Revolution, Raskol, and Rock ‘n’ Roll: The 1,020th Anniversary of the Day of the Baptism of Rus

Abstract

Every year on July 28, citizens in contemporary Russia turn on the television news and hear extensive reports about a new federal holiday known as “The Day of the Baptism of Rus.” Viewers watch as Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow stand side‐by‐side and repeat an ancient story about the Conversion in 988 and the sacred bonds which even today unite the nations of “Holy Rus”: Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. But what, exactly, is the political and ecclesiastical backstory behind the staging of these yearly media spectacles? Why and when had the Day of the Baptism of Rus begun to play such a visible role in post‐Soviet politics? In this study, Griffin reconstructs the development of this propaganda campaign in the years between 1991 and 2008. Special attention is given, above all, to the events that unfolded in Ukraine following the Orange Revolution, when the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church began to fear that they were in danger of losing their traditional status as the only canonical Orthodox church in Ukraine. Ultimately, Griffin argues that the contemporary commemorations of the Day of the Baptism of Rus have less to do with the Vladimir who ruled in the late tenth century than they do with the Vladimir who currently rules in the twenty‐first.