And at this point I consider Putin’s claim to be a Christian as maskirovka. Would that be the proper Russian term?
I think a better word would be “pokazukha”.
It would be: camouflage - maskirovka, the art of masking.
It is difficult to imagine an Orthodox Christian would start a war on another Orthodox nation on a Forgiveness Sunday.
However, we should not discount a religious feeling mixed in. The Soviet mind is above all a confused mind. These people had lived themselves, and absorbed the mental inertia from their parents if they are not themselves old enough, in a strange world, where national identities were crushed and mangled, normal economic activity was criminalized, history was re-written at will, religion was seen in purely utilitarian fashion as a tool to motivate the supine and defunct nation to die in wars. Under Putin a subtle re-assessment of Christianity took place. The idea took hold that the Communist ideas were aberrant but still excusable because they attempted clumsily to restore notions of equality in poverty and collectivist society found among the early Christians. That meme opened the floodgates of former and present KGB officials converting to very visible Christianity. Three line of thoughts united at that:
- instant excuse for the atrocities of the Soviet regime;
- continuation of the utilitarian view on religion as tool of social cohesion;
- usefulness of the Orthodox Christianity in promoting a new national identity of the New Russians on the ruins of the Soviet Union surrounded by enemies (that last tack was also used by Stalin in turning lenient toward the Church he learned to control).
If it sounds absurd to you, — that’s because it is absurd. Christian people don’t shoot unidentified airliners from the sky. But these are brains filled with hereditary mush.