Post-Imperial Third Romes: Resurrections of a Russian Orthodox Geopolitical Metaphor

Shortly after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, a Russian Orthodox monk nominated Russia as the ‘Third Rome’, or successor to the Roman and Byzantine empires. Some analysts have seen Muscovite Third Romism (that allegedly persisted into the Bolshevik era of the Soviet Union) as the Russian equivalent of the USA’s Manifest Destiny, and other concepts used to rationalise imperialism. This paper attempts to broaden and deepen similar interpretations of the major geopolitical dictum coming from Russian Orthodoxy: questionably a direct justification for Russian imperialist messianism and far from being just a feature of the past, this metaphor is an essential element of post-imperial Russian geopolitical discourse as evident in its usage in writings of politically diverse authors. The paper focuses on resurrections of the metaphor in postimperial Russia nowadays, and, ultimately, broadens our understanding of ‘religion as geopolitics’ nexus by presenting the too frequently overlooked field of Russian Orthodoxy-related geopolitics.

INTRODUCTION The main goal of this paper is to overview the contemporary Russian geopolitical thinking from an often overlooked angle of the Russian Orthodox form of Christianity (Russian Orthodoxy). At risk of oversimplification, it seems that most of Western scholarly attention to the resurgence of geopolitical thinking in post-Soviet Russia is focused on two geopolitical currents: prospects for Russia’s rapproachment with the West (Westernism) and a re-emergent alternative, the ideology of Russia’s uniqueness in Eurasia (Eurasianism). For example, Tsygankov1 distinguished five schools of Russian geopolitical thinking that broadly represent two groups of authors: those in the Western Liberal tradition (writing on topics such as adjustment to Western dominance in Eurasia, geoeconomic challenges and the geopolitics of cooperation, and political stabilisation) and Eurasianists and their supporters (who write on defence of post-Soviet Eurasia from the West and Eurasianist expansionism). Even if focused not on the writings of the political elite and intellectuals but rather on ordinary Russians’ post-Soviet geopolitical fantasies, O’Loughlin’s account still ranges from the fantastic notions of extreme Eurasianism to the reformers’ goal of tying Russia firmly to the West.2 Neo- Eurasianism and related National Bolshevism dominate a review by Kolossov and Mironenko even if they make reference to other ideologies.3

Yet, re-phrasing the leader of neo-Eurasianists Dugin, in Russia there is always something ‘third’. What is arguably commonly underrepresented in the West or just missing in between accounts focused on the dominant Eurasianism4 and/or Westernism, is Russia’s oldest and still vibrant geopolitical discourse: Orthodoxy-related geopolitics (not entirely the same as ‘Orthodox geopolitics’). This paper attempts to represent the field of modern Russian geopolitical thinking ‘from within’, as it developed not from the time of the founding fathers of Western geopolitical science but rather several centuries earlier (Muscovite Russia of the fifteenth century). Such an account is intended also as an attempt to highlight the Orthodox roots of Eurasianism and other geopolitical ideologies in Russia.

‘Orthodoxy-related geopolitics’ here is an inclusive, umbrella term: it is not about the Russian Orthodox Church’s teaching per se, rather more about various Orthodox, quasi-Orthodox or even secular intellectual currents in post-Soviet Russia that use the Church’s historiosophy in their geopolitical constructs. ‘Orthodoxy-related geopolitics’ here is a convenient substitute label for a more accurate term ‘Third Romist geopolitics’; it is the use of the major Orthodox metaphor, the concept of Russia as the Third Rome, that is utilised here as a formal criteria for labeling authors as belonging to ‘Orthodox’ geopoliticians. As a result, geoeconomist Alexandr Neklessa is considered here, while writer Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, who is rooted in Orthodoxy, is not.

After presenting origins of the concept and its major interpretations in the past, the paper considers its reincarnations (‘Third Romisms’) in various contemporary Russian geopolitical ideologies, such as Orthodox Nationalism/ Fundamentalism, Geoapocalyptics of the Postmodern, Neo-Panslavism, Statism/Eurounionism, Neo-Eurasianism, New Chronology, and Neo-Orthodox Communism5 (see Table 1). Each ideology is personified by one or two key proponents. The field is diverse and characterised by frequent overlaps of ideologies: the same figure often adheres to several ideologies (e.g., Zyuganov could be viewed simulataneously as a neo-Orthodox Communist and neo-Eurasianist). There are significant overlaps between these ideologies and therefore this classification is highly conditional. Still, it is necessary to differentiate the field and highlight contrasts. These ideologies are further loosely grouped as Russia-focused isolationists, Europe-minded neo- Panslavists and statists, and Eurasia-centred expansionists (Table 1).

