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Religion, the Russian Nation and the State: Domestic and International Dimensions: an Introduction

This is an introduction to a collection of papers presented at a workshop organised by Jerry Pankhurst and Alar Kilp at Tartu University, Estonia, on 6 and 7 June 2012. It proceeds in three parts. In the first part we consider 1988 as the watershed when ‘Soviet’ religion–state relations were replaced by ‘post-Soviet’ ones. Building on the existing scholarship and the contributions to this issue, we argue that the religion–state relationship of the ‘post-Soviet’ period is more complex as a result of (1) major transformations in the political sphere, (2) shifts in the status of traditional religious institutions vis-à-vis the state, culture and society, (3) the emergence of new intersections of religious and secular interests, and (4) alterations in the means of mass communication and its outcomes in the realm of scholarly exchange of ideas and information. In the second part we argue that the increasingly complex nature of religion–state relationships has resulted in a body of scholarship less prone to promoting agreement among experts because of the greater complexity of phenomena and variations in the type of intellectual approach one brings to issues. A new range of theoretical and conceptual approaches that either were not applied during the Soviet period or have been developed since the end of that period are now being utilised in this field. In the third part we discuss developments in Russian religion and politics from three comparative angles: by comparing Russia with other Orthodox and non-Orthodox countries and societies of the postcommunist region of Europe; by comparing East-Central European countries with those ofWestern Europe; and by comparing Russia with the countries of the CIS.