Gordon M. Hahn — Putin, Stalin, Orthodoxy, and Russian Traditionalism

Much Western media and many observers of Russian politics are fond of playing up an ostensible revival of Stalin – his ‘rehabilitation’ as it were – under Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rule. This is not just inaccurate — as I have written in the past, the Putin era has seen numerous anti-Stalinist and non-Stalinist state-funded projects including mass audience films, television serials, museums and monuments — but it dangerously distorts our understanding of contemporary Russia. Moreover, many of the same observers are also fond of emphasizing the powerful role of the more traditional – some would say retrograde or reactionary – Russian Orthodox Church. This is often exaggerated, but this is not the most interesting aspect of such a focus. The latter focus is often made by the very same observers who decry Putin’s alleged rehabilitation of Stalin. The more revealing phenomenon is the political tension between these two positions; something that might suggest Putin’s less than dictatorial powers and the syncretic and more inclusive nature of his somewhat moderate Russian traditionalism. Thus, anti-Stalinist, anti-communist, Tsarist, and projects of other ideological, cultural, religious, and ethnic orientations often coexist in Putin’s Russia, with the state giving space, albeit often strictly limited, for their expression. This is a function of a supra-national identity still being in development, Russia’s multi-communal character, and the interplay of various orientations and of those orientations within the state....

The US and Europe are now going through similar conflicts between traditional and liberal views and factions representing them. Every nation's character is a melding of historical forces through the historical dialectic. History is path dependent.

Furthermore, it can be argued that countries like Germany and Russia have dealt more openly and rankly with their unsavory past than countries like the US and Japan.

Russian and Eurasian Politics
Putin, Stalin, Orthodoxy, and Russian Traditionalism
Gordon M. Hahn, analyst and Advisory Board member at Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, member of the Executive Advisory Board at the American Institute of Geostrategy, a contributing expert for Russia Direct, a senior researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies, Akribis Group, and; and an analyst and consultant for Russia – Other Points of View

Paul Goble — Orthodox Fundamentalism Becomes Dangerously ‘Respectable’ in Russia, Knorre Says

First Russia was a problem because it was atheistic. Now it is a problem because it is too Christian.

Is Western liberalism is just another form of our-way-or-the-highway? 

This is fundamental paradox of liberalism. 

Liberalism is anti-liberal about anything that is perceived as anti-liberal. It's similar to the libertarian view that democracy is the tyranny of the majority. 

All ideologies are grounded in assumptions asserted dogmatically.

The final analysis disagreement over opposing assumptions can only be resolved by either tolerance (which is the basis of liberalism) or conflict. But everyone, including most liberals, has boundaries, so at some point tolerance breaks down and conflict arises.

Interestingly also, the post also criticizes the Russian view as being based on "specialness," while overlooking both American "exceptionalism" and the Nazi view of "Aryan" specialness.

Window on Eurasia -- New Series
Orthodox Fundamentalism Becomes Dangerously ‘Respectable’ in Russia, Knorre Says
Paul Goble

BTW, from the Russian Orthodox Christian POV the West has become anti-Christian and morally degenerate, so it runs both ways. But there is no inconsistency in the Russian Orthodox position. This has been the Christian view since Roman times when Christians regarded Romans as morally degenerate.

This is the position of most traditional societies. One of the main tenets of so-called radical Islam is the belief that believers have an obligation to fight moral degeneracy and the West is viewed as the perpetrator of moral degeneracy worldwide through the promotion of the values of Western liberalism.

This is an ideological war that is likely to occupy the rest of this century at least.

Iben Thranholm — Russia and the West Have Swapped Spiritual and Cultural Roles

“Russians are returning to Christianity in a modern and contemporary context”

“They are familiar with the bitter fruit of atheism and have no appetite for the bleak and barren wasteland it produced”

“in Russia, Christianity is associated with being modern and progressive”
“the young, the hip, the wise and the wealthy, express their Christianity as a completely natural and straightforward thing”

“Today, the spirit of communism shows itself in western worship of human rights, freedom of speech and the elite’s utopian notions of so-called open societies. We are headed for the very wasteland that the Russians were relieved to leave behind.”

“Russians perceive activists like Pussy Riot as latter-day Bolsheviks”

This is actually quite funny. The liberal West is all in an uproar over Russia going (Orthodox) Christian. Excepting the benighted souls that believe that Russia is still atheistic and Communist.

Russia Insider

Russia and the West Have Swapped Spiritual and Cultural Roles
Iben Thranholm

Nicolai N. Petro — Russia's Orthodox Soft Power

For many analysts the term Russky mir, or Russian World, epitomizes an expansionist and messianic Russian foreign policy, the perverse intersection of the interests of the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church.