In reviewing modern Russian Orthodoxy-related geopolitics, I hope to achieve a larger goal of contributing to the discipline of geopolitics as a whole. Both Tsygankov’s and O’Loughlin’s studies are methodologically part of the so-called new geopolitics school that ‘emphasizes a socially constructed nature of geographical space’, need to ‘move toward delineating the particular cultural myths underlying [state] practices, such as the myth of national uniqueness’, concern with boundaries in a broader sense (than only power and domination), and plurality of geographic space.6 However, actual findings of these and similar studies are arguably only partially consistent with this agenda if the major Russian cultural myth (of the Third Rome) remains in the shadow, and plurality of geopolitical space underrepresents the main religion of the realm. The main reason for such partiality seems to be not the authors’ biases but rather the chronological limitation of the ‘new’ in the ‘new geopolitics’ that is commonly conceived as a departure from the classical western geopolitics and going beyond ‘the traditional boundaries of the Westphalian world’.7 This paper argues for further broadening of the chronological and topical scope of the new geopolitics: as in many instances of (re)emerging religious geopolitics throughout the world, the case of Russian Orthodoxy-related geopolitics shows that to understand the country’s current geopolitical imaginations, its ‘myth of national uniqueness’, scholars need to go not only beyond classical geopolitics but also prior to it, take more seriously imaginary proto-boundaries of the pre-Westphalian world. Such a more flexible version of the new geopolitics would attempt combining its serious take on the imaginary and the postmodern with attention to the traditional and the pre-modern, and should allow for greater latitude in studying cultural and political boundaries across different eras.

Russian Orthodoxy is more than a major religion in the country. From very early history, it played the utmost political and geopolitical role in the country. For instance, the conversion to a Byzantine form of Christianity (Orthodoxy) by Prince Vladimir of Kiev in 988 not only allowed the creation of the first Russian state (Kievan Rus’), but also later assured its survival when the country was again decentralised by the invasion of Central Asian nomads and resurrected around Moscow in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries8 (see Figure 1).

In 1453 the original hearth of Russian religion, the Byzantine Empire, fell to the Turks. Only a few years later, in 1480, the nomadic invaders were defeated and their domination came to an end. It is likely that to the Russians Post-Imperial Third Romes 321 it seemed no coincidence that at the very moment when the Byzantine Empire, the Orthodox Second Rome, came to an end, they themselves were at last throwing off the few remaining vestiges of Mongol control: God, it seemed, was granting them their freedom because He had chosen them to be the successors of Byzantium. The new (Muscovite) Russia was now called to take Byzantium’s place as protector of the Orthodox world, because it was the only Orthodox country (besides Georgia) which remained independent at this time.9

In short, in the second half of the fifteenth century and the early sixteenth century, the idea developed that Moscow had a unique religious and political mission as the successor of Rome and Byzantium. The earliest surviving formulations of this idea are in several works attributed to the monk Filofei (Philotheus), the elder (starets) of the Eleazarov monastery in Pskov (Figure 2).

For instance, in 1511 Filofei addressed his Tsar, Vasily III, with these words: “The Church of old Rome fell because of the impiety of the Apollinarian heresy; the Church of the Second Rome, Constantinople, was smitten FIGURE 1 Byzantine Christianity and the Slavs by 1000 A.D. Source: D. Sidorov, Orthodoxy and Difference: Essays on the Geography of Russian Orthodox Church(es) in the 20thCentury (Princeton Theological Monograph Series 46) (San Jose, CA: Pickwick Publications 2001). 322 Dmitrii Sidorov under the battle-axes of the Agarenes; but this present Church of the Third, New Rome, of Thy sovereign empire: the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church …shines in the whole universe more resplendent than the sun. And let it be known to Thy Lordship, O pious Czar, that all the empires of the Orthodox Christian Faith have converged into Thine one empire. Thou art the sole Emperor of all the Christians in the whole universe …For two Romes have fallen, and the Third stands, and a fourth shall never be, for Thy Christian Empire shall never devolve upon others.10

In a way, Filofei’s writings appeared several times: first, in the Medieval Muscovy of the sixteenth century, second, in the imperial Russia of the nineteenth century, and, third, in the West through interpretations by Berdiaev in the twentieth century. All three had different audiences, produced different geopolitical ideals, and have different degrees of appeal nowadays.

