Christianity was introduced into the East Slavic state of Kievan Rus by Greek missionaries from Byzantium in the ninth century, but it was the baptism of Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, in 988 that propelled Russia from paganism to Christianity. This led to the adoption of the Cyrillic alphabet and to centuries of alignment with Byzantine culture and traditions.
Under Vladimir's successors, and until 1448, the Russian church was headed by the metropolitans of Kiev and formed a metropolitanate of the Byzantine patriarchate; thereafter the Russian bishops elected their own patriarch without recourse to Constantinople, and the Russian church was thenceforth independent.
Just as in the arts, the fate of the religious institutions ebbed and flowed according to changing political climate. In the twentieth century, and particularly under Soviet rule, periods of persecution and repression were followed by brief interludes of revival and expansion. Although the constitution of the Soviet Union nominally guaranteed religious freedom, religious activities were greatly constrained, and membership of religious organizations was considered incompatible with membership of the Communist Party. When the Soviets first came to power they soon declared the separation of church and state, and nationalized all church-held lands. These administrative measures were followed by brutal state- sanctioned persecutions that included the wholesale destruction of churches, and the arrest and execution of many clerics. The Russian Orthodox Church was further weakened in 1922, when the Renovated Church, a reform movement supported by the Soviet government, brought division among clergy and faithful.
In 1943, benefiting from the sudden reversal of Joseph Stalin's policies toward religion, Russian Orthodoxy underwent a resurrection: a new patriarch was elected, theological schools were opened, and thousands of churches began to function. Between 1945 and 1959 the official organization of the church was greatly expanded, although individual members of the clergy were occasionally arrested and exiled. The number of open churches reached 25,000. But a new and widespread persecution of the church was subsequently instituted under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. Then, beginning in the late 1980s, under Mikhail Gorbachev, the new political and social freedoms resulted in many church buildings being returned to the church, to be restored by local parishioners. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 made religious freedom a reality, and revealed that large sections of the population had continued to practise a variety of faiths. Indeed, Russian nationalists who emerged from the 1990s identified the Russian Orthodox Church as a major element of Russian culture. Tsar Nicholas П, the Russian emperor who had been murdered by the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution of 1917, and members of his family were canonized by the church in 2000.
Other Christian denominations are much smaller and include the Old Believers, who separated from the Russian Orthodox Church in the seventeenth century, and Baptist and Evangelical groups. Catholics, both Western rite (Roman) and Eastern rite (Uniate), and Lutherans were numerous in the former Soviet Union but lived mainly outside present-day Russia, where there are few adherents. Muslims constitute Russia's second-largest religious group. In 1997 legislation was enacted that constrained denominations outside five "traditional" religions - Russian Orthodoxy, several other Christian denominations, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism - restricting the activities for at least fifteen years of groups not registered in the country. For example, groups not meeting this requirement at the time the law was implemented (such as Roman Catholics and Mormons) were unable to operate educational institutions or disseminate religious literature.
Although there is some degree of correlation between language and religion, the two do nor correspond entirely. Slavs are overwhelmingly Orthodox Christian, Turkic speakers are predominantly Muslim, although several Turkic groups in Russia are not. For example, Christianity predominates among the Chuvash, Buddhism prevails among large numbers of Altai, Khakass, and Tuvans, and many Turkic speakers east of the Yenisey have retained their shamanistic beliefs (though some have converted to Christianity). Buddhism is common among the Mongolian-speaking Buryat and Kalmyk.
Jews long suffered discrimination in Russia, including purges in the nineteenth century, repression under the regime of Joseph Stalin, and Nazi atrocities on Russian soil during the Second World War. Beginning with Gorbachev's reformist policies in the 1980s, Jewish emigration to Israel and elsewhere was permitted on an increasing scale, and the number of Jews living in Russia (and all parts of the former Soviet Union) has decreased. Prior to the break-up of the Soviet Union, about one- third of its Jewish population lived in Russia (though many did not practise Judaism), and now about one-tenth of all Jews in Russia reside in Moscow. In the 1930s the Soviet government established Yevreyskaya in the far east as a Jewish autonomous province, though by the end of the twentieth century only about 5 per cent of the province's population was Jewish.
Social Issues
Some of Russia's most pressing social problems have been inherited from the Soviet and earlier past. Others are more recent developments, fostered by the speed of change and economic collapse that followed the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Public health is among the most serious social concerns. During much of the Soviet period, when social welfare programmes were funded by the central government, advances in health care and material well-being led to a decline in mortality, the control or eradication of the more dangerous infectious diseases, and an increase in the average lifespan. From the 1990s a major portion of the public welfare budget continued to be directed into free medical service, training, pensions, and scholarships with the aim of improving the material and social conditions of workers in Russia, but employer-based social insurance and pension funds, to which workers contributed, were also introduced.
Nevertheless, after 1991 public health deteriorated dramatically. The death rate reached its highest level of the twentieth century (excluding wartime) in the 1990s. Life expectancy fell dramatically (though it began to rise again by the end of the decade), and infectious diseases that had been under control spread again. In addition, the country suffered high rates of cancer, tuberculosis, and heart disease. Various social, ecological, and economic factors underlay these developments, including funding and medicine shortages, adequately paid and trained medical personnel (for example, many medical schools lack sufficient supplies and instructors), poor intensive and emergency care, the limited development of specialized services such as maternity and hospice care, contaminated food and drinking water, duress caused by economic dislocation, poor nutrition, contact with toxic substances in the workplace, and high rates of alcohol and tobacco consumption. Air pollution in heavily industrialized areas has led to relatively high rates of lung cancer in these regions, and high incidences of stomach cancer have occurred in regions where consumption of carbohydrates is high and intake of fruits, vegetables, milk, and animal proteins is low.
Alcoholism has long been a severe public health problem in Russia. At the beginning of the twenty-first century it was estimated that some one-third of men and one-sixth of women were addicted to alcohol. The problem is particularly acute in rural areas and among the Evenk, Sakha, Koryak, and Nenets peoples in Russia's northern regions. Widespread alcoholism has its origins in the Soviet-era "vodka-based economy", which countered shortages in the supply of food and consumer goods with the production of vodka, a non-perishable product that was easily transportable. The government has sponsored media campaigns to promote healthy living and imposed strict tax regulations aimed at reducing the profitability of vodka producers; in addition, group-therapy sessions have spread. There have also been proposals to prohibit the sale of hard liquors in the regions with the highest rates of alcoholism.