by Stefano Caprio

Although some Russian Orthodox priests have spoken out against “war liturgies,” they don’t all hold the same positions. Some have tried to stick with the patriarchal Church, others have turned to other Orthodox jurisdictions; some have limited themselves to passive resistance, while others have openly criticised the patriarch himself, such as the theologian and Deacon Andrey Kuraev.

The 9th international “Yakunin Readings” online conference was held earlier this month. The event began in 2016, two years after the death of Father Gleb Yakunin, one of the foremost Soviet era religious dissidents.

In 1965, as a young Orthodox priest, Yakunin wrote to the then Patriarch Alexy I (Simansky), known as “Stalin’s patriarch”, together with his confrere, Nikolai Eshliman, in which he accused the Russian Church hierarchy of supporting the communist regime that oppressed the people, denying them freedom of religion.

After spending eight years in different Soviet penitentiary facilities, the clergyman was freed under Gorbachev and his perestroika, and was eventually elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation, where he contributed to the drafting of the first laws on religious freedom, later curtailed and distorted by Putin and his regime.

Disappointed by the post-Soviet evolution of the Moscow Patriarchate, which never managed to cut the cord that tied it to the state, Father Gleb founded his own "Apostolic Orthodox" Church, remaining a determined supporter of freedom of conscience until the end.

This year's conference was dedicated to “Old and new religious dissidents” amid the unremitting pressure on and excommunications of priests who condemn the war launched by Putin's regime and Patriarch Kirill, or who simply fail to “pray for Victory”.

For many, the time has come to dust off the term “dissident” even at a time of Orthodox sovereignism”, and go beyond that of simple "opponents" used for the martyred Alexei Navalny, applying the concept of “dissent” even in religious matters that no longer concern the juxtaposition of atheism to the profession of faith, but refers to the opposition between the Patriarchate’s "political theology" and the experience of faith that rejects war.

The Siberian philosopher Nikolai Karpitsky, who today lives on the edge of the war in Sloviansk (Donetsk Oblast), gave a talk on “The War and the Crisis of Religious Identity”, stating that the problem of religious dissent arises when “canonical rules only exacerbate, rather than resolve, internal contradictions. [. . .] In times of peace, these contradictions can remain hidden, but war highlights them.”

In his opinion, the mechanism by which religion is transformed into ideology is activated when “the tension to convey one's own moral position in society is embodied not in religious preaching, but in demands on everyone, even those with different beliefs.” In this case, the appeal is made to the “ideology of fundamental values” in an “imitation of religion” that transforms faith into a “parody in favour of power”.

This is in fact the parable of the “religious revival” of post-Soviet Russia, where religion has been bent to serve ideology, achieving an even more oppressive result than the propaganda of state atheism itself.

Karpitsky defines the compulsory orthodoxy of today's Russians as obryadoveriye (обрядоверие), uncritical "ritualism" that submits to religious authorities and observes their formal practices, which “adapt to socio-political conditions, ending up serving only the ruling political power.”

After all, this is how Orthodoxy interpreted things even in Soviet times, against which the religious dissent of Father Gleb Yakunin and many others developed, people like Father Aleksandr Men, killed in 1990 by the dark forces of a regime that was changing its skin, so as not to lose its power.

The ideology of values ends up projecting itself as an imperial and universal vision, addressed to the will of the Most High as the source of every principle of world order, justifying dictatorship and war against the “enemies of the true faith”.

The “Yakunin Readings” are organised by Elena Volkova, author of an important book on the dissident priest, Glyba Gleba (Глыба Глеба), the “Gleb Bloc”, who speaks of a “clear regression to Soviet policies” by the incumbent regime, and the re-emergence of the dissident movement.

After all, “it is still the same country and the same Moscow Patriarchate, that of the mendacious Sergiantsy (сергианцы),” she says, using a definition in vogue among religious dissidents in the 1960s, who accused Church leaders of betraying their own traditions, starting with the submission of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), the first to recognise the Soviet regime and then becoming the first patriarch restored by Stalin in 1943, in support of the war against Nazism.

