You Never Know Whom You'll Find in Appalachia

I'm greatly looking forward to reading a book just published last week, and to interviewing its author. That book is Between Heaven and Russia: Religious Conversion and Political Apostasy in Appalachia by Sarah Riccardi-Swartz  (Fordham University Press, April 2022), 288pp. It brings together so many themes of interest and in such a timely manner, too. About this book the publisher tells us this: 

How is religious conversion transforming American democracy? In one corner of Appalachia, a group of American citizens has embraced the Russian Orthodox Church and through it Putin’s New Russia. Historically a minority immigrant faith in the United States, Russian Orthodoxy is attracting Americans who look to Russian religion and politics for answers to Western secularism and the loss of traditional family values in the face of accelerating progressivism. This ethnography highlights an intentional community of converts who are exemplary of much broader networks of Russian Orthodox converts in the United States. These converts sought and found a conservatism more authentic than Christian American Republicanism and a nationalism unburdened by the broken promises of American exceptionalism. Ultimately, both converts and the Church that welcomes them deploy the subversive act of adopting the ideals and faith of a foreign power for larger, transnational political ends.

Offering insights into this rarely considered religious world, including its far-right political roots that nourish the embrace of Putin’s Russia, this ethnography shows how religious conversion is tied to larger issues of social politics, allegiance, (anti)democracy, and citizenship. These conversions offer us a window onto both global politics and foreign affairs, while also allowing us to see how particular U.S. communities are grappling with social transformations in the twenty-first century. With broad implications for our understanding of both conservative Christianity and right-wing politics, as well as contemporary Russian–American relations, this book provides insight in the growing constellations of far-right conservatism. While Russian Orthodox converts are more likely to form the moral minority rather than the moral majority, they are an important gauge for understanding the powerful philosophical shifts occurring in the current political climate in the United States and what they might mean for the future of American values, ideals, and democracy.

Russian Conservatism

It is striking but not surprising that we have both president and patriarch pictured on the cover of a book that was published in 2019 in hardcover, and in the spring of next year will come out in paperback: Paul Robinson, Russian Conservatism (Northern Illinois University Press, 2019/2021), 300pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this: 

Russian Conservatism examines the history of Russian conservative thought from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. As Paul Robinson shows, conservatism has made an underappreciated contribution to Russian national identity, to the ideology of Russian statehood, and to Russia's social-economic development. Robinson charts the contributions made by philosophers, politicians, and others during the Imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods. Looking at cultural, political, and social-economic conservatism in Russia, he discusses ideas and issues of more than historical interest. Indeed, what Russian Conservatism demonstrates is that such ideas are helpful in interpreting Russia's present as well as its past and will be influential in shaping Russia's future, for better or for worse, in the years to come.

Through Robinson's research we can now understand how Russian conservatives have continually proposed forms of cultural, political, and economic development seen as building on existing traditions, identity, forms of government, and economic and social life, rather than being imposed on the basis of abstract theory and foreign models.

Muslims in Putin's Russia

In my courses on Eastern Christian-Muslim relations, perhaps the most fascinating case-study we examine is that of Russia, which presents a very different picture not just from the Arab world, but even from Muslims in other parts of Europe. A recently reprinted book sketches out that picture for us in further detail: Muslims in Putin's Russia: Discourse on Identity, Politics, and Security by Simona E. Merati (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 256pp.

This book, the publisher tells us,

offers a novel interpretation of Russian contemporary discourse on Islam and its influence on Russian state policies. It shifts the analytical perspective from the discussion about Russia's Islam as a potential security threat to a more comprehensive view of the relationships of Muslims with Russia as a state and a civilization. The work demonstrates how many Muslims increasingly express a sense of belonging to Russia and are increasingly willing to contribute to state building processes.