As scholars increasingly agree, in Muscovite Russia Filofei’s writings initially remained known only in limited church circles; there is no evidence that they were used to design state policies. The ultimate scholarly authority on the topic, the author of the fundamental volume Third Rome, Nataliia Sinitsyna, 11 concludes that the original Filofei’s dictum perhaps was not a triumphant ode to the newly born global empire, as some later interpreters claimed, rather a mix of flattery and mild warning to fight against astrology and Catholicism;12 it was not a messianic imperialist claim, but rather an eschatological warning, not a spatial expansionism but temporal extensionism. 13 The original concept was not imperialist but imperial: ‘empire’ here has FIGURE 2 The monk Filofei of Pskov prophesying the Third Rome. Source: Post-Imperial Third Romes 323 a special religio-political meaning, an expression of translatio emperii idea that Christian empire (Roman and Byzantine ones) could be inherited or translated geographically and has a spiritual reason for existence. In Orthodox theology, the Third Rome, the Orthodox Russian Empire, came to be seen as a third embodiment of what in the Bible (2 Thessalonians 2:6–8) is called ‘hold back’, ‘restraining’ power (in Greek, catehon) against the coming rule of lawlessness. Therefore, the Russian Empire had a sacral meaning, with its fall, Filofei wrote, the Christian world would be over because the rule of lawlessness, of Satan, would prevail and there could be no ‘Fourth Rome’ to restrain it. That would be the Latter Times, the apocalyptical time of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.14 The original idea was about Russia as a whole, and the metaphor ‘Moscow the Third Rome’ is its later localisation.15 This understanding could be called eschatological; its geopolitical ideal was a protected and protecting Russian Orthodox empire-catehon.

A second appearance of Filofei’s writings was their publication three centuries later in 1861–1863;16 only after that did the concept of the Third Rome become part of scholarly and publicist discourses, which had become increasingly popular and influential.17 Some major Russian philosophers (e.g., Vladimir Solov’ev) reflected on the concept.18 The Medieval eschatological expectations of the Muscovy by the nineteenth century were, if not lost, then limited to the Old Believers circles.19 This time the concept could be called pan-Orthodox; unlike in the Muscovy time, geopolitically the concept was most often interpreted as the ideal of taking over Constantinople, spiritual leadership in Orthodox Europe and the establishment of a Panslavic union. It was very important in the context of the Russo-Turkish Balkan wars and the Eastern Question over the straits allowing access to the Mediterranean Sea.20 After the bloody 1905 revolution, the doctrine acquired new significance for Russian intellectuals, especially those who rejected radicalism of the leftist political movements.

Between World War I and World War II the Third Rome continued to attract the attention of researchers and thinkers as before.21 The third major surfacing of Filofei’s writings was in the early twentieth century, this time in the West. The arrival of Communism in Russia provided the doctrine with new imperialist messianist resonances: its geopolitical ideal this time began to be seen as imperialist expansionism. Nikolai Berdiaev (1874–1948) was the main defender of such a view. ‘Russian messianism’ was the main moving force of Bolshevism as the main element of ‘Russian religious psychology’, 22 the core of Russian spirituality: “Growing out from the sphere of the unconscious into the conscious, the idea changes its name and instead of Filofei’s ‘third Rome’ appears Lenin’s Third International.”23 Berdiaev’s interpretation of international communism as reincarnated ‘Russian messianism’ has been widely publicised in the West; he has become the most wellknown Russian philosopher in the West. His interpretation was and still is welcomed especially by conservative, anticommunist, and Russophobic circles.24 324 Dmitrii Sidorov

The Soviet occupation of East Europe gave rise to the concept later called ‘Soviet expansionism’. Many of the post-war analysts turned to Berdiaev’s interpretation of Bolshevism as modified ‘Russian messianism’. Many thought that Communist imperialism could be understood as a modern reincarnation of the alleged original Russian desire to become the Third Rome.25

Before I shift to a discussion of how these three geopolitical forms of the Third Rome re-emerged nowadays, it may be interesting to mention a fourth, never fully developed historical form. In the USSR itself during the Soviet time the concept had only limited, episodic circulation, primarily a result of the revival of Russian nationalism under Stalin during and after World War II. For Poe, the culminating point of national-Bolshevik interpretation of the idea was the S. Eisenstein film, Ivan the Terrible:26 in the first scene of the film the tsar announces the goal of uniting Russian lands, destroying inner opposition, and defending the tsardom from German intruders. Ivan closed his speech with a pompous citation from Filofei.27 What Poe highlighted as the ‘culminating point’ would pale compared to Stalin’s biggest yet understudied post-World War II geopolitical scheme: in the years 1943–1948 he hoped to use the Russian Orthodox Church as a major agent for bringing Eastern Europe and the Middle East under Soviet control. To that end, he planned the creation of a ‘Moscow Vatican’, a Moscow- centered transformation of the Orthodox world. When he failed to get the approval of patriarchs of national Orthodox churches for transfer of the nominal center of Orthodoxy from Istanbul (Constantinople) to Moscow and failed to bring the independent state of Israel into the Soviet sphere, he lost interest in the project,28 and the concept of the Third Rome became again mostly invisible in public intellectual discourse until the end of the Soviet system (see, for example, references to it in Ilya Glazunov’s monumental painting Eternal Russia, Figure 3).

