- 1 week ago
بوتين لا يخوض “حربًا مقدسة” كما يريد أن يروّج؛ بل يستخدم الدين كأداة سلطة، ويحوّل الأرثوذكسية إلى لغة إمبراطورية تخدم الكرملين. تشرح إلفيرا باري كيف تُصنع صورة التقوى عبر الشموع والأيقونات والكهنة، بينما تبقى الكنيسة في روسيا جزءًا من آلة الدولة لا ضابطًا أخلاقيًا لها.
من “القناع المقدس” إلى “إله الدولة” و“الإيمان في الزي العسكري”، يفكك هذا التحليل السياسي والديني كيف تُبارك الطاعة، وكيف تُستعمل القيم التقليدية لتثبيت الولاء، ولماذا كشفت أوكرانيا أن القوة أهم من اللاهوت. كما يوضح كيف جرى دمج الأرثوذكسية والإسلام والبوذية واليهودية في خطاب واحد يخدم “العالم الروسي” والإمبراطورية.
محتوى مناسب لمن يبحث عن تحليل روسيا وبوتين، الدين والسياسة، الأرثوذكسية الروسية، الحرب في أوكرانيا، والدعاية الإمبراطورية. إذا كنت مهتمًا بـ documentary-style political analysis, Russian history, religion and power, Kremlin propaganda, and geopolitical commentary, فهذه الحلقة تقدم قراءة عميقة ومباشرة لهذا التداخل بين الإيمان والحكم.
من “القناع المقدس” إلى “إله الدولة” و“الإيمان في الزي العسكري”، يفكك هذا التحليل السياسي والديني كيف تُبارك الطاعة، وكيف تُستعمل القيم التقليدية لتثبيت الولاء، ولماذا كشفت أوكرانيا أن القوة أهم من اللاهوت. كما يوضح كيف جرى دمج الأرثوذكسية والإسلام والبوذية واليهودية في خطاب واحد يخدم “العالم الروسي” والإمبراطورية.
محتوى مناسب لمن يبحث عن تحليل روسيا وبوتين، الدين والسياسة، الأرثوذكسية الروسية، الحرب في أوكرانيا، والدعاية الإمبراطورية. إذا كنت مهتمًا بـ documentary-style political analysis, Russian history, religion and power, Kremlin propaganda, and geopolitical commentary, فهذه الحلقة تقدم قراءة عميقة ومباشرة لهذا التداخل بين الإيمان والحكم.
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LearningTranscript
00:00Putin wants people to believe that his war in Ukraine and his broader confrontation
00:05with the West is holy. Not merely strategic, but sacred. The West is decadent. Its values
00:14are collapsing. Washington and Brussels, he says, dragged Ukraine into their peace.
00:21For some people in the West, especially those who are discussed with their own elites,
00:28that message has real appeal. They look at Russia and think, maybe this country is still fighting for
00:36order, faith and civilization. Maybe Putin is the last defender of Christian values.
00:44Look at his public pity. Look at the magnificent Orthodox cathedrals, the priests, the icons,
00:52their rituals. Surely, they think, this must be a war about something higher than power. It is not.
01:02In Russia, the church is not a moral check on the state. It is part of the state machine. It
01:09is
01:09tolerated, praised and funded only as long as it does what the Kremlin has always demanded. Bless
01:17hierarchy, sanctify obedience, and turn suffering into duty. So, here is the real question. If Putin
01:26wraps invasion, repression, and bloodshed in religious language, what does he actually believe in, not
01:33Christ? He violates the most basic Christian commandments from thou shall not kill to the
01:40moral law. It is the simple moral law of treating others as you would want to be treated, not repentance.
01:48Because there is no sign of remorse. Not the idea that a ruler stands beneath a higher moral law
01:56and will one day be judged by it. What he believes in is something much older and much more useful
02:03to
02:03men like him, empire, and the religion that serves empire. I am Elvira Barry, a writer born in the Soviet
02:13Union. Today, I will show you how the Kremlin captured faith and turned it into an instrument of rule,
02:21how the holy war costume works, who it is designed for, and what it hides. Here is our roadmap.
