Kathy Rousselet, research director at Science Po-Paris, is a specialist in religious issues in post-Soviet Russia. Author of Holy Russia against the West (Salvator, 172 p., €18.50), she analyzes in an interview with World the position of Patriarch Kirill vis-à-vis the Kremlin, particularly since the start of the war in Ukraine, and the increasingly anti-Western discourse of the Russian Church.
Were you surprised by the overtones of holy war in Kirill’s speeches about the Russian intervention in Ukraine or the fight against the “depraved West”?
In fact, Kirill’s first reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was not this. Let us recall that on February 24, 2022, the Patriarch, admittedly without denouncing the war, recalled the common history of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, hoping that “this brotherhood” would help them “overcoming divisions” and guest “the pleroma [l’entièreté] of the Russian Orthodox Church to insistently raise ardent prayers for the speediest restoration of peace. »
But a few days later, the tone changed. The archives may one day explain precisely why. On March 6, to justify the unjustifiable, he took up the arguments with which he is most familiar. It was not for him to “denazify” Ukraine, as Vladimir Putin asserted or another hierarch close to him and to the FSB, Metropolitan Tikhon Chevkunov. Its objective was to fight against globalization and liberal values.
This rhetoric of Kirill, very close to that of ultra-conservative religious movements elsewhere in the world, is old. The reference to homosexuality, for example, speaks particularly to the Russian population: it is with them that the opposition to the depraved West was built, especially from the beginning of the 2010s. His speech is inflamed . He talks about “metaphysical battle”.
Kirill has long insisted on Russia’s messianic duty. The people of Rous [qui comprend dans ses représentations les peuples russe, ukrainien et biélorusse] would have a mission for which he would have to account at the end of time. He spoke in 2009 of a people “bearer of God”, an idea that goes back at least to the 19th century and to Dostoyevsky. On November 6, in line with these ideas, he presented Russia as “the pillar and support of truth” (referring to the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy3:15)
Finally, the patriarch’s speech took on a patriotic dimension with Soviet accents, strongly militarized. Kirill recalled how much the sacrificial exploit was part of the Russian cultural code. In his September 25, 2022 sermon, he went so far as to say that “Russian soldiers who will die in the war in Ukraine will be washed away from all their sins”. His speech has become more radical over the months.
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