When Patriarch
Kirill visited Russia's largest shipyard in late August, he was greeted with
full military honors.
As a brass band played at the Northern Shipyard in
Severodvinsk, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church strolled past a row of
sailors in dress uniform, boarded a nuclear submarine, and presented the crew
with an icon of the Mother of God.
He later said Russia's defense capabilities need to be
bolstered by Orthodox Christian values.
"You should not be ashamed of going to church and
teaching the Orthodox faith to your children," the patriarch told the
Severodvinsk workers. "Then we shall have something to defend with our missiles."
Kirill's comments linking sacred Christian faith and secular
nuclear might raised eyebrows, particularly among Russia's religious
minorities. The event, analysts say, also served to illustrate the patriarch's
growing political profile.
"Patriarch Kirill is very energetic and sees himself
not only as a religious figure but also somebody who can play a role in secular
affairs as well,” says Boris Falikov, an associate professor of religious
studies at the Russian State Humanities University in Moscow.
“Since the moment of his enthronement he has energetically
engaged in church affairs, and has also sought out his own role in Russian
politics."
Analysts say Kirill's relationship with Russia's secular
authorities is a complex dance carried out in the context of centuries of
close, but often troubled, ties -- including decades in which the church was
suppressed under Soviet rule.
Falikov says Kirill is seeking to strike a difficult balance
in his relations with the state as he carves out his own political role:
"He is finding a common language with the secular
authorities, but at the same time understands that the church must not lose its
autonomy and must not become an obedient tool of the Kremlin,” Falikov says.
“But nevertheless, their interests often coincide because
the church needs a lot from the state and the state is giving a lot to the
church."
Soft-Power Tool
Kirill's political role was clearly on display during his
recent high-profile trip to Ukraine, where he sought to unite the country's
fractious Orthodox Christians who are split into parishes loyal to the Moscow
Patriarchate and an autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Many observers saw political undercurrents in Kirill's trip,
which came as Moscow was engaged in a bitter struggle with the pro-Western
government in Kyiv -- and came shortly after a visit to Ukraine by U.S. Vice
President Joe Biden.
In a televised speech on July 28, Kirill implored Ukrainians
not to sacrifice the common Orthodox Christian values they share with Russia in
the pursuit of closer ties with Europe, a clear reference to Kyiv's efforts to
join NATO and the European Union.
Father Ihor Yatsyv, press secretary for Lubomyr Huzar, the
head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, told RFE/RL's Russian Service that
Kirill sounded like "a politician from Russia...who wants to establish a
sphere of influence in Ukraine," rather than a religious leader.
"The visit was not just pastoral. It was political,”
Yatsyv said.
“Given Kirill's statements about two brotherly peoples that
cannot be divided, one has to wonder whether he understands that Ukraine today
is an independent country."
Falikov and others say Kirill had his own religious agenda
in Ukraine -- uniting the Orthodox faithful -- but that this coincided with the
secular interests of the Kremlin, mainly bringing Ukraine back into its sphere
of influence.
"His visit to Ukraine is an example of when church
politics works to the advantage of the Russian state,” Falikov said.
“I don't think he allowed himself to be used as a tool [of
the state], but was rather playing an autonomous role. In this case his
interests as a church official overlapped with the state's interests."
In a recent commentary published in "The Moscow
Times," Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the journal "Russia In Global
Affairs," called Kirill "a new public figure in Russia whose
political weight and diplomatic skills surpass those of the secular
authorities."
Lukyanov added that Kirill's ability to combine "tact
and kind civility with a firmness of ideological positions" was an example
"of the soft, nonstate power that Moscow has long been criticized for
lacking."
A similar soft-power offensive will also likely be on
display later this year when Kirill visits Georgia, a country that fought a
bitter five-day war with Russia last summer and seeks to join NATO, but which
also has a large and devout Orthodox Christian population.
There are also indications that Kirill's interests go beyond
the former Soviet space.
Interfax reported on September 2 that Kirill supports the
idea of helping ethnic Russians win election to legislative bodies in the
European Union. After meeting with Tatiana Zhdanok, president of the
European-Russian Alliance and a member of the European Parliament from Latvia,
Kirill said he attaches “great importance to the cooperation of the Russian
Orthodox Church and the political forces in Europe and are actively working in
this direction.”
