Abstract:

Following the transmission of Orthodox Christianity from Byzantine to Russia, Church gained prominence and enjoyed an equal status with the political authority. After the collapse of Byzantine, Church became wholly independent and engaged in a mission of defending and strengthening the Russian state. Church, which had largely been considered not only as religious but also as political actor by Russian society and administrators, continued to be an important determinant of Russian politics concurrently with the secularization and laicism processes in Europe. However, increasing authority of Tsar’s administration over the Church depleted its equality and “symphonia” vis-à-vis political authority and the Church started to be reconstructed as an instrument of political authority rather than an independent actor in political arena. In this context, Church was not taken out of politics. It simply continued to be included in politics, but with a different attribute. Once discredited before the community by Soviet authorities, Church gained power again in both societal and political realms in the 1990s Russia. Related to this development, scholars often tried to highlight the similarities between pre-Soviet era and today’s Russia within the framework of church-state relations. The aim of this paper is to clarify the continuities and changes in church-state relations in Russia in the leadership of Putin via a foreign policy example. A foreign policy example was chosen, because the church-state relations literature concerned with Russia simply lacks a focus on foreign policy. Ukraine is selected as a case study because of Ukraine’s holiness and strategic importance for the Russian Orthodox Church. The paper concludes that, as of 2014, Putin administration’s Ukraine policy was not strictly consistent with Church’s Ukraine policy. Moreover, Putin’s policy damaged Church’s regional objectives. Even so, Church administration supported Putin and took part in “asymmetric symphonia” model based on hierarchy. This model is possibly today’s version of continuity in church state relations in Russian history.

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