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Unless the readers of this article have been in purdah for the last few days, they will be aware that President Putin held his annual Q & A on Thursday 19th December. Clocking in at over 4 and a half hours, Putin answered 76 questions, comprised of the usual mix of geopolitical commentary, domestic detail and the odd softball heart-warmer.
It is entirely natural that much attention was devoted to the ongoing SMO, but my concern is to highlight Putin’s statement on the plight of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). The UOC is a branch of the historic church which straddles territory that was once united in a single empire, but is now divided into the separate political entities of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. As it remains faithful to the Moscow Patriarchate, the UOC has been systematically persecuted since the Maidan coup of 2014 brought an overtly anti-Russian regime to power in Kiev, with churches and monasteries being closed, raided and even bombed, and clergymen harassed, prosecuted and sometimes murdered, particularly in the Donbass.
This reign of terror only accelerated in 2019, when a schismatic Ukrainian church was hailed by the Patriarch of Constantinople as the ‘true’ UOC, and then further intensified since the beginning of the SMO. The UOC has been accused of being a Trojan Horse for the sin of Russianness in Ukrainian society – the same society that is largely Russian-speaking, and at least 50% ethnic Russian – and is now used as a stick to beat the majority of Ukrainians who fail to hate Russia enough to abjure the faith of their ancestors. This is despite the fact that the Moscow Patriarchate has never made any political demands on the Ukrainian faithful which might constitute a challenge to the Ukrainian government.
Putin, usually circumspect in his criticisms, was uncharacteristically vociferous.
“You know, what is happening to the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine is unique. Simply unique. It is a gross, just blatant violation of human rights and the rights of believers. The church is being torn apart in front of the whole world. It’s like a firing squad. And everybody in the world prefers not to notice it.”
“I think those who are doing it will have it come back to them. You said they’re tearing it apart. Yes, that’s what’s happening. You see, the thing is? They’re not even atheists, these people. Atheists are people who believe in something. They believe that there is no God. But that’s their belief, that’s their conviction. And they are not atheists. They’re just people with no faith at all, godless people…They are people without family, without tribe, they do not care about anything that is dear to us and to the overwhelming majority of the Ukrainian people. They will go to the beach, not to church. But that is their choice…”
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Anyone who has watched any of the plentiful footage of the persecution of Ukrainian Orthodox Christians will understand Putin’s emotional outburst. The visible distress of the congregation, as soldiers break into churches, burn icons and beat up priests, is hard to stomach, particularly as so many of the people are either very young or very old. At first glance, it is natural to cast those who attack old people, children and peaceful priests as cynical, faithless and mindless. However, although Putin’s desire to disparage the perpetrators is a natural one, it is hard to see his words as anything other than rhetorical.
Putin, as surely the most historically-minded of all world leaders, will be keenly aware of how Ukrainian nationalism, in its most virulently anti-Russian form, is rooted in an emotionalism that is certainly religious in its mesmeric power. As any student of eastern European history knows, the area now known as Western Ukraine, the root of Ukrainian nationalism, was part of what the scholars Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz called ‘the shatterzone of empires’; an area, populated by incompatible peoples, that has changed hands repeatedly, creating a kaleidoscope of constantly-shifting power imbalances and mutual antagonisms. Russia, in the form of the old Tsarist empire, the Soviet Union and then the more recent Federation, is merely the last in a line of regional hegemons to trigger feelings of fear, envy and hatred amongst rival ethnicities, and in particular those Ukrainians who evolved an elaborate mythology of genetic and cultural superiority to their neighbours in order to combat their feelings of impotence and rage.
To imply that those now acting against the church lack any systematic framework of motivating belief is to ignore the results of this mythology of difference, which has developed an elaborate superstructure of creation story, exegesis, catechism and ritual similar to that of a conventional faith. This is not to imply that they are at all original; the solemn torch-lit marches, the invoking of the psychopath Bandera as a Christ-like figure, and the constant exhortations of ‘Slava Ukraini’ are almost totally derivative of a certain notorious period of history. To those of an emotionally-healthy disposition, they seem at best ridiculous, and certainly more reminiscent of self-delusion and failure than glory. But to a specific kind of Ukrainian, raised on an IV drip of anti-Russian outrage, they are quasi-religious practices that are just as sacred as the Orthodox sacraments.
Here a disclaimer is important; clearly it is not possible to discern the exact motivations of all those participating in the persecution. Some policemen and soldiers may be too apathetic to do anything other than go along to get along. Some may even feel too frightened to resist their orders. Conversely, others may be genuine satanists who will take any opportunity to attack any church! To echo a famous British queen, we cannot make windows into men’s souls, but we can make educated guesses about the dominant motivation, given the plentiful evidence available. Putin has every right to disparage the ‘godlessness’ of those who attack the Orthodox faithful, but it is not quite correct to call them faithless.
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