Spheres Of Influence
But analysts say Kirill's political role is wider than just
being a weapon in the Kremlin's soft-power arsenal.
Under a recent agreement with the ruling United Russia
party, he has won the right to review and suggest changes to any legislation
before the State Duma that is of particular interest to the church.
Analysts note, however, that Kirill's influence does not
extend across the full range of issues before the legislature, but is very strong
in a few select areas:
"Kirill has already received more from [President
Dmitry] Medvedev than [his predecessor Patriarch Aleksy II] got from Putin
during his whole presidency,” says Nikolai Mitrokhin, a research fellow
specializing in religious issues at the Center for Eastern European Studies at
the University of Bremen in Germany.
“He is, nevertheless, someone who has influence over a very
narrow sphere -- education, culture, spirituality -- but not more than
this."
Kirill has already made it clear that he intends to use his
growing influence to keep sex education out of Russia's schools.
In May, Russia ratified the European Social Charter, which
calls for health education in schools, including sex education. Kirill is
determined to make sure this doesn't happen when the Duma codifies the charter
into Russian law.
The patriarch is also seeking to expand the teaching of
Orthodox Christian culture in Russia's public schools and to have chaplains
embedded with military units. Each of these initiatives is running into
opposition in predominantly Muslim regions like Tatarstan.
But Kirill has also had his differences with the Kremlin.
In a recent interview with the magazine "Ekspert,"
Archbishop Hilarion, who heads the Moscow Patriarchate's Department of External
Relations and is a close aide to Kirill, called the Soviet leader Josef Stalin
"a spiritually deformed monster" who was "comparable to
Hitler" and "unleashed a genocide against the people of his own
country."
Mitrokhin says Hilarion and other clergy, who were products
of Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost period, have strong influence over the
62-year-old patriarch.
"The priests who are dealing with administrative issues
came of age in the 1980s and 1990s. This generation, who are now 35-45 years
old, are very anti-Stalinist. They were very influenced by the perestroika-era
critique of the Stalin period," Mitrokhin says.
To a degree, this puts the Moscow Patriarchate at odds with
some elements in the Kremlin who have been seeking to rehabilitate some
elements of Stalinism as part of a new, nationalistic, Russian ideology.
Troubled History
The political influence of Russian Orthodox patriarchs has
varied widely over the centuries. The church provided a key component of the
ideological doctrine of “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationalism” that dominated
Russia under the Romanov dynasty.
Most historians agree that the most powerful was Patriarch
Filaret in the early 17th century, who was Russia's de facto ruler during the
reign of his son, Tsar Mikhail I, the first monarch of the Romanov dynasty.
Mikhail was just 16 years old when he came to power
following the Time of Troubles, a period of factional fighting and famine that
nearly led to the collapse of the Russian state.
Other patriarchs have not fared so well when they tried to
assert political authority. One example is Patriarch Nikon, who aspired to be a
co-ruler with Tsar Aleksei in the mid-17th century. He was removed as patriarch
and imprisoned as a simple monk in the Ferapontov Monastery in the northern
Vologda region.
Tsar Peter I was mistrustful of church authorities and
abolished the Moscow Patriarchate in 1721, replacing it with the Holy Governing
Synod and bringing the church under greater control by secular authorities.
The Patriarchate was restored in 1917, but was again
suspended by the Soviet authorities in 1925. It was reinstated for the last
time in 1943 during World War II.
Most patriarchs have sought to accommodate Russia's secular
rulers to varying degrees. The most notorious example is that of Patriarch
Aleksy I, who was enthroned with the support of Stalin in 1945, toward the end
of World War II.
Stalin had allowed the Russian Orthodox Church, which had
been suppressed following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, to operate officially
again starting in 1943, albeit under tight Soviet supervision. The move was
seen as part of efforts to intensify patriotic support for the authorities
during World War II and after.
The collaboration intensified under Aleksy I, whose
detractors accused him of soiling the church by collaborating with the
Communist authorities.
With Kirill's rising profile, there has been some
speculation in the Russian media that the so-called diarchy of President
Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin might become a triumvirate.
Analysts dismiss such speculation as unrealistic, but adds
that Kirill's influence is nevertheless likely to grow:
"This is not going to turn into a triumvirate,” Falikov
says. “But it is clear that Kirill aspires to increase the church's role not
only in society but in politics as well. We can see this already in the first
months of his patriarchy."