The Russian-Engineered Conflict in Ukraine

As we enter further into 2016, we enter into the third year of sustained violence against Ukraine on the part of Russia. It is easy to lose sight of this conflict with ISIS and Syria eating up so much headline space. A recent book helps us to understand not just what has happened, but why: Serhy Yekelchyk, The Conflict in Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford UP, 2015), 208pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

When guns began firing again in Europe, why was it Ukraine that became the battlefield? Conventional wisdom dictates that Ukraine's current crisis can be traced to the linguistic differences and divided political loyalties that have long fractured the country. However this theory only obscures the true significance of Ukraine's recent civic revolution and the conflict's crucial international dimension. The 2013-14 Ukrainian revolution presented authoritarian powers in Russia with both a democratic and a geopolitical challenge. President Vladimir Putin reacted aggressively by annexing the Crimea and sponsoring the war in eastern Ukraine; and Russia's actions subsequently prompted Western sanctions and growing international tensions reminiscent of the Cold War. Though the media portrays the situation as an ethnic conflict, an internal Ukrainian affair, it is in reality reflective of a global discord, stemming from differing views on state power, civil society, and democracy.

The Crisis in Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know explores Ukraine's contemporary conflict and complicated history of ethnic identity, and it does do so by weaving questions of the country's fraught relations with its former imperial master, Russia, throughout the narrative. In denying Ukraine's existence as a separate nation, Putin has adopted a stance similar to that of the last Russian tsars, who banned the Ukrainian language in print and on stage. Ukraine emerged as a nation-state as a result of the imperial collapse in 1917, but it was subsequently absorbed into the USSR. When the former Soviet republics became independent states in 1991, the Ukrainian authorities sought to assert their country's national distinctiveness, but they failed to reform the economy or eradicate corruption. As Serhy Yekelchyk explains, for the last 150 years recognition of Ukraine as a separate nation has been a litmus test of Russian democracy, and the Russian threat to Ukraine will remain in place for as long as the Putinist regime is in power. In this concise and penetrating book, Yekelchyk describes the current crisis in Ukraine, the country's ethnic composition, and the Ukrainian national identity. He takes readers through the history of Ukraine's emergence as a sovereign nation, the after-effects of communism, the Orange Revolution, the EuroMaidan, the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, the war in the Donbas, and the West's attempts at peace making. The Crisis in Ukraine is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the forces that have shaped contemporary politics in this increasingly important part of Europe.

Turns of Soviet Faith

The Russian Church and its relationship to the Putin regime continue to attract considerable attention in this time of on-going war against Ukraine and geopolitical machinations by Russia in Syria, and now Iran. A recent collection sheds light on the nature of Orthodoxy in Russia in the post-Soviet world: Alexander Agadjanian, Turns of Faith, Search for Meaning: Orthodox Christianity and Post-Soviet Experience (Peter Lang, 2014), 321pp.

About this book we are told:

The book examines deep shifts in the religious life of Russia and the post-Soviet world as a whole. The author uses combined methods of history, sociology and anthropology to grasp transformations in various aspects of the religious field, such as changes in ritual practices, the emergence of a hierarchical pluralism of religions, and a new prominence of religion in national identity discourse. He deals with the Russian Church’s new internal diversity in reinventing its ancient tradition and Eastern Orthodoxy’s dense and tense negotiation with the State, secular society and Western liberal globalism. The volume contains academic papers, some of them co-authored with other scholars, published by the author elsewhere within the last fifteen years.

Contents: Russian Orthodox Church – Eastern Christianity – National identity – Religious practices – Religion and human rights – Church-State relations – Post-Soviet religiosity – Globalization, religious pluralism – Traditional and liberal values. Further details may be had here. 

