8 - ‘My Strength Is Made Perfect in Weakness’: Russian Orthodoxy and Forced Displacement

Summary

Abstract

This chapter analyses the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the context of forced displacement in Russia. The author has used historical and sociological methods and material to observe the trends of migration and waves of forced displaced people from the Soviet period till the 2000s. It analyses the state of church-state relations in Russia, the role of religion in civil society, the specifics of religious belonging, and the historical perspective and social activity of the Orthodox Church. The author concludes that the support of forcibly displaced people by the Russian Orthodox Church became effective in the context of the transformation of the Church itself, and under the conditions of religious diversity and competition with other Christian confessions in Russia.

Keywords: Russian Orthodox Church, migration, religious policy, religious legislation, state-church relations, social work, freedom of religion or belief

Introduction

The Russian Federation is a unique example of a country where changes in society's cultural atmosphere and religious consciousness depended more on forced displacement than on inner natural changes. The specifics of the religious situation in Russia include the combination of two historical factors: 1) the unprecedented migration waves that affected the territory of the present-day Russian Federation during the twentieth century, both before and after the revolution of 1917, and 2) the anti-religious campaigns that were more devastating on Russian territory than in the other republics of the Soviet Union.

Waves of forced migration, the deportation of entire nations under Stalin, and the migration and emigration of the 1990s all directly affected the religious landscape of Russia. First of all, the ethnic composition of many faiths has changed. For example, the ethnic composition of the Lutheran and Catholic communities changed and became more Russian. Whereas at the beginning of the twentieth century it was mainly the German, Polish and Finnish populations that identified as Lutheran and Catholic, from the 1990s ethnic Russians came to make up a larger proportion of adherents to these groups. This was due to conversions due to the weakness of Orthodoxy, the emigration of Germans, decreasing numbers of Poles and Finns, and, in general, because of the growing interest of Russians in other confessions.

During the Soviet period, all faiths were under pressure due to the state’s anti-religious policy.