For Volkova, the term “dissident” goes back to the English Protestants of the 16th and 17th centuries, who did not accept Henry VIII’s compromises with Catholic traditions after he broke with Rome, and founded the Anglican “hybrid” Church.

Puritans, Quakers and other groups demanded true adherence to the reforms born out of the Lutheran schism, and were called “dissidents” or dissenters, a term therefore created to highlight those who challenge the dominant Church in their country.

Archpriest (protoiereus) Georgy Edelstein, a great friend of Father Gleb Yakunin, took part in the conference. Now 93 years old, he emigrated to Israel following the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, and is the de facto “patriarch” of Russian religious dissent.

He does not see himself as a dissident, considering illegitimate the current Church of the Moscow Patriarchate re-established by Stalin, but rather as a priest of “authentic pre-revolutionary Orthodoxy”. Father Georgy was a member of the “Helsinki Group”, created after the 1975 Declaration of Human Rights, which the Soviet Union signed, also backed by the Holy See at a time when it was pursuing its own Ostpolitik.

According to Father Georgy, "on the territory of historical Russia, from Petersburg to Vladivostok, the state founded in October 1917 by Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin is still in place,” the  state that the philosopher Ivan Ilyin sarcastically called Sovdepiya (Совдепия), from the original definition of Sovet Deputatov (Совет Депутатов), the “Council (Soviet) of deputies”, from which the term Sovok (совок) derives, the Soviet citizen, which today still indicates those who remain strongly linked to the Soviet heritage, which President Vladimir Putin best exemplifies.

Edelstein says he “does not understand how today those who consider themselves true Russian patriots and venerate Ilyin as their thinker of reference fail to heed his warning not to confuse Russia with Sovdepiya.”

In his view, Sovok rule has been "transfigured" several times, from Lenin’s “New Economic Policy” and the Khrushchev-era thaw to Gorbachev's perestroika and post-Soviet Putinism. In the end, “they are only name changes, as in the fairy tale in which the goats delude themselves that when the wolf speaks with the sounds of a goat,  then he stops being a wolf.”

Soviet dissidents defended human rights, like the advocates of the Helsinki Charter, with a humanitarian and democratic vision, turned towards respect for the rule of law at home and international law abroad, who used the slogan against Soviet totalitarianism “Observe your Constitution!”

Father Yakunin also defended legalism, which contained much discrimination against believers, denouncing the violation of the principle of separation of Church from State imposed by Lenin himself. The Soviet Church, on the other hand, was totally at the service of the state as Putin's Church is today, and once again, constitutional principles are trampled on, not to mention the now derelict international law.

As humanitarian activist Lev Levinson noted, religious dissidents came in different shapes and forms, from those who dreamt of restoring tsardom and Russian nationalists of various shades to sincere democrats like Yakunin and Zoya Krakhmalnikova, a writer and publicist who died in 2008, and many others.

Even today it is not possible to give a complete and accurate picture of Putin “opponents”. In late February, a few thousands marched through the streets of Berlin led by Ilya Yashin, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Julia Navalnaya, Alexei's wife, whose followers are at odds with other “dissidents” at home and abroad.

There is also no common front among Russian Orthodox priests who spoke out against “war liturgies”, from those who have tried to remain within the patriarchal Church and those who turn to other Orthodox jurisdictions to those who limit themselves to passive resistance and those who explicitly speak out against the leaders and the patriarch himself, such as the theologian and Deacon Andrey Kuraev,  who now lives abroad after being excommunicated and put under investigation for “defamation of the Armed Forces”.

Kuraev recently published a multi-volume book on the “Mythology of Russian Wars” to show the deception of the “greatest earthly power, which seeks to show itself as the most peace-loving” by waging wars in all latitudes, using sacred and higher motivations.

One of the most recurrent myths he denounces is that of the alleged “hatred of Europe and the West towards Russia”, which serves to justify aggressions and invasions such as the one in Ukraine.

Dissent, as the great writer and dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn taught, is first and foremost the search for truth, to “live without lies” not against anyone, but to defend the freedom and dignity of every human being, of every son and daughter of God.

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