Put Not Your Trust in Princes, E.g.#159,614,287

We are mere weeks away from mid-term elections in the US, but also many, many weeks into the Russian-Ukrainian conflict during which, inter alia, I have heard from Christian friends waxing romantic about the supposed "traditional" "Christian values" being exhibited by and under the influence of Vladimr Putin. In the US, as NPR was reporting earlier this week as I was driving home, there are GOP politicians who, running for re-election next month, have not yet figured out how to appeal to the fear of Christians that social mores have changed with regard to same-sex "marriage," but how, also, to appeal to the more liberal voters who are glad that such mores have changed or been set aside by various judicial fiats of late. What is the so-called conservative voter and politician to do? Perhaps John Anderson's newly published book will help us: Conservative Christian Politics in Russia and the United States: Dreaming of Christian Nations (Routledge 2014), 206pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

This book explores the politics of conservative Christian churches and social movements in Russia and the United States, focusing on their similar concerns but very different modes of political engagement.
Whilst secularisation continues to chip away at religious adherence and practice in Europe, religion is often, quite rightly, seen as an influential force in the politics of the United States, and, more questionably, as a significant influence in contemporary Russia. This book looks at the broad social movement making up the US Christian Right and the profoundly hierarchical leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church as socially conservative actors, and some of the ways they have engaged in contemporary politics. Both are seeking to halt the perceived drift towards a more secular political order; both face significant challenges in handling the consequences of secularism, pluralism and liberal individualism; and both believe that their nations can only be great if they remain true to their religious heritage. In exploring their experience, the book focuses on shared and different elements in their diagnosis of what is wrong with their societies and how this affects their policy intervention over issues such as religious and ethnic belonging, sexual orientation and education.
Drawing on political, sociological and religious studies, this work will be a useful reference for students and scholars of religion and politics, Russian politics and American politics.

Russian Orthodoxy and Human Rights

In the spring issue of Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, of which I am editor, we feature an article by Christopher Brenna on Orthodox approaches to the question of human rights. This is, as the author notes, a relatively new area for theological exploration. But the relationship of Orthodoxy and rights has been examined by sociologists and political scientists in a series of new books over the last decade, the newest of which, released just this spring, is by Kristina Stoeckl, a research associate in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Vienna: The Russian Orthodox Church and Human Rights (Routledge, 2014). I contacted her for an interview, and here are her thoughts:

AD: Tell us about your background and what led to the writing of The Russian Orthodox Church and Human Rights.

Kristina Stoeckl: In the preface of the book I reveal a piece of biographical background and my reasons for engaging in the topic of the Russian Orthodox Church and human rights. Readers of the preface will understand that I have a fairly traditional Catholic background which, in my academic work, has made me sensitive to the topic of religion in politics. They will also understand that the book is the work of a European political theorist who cannot but confront the towering paradigm of “postsecular society” expressed by Jürgen Habermas. I did not come to the topic of Russian Orthodoxy and human rights because I had a pre-determined interested in human rights as such; I was instead interested in the work of “translation” between religious content and secular norms. The Russian Orthodox debate on human rights appeared like a good example.  What readers of the preface will not find out is that I have an academic background in Russian and comparative literature and philosophy. I had the fortune to have very good teachers during my underground studies of Russian literature and philosophy at the University of Innsbruck in Austria: Fedor Dostoevskij, Vladimir Solov’ev, the philosophers of the Russian Silver Age, the generation of Soviet semioticians around Jurij Lotman, and later on also the religious thinkers of the Russian emigration were my early guiding lights for approaching Russian thought and culture. This background is much more evident in my first book and PhD-thesis entitled Community after Totalitarianism and published in 2008. This background explains why, despite all criticism of what the Russian Orthodox Church represents today, my approach to the Russian Orthodox tradition is sympathetic.


AD: Your first chapter notes the different responses to human rights discourse in modern Orthodoxy, from those very critical and dismissive to those who are more receptive. At the end of your chapter you note that the Russian Orthodox Church has adopted rather a middle position here--not totally dismissive, but not fully accepting, either. Why the middle position? 
 
