Mikhail Gorbachev’s tragic legacy within the Russian Orthodox Church
(RNS) — The legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev, so celebrated within the West, evokes deep ambivalence amongst Russians and Russian Orthodox believers. After 70 years of persecution and marginalization beneath the Soviet regime, the Orthodox Church took benefit of Gorbachev’s invitation to reenter public life.
However the final Soviet chief additionally failed the church in lots of Orthodox eyes. He diminished faith to a personal, particular person matter; tragically, he couldn’t see Russian Orthodoxy because the politically privileged faith of each Russia and its Jap Slavic neighbors. The place that he rejected has now helped Russians justify the invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian Orthodox Church was as soon as the church of Russia and Ukraine. Beneath Gorbachev, Ukrainian Greek Catholics and adherents of an autocephalous — impartial — Ukrainian Orthodox Church got here out of the underground, finally demanding authorized standing and the return of church properties the Communists had confiscated and given to the Russian church. Gorbachev made the error, his Orthodox critics cost, of making use of glasnost and perestroika to spiritual affairs, somewhat than securing the unity of the nation and its historic church.
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Gorbachev didn’t instantly reverse the federal government’s anti-religious insurance policies when he got here to energy in March 1985. After the 1917 October Revolution, the brand new Soviet rulers razed church buildings or turned them into factories, gymnasiums, house buildings and warehouses. Church bells weren’t permitted to ring, nor might the martyrs of the gulag be canonized. Candidates for the priesthood needed to be vetted by state non secular affairs officers and safety forces. Most monasteries had been closed.
State authorities restricted non secular actions to the remaining church buildings — academic endeavors or social ministries had been forbidden. Attendance at non secular providers would usually end in difficulties at work or college. At Easter, the police surrounded church buildings and demanded to see individuals’s passports. Faith more and more grew to become a matter greatest left to the babushki.
The church’s fortunes rose and fell within the following many years. Stalin relaxed anti-religious measures in change for the church’s help within the conflict in opposition to the Nazis, however Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor, pressed an aggressive marketing campaign for atheistic indoctrination. Then, in 1983, in anticipation of Russian Orthodoxy’s celebration of its millennium in 1988, the federal government returned Moscow’s historic Danilov Monastery to the church.
However by the start of the Gorbachev period, fewer than 7,000 Orthodox parishes had been in operation, in contrast with 50,000 in 1917. Solely a few dozen of small monastic communities endured, whereas there had as soon as been a thousand.
Though himself a confirmed atheist, Gorbachev believed that Orthodox Christianity might counter the widespread demoralization and atomization of society that had occurred beneath communism and that Gorbachev was combating together with his perestroika and glasnost insurance policies.
On April 29, 1988, an unprecedented assembly of church and state came about on the Kremlin: Gorbachev spoke for 90 minutes with Patriarch Pimen, acknowledged the Soviet state’s historic “errors” towards the church and promised a brand new period of non secular freedom. The previous months had already seen dramatic adjustments. Two main monastery complexes had been returned to the church, and the Easter liturgy had been broadcast for the primary time on Soviet tv.
Now, the speed of change accelerated. In June, Gorbachev’s spouse, Raisa, and main authorities officers attended the church’s jubilant millennial celebrations. By the tip of the 12 months, the church had established 800 new parishes, constructed dozens of church buildings and recovered the church’s most historical monastic complicated, the Monastery of the Caves in Kyiv.
It was a heady time. Orthodox monks started showing repeatedly on tv. The charismatic Orthodox priest Alexander Males attracted crowds of 15,000 in stadiums for his lectures on the Bible and spiritual life. Parishes organized Sunday colleges and academic institutes. Because the state-controlled social safety internet grew to become more and more frayed, Orthodox lay brotherhoods and sisterhoods stepped into the breach. Hospitals, orphanages and alcohol and drug rehabilitation facilities, as soon as off-limits to believers, flung open their doorways, grateful for the church’s charitable work.
Over the objections of many native officers, church leaders now felt free to attraction to Gorbachev to defend their rights. By 1991, the church had greater than 10,000 parishes and near 100 monasteries. Shortly earlier than the demise of the Soviet Union in December of that 12 months (and the tip of his presidency), Gorbachev succeeded in passing a legislation of non secular freedom and conscience that resembled the American mannequin of separating church and state.
One church chief exclaimed: “The church is totally free for the primary time in its historical past. The query is whether or not we’ll use this freedom.”
Gorbachev regarded the brand new legislation as considered one of his crowning achievements. The issue for a lot of Orthodox believers was that the church now had competitors. Dozens of “sectarian” teams emerged, together with Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslim “extremists.” Western evangelical missionaries poured into the nation, as if Orthodoxy had by no means been really Christian. In Ukraine, non secular tensions intensified between the “Moscow church” and nationalistic Orthodox believers.
This lack of ecclesiastical empire got here as inflation soared, the gross nationwide product crashed, the Yeltsin authorities gave away state enterprises to oligarchs, and corruption grew to become a lifestyle. A counterreaction quickly set in, in political and spiritual affairs.
However whilst freedom of faith and conscience grew to become extra restricted, the church received a privileged place for itself. With Vladimir Putin’s help, the church has grown to 39,000 parishes and 800 monasteries. It claims the affiliation of 70% or extra of Russians. Lots of them now affiliate Gorbachev with the efforts of the West to impose its “ethical decadence” on the East. These are the Russians who welcome Putin’s “particular army operation” to protect Russia’s cultural and spiritual unity with Ukraine, the place the destiny of 12,000 of these parishes hangs within the stability.
After his loss of life on Aug. 30, Russian Jewish, Islamic and evangelical Christian leaders commemorated Gorbachev enthusiastically for having given their adherents freedom to to migrate, undertake pilgrimages and handle their very own affairs. Conservative Orthodox commentators had solely scorn: “No different chief in Russia’s thousand years voluntarily gave up half of the nation,” stated one. One other asserted that Gorbachev was “weak and insignificant not solely by historic but in addition by human requirements.”
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The silence of Patriarch Kirill — who has justified the Ukraine invasion on Russian political and ecclesiastical grounds — has been telling. He has issued no assertion, provided no condolences. A 12 months in the past, he congratulated Gorbachev on his 90th birthday and acknowledged, even when simply matter-of-factly, Gorbachev’s efforts “to enhance the scenario of believers.” Now, the conflict has apparently made even ambivalence not possible.
However, what occurs in Ukraine will decide not solely Gorbachev’s legacy in Russia but in addition the way forward for its church. Because of the atheist Mikhail Gorbachev, Orthodox artwork, structure, music, ministry, religious life and social service might flourish once more. Immediately, a Western observer can solely hope that Kirill and his flock won’t betray the outstanding freedom for which Gorbachev fought.
(John P. Burgess is James Henry Snowden Professor of Systematic Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and the creator of “Holy Rus’: The Rebirth of Orthodoxy in the New Russia.” The views expressed on this commentary don’t essentially replicate these of Faith Information Service.)
