism - Deadline - March 13th, 2025 [March 13th, 2025]
- Linda Rama: This is what the world can learn from the fall of communism - MSNBC - March 13th, 2025 [March 13th, 2025]
- Christian training center in northern China amid communism, Islam, and poverty - Mission Network News - February 27th, 2025 [February 27th, 2025]
- Gulys: Remembering victims of communism is both a task and a duty - Budapest Times - February 27th, 2025 [February 27th, 2025]
- Love and Torture The Stories of Russian Women Who Married Albanians During Communism - Euronews Albania - February 27th, 2025 [February 27th, 2025]
- Communist Knesset member Cassif: "They are trying to silence us, theres a fascist atmosphere in Israel" - In Defense of Communism - February 27th, 2025 [February 27th, 2025]
- It allowed us to survive, to not go mad: the CIA book smuggling operation that helped bring down communism - The Guardian - February 23rd, 2025 [February 23rd, 2025]
- Nazism, Fascism, And Communism: Warring Sons To A Common Father OpEd - Eurasia Review - February 23rd, 2025 [February 23rd, 2025]
- State Capitol news in brief: Communism lesson bill goes to Sanders | Senate to convene despite icy weather - Arkansas Online - February 23rd, 2025 [February 23rd, 2025]
- USAID was created to counter communism, but came to a nearly opposite agenda - The Times and Democrat - February 23rd, 2025 [February 23rd, 2025]
- My Dear Mother, The Last Divorce of Communism, Von Fock Tease New Chapter for Baltic TV Shows: Culturally Specific and Universally Relevant - AOL - February 23rd, 2025 [February 23rd, 2025]
- Canada: Marxist School 2025 studying the pillars of communism to prepare for turbulent times - In Defence of Marxism - February 23rd, 2025 [February 23rd, 2025]
- Cottons new book on China aims to ring the alarm bell on Taiwan and communism - coloradopolitics.com - February 23rd, 2025 [February 23rd, 2025]
- Sean McMeekin: Don't Whitewash the History of Communism - Reason - February 14th, 2025 [February 14th, 2025]
- Don't Whitewash the History of Communism - RealClearPolicy - February 14th, 2025 [February 14th, 2025]
- The Socialist State in Latvia: From the revolutionary triumph to the drama of dissolution - In Defense of Communism - February 14th, 2025 [February 14th, 2025]
- Nothing says 'communism' like this $165 poverty-chic plastic bag based on Disco Elysium, aka 'the level of greed that they talk about in the Bible' -... - February 7th, 2025 [February 7th, 2025]
- Texas Audience Delighted to See Universal Beliefs in China Before Communism Through Shen Yun - NTD - February 7th, 2025 [February 7th, 2025]
- Communist Workers Platform USA: The Class Struggle in America and the Communist Strategy - In Defense of Communism - February 7th, 2025 [February 7th, 2025]
- Communist Party of Turkey: Ahmed Al-Shara is an ISIS remnant and a war criminal - In Defense of Communism - February 7th, 2025 [February 7th, 2025]
- Vietnam's Communist Party marks 95th anniversary - In Defense of Communism - February 7th, 2025 [February 7th, 2025]
- The Beauty of China Before Communism Was Eye-Opening, Says Houston Theatergoer - NTD - February 3rd, 2025 [February 3rd, 2025]
- Pastor Delighted to See Shen Yun Express Love for Traditional Ways Before Communism - NTD - January 27th, 2025 [January 27th, 2025]
- KKE's leader Koutsoumbas on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army - In Defense of Communism - January 27th, 2025 [January 27th, 2025]
- Elon Musk and the Dictatorship of the Capital - In Defense of Communism - January 27th, 2025 [January 27th, 2025]
- Another shameful anticommunist resolution of the European Parliament, full of unhistorical references - In Defense of Communism - January 27th, 2025 [January 27th, 2025]
- Education panel backs expansion of tuition waivers for guardsmen, voices concern over bill to teach perils of communism - Northwest Arkansas... - January 26th, 2025 [January 26th, 2025]
- Gaza: By whatever name you call It Is Genocide! - In Defense of Communism - January 26th, 2025 [January 26th, 2025]