(Un)Expected Soviet Nostalgia? Complex Memory of the Soviet Past and the Improbable Democratic Discourse in Russian Orthodoxy

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article examines the current ethos of Russian Orthodox culture in terms of its correspondence to democratic values by analyzing the structure of memory of the Soviet past in the Orthodox milieu and among the Church’s leadership. The premise is that collective memory of this kind can be a criterion in assessing the political ethos of a community. The memory of the Soviet past includes such elements as hagiography of the martyrs who died in the Soviet anti-religious terror; the issue of the Church’s strategy of loyalty toward the repressive regime; the hermeneutics of trauma as providential sacrifice; and attitudes toward the Soviet past in view of Orthodox sociopolitical ideals. This article shows ambiguities in Orthodox assessment of the Soviet regime; but even the direct rejection of the Soviet past rarely translated into an engagement with a democratic agenda. This attitude is in line with the official endorsement by the Church leadership of Putin’s authoritarian regime and of the Russian war in Ukraine started in 2022.