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If
Russia’s geopolitical characteristics have shaped its ‘body’ and
also the temperament, skills and habits of the Russian people,
then the religion of the Russian people - the eastern form of
Christianity known as Orthodoxy - have shaped its ‘soul’ and
left an indelible mark on the Russian spiritual, cultural and
political traditions. |
Both Russia
and the West represented predominantly Christian civilizations.
However, Christianity had reached them by different channels. Rome
had been the West’s main mediator of Christianity, while in Russia’s
case it was the Byzantine Empire that had acted as her Christian
‘god-mother’. Byzantium was the Eastern part of the Roman Empire and
saw itself as its heir after the collapse of the Western Empire in
476. The Western form of Christianity - Catholicism - reflected the
peculiarities of the Roman civilization, while the Eastern form of
Christianity - the Orthodoxy - was imbued with the spirit of the
Greek civilization that dominated Byzantium at the time of the
implantation of Christianity to Russia.
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Central to
Orthodox Christianity was the idea of joining together the earthly
order with the heavenly one. The authority of the emperor was the
power that linked these two worlds together. When exercised
properly, the emperor’s power was capable of resolving all tensions
and contradictions between the imperfect world of mortals and the
ideal celestial order. It was able to bring this world in harmony
with the next. For this reason, the authority of the ‘true’ orthodox
tsar was seen by the Orthodox religion as a guarantee of salvation
after death. |
In Western
Europe, particularly after the sixteenth-century Reformation, the
Christian religion motivated individuals to engage in some kind of
profitable economic activity. Economic success strengthened the
person’s belief that he was a ‘chosen’ one, destined for a future
individual salvation. In Russia, however, the Orthodox religion
promised its people not an economic but a political way of
collectivist salvation. In contrast to western
Christianity, which roused Europeans to seek economic prosperity and
encouraged them to develop civil society as a means of protecting
their business interests and civil rights, the Russian people was
prescribed by its religion to engage in a centuries-long quest for a
‘true’ Christian tsar.
The gradual
secularization of these beliefs had crystallized into two divergent
value-systems. In the West, professional success became one of the
chief criteria for the evaluation of a person’s activity, whereas in
Russia, the idea of bringing closer the existing, imperfect world
with the divine order resulted in a collectivist movement in search
of a better future, in a continual quest for an ideal of social
justice. With the collapse of tsarism in 1917, the charismatic power
of the communist leader and of the State replaced the divine
authority of the emperor as the force that bridged the divide
between the earthly order and the radiant collectivist future.