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Interest groups in Russian foreign policy: The invisible hand of the Russian Orthodox Church

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Abstract

Among the domestic interest groups that play a role in influencing Russian foreign policy the Russian Orthodox Church has become an important actor. Its most important role has been that of supporting the emergence of a new nationalist Russian identity to undergird Russian policy. On specific policy issues, it has advocated the political reunification of Eastern Slavic Orthodox peoples, the emergence of a multipolar international system and the restatement of traditional values as the foundation for the pursuit of global human rights.

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Notes

  1. According to the Russian defense ministry, two-thirds of the country's servicemen consider themselves religious. Some 83 per cent of them are Orthodox Christians, about 8 per cent are Muslims and 9 per cent represent other confessions (RIANovosti, 2011).

  2. Dmitri Trenin (2011) believes that Putin's new integration plans are not aimed at restoring the Soviet Union under another name for three basic reasons: the complete evaporation of Russia's imperial élan, its unwillingness to pay other countries’ bills and the new countries’ unwillingness to cede too much sovereignty to the former hegemon.

  3. Boris Yeltsin noted in his memoirs that ‘building the CIS was the only option to save the common geopolitical space …’. He said ‘I did believe that Russia ought to get rid off her imperial mission’ (Yeltsin, 1994, pp. 152–153, 160).

  4. Only Azerbaijan has refrained from joining the free trade zone.

  5. Richard Sakwa (2008, pp. 5–7) defines the basic contradictions of the Russian state as the duality between the stated goals of the political regime and its practices, which permanently subverted the principles it claimed to uphold. Lilia Shevtsova (2007, p. 894) discerns such contradictory features of Russia's political order as those visible in the adherence to mutually exclusive principles of the market and bureaucratic control, authoritarianism and democracy, anti-western and pro-western trends in foreign policy and rhetoric. See, also, Shevtsova and Wood (2011) and Ferguson (2011).

  6. Director of the Moscow-based International Institute of Political Expertise Yevgeniy Minchenko suggested that a big ‘Politburo’ consists of members of the ‘tandem’ and key figures of the Presidential Administration and the government, such as the former Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Naryshkin, elected in December as Speaker of the State Duma, his successor Sergei Ivanov, Vice-Prime Minister Igor Sechin, Minister of Defence Anatoly Serdukov, Federal Security Service Director Alexandr Bortnikov, first Deputy Chief of Staff Vladislav Surkov, Head of Russia's Drug Enforcement Administration Viktor Ivanov, and Minister of Emergency Sergei Shoigu. Other influential government figures, including the ministers of interior and foreign affairs, CEOs of Russia's ‘national champions’, as well as some leaders of regions belong to ‘Central Committee’ (Minchenko, 2010).

  7. The moral authority of the ROC in Russian society is proven by high rates of public approval throughout the whole 1990s (Starye tserkvi, 2000, p. 14).

  8. The ROC has developed several ‘Social concepts’, which contain basic principles of its activity at home and abroad.

  9. For details see Lukichev (2009).

  10. Andrei Bel’janinov, Director of Federal Customs Service; the CEO of the Russian Rail Roads Vladimir Yakunin; the Governor of St Petersburg Georgi Poltavchenko, to name just few of them.

  11. The process of ‘secularisation’ of Russian foreign policy, its liberation from the ‘special spiritual mission’ of the country, finally seemed to prevail. As Trenin and Lo stated, Yevgeny Primakov, who succeeded Kozyrev in January 1996, adapted Palmerston's dictum in claiming that Russia ‘does not have permanent friends, but permanent interests’. This thesis of permanent interests can be sustained as it relates to such broad objectives as national security, territorial integrity and economic prosperity (Trenin and Lo, 2005). For historical accounts of Russian national interests see Lederer (1962); Rubinstein (1989); Rieber (1993).

  12. The web site that Father Chaplin spoke to, ‘Pravoslavie i mir’ (Orthodox Christianity and the World), has become a platform for debate about politics and morals. Its editor, Anna Danilova, said the reaction inside the church arose from disgust at official dishonesty surrounding the election. ‘A Christian has to protest against lies, especially lies to millions of people’, she said.

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  1. Faculty of Economics at St Petersburg State University, 3-38 Tuchkov pereulok, St Petersburg, 199053, Russia

    Nikita Lomagin

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Lomagin, N. Interest groups in Russian foreign policy: The invisible hand of the Russian Orthodox Church. Int Polit 49, 498–516 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2012.13

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