The Role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the State’s Promotion of the “Traditional” Family as Part of Family Policy

Abstract

Since the 2010s, the Russian government has promoted a family model in its family policy – a heterosexual married couple with three children – explicitly defined as “traditional”. This definition is close to the representation of the family by the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), which, since the 2000s, has positioned itself as an actor in family policy, in particular through the establishment of “The Committee of Patriarchs on the Family, Child Welfare and Motherhood” serving as an intermediary with the State. I show that the ROC and the State offer comparable family models and that they work closely together in the implementation of family policy. I show how the Russian government and the ROC support religiously motivated actions, including promotional events such as the creation of new holidays and restrictive measures such as limiting the right to abortion. I conclude that the demographic crisis led Russian family policy in the 2000s to combine a natalist dimension with a traditionalist dimension that values a family model based on ROC values. This work is based on official documentation and the results of a field work conducted between 2015 and 2018 in the Ulyanovsk Oblast. I conducted interviews with two categories of the population: officials of different governmental structures directly related to family policy and ROC priests. The choice of this region was motivated by the involvement of local authorities and ROC representatives in the realisation of the objectives of the federal family policy.