KS: I call the Russian Orthodox Church’s a middle position, because it really stands for a response to the issue of human rights that steers mid-way between a complete rejection of human rights and acceptance. The Russian Orthodox Church published, in 2008, a document entitled “The Russian Orthodox Church’s Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights”. This document fundamentally changed the position on human rights which the Church had explained eight years earlier in the “Basis of the Social Doctrine” in 2000 (in which human rights are rejected as a sign of apostasy), but it did not go all the way to accepting human rights as a legal instrument that should be fully endorsed and supported by the Church. Why did the Church adopt this middle position? In the book, I give several reasons: relevance - the Moscow Patriarchate recognized that it cannot continue to ignore or dismiss the topic in its internal and external relations; politics – the Moscow Patriarchate recognized that for having a voice in politics, it better speak the language of contemporary politics; soteriology – the Church understood very well that Orthodox believers live in secularized societies and ask from their Church to express itself and provide guiding lines on topics of contemporary relevance; and lastly individuals – the individual members of the Russian Orthodox Church involved in the working out of the document between 2006 and 2008 were not unanimous in their assessment of human rights, some wanted total dismissal, some wanted endorsement. The document is a compromise between these actors. It is important to be aware that the individual dynamics may since have changed. I am not sure whether today, in 2014, a new document on human rights of the Russian Orthodox Church would still occupy a middle-position or would not demonstrate a regress to earlier, dismissive positions.
 
AD: You also note in your first chapter that religious groups in a majority position tend to be less favourably disposed to human rights than to minority religious groups. Have you found, e.g., that Catholics or Jews or Muslims in Russia invoke human rights language more than their Russian Orthodox counterparts?

KS: In the book I note in the first and analyse in detail in the last chapter that majority religions tend to be less favourably disposed to human rights than minority religious groups, who invoke the right to religious freedom in order to assure their survival and flourishing. Minority religious groups need the protection of the international human rights regime where majority religions simply rely on traditional privileges. This dynamic is clearly visible in the Russian case, both in the debates around the 1997 law on religious freedom and in cases on religious freedom that have reached the European Court of Human Rights. It is, however, not unique to Russia. Also many Western European countries are in the process of discovering that they have become, due to immigration, religiously pluralistic societies where individual human rights trump the historical privileges of waning majority religions. I have not done systematic research on the way in which minority religious groups appeal to human rights, but I refer the interested reader to the work of my colleague Effie Fokas, who is conducting a long-term research project on precisely this point.  

AD: You note that post-1991, Russia had two very different paths before it, and in the end chose the path of "religious nationalism." What motivated that choice--was it purely an anti-Western spirit, or was there something positive to it?

KS: The two paths I mean are “religious nationalism” and “religious renewal”. A religious renewal would have required a thorough process of critical self-reflection, a laying open of the guilt which the Church had heaped upon itself during the decades of Soviet collaboration and a renewal of the Church in the spirit of religious dissidence. This did not happen; what we got instead was continuity and strengthening of the religious apparatus. I think this choice was motivated less by ideological reasons (anti- versus pro-Western) but mostly by pragmatic considerations. The religious nationalism promised more public echo, more political support, and it apparently convinced many Russians. At the same time, inside the leadership structure of the Church and on the level of parish communities pockets of liberal renewal continued and continue to exist. Was there something positive to the path of religious nationalism? I don’t think so, but inasmuch as I interpret it not as an ideological, but as a pragmatic development, the only positive element there was is that the official religious nationalism has left some space for alternative viewpoints to emerge, which enjoy less visibility, but continue to exist. I should also add that I feel this space is significantly narrower today than it was in the period I study in this book.

AD: You note in your second chapter that the 2000 document "Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church" was very much the product of the Department for External Church Relations, headed by now-Patriarch Kiril, who seems to have positioned himself somewhere between "liberals" and "zealots." Has he maintained that balance since taking over as patriarch?

Source: Mospat.ru

KS: This is the much debated question among scholars dealing with the Russian Orthodox Church! On the first glance, it would seem that Kirill has given up his middle-stance in favour of more fundamentalist positions. He has appointed some real hardliners to important positions inside the Church, for example Vsevolod Chaplin who became responsible for Church-Society Relations. Since 2009, when Kirill became Patriarch, we have also seen a number of events which have tipped the balance in favour of the zealots: for example the trial of the punk-band Pussy Riot, the legislation against “homosexual propaganda” and “offense of religious feelings.” But there are also examples to the contrary, like the relatively balanced stance which Kirill has assumed in the present crisis in Ukraine (which I have analysed elsewhere). Leaving aside for a moment the position of Patriarch Kirill and his successful or unsuccessful attempts to maintain an independent position for the Church, what is clear is that in foreign and also in Russian public perception, this independence has already been lost. The Moscow Patriarchate is now widely perceived to stand unconditionally on the side of Putin and in support of his anti-Western politics.

