Средневековый московский миф о государстве и его смысловые актуализации в современности

Abstract

The medieval state in Rus’ was constituted and symbolized as a Christian institution, and its quintessence was the image of the sovereign. To fill the significant image with meaning, the mythological motif of serpent fighting, the struggle of the Hero with the Enemy, was used. This was demonstrated both by visual representations (icons, seals, coat of arms) and by the official nomination “tsar”, which acquired a special Orthodox mystical meaning. The sacralization of the image of the Russian sovereign and state was based on the Byzantine model of a universal empire, in which the tsar was the vicar of Christ on earth, being his “living” incarnation. As a result, the role of Moscow, this already transcendental state, called by virtue of symbolic continuity the “Third Rome”, and the tsar were associated with the extension of the life of the fourth world Christian kingdom in the context of the coming end of the world. This last kingdom, it was believed in medieval Moscow, was already an established Orthodox power, united in the universe, headed by a truly Orthodox tsar, hence the main political function of the tsar was to protect Orthodoxy from enemies. Thus, on the basis of the construction of the heroic myth, a complete and all-encompassing world of meaning was built, and the political order was legitimized in its ultimate meaning, in its correlation with the divine cosmic order. The ideas of Russian Orthodox theology of the 18th–20th centuries concerning what should be done in the construction of Russian statehood are based on ideas about the God’s chosenness of the Russian people, the religious mission of Rus’ and its tsar, formed during the period of the Principality of Moscow. Meanwhile, the theology of this period also has its own specifics. The new political reality, characterized by the fact that Russia, with the beginning of the church reform of Peter the Great, took the path of state secularization, gives a special tone to discussions about the nature of Russian statehood. The theological thought of this period is distinguished by an attempt to substantiate the need for a return to traditional values, which, according to the authors, constitute the basis of Russian statehood. Particular hope for a return to the “old models” rests with the Russian people, who are assigned a heroic role – to be the savior of the state. Ideas about the mystical nature of the Russian state are updated today through speeches and statements of political and religious leaders, in which political power is represented in mythical-heroic motifs, and Russia appears as a defender of traditional values and world Orthodoxy, a state with a messianic role in the modern world.