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Abstract:
Scholars have identified numerous obstacles that appear to stand in the way of democracy taking root in Russia, including the country's religious heritage. In an attempt to understand the role of Orthodoxy in Russian society more accurately, this article explores the civic, political, and democratic values of devout Orthodox Christians and more secular-leaning "cultural Orthodox." The findings suggest that whereas Russian citizens are only loosely predisposed toward democratic governance, devout Orthodox Christians as a group are somewhat more favorably inclined toward democracy than are other Russians. Moreover, religious belief and practice have virtually no impact on democratic values, suggesting that Orthodoxy may not be the obstacle to democracy that some have made it out to be.
Key words: Christianity, Orthodoxy, religion, Russia
During the Soviet era, many people assumed that the Communist Party dictatorship was all that stood in the way of democracy in Russia. Once the Soviet Union entered the dustbin of history, however, the path to democracy in Russia was clearly plagued by other, perhaps more formidable obstacles than the decaying monolith of the Soviet state. Indeed, the body of scholarship on Russian democratization since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been a virtual enterprise of identifying the many obstacles to democracy in Russia. The range of such obstacles is dizzying and seemingly endless, extending from the country's autocratic past, to the authoritarian tendencies of President Putin, and even to some regional leaders, such as Novgorod Governor Mikhail Prussak and Tatarstan President Mintimer Shaimiev, not to mention the debate over the absence or existence of a democratic political culture and civil society in Russia.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Russia's religious heritage has had its share of blame for the country's woes. Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Samuel Huntington proclaimed that "the cultural division of Europe between Western Christianity . . . and Orthodox Christianity and Islam" was reemerging, and that "the eastern boundary of Western Christianity in the year 1500" was "the most significant dividing line in Europe."1 Huntington not only predicted that the Orthodox world would clash with the rest of Europe, but that Orthodox societies seemed "much less likely to develop stable democratic political systems." In a similar vein, Michael Radu later announced...