Little noted is that the term actually means something quite different for each party. For the state it is a tool for expanding Russia's cultural and political influence, while for the Russian Orthodox Church it is a spiritual concept, a reminder that through the baptism of Rus, God consecrated these people to the task of building a Holy Rus.

The close symphonic relationship between the Orthodox Church and state in Russia thus provides Russian foreign policy with a definable moral framework, one that, given its popularity, is likely to continue to shape the country's policies well into the future.

More on the concept of "the Russian World," or Russky mir. This is a short article that is profusely documented.

Carnegie Council
Russia's Orthodox Soft Power
Nicolai N. Petro

Kerry R. Bolton — Spiritual Roots of Russo-American Conflict

Weekend reading.

Western-liberalism, rationalism, even the most strenuous efforts of Bolshevik dialectal materialism, have so far not been able to permanently destroy, but at most repress, these conceptions—conscious or unconscious—of what it is to be ‘Russian’. Spengler, as will be seen, even during the early period of Russian Bolshevism, already predicted that even this would take on a different, even antithetical form, to the Petrine import of Marxism. It was soon that the USSR was again paying homage to Holy Mother Russia rather than the international proletariat, much to Trotsky’s lament.

‘Russian Socialism’, Not Marxism

Of the Russian soul, the ego/vanity of the Western culture-man is missing; the persona seeks impersonal growth in service, ‘in the brother-world of the plain’. Orthodox Christianity condemns the ‘I’ as ‘sin’.[7]

The Russian concept of ‘we’ rather than ‘I’, and of impersonal service to the expanse of one’s land, implies another form socialism to that of Marxism. It is perhaps in this sense that Stalinism proceeded along lines often antithetical to the Bolshevism envisaged by Trotsky, et al.[8] A recent comment by an American visitor to Russia, Barbara J. Brothers, as part of a scientific delegation, states something akin to Spengler’s observation:

The Russians have a sense of connectedness to themselves and to other human beings that is just not a part of American reality. It isn’t that competitiveness does not exist; it is just that there always seems to be more consideration and respect for others in any given situation.[9]

Of the Russian traditional ethos, intrinsically antithetical to Western individualism, including that of property relations, Berdyaev wrote:

Of all peoples in the world the Russians have the community spirit; in the highest degree the Russian way of life and Russian manners, are of that kind. Russian hospitality is an indication of this sense of community.[10]…

Whatever Russia is called outwardly, whether, monarchical, Bolshevik, or democratic, there is an inner—eternal—Russia that is unfolding, and whose embryonic character places her on an antithetical course to that of the USA.

Ironically, the Native American soul as described by Ohiyesa aka Dr. Charles Eastman in The Soul of the Indian is very similar to "the Russian soul" as Bolton describes it with reference to Oswald Spengler, that is, communitarian culture and deep spiritual feeling shaped by the immense space of plains and ever-receding horizons. Interestingly also, it was African-Americans that popularized this meaning of "soul" in American English.

Failure to understand this makes American liberalism illiberal in attempting to impose "the American soul" a universal. It is not going to work, and it has already resulted in huge devastation.

Foreign Policy Journal
Spiritual Roots of Russo-American Conflict

Kerry R. Bolton | Fellow of the Academy of Social and Political Research, Athens; assistant editor of the Academy's journal Ab Aeterno; "contributing writer" for Foreign Policy Journal, and proprietor of Renaissance Press

David C. Speedie — "Soft Power": The Values that Shape Russian Foreign Policy

In the increasingly frigid environment of U.S.-Russia relations, much attention is given to what may be seen as Russia's strategic "interests." (Of course, much of the policymaking class in the West seems to suggest that Russia is entitled to no "interests" whatsoever.) Of at least equal significance for understanding Russian attitudes, however, is a grasp of the values, the moral framework for Russia's foreign policy.

A valuable resource for this understanding is found in a recent article, "Russia's Orthodox Soft Power," by the University of Rhode Island scholar Nicolai Petro, who explores the "symphonic relationship" between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian state and the manner in which they both utilize the term Russky mir, or Russian World. For the discussion herein of what this entails, we are indebted to Professor Petro.

As Petro observes, the term Russky mir has been wrongly interpreted by some Western analysts as the "perverse intersection" between the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church; in reality, the term is employed differently by each party. Where the state uses it as a tool for expanding Russia's cultural and political influence, the Church views it as a spiritual concept linked to God's objective for the rebuilding of a Holy Rus.

The relationship between the two provides a popular and definable framework for Russian foreign policy. Values play a significant role in policy formulation and, throughout modern history, three constants dictate how Russia responds to Western actions: sovereignty, capability to defend that sovereignty, and loyalty to those who share Russia's sense of honor. (The 2014 conflict Ukraine exacerbated the perceived values gap between the West and Russia, yet Russia claims it occupies the higher moral ground by defending its core values of honor in the context of the unique historical, religious, and cultural bonds with Ukraine.)