02:30The holy mask. Why outsiders mistake Kremlin theater for faith. The state's god. Why Russian rulers
02:40never tolerate a church they can't control. Useful orthodoxy. How Putin turned religion into a political
02:48asset. Faith in uniform. When the church stopped blessing the army and became part of it. God for empire.
02:57How orthodoxy, Islam, and Buddhism get flattened into one state cult. The broken cross. Why Ukraine
03:06proved power matters more than theology. Candles and magic. What Putin's style of belief really reveals.
03:15If you want to support independent analysis like this, you can join the think tank or use PayPal or
03:22super things or tap hype points. And if you are listening on Spotify, hit follow so the next episode
03:30lands in your feed. Now, let's start with the first illusion. The holy mask. The holy mask.
03:42A lot of Western conservatives look at Putin and see what they want to see. They see a man standing
03:49in the
03:49church with a candle. They hear him talk about family morality tradition and the sins of the modern West.
03:58They hear that Russia protects Christianity while Europe forgets it. And because many people in the
04:04West are tired of their own elites, they project their hopes onto Moscow. That is the first mistake.
04:11That is the first mistake. Religious imagery is not the same thing as religious conviction. In an authoritarian
04:18country, public ritual is often just another costume of power. Putin understands this very well. He knows
04:28that the theater of faith works on two audiences at once. At home, it tells ordinary Russians that the state
04:35is
04:35not just powerful but righteous. Not merely armed but blessed. If the ruler appears next to icons and priests,
04:45then obedience begins to feel moral, not just practical. The system stops looking like a machine for
04:53extraction and starts looking like a sacred order. Abroad, the message is different. It is aimed at
05:01disillusioned people on the right, especially in Europe and America. It tells them you may hate your
05:08liberal elites, but here in Russia we still honor God, nation, family, and history. It is branding. Very
05:17effective branding. And Putin has spent years building that image piece by piece. One famous example came in
05:25in his interview with Larry King when he told the story of his aluminum cross. According to Putin,
05:32his mother had given him the cross, he lost it before a fire at his dacha, then found it again
05:39in the ashes
05:41and had it blessed in Jerusalem. It is a perfect political anecdote. Personal, humble, touched by danger,
05:49touched by miracle. It sounds like a man chosen by fate. And that is exactly the point. In Russia, rulers
05:59are always trying to rise above the level of mere administrators. They want to look marked out. And the
06:07church helps with that transformation. A real religion places limits on power. It tells the ruler that he too
06:16will be judged. Kremlin religion does the opposite. It wraps power in incense and tells the public to kneel,
06:27the state's God. By using religion this way, Putin stepped into a much older Russian pattern. The state
06:37may cooperate with the church, praise the church, hide beneath the church, and even weep inside the church,
06:45but it never accepts a church that is truly independent of power. In the Western imagination,
06:52church and state are often pictured as rival centers of authority. They may clash, bargain, or limit each other.
07:01In Russia, the deeper instinct has long been different. Authoritarian rulers wouldn't have any real competition.
07:09Not in politics, not in business, not in the media, and certainly not in the realm of ultimate meaning.
07:18Because religion is too important to live alone. If people sincerely believe there is a moral law above
07:25the ruler, then the ruler is no longer absolute. If people belong to a community that answers to something
07:33higher than the state, then their loyalty is divided. And empires hate divided loyalty. So Russian power
07:43developed a simpler solution. Instead of destroying religion entirely, it domesticated it. The church may speak,
07:51but in the right tone. It may keep its rituals. All of that is fine. Beautiful even. But the moment
08:01faith starts acting like an independent source of judgment, the state moves in and reminds everyone
08:09who owns the building. That logic survived every costume change. Under the Tsars,
08:15of course, orthodoxy was tied to the empire. Under the Soviets, the state first tried to crush religion,
08:22then later learned to manage and instrumentalize it. Their costume changed from cross to red banner
08:30and back again, but the instinct stayed the same. No rival authority above the ruler.
