Divine governance: Putin’s co-optation of the Russian Orthodox Church as authoritarian legitimation
Abstract
This project seeks to elucidate to what extent the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has been co-opted by Putin’s Kremlin, specifically within the period of 2012-2024, and used as a tool of legitimation for increasingly repressive authoritarian legislation passed by the regime. This research takes an analytical, systematic approach to answering a qualitative social science question, and is based on a vast body of theoretical and evaluative scholarly work on Russian authoritarianism. Scholars agree that Putin has used the Church as a mouthpiece to justify, through a moral and traditional values framework in line with Orthodox tradition, his legislative bids for increasingly consolidated control. The first main section of this research is an overview not only of secondary scholarly sources, but of repressive legislation. Several areas of control emerge: education, sexuality/morality, family/marriage, and an ethnically Russian, culturally Orthodox collective identity and shared history.
Primary Faculty Mentor Name
Elizabeth Pinel
Status
Undergraduate
Student College
College of Arts and Sciences
Program/Major
Political Science
Primary Research Category
Social Science
Divine governance: Putin’s co-optation of the Russian Orthodox Church as authoritarian legitimation
This project seeks to elucidate to what extent the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has been co-opted by Putin’s Kremlin, specifically within the period of 2012-2024, and used as a tool of legitimation for increasingly repressive authoritarian legislation passed by the regime. This research takes an analytical, systematic approach to answering a qualitative social science question, and is based on a vast body of theoretical and evaluative scholarly work on Russian authoritarianism. Scholars agree that Putin has used the Church as a mouthpiece to justify, through a moral and traditional values framework in line with Orthodox tradition, his legislative bids for increasingly consolidated control. The first main section of this research is an overview not only of secondary scholarly sources, but of repressive legislation. Several areas of control emerge: education, sexuality/morality, family/marriage, and an ethnically Russian, culturally Orthodox collective identity and shared history.