In summary: The significance of religion in Russian life allows the state to garner huge social capital from having the blessing of the Orthodox Church, and likewise the Church benefits from the relationship by disseminating its message of Christianity worldwide via Russian foreign policy. For the state, Russky Mir is a political/cultural tool for strengthening domestic stability, worldwide status, and influence in neighboring states. For the Church, it is a religious foundation essential for reversing the secularization of society (which it sees as an unwelcome evolution already well underway in the West).…

Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
"Soft Power": The Values that Shape Russian Foreign Policy

David C. Speedie. director of the Council's program on U.S. Global Engagement

Paul Robinson — The West’s new ‘Cold War’ is with Dostoevsky’s Russia, not Stalin’s

"All great nations,” wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky in an 1873 letter to the future Emperor Alexander III, “have manifested themselves and their great powers…and have brought something, if only a single ray of light, into the world, precisely because they have remained themselves, proudly and undauntedly, always and presumptuously independent.”

The West firmly disagrees. Despite their stated commitment to multiculturalism, most Western states in fact believe that the whole world should be like them – secular, democratic, and capitalist. Consequently, they tend to interpret any attempt by Russia to be “presumptuously independent” as an aggressive act. As Russian foreign policy has become more assertive in the past decade, the result has been a crescendo of accusations that Russia has started a “new Cold War”.

Former U.S. National Security Agency spook John Schindler claims that Russia is aggressively promoting its agenda through “Orthodox jihad”, which “bears more than a little resemblance to Holy War in a Russian and Orthodox variant.” Schindler writes that Vladimir Putin, “has created and nurtured a virulent ideology, an explosive amalgam of xenophobia, Chekism and militant Orthodoxy which justifies the Kremlin’s actions and explains why the West must be opposed at all costs.”

New York Times columnist David Brooks agrees. Noting that in January 2014 the Kremlin distributed books by three late 19th/early 20th century Russian philosophers – Vladimir Solovyov, Nikolai Berdyaev, and Ivan Ilyin – to regional governors, Brooks argues that Russian foreign policy rests upon “a highly charged and assertive messianic ideology.”…..

First Russia was the devil because it was atheistic. Now it is the devil because it is the wrong kind of Christian. All in a couple of decades. WTF?

Western ideology has always had universalistic tendencies, from the era of the medieval crusades onwards. It shares these tendencies with Islam, but less so with Orthodoxy, which has rarely shown any proselytizing zeal or given holy sanction to anything other than defensive war. Although some Byzantine rulers did attempt to harness religion to support their wars, their efforts were sporadic and generally met resistance from the Church authorities.

Schindler cites Putin’s admiration of Ilyin as evidence for his thesis that Russia is engaged in “Orthodox jihad”. Far from supporting holy war, Ilyin in fact wrote that “all my research proves that the sword is not ‘holy’ and not ‘just’.” This position is in line with Orthodox theology, which generally maintains that while war is sometimes necessary, it should never be seen as a positive good but only as the lesser of two evils. As Father Stanley Harakas, one of the leading experts on the subject, comments, “The Eastern Orthodox Patristic tradition rarely praised war and, to my knowledge, never called it ‘just’ or a moral good.” Schindler’s soundbite, “Orthodox jihad”, is an oxymoron.  

C2C
The West’s new ‘Cold War’ is with Dostoevsky’s Russia, not Stalin’s

Paul Robinson | professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of numerous books and articles on Russian history, military history, military ethics, and international security, and he blogs at www.irrussianality.wordpress.com

Nicolai N. Petro — Russia's Orthodox Soft Power

For many analysts the term Russky mir, or Russian World, epitomizes an expansionist and messianic Russian foreign policy, the perverse intersection of the interests of the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church.

Little noted is that the term actually means something quite different for each party. For the state it is a tool for expanding Russia's cultural and political influence, while for the Russian Orthodox Church it is a spiritual concept, a reminder that through the baptism of Rus, God consecrated these people to the task of building a Holy Rus.

The close symphonic relationship between the Orthodox Church and state in Russia thus provides Russian foreign policy with a definable moral framework, one that, given its popularity, is likely to continue to shape the country's policies well into the future.....

It's not possible to understand current events involving Russia, Russians, and Russophones in other countries without understanding the significant of the concept of Russky mir. Otherwise it is just projection. Religious people of the West were praying for the conversion of Russia. Well, they got it and now will have to deal with it.

Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
Russia's Orthodox Soft Power
Nicolai N. Petro | Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island