08:38This is why the usual Western argument, but Putin restored religion after communism,
08:43is too shallow. Yes, churches reopened and symbols came back, but public visibility is not the same as
08:52freedom. A burden may be taken out of a box and still kept in a cage. Even the post-Soviet
09:00religious
09:01revival had a strange quality. People baptized children, wore crosses, lit candles, venerated icons
09:09and spoke the language of faith, but often without deep theological knowledge or serious parish life.
09:15That made religion easier for the state to mold. Ritual remained. Discipline of conscious
09:23stayed weak. And that is the sweet spot for an authoritarian regime. Not deep Christianity,
09:30which might produce inconvenient questions. Not a morally serious church that would confront
09:38lies, corruption and war. But a broad, sacred atmosphere. A religion of symbols, moods and national
09:47belonging. Useful orthodoxy
09:53Many people now look backward and imagine a straight line, as if Putin arrived in the Kremlin already
10:00dreaming of some holy Russian mission. But in his first years, he looked much more like a pragmatic
10:08state manager. The Russian Orthodox Church was already there, but it had not yet become the center of the
10:16regime's moral performance. Then he saw what it could do. One of the clearest moments came in 2007,
10:24when the Moscow Patriarchate reunited with the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia,
10:29the emigrant church formed by people who had fled the Bolsheviks. Speaking at that occasion, Putin said
10:37restoring church unity was important for rediscovering the lost unity of the Russian people.
10:44That is the phrase to notice. Not unity in Christ, repentance or truth. Unity of the Russian people.
10:52In other words, he treated the church as a mechanism for gathering scattered Russians back
11:00under one symbolic roof. The Soviet Union was gone. Millions of Russian speakers were outside the Russian
11:08Federation. The emigrant world still carried old anti-Bolshevik legitimacy. Bringing that world closer
11:15to Moscow was a move of political consolidation. And this is where the idea of the Russian world
11:22starts to matter. It sounds soft, cultural, civilizational, maybe even comforting. A shared language,
11:31shared memory, shared faith, shared ancestors. But in Kremlin usage, that phrase is never just descriptive.
11:41It says that Russia has a special right to gather, protect, supervise and, if necessary,
11:47discipline all those people and spaces it calls spiritually its own. Orthodoxy fits that project
11:55beautifully. Not because everyone in that world is deeply religious. Often they are not. But that makes
12:02the church more useful, not less. Putin understood that this symbolic grammar could travel farther than
12:11ideology. Communism had burned out. Soviet internationalism was dead. Naked nationalism felt crude and provincial.
12:21But religion added depth. It made expansion sound like inheritance. Faith in uniform.
12:34The real turn came in the 2010s, when the Russian church effectively became part of the military machine.
12:42Before that, Orthodoxy helped the regime look deeper and more legitimate. After that, it began helping the regime
12:50punish, mobilize, mobilize and bless force. The shift happened in public, almost theatrically. And one of the
12:59clearest early triggers was the Pussy Riot protest in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The performance
13:07itself was crude and designed to provoke, but what mattered was the state's response. The Kremlin understood that
13:15this scandal could be used to redraw the line between dissent and sacrilege. In 2013, Russia passed a law
13:25making the insulting of religious feelings a criminal offense punishable by up to three years in prison.