AD: You note that the history in the "Bases" document attempts to sketch out a very different lineage for any notion of human rights in Russia, away from Western history, and all the way back to Byzantium. Why is that? Why the constant effort to so vociferously differentiate itself from "the West"? 
 
KS: Not the entire “Bases of the Social Doctrine” document, but definitely its section on human rights conveys a strong Orthodox anti-Westernism that goes back to the Slavophiles and to Orthodox resentments against the Latin West. The paradoxical feature about this anti-Westernism is that it comes in a format that is influenced by “Latin” Christian models of theological reasoning. In my interviews for this book it became clear that the Russian Orthodox Church has learned (and wanted to learn) from Catholic and Protestant theologians in matters of social teaching: conferences were held, working groups were created, position-documents were exchanged. This also explains the deep disappointment about the “Human Rights Doctrine” expressed by the German Protestant Churches, an episode I explain in chapter 4 of the book. These Western theologians felt that they had been part of a real exchange and had accompanied the Russian Orthodox colleagues in a “learning process” – and then they saw that the Russian Orthodox Church had given the entire debate an anti-Western twist.   

AD: You note (p. 101) that the Church today has shifted away from "inward" focus (on church-state relations) to "outward" focus on issues of "society, family, and values." Does that reflect new-found strength in the Church? What are the risks for this strategy? And are Russian Orthodox Christians fully supportive of this shift or--to go back to your opening discussion of the Pussy Riot--are they generally more ambivalent? 

KS:Yes, I do believe that this reflects a new-found strength in the Church structure. For a large part of the 1990s and 2000s the Church was busy with sorting out its own matters: the restitution of Church property once confiscated by the Soviet state, the establishment of courses that teach Orthodox “culture” in public schools, the building up of a system of Orthodox military chaplaincy, etc. Under Patriarch Kirill the Church has now moved to issues of society, family, and values. It has taken a firm moral conservative stance on issues of life, sexuality and gender, and religious freedom. I argue in the book that this shift does not only come from inside the Russian Orthodox Church, but is also the result of cooperation between Russian Orthodox actors and traditionalist sections inside the Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical Churches. My feeling is that ordinary Russian believers feel somewhat puzzled by this shift. The remaking of post-Soviet Russia as the world’s leading nation that respects “traditional values” is deeply paradoxical.
 
AD: Your data (p. 106-07) revealed that "since 2008, representatives of the Church and the Russian government have pursued an active human rights agenda at international level, in particular in the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations." Clearly it seems to me that one area where we have recently seen evidence of this is Russia's support for Syria against US intervention in the on-going civil war. Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church claim to have been motivated here by their concern to protect the rights of fellow Orthodox Christians in Syria. What do you make of these arguments?
 
I have not followed the Church’s argumentation on Syria closely and I was not aware that Putin has motivated his support for Syria (and Russia’s veto-position in the UN Security Council) on grounds of intra-Orthodox solidarity. I would interpret this stance merely as a rhetorical tool to cover up what the Russian agenda really is about: preventing regime-change at all costs.
 
AD: In your opening, and then again in the conclusion of your book, you return to the idea of Charles Taylor in speaking of a "mutual fragilization" as taking place in the encounter between Russian Orthodoxy and modernity. Explain this for us a little bit. 
 
