Social contexts of Russian orthodoxy - Статья

Анотація Радзік P. Соціальні контексти православ’я У статті розглядається проблема церкви (російського православ’я) як інституту, що здійснює цінності та зразки поведінки у світському контексті їхнього виникнення, які побудовані людьми довкола Бога та, незважаючи на відкликання до священного, часто відрізняються у різних віросповіданнях: католицизмі, протестантизмі та православ’ї. This tendency, already visible in the seventeenth century, became common in the times of Peter I. By contrast, Russia was never a point of reference for Western Europe, and Western Europeans never formed their identity in constant comparison with Russia and Russianness. 1. The sacral dimension of Rus’ness The concept of Moscow as the Third Rome was proposed in the early sixteenth century by Philotheus, a monk at the Pskov monastery. Whatever his intentions, in the course of time the idea exerted an enormous influence on the shape and form of the Russian state in terms of its culture, religion and politics: the Russian Tsardom came to be perceived as the only and the last Christian state, with the Russian rulers destined to assume the leadership of the Christian world until the Second Coming of Christ. Following the reforms introduced by Peter I, this messianic dimension of the Russian idea of the Third Rome came to be replaced by a missionist idea of a universal and secular empire serving the common good. Thus, between the sixteenth and eighteenth century Russia embraced its two fundamental concepts and sets of values, which became the decisive factors shaping the development Russianness in the centuries to come, and are still visible today. Firstly, Orthodoxy, consolidated by the messianic idea of the Third Rome, came to provide a set of constitutive values which defined a Russian (русский) in terms of culture and mentality, set the limits of Russianness, created Russian visions of the world and built the social capital. As such, its impact extended also to the political sphere. Secondly, Peter I’s secular missionist idea was to build an empire whose subjects would no longer be the ethnic Rus’ people, but Russians, regardless of their ethnicity or religion - a concept following, to a certain extent, the example of European political nations. Although over the course of Russian history the paths of the two concepts have sometimes diverged and sometimes converged, the messianic spirituality stemming from Orthodoxy has always been intertwined with the missionist conviction of Russia’s grandeur. Even if contrary to the facts, Russia, as seen by the Russians, has always been great and is indeed predestined for its grandeur, considering its culture, spiritual depth, political power and its sense of a mission going back to the concept of the Third Rome and the great empire of Peter I. In this approach, Russians perceive themselves to be a special nation. Today’s Russian elites are trying to convince the West that the great Russian culture brings a universal message to the world. Andrzej Nowak argues that, in the spirit of Philotheus, some Russian intellectual circles are currently attempting to consolidate the imperial dimension of their country in a bid to protect its cultural identity from the Western menace. This can be seen as yet another Russian attempt to bring salvation to the world [12, pp. 136-137]. While The West saw the medieval idea of Respublica Christiana secularised in the Renaissance and was ultimately to experience the birth of nation states, in the East the process of transformation of the Tsardom of Muscovy into the Russian Empire took an entirely different course. Indeed, Mykola Riabchuk observes that ‘[h]ere, the pre-modern Slavia Orthodoxa became a part of the imperial narration and the newly established empire was synectically identified with the mythical «Rus’», which came to signify not only a religious, but also an ethnic, territorial and political community. Thus, the empire acquired a sacred dimension while the Slavia Orthodoxa was nationalised. For the empire, this meant a petrification of the pre-modern frame of thought and structure of government; for Orthodoxy, a fatal stagnation in the archaic forms of caesaropapism, which until today involves a peculiar combination of politically inspired megalomania with aggressive messianism disguised in the cloak of a construct referred to as «russkii mir». The replacement of confessional-civilisational «Rus’ness» with ethnopolitical «Russian- ness», along with utterly unfortunate misunderstandings stemming from the fact, have considerably hindered the formation of modern national identities, not only Ukrainian and Belarusian, but also Russian’ [15, p. 363-364]. The Russian-Rus’ community, which, as viewed by Russians, includes also Ukrainians and Belarusians, is sometimes compared to Muslim ummah (Besanfon, Riabczuk): the sacred space of its hard core is surrounded by a borderland zone, with areas outside remaining to be conquered. Thus, there are no limits to expan