The Baton and the Cross: Russia's Church from Pagans to Putin

"The book does have a historic sweep and looks at the ebb and flow of the Russian Orthodox Church’s relationship with political power, but it’s particularly interested in the current close relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and Putin. It shows there’s always been a kind of tango going on between the Russian Orthodox Church and whoever was in charge. Sometimes they’ve been dancing in harmony, and sometimes—maybe this is such a terrible metaphor that I should abandon it—it’s not a dance at all, and they’re throwing things at each other. But they’re always in a dynamic relationship with each other. Ash focuses particularly on what is going on right now. Why are members of the Russian Orthodox Church blessing the tanks that are being sent into Ukraine? What is the position of clerics of the Russian Orthodox Church who don’t feel so enthusiastic about the war? What sorts of experiences are they having? How do members of the congregations of these churches feel about any of this? The book is based on lots of on-the-ground research in Russia in the last decade or so, and it’s told by a journalist who has considerable expertise of living and working in Russia."

"Lucy Ash is a journalist with a lot of knowledge and understanding of Russia. She brings her own personal experiences into this book, and that makes it very readable. She takes a very panoramic view of the relationship between the state and the Orthodox Church, between the political and the religious powers, starting from the 7th century. This is the time of Olga, the grandmother of Vladimir the Great. She was the first to be baptized, but Christianity was not yet accepted at that time. Vladimir was baptized and became an Orthodox Christian in 988. The book focuses on a long, complex, and multilayered story about the power relationships and the mutual interdependencies between the tsars representing the earthly power, on the one hand, and the religious leaders deriving their symbolic power from connection to God, on the other. One important line that emerges in the book is how many times the Orthodox Church was on the brink of extinction. The biggest story there is the events of the 20th century, under Stalin, when thousands of churches were destroyed and priests were killed or sent to the gulag. The continuing threat to the Church has been there through history, but somehow the Church and the religious leaders have always found ways to adjust, to come back, to be useful and become very closely integrated with the state. The book also brings us to the present moment, when Ash looks at the link between Patriarch Kirill and Putin. In the 1990s, there wasn’t much of a link between the state and the Church, but in the 21st century, the whole foundation of Putinism became very much interlinked with religion and reliance on the Orthodox Church. That proximity and interdependence have grown and have been very much on display during the war in Ukraine. The war has been blessed by the Orthodox church, also in a very literal sense, with priests blessing soldiers, tanks, and other weapons. But the historical canvas is more complicated. It shows the interdependencies, but also the church’s vulnerability to the political power. It’s a very important book for understanding that the contemporary Russian political regime builds itself on sacred and religious values and that makes it strong. The book also shows the social yearning for those values, for religion, for something sacred. Again, there is this appreciation of humanity and how complex human beings are. The book is drawing us away from a simplistic view of Russians. The book shows Patriarch Kirill and the Orthodox Church as very materialistically driven. In the 1990s, the church used a lot of loopholes to become rich through trade, getting special export and import quotas for tobacco and other goods. You see the materialism and the manipulation. That brings us back to the first book, by Howard Amos, where you see these vulnerable human beings who are looking for something to hold on to, for values they can rely on. Ash shows how these values are manipulated and used in politics. The book is very much focused on institutions: the church and the state, political power, and religion. But behind the story, there is a space for appreciating the importance of religious values in life and how they’re used by politicians to legitimize their rule. I wouldn’t say that. On the one hand, you have this strong recognition that ‘We’re Christians and there are certain values that are important for us.’ On the other hand, when sociologists study how often people go to church or practice religion in a systematic, regular way, the numbers are not very high. It’s this identification and psychological appreciation of religion as part of your identity that’s very strong. It’s not only about Christian Russians, actually. In various parts of Russia, there are many Muslims. In the republics of Bashkortostan and Tatarstan, for example, or in the Caucasus, you also see a strong role of religion in social life. It has been happening over the past 20 or so years as a response to the disorientation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But it’s not as simple as saying, ‘Russians are all going to church these days.’ They aren’t. Nonetheless, it’s important for their identity. They see themselves as Orthodox, and that is an important part of who they are."