Charles Taylor's concept of “mutual fragilization” adds an important feature to the paradigm of the “post-secular”. Habermas’ notion of post-secular society confidently assumes that religious and secular actors may learn from each other for the good of society as a whole; mutual fragilization reminds us of the fact that getting to know the other better may not always result in greater understanding, but in greater insecurity and self-reflexivity. Insecurity and self-reflexivity are positive, because hardened-up and doubt-free identities can be very frightening, whether religious or secular. In the history of the Russian Orthodox tradition, the period of the Russian émigré-theologians Sergij Bulgakov, Vladimir Lossky and Georges Florovsky strikes me as an example of “mutual fragilization”, where both the Orthodox as well as some of their Western interlocutors were faced with the moral breakdown of their respective traditions (Bolshevism in the East, Fascism and Nazism in the West), recognized that they were facing similar questions, learned from another and enriched their respective standpoints through encounter with the other. In that particular case, the encounter resulted in the neo-patristic turn in theology, a point I have made in my book Community after Totalitarianism.
  
AD: Very interestingly for me in a theology department, you end your book by noting that you are not a theologian but a political scientist, but nevertheless "it is there--in theology--where the future trajectory of the encounter of Orthodoxy and modernity is being mapped out" (p.131). Why do you say that? Tell us a bit more about how you see this trajectory being mapped out.
 
KS: I have studied the Russian Orthodox intellectual tradition for many years now and I have covered important periods from Solov’ev and Dostoevskij to the émigré-theologians, to late Soviet dissidence and contemporary debates. My impression is that during all this history, the Russian Orthodox Church has found itself tied to the state, has actually actively tied itself to the state and has failed to give an independent response to society and the world. These responses have come from elsewhere inside and outside the Church, from theology and religious philosophy. Such voices also exist today and many of my Orthodox friends and colleagues understand themselves as engaged in precisely this endeavour. It is them that I had in mind when I wrote those pages, obviously with the hope that theology may at one point prevail over reasons of church-state relations. At the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna we organized a workshop on “Orthodox political theologies” earlier this year, where we brought together theologians from Russia, Western Europe and the United States. The aim of the publication that will come out of this meeting is precisely to take stock of the ways in which Orthodox theologians map out the relation between their churches and politics.
 
AD: Sum up what you hope the book accomplishes

KS: The book wants to make a contribution to contemporary debates on the compatibility of religious claims and secular norms. It wants to challenge the prevailing theories of religious-secular accommodation by studying a “difficult” case like the Russian Orthodox Church’s treatment of human rights. I may not have managed to give full answers in chapter 5 of this book, but I am confident that I raised relevant questions which I intend to explore further. The book also wants to offer a balanced account of the ideas and politics inside the Russian Orthodox Church. It wants to highlight one aspect that is frequently overlooked in research in this field, and that is the interactions and relatedness of the Russian Orthodox Church with religious actors outside Russia, its engagement on the level of international institutions and its external relations.

AD: What projects--books, articles--are you at work on now?
 
KS: Since finishing the book I have tried to work further on the theoretical questions that emerge from my Russian case study. I have made some preliminary considerations on what I perceive as “theology's blind spot” in contemporary theorizing of religion and politics here and I plan to develop these ideas further into a full-fledged theoretical contribution. I am also working on a project to study present-day Russian moral conservatism. You can follow my work on my website and at the IWM.

Orthodox Paradoxes

The Russian Orthodox Church, by virtue of being the largest Orthodox church in the world (as they ceaselessly remind everyone, especially in Constantinople...), already commands considerable attention both popular and scholarly, but the events in Russia and Ukraine under Putin have only magnified the attention. A book just released explores the nature of Orthodoxy in Russia, at once "traditional" and yet (pace certain fatuous apologists) capable of adapting to new situations:  Katya Tolstaya, Orthodox Paradoxes: Heterogeneities and Complexities in Contemporary Russian Orthodoxy (Brill, 2014), 406pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

The contemporary Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is in a paradoxical situation: On all levels of Church life, new practices and concepts are considered to belong to Orthodox tradition, yet at the same time Orthodoxy is regarded as the most “unchangeable” and normative of the Christian confessions. So what makes tradition? The nineteen contributions in this volume examine the ambiguities and complexities created by the dynamic between tradition and innovation within the ROC in relation to the fundamental tenets of Orthodoxy. By this focus, the volume offers new insights and highlights the question how to define (Orthodox) Tradition. It addresses “unorthodox” topics of Orthodox paradoxes.