13:33This measure was proposed right after the Pussy Riot action. The sacred was now policed by the state in ways
13:41the
13:41state itself could define. When that happens, religion stops being a source of truth and becomes one more
13:50weapon of discipline. Then came the cathedral. In 2020, Russia opened the main cathedral of the Russian
13:57Armed Forces outside Moscow, a giant military church dedicated to victory in the Second World War. Its
14:06symbolism is not subtle. The cathedral's dimensions were designed around war dates. The main dome's drum measures
14:1419.45 m for the year 1945. The belfry is 75 m high for the 75th anniversary of victory. And
14:26another dome stands
14:26at 14.18 m for the 1,418 days of the war. Metal from captured Nazi weapons and tanks was
14:38used in the
14:39floor so that each step becomes a symbolic blow against the enemy. This is not a church built around sin,
14:47mercy,
14:47repentance, forgiveness, or the dignity of human life. It is a church built around military triumph,
14:54sacred violence, sacred violence, and national memory. And even the scandal around its planned mosaics was
15:02revealing. Early designs included images of Putin and Stalin. And one panel celebrated the annexation of Crimea
15:11with the slogan Crimea is ours. That's how today's Russian church helps the regime by turning soldiers into martyrs,
15:20war into duty, war into duty, and obedience into holiness. It wraps the state's violence in the smell of incense
15:28and tells people that by fighting for the state's interests they are serving God. God for Empire
15:40Once you understand that religion is useful to the Kremlin only as a tool of rule, one strange thing suddenly
15:47makes perfect sense.
15:49Putin no longer needs orthodoxy alone. He needs a broader formula, a state language that can cover the empire's
15:57different peoples without giving anyone faith the right to stand apart from the state. So the message shifts.
16:06Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, all of them are now praised as carriers of the same traditional values,
16:15the same moral code, the same civilizational loyalty. To a believer that should sound absurd.
16:24These religions are not interchangeable. They do not imagine God the same way. They do not prescribe the
16:32same way of life. But theology is not the point here. In a 2014 Valdai speech, Putin described Christianity,
16:41Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and other religions as an integral part of Russia's identity and heritage.
16:48Years later, in his Tucker Carlson interview, he said that as Russia expanded and absorbed peoples who profess
16:56Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism, our traditional values are very similar. The meaning behind this is whatever
17:04God you pray to, your real job is the same. Respect hierarchy, accept authority, defend the state.
17:13That is why I call this radical ecumenism, but in a very Russian way. Ecumenism as administrative
17:20flattening, all differences is tolerated only after it has been reduced to usefulness.
17:28And there are hard political reasons for this turn. Russia is not a purely or even mostly Russian
17:35orthodox country. It is also a state with large Muslim populations, Muslim majority regions,
17:43Buddhist minorities. It cannot afford a model of sacred identity that speaks only to ethnic Russians.
17:50It needs a portable moral formula that can travel from a cathedral in Moscow to a mosque in Chechnya,
17:58to a Buddhist temple in Buryatia, and still point upward to the same center of power.
18:04This is especially true in wartime. The Kremlin needs troops from Muslim majority regions,
18:10it needs minority elites to remain invested in the imperial structure, so religion is quietly
18:17translated into state service. This is another reason the Western fantasy about Putin as a Christian
18:24defender falls apart. A genuine Christian statesman would care about the content of belief. Putin's
18:33system does not. It cares about whether a religion can be made to support imperial coercion.
18:41The Broken Cross
18:45What happens in Russia when theology collides with empire? Empire wins. The clearest proof came in 2018,
18:54when the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople moved towards recognizing an independent
19:01Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The Russian Orthodox Church responded by severing all relations with
19:09Constantinople over its support for Ukraine's request for an autokephalius or independent church.
19:16To understand what this means, here is a bit of context. For Orthodox believers,
19:23Constantinople is the historic center and senior symbolic authority like Vatican is for Catholics. So,
19:32when Moscow chose rapture, it was choosing political goals over spiritual unity. If Putin's system were
19:40truly centered on Christian faith, then the highest priority would have been preserving the unity of
19:47believers and peace inside the church. Instead, the Kremlin treated the church exactly the way it treats
19:54its land, pipelines, media and courts. As property. So, when people tell you Putin is defending Christianity,
20:03remember this moment. He was willing to break with the historic center of his own religious tradition
20:09rather than losing his grip on Ukraine. Before we move on, I'd like to share a short book trailer for
20:17my novel
20:18The Prince of the Soviets. One of its central themes is how the Soviet government dismantled traditional faith
20:25and replaced it with a substitute, preserving the rituals that worked while stripping away the moral core.
