Paul Goble
The Moscow Patriarchate is taking steps to increase its usefulness to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia and abroad to offset its declining power and influence across the former Soviet space.
The Moscow Patriarchate is aiding the Kremlin in promoting traditional values and making Orthodoxy a more central part of Russian identity while also expanding Russian influence in Africa and beyond.
The church’s achievements mean that the Kremlin will likely overlook its failures in Ukraine and elsewhere and keep Patriarch Kirill as its head, at least in the short term.
For the past decade, the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (ROC MP) has been shrinking. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) achieved official autocephaly in 2019, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) distanced itself from the ROC in 2022, and many other post-Soviet national branches of Orthodox churches are taking steps to separate from Moscow (see EDM, February 13, 2024). At home, fewer Russians follow the ROC MP’s precepts or attend its services (The Moscow Times, August 1). These losses have been so large that the Moscow Patriarchate risks becoming a small national church subject to competition from other Orthodox and Christian denominations within Russia (Vazhnie Istorii, January 12, 2024; see EDM, February 13, 2024). The decline the ROC MP’s influence has fueled speculation that Russian President Vladimir Putin might seek the replacement of the current head of the church, Patriarch Kirill, with someone who might prove more effective, most likely Metropolitan Tikhon, a figure widely known as Putin’s “favorite priest” (Window on Eurasia, October 15, 31, 2023, December 31, 2024). Patriarch Kirill and his church have stepped up their efforts to make themselves useful to the Kremlin in response, promoting Kremlin-favored traditional values and pushing Orthodoxy as a more central part of Russian identity than at any time since 1917 while helping the Kremlin expand Russian influence abroad (see EDM, February 3, 2022, April 10, 2024).
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