Contributors include: Tatiana Artemyeva, Alexei Beglov, Wil van den Bercken, Per-Arne Bodin, Page Herrlinger, Nadieszda Kizenko, Anastasia Mitrofanova, Stella Rock, and Alexander Verkhovsky.

Religious Freedom in Russia

I know several Christians who, even before the Olympics shone the light on Russia, have been willfully indulging in what I can only regard as a certain kind of historically myopic romanticism about the country for its stance on certain moral questions, chiefly "homosexuality." They think they have found in Russia, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Orthodox Church perhaps the last remaining powerful Christian bulwarks against trends that seem irreversible in the rest of Europe, North America, and elsewhere (at least outside the Islamic world). As tempting as it is to think in these terms, I find it untenable to do so for several reasons, not least recent Russian history, much of which is within very recent memory. This is a country with too long a track record of destroying its own citizens in the name of various ideologies and totalitarian thugs, some with crowns on their heads. To assume that all traces of this libido dominandi have been wiped out, that all perpetrators of various forms of torture, persecution, and execution have been extirpated from every inch of the country--or even modest sections of it--is, it seems to me, absurdly naive and a gross violation of the psalmist's counsel to "put not your trust in princes and in a son of man in whom there is no help."

My unease with seeing Russia today as an unadulterated incarnation of "Holy Russia" or the "Third Rome" or a new model of Christian "symphonia" or other pious rubbish is only magnified after having just finished reading Koenraad De Wolf's fascinating and moving new book, Dissident for Life: Alexander Ogorodnikov and the Struggle for Religious Freedom in Russia (Eerdmans, 2013), xii+303pp. About this book we are told:

This gripping book tells the largely unknown story of longtime Russian dissident Alexander Ogorodnikov -- from Communist youth to religious dissident, in the Gulag and back again. Ogorodnikov's courage has touched people from every walk of life, including world leaders such as Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher.

In the 1970s Ogorodnikov performed a feat without precedent in the Soviet Union: he organized thousands of Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic Christians in an underground group called the Christian Seminar. When the KGB gave him the option to leave the Soviet Union rather than face the Gulag, he firmly declined because he wanted to change "his" Russia from the inside out. His willingness to sacrifice himself and be imprisoned meant leaving behind his wife and newborn child.

Ogorodnikov spent nine years in the Gulag, barely surviving the horrors he encountered there. Despite KGB harassment and persecution after his release, he refused to compromise his convictions and went on to found the first free school in the Soviet Union, the first soup kitchen, and the first private shelter for orphans, among other accomplishments.

Today this man continues to carry on his struggle against government detainments and atrocities, often alone. Readers will be amazed and inspired by Koenraad De Wolf's authoritative account of Ogorodnikov's life and work.

Though having read works on the Gulag, the de-Kulakization and collectivization campaigns of mass starvation, the NKVD/KGB, the Russian Revolution, the state of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church under communism, and biographies of figures such as Stalin, Khrushchev, and Solzhenitsyn--as well as wider works on imperial policy, the tsars, the Romanovs, Russian spirituality and iconography, Russian theologians, and Russian wars, including the Crimean War, and World War I and II--I was still repeatedly taken aback by the descriptions of the abuse suffered by Ogorodnikov for simply being a Christian. I was well aware of what communism did to Christians, and the millions of martyrs it created. But perhaps my memory has gone a bit soft after two decades since the collapse of the evil empire. This book is a fresh reminder of all those horrors, and not just in the dark days of the Brezhnev era, but even well after the USSR officially collapsed and ended. Even through the 1990s, and into the last decade, Ogorodnikov was still being severely harassed by various Russian officials for the "crime" of running a shelter and soup-kitchen near Moscow. How he has survived all this can only be seen as a miracle and gift of God.