20:48Find out who he really is. Officially, Klim Rogoff's biography read like something safe and respectable.
20:56A journalist from New York, a foreign correspondent working for a prestigious news agency.
21:02In reality, Klim Rogoff was a white hemigre.
21:10And if that troop were ever exposed, he would be arrested on the spot.
21:18He came to the Soviet Union for one reason only, to find his wife abducted by the Bolsheviks.
21:31And he did find her, just not where he expected. It turned out she had caught the attention of the
21:40only red
21:41of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union in the Soviet Union.
21:43A man inexplicably allowed to run a private business in a state supposedly devoted to building Socialism.
21:51A man powerful enough to break the rules in Stalin's Moscow.
21:57A man powerful enough to break the rules in Stalin's Moscow.
22:12Will you catch him?
22:18We'll catch them all.
22:27Candles and magic.
22:31So, what does Putin actually believe in?
22:34Not God in any serious theological sense.
22:38Not in the sense of submitting himself to a higher truth.
22:43What he practices is something much more common in the post-Soviet world.
22:49A religion of symbols without depth.
22:51And this is not just my impression.
22:55Pew's work on Orthodoxy found that in Russia, only 6% of Orthodox Christians said they attended church weekly.
23:0415% said religion was very important in their lives.
23:08And 18% said they prayed daily.
23:11At the same time, public identification with Orthodoxy remained very strong.
23:17As a daily routine, these self-identified Orthodox believers were especially likely to
23:23light candles in church and wear crosses.
23:26That tells you a great deal.
23:29In Russia, religion functions less as a demanding moral practice than as a badge of belonging.
23:35You light a candle, cross yourself, baptize the child and kiss the icon.
23:41But you don't really need to read and understand the Bible or have faith judge your own conduct.
23:48That is the soil Putin grows from.
23:52He is a man shaped by the post-Soviet spiritual marketplace, where orthodoxy, nationalism, superstition,
24:00hero worship, fear and state mythology all mixed together into one thick emotional paste.
24:07This is where the border between faith and magic gets blurry.
24:14Not magic in the fairytale sense.
24:16I mean the belief that sacred objects and rituals have the power to protect you.
24:22It is a very old instinct.
24:24In insecure societies, people often want not a demanding God but a protective force,
24:31something that guards the ruler and the nation.
24:35That mentality is perfect for authoritarianism.
24:39Because once religion becomes mainly protective, tribal and symbolic,
24:45it stops asking hard questions.
24:49It no longer says, are you lying, stealing or killing your fellow human being?
24:54It says, are you one of us?
24:57Are you defending our people?
25:00Are you keeping the sacred circle intact?
25:04And once that happens, the ruler can do almost anything.
25:09He only has to perform belonging.
25:11That is why Putin can stand in church, talk about morality, present war as purification,
25:18and still govern through corruption, violence, cynicism, and fear.
25:22In a morally serious Christian framework, those things would tear the whole picture apart.
25:29In a tribal ritual framework, they do not.
25:32Now I want to leave you with one important question.
25:35How have you seen religion used this way in your own country or community?
25:41Not to humble power, but to decorate it.
25:44Not to restrain violence, but to bless it.
25:48Not to demand repentance, but to demand obedience.
25:53What did it look like in real life?
25:56A speech, a ritual, a symbol, a holy phrase that suddenly showed up next to politics.
26:03If this episode helped you see the holy war costume more clearly,
26:08please like the video and subscribe.
26:10Share it with one person who still thinks Putin is fighting for faith instead of the empire.
26:17And if you want to support this work directly, you can join my think tank or use PayPal or Super
26:24Thanks.
26:25You can also tap Hype Points to help the video travel.
26:29And if you are listening on Spotify, hit follow so you don't miss the next episode.
26:38See you next time.
26:59Have a great day.
27:05Bye.
27:06Amen.
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