Berkley Center

More than perhaps any other social or political force outside of Communism, Russian Orthodoxy has profoundly shaped the collective identity of the Russian people. Ever since Prince Vladimir "baptized" Kievan Rus, the predecessor of the modern Russian state, by accepting Christianity in 988, the Russian Orthodox Church has, in countless ways, determined the nature of the Russian state and the self-conception of the Russian people. Russians owe their language to the church: monks Cyril and Methodius developed the Cyrillic alphabet, which Russian uses, as well as an embryonic form of the language's grammatical structures. Russians also partially owe their state to the organizational powers of the church; the institution acted as a vehicle for catalyzing economic and political recovery after the devastating Mongol attacks of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which threatened the very existence of what would become the Russian state.

Indeed, the church sunk itself so deeply into the Russian collective consciousness throughout its nearly 500 years of hegemony in both the Russian psyche and state that, though the roster of notoriously arrogant and controlling Soviet leaders would please themselves by thinking otherwise, the vicious secularism propagated by the Soviet state did not succeed in extraditing the church from its prominent position in the Russian mind. Instead, the Soviets succeeded in creating such a comprehensive and forceful apparatus through which to brainwash and scare the Russian people into accepting secularism, that the post-Soviet environment in Russia is awash in confusion concerning the church's role in both the individual lives of Russians and the collective life of the Russian state. One fact, it seems, however, all Russians agree on: whatever subtleties its role might take, the church will—and must—play a significant role in post-Soviet Russia.

The population of Russia is overwhelmingly Orthodox; over 90 percent of Russians identify as Russian Orthodox, and countless icons depicting saints or the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus adorn the dashboards of taxis and the kitchen counters of Russian homes. However, church attendance remains low; most Russians don't bother to attend church services except on major holidays such as Easter or Christmas. Nevertheless, virtually all Russians argue for the significance of the church in defining Russian identity. Such a claim likely hearkens back to the end of the fifteenth century when, due to the fall of Constantinople and the subsequent collapse of the center of Eastern Orthodoxy in the form of the Byzantine Empire, Russia considered itself the last bastion of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Throughout the post-Soviet period, the Russian government has acknowledged this widespread endorsement of the church's historic power with such laws as the 1997 law seriously restricting the rights and ability to worship of religious groups which could not provide proof of their official existence in the Russian Federation for the preceding 15 years.

Since the Soviet Union outright banned the existence of other religions, this law effectively allows the church to recover from Soviet repression uninhibited by the proselytizing efforts of other religions, though it does grant full rights to so-called "first-rank" religions such as Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism. Regardless, the law has come under fire by leaders of other religions and human rights' activists alike. One of the most interesting arenas in which to examine the struggle among church leaders, political leaders, and the people of Russia to define what role the church should play in post-Soviet Russia is in Russian public schools. At the urging of church leaders, who argue that the adamant secularism of Communism left Russians estranged from a core part of their identity, increasingly more localities are decreeing that students learn the liturgy and history of the church.

Interestingly, when responding to critics' arguments that such courses erode the constitutional separation between church and state and risk alienating Russia's significant Muslim minority—about 10 to 15 percent of the population—the church argues that these courses are cultural, not religious. Nominally, President Putin claims that he supports a curriculum in which children learn about religion in general and, in particular, the four faiths significant for Russia's history: Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Russian Orthodoxy. However, he has allowed local officials to carry out policy concerning such courses with considerable latitude and has not advocated for the scaling back of any efforts to teach Russian Orthodoxy in public schools.

Though only one aspect of the complex situation in which the Russian Orthodox Church has found itself in post-Soviet Russia, the controversy surrounding the introduction of classes in Russian Orthodoxy into public schools explicates the tension between those who advocate rediscovering and integrating into post-Soviet society Russia's "roots"—whether they be Russian Orthodoxy or a population consisting primarily of ethnic Russians rather than Muslims or citizens of the former Soviet republics—and those advocating the creation of a pluralistic, democratic society. Putin's decision to vocalize a desire for children to learn about all religions, but his refusal to scale back the church's efforts to monopolize the public school curriculum regarding religion, suggests that the Russian government has not yet formed a policy that caters to the desires of members of both sides of this debate.