We needed to be given a narrative that explained who we were and where we were going, and why that was a good thing, but with communism defeated, and the old methods of transmitting cultural information long-destroyed, there was now a huge vacuum where ideas and identity should have been. There was not a single political institution that was dedicated to the health of the society. It was not enough to be able go out and buy a new car or watch – especially since only a limited proportion of the population could afford these panaceas. These items were, we would learn, little more than a sticking plaster.
Clerical organisations were the only bodies left with authority, the only bodies trying to heal the grievous wounds that had been inflicted on the Russian population. And perhaps it was not surprising that people responded as warmly to them as they did. We were, after all, a society suffused with belief (ever since the 1920s, there had been an understanding that many traditionally Christian values had been present in Communist ideology, so even though the faith itself was afforded no space, many of its tenets were already sewn into our souls), it was just that now there was nowhere we could turn to channel this emotion. A ‘superstition’ that the Bolsheviks had assumed would eventually crumble into dust had instead proved surprisingly durable. And what was true of the Orthodox Church in Russia was true also of Islam in the Caucuses, and of Judaism, which in the years since 1991 has enjoyed an astonishing, almost unparalleled renewal.[21]
For those people who did not know where their lives were heading, or to whom they could turn, the church or mosque or synagogue became a place they could visit and find somebody who at least tried to listen to their concerns and reassure them. If they were hungry, they might even find a meal. These places of worship became a source of hope to men and women who had lost everything, and while there were few attempts at proselytisation, I think many rediscovered the religion that had lain dormant within them for most of their lives.
It was out of respect for the great service they provided that I began to communicate with members of the priesthood and also to start contributing money from my own pocket. In the years since my clandestine baptism, my relationship with Christianity had evolved, albeit slowly. Once I became an officer and had embarked on my adult, professional life, I came to believe that although our understanding of the physical world was expanding more quickly than at any previous time in human history, we still knew little or nothing about metaphysical life. Perhaps, I concluded, there was something else we could not understand, that remained forever out of our grasp.
I only really came to the church relatively late in life, in 2003, at the age of fifty-four. It was in that year that, for the first time, along with a group of others, we brought the Holy Fire from Jerusalem to Moscow, in time for the Easter service at the Christ the Saviour cathedral – the resumption of a ritual abandoned under communism, and one we have reprised every year since. I believed that anything that could bring people together, which could provide support and inspiration to the people left disillusioned by the collapse of the USSR, could only be positive.
To begin with, I considered the initiative more from that perspective and did not consider myself religious at all; I did not even cross myself as I entered the church, since I believed it would be an act of hypocrisy. It took three years for me to be able to come to some kind of accommodation within my soul, so I could reconcile myself to the truth of what I was actually engaged in.
And even today, I would hesitate before proclaiming that I should be called devout. (I know I am not a perfect man, far from it, but I know too that I have never betrayed anybody, nor have I ever used my position to harm somebody as a means of advancing my own selfish interests.) To deserve that description, there are many rules that must be followed, many pieties observed – and the life I have led, and the life I lead now, discount me from this. I have little time and I am constantly travelling, but my belief runs deep.
Homo sapiens emerged on the savannahs of Africa around a hundred thousand years ago. We evolved family and community structures as ways of ensuring survival in an often hostile, unforgiving environment. Domestic life, caring for the future of your children, working for the common wealth of the people you live alongside, fair treatment of other members of society – all these are rooted in the prehistory of mankind, hardwired into our consciousness. As societies developed, these qualities were joined by other things worth celebrating: people learned about rights and responsibilities and, through freedom of speech and democracy, discovered new ways of being free.
It is only in the past thirty years, as post-modernity’s moral relativity has been absorbed into the bloodstreams of societies across the world, that these values, which we had become accustomed to regarding as inherent in mankind, have become increasingly threatened. Other assaults have come from the mass media – which, rather than reflecting society, increasingly seems determined to be the force that shapes it – and, perhaps most insidiously, the technological innovations that are altering the world around us at an almost incomputable rate. How can we hold on to our humanity when the rate of development in, inter alia, information technology, communication technology, biotechnology and artificial intelligence is outstripping our ability to even comprehend it, let alone control it?
Russia has still not managed to evolve a coherent set of morals and ethics that can fill the void left by the collapse of communism, or insulate it from the dangers of the twenty-first century. This nation of 200 nations, of more than 140 million souls, needs a guiding philosophy to ensure that its centre can hold. We need a story that we can tell about ourselves that will help explain who we are, and why it is worth our while to persist even when storm clouds begin to gather. Otherwise, as we know from grim experience, things fall apart.
I do not believe that a person can be forced to be good (bad, yes, but that is a different matter). Values are not something that can be imposed from above; they cannot be the result of legislation – those of us who have experienced communism, or its legacy, at first hand know in our bones the truth of this – or forcing people to go to church every Sunday. (In the course of the twentieth century, we saw how every project designed to create a new human being failed catastrophically, with unbearable costs. In the West, I can see ever greater attempts to make morality and ethics a question of legal fiat rather than consensus – who knows how the Homo Europeanus experiment will end?) The creation, or recovery, of a value-based society must instead be a consensual enterprise informed by the work of thinkers and theologians, and, perhaps most significantly, a deep if critical engagement with tradition and history: no new story, no new body of ethics, can ever proceed from a policy of oblivion.
In Russian, the word for education, vospitanie, means more than simply the classes a child takes at school; it is also about introducing them to the best of their traditions and culture. Vospitanie involves developing one’s character and values, not just acquiring academic qualifications. This is why the degradation of education, which is in many ways also the degradation of culture, has been one of the great tragedies of the post-Soviet era. If you want to rebuild a society’s moral core, then you need an understanding of what was lost in the first place. Instead, schools and universities that once were the envy of the world have been left to languish and decay as state spending on education was halved between 1990 and 1995, becoming symbols of the country’s lack of faith in its future.
21
Much Western coverage of Russia has tended to focus on the somewhat misleading contention that Orthodox Christianity has become a kind of adjunct of the state, but this is an unfortunately one-eyed view of the religious landscape in Russia. While 80 per cent of the population would self-identify as Christian, church attendance rarely struggles above 4 per cent. Compare this to the Eid celebrations, in which 250,000 Muslims spill into the streets of Moscow. Russia contains Europe’s biggest mosque and 10 per cent of its population is Muslim. All this should be kept in mind by anyone tempted to make generalisations about the country.