To summarise, historically there have been several major understandings of the concept with distinctive geopolitical ideals attached: its original meaning in Muscovy was eschatological and primarily inward-looking, promoting ideals of a protective Orthodox empire; in the nineteenth century the concept often had pan-Orthodox meaning and connoted taking over the second Rome (Constantinople); in the twentieth century in the West the concept was understood as justification of Russian imperialist messianism. (If Stalin’s post-World War II geopolitical schemes are implemented, we perhaps would have another geopolitical understanding of the Third Rome.)

Scholars of geopolitics rarely pay significant attention to the concept of the Third Rome: in their writing it is most often marginalised, misinterpreted or just ignored. For example, the well-known book by Liberal Westerner Trenin has no reference to the concept.29 The textbook by Vasilenko has a discussion of Russian messianism without reference to the Third Rome, having only passing reference to the second Rome and its loss.30 The textbook Post-Imperial Third Romes 325 by Nartov has a chapter on Eurasianists while the Third Rome is not mentioned. 31 In Dergachev’s textbook the theory has no special consideration in the text (unlike Eurasianism), only reference in the book’s glossary.32 The textbook by Kolossov and Mironenko33 does consider the Third Rome concept in some depth and eclectically interprets it essentially as a messianist Panslavic, pan-Orthodox concept that was geopolitically important only in the context of the liberation of Balkan Orthodox peoples from the Ottoman Empire at the end of the nineteenth century.

Politologists of Russian Orthodoxy, too, are frequently silent on the concept. Mitrofanova’s work34 itself perhaps belongs to the Liberal Westernised ideological tradition, if judged by its intentions, choice of foundational ideological predecessors and conclusions. Funded by a Western source, Mitrofanova’s rare and useful study on politicisation of the Russian Orthodox religion was to assess primarily issues of interest for Western security issues: relative popularity of various currents of modern Orthodox political ideologies and the extent to which an Orthodox equivalent of the Islamic world is possible. Paradoxically, she traces roots of modern political Orthodoxy only to relatively recent ideologies (Panslavism and Eurasianism) and does not consider Third Romism. Therefore, it is not a surprise that she concludes that there is no major ideology in political Orthodoxy: most ideologies, including the popular Eurasianism, are more particularistic than universalist and therefore can’t unite various currents of political Orthodoxy, and possibilities of an Orthodox political unity are slim. FIGURE 3 Ilya Glazunov, Eternal Russia (1988). Ilya Glazunov is modern Russia’s preeminent artist. This gigantic painting represents the totality of Russian history as an uninterrupted procession of the country’s key figures originating at Moscow’s Kremlin cathedrals. The Orthodox cross and Moscow, the Third Rome, visually constitute the central complex of the painting. Source: 326 Dmitrii Sidorov This paper aims not at challenging the reigning positions of Eurasianism and Westernism in representations of contemporary Russian geopolitical discourse, but rather at highlighting an essential additional pillar of Russian geopolitical thinking, Third Romist geopolitics. It is arguably between or around these three ideological poles, Eurasianism, Westernism, and Orthodoxyrelated geopolitics that modern Russian geopolitical imaginations revolve.

The remainder of this paper will look at the metaphor’s three historical forms’ resurrections in post-Soviet, post-imperial Russia and in doing so will overview various currents of contemporary Russian Orthodoxy-related geopolitical thought.

The concept of the Third Rome has often been perceived as “one of the most significant (if not most significant) historiosophical concepts forming the ideology and character of the Muscovite state and staying in Russian minds for several centuries. It is the archetype of Russian nationalism.”35 Being essentially about the nature of the Russian Empire and the country’s geographical identity, the concept seemingly has always been emerging at turning points of Russian history: the establishment of an independent Muscovy state, the end of the Russian Empire, and World War II. Therefore it is understandable that the trauma of the fall of the Soviet Empire has caused not only the current renaissance of geopolitical imperial thought in the area, but specifically a resurgent interest in the concept of the Third Rome. However, as the remainder of this paper shows, the revived modern ‘Third Romisms’ are quite different from each other (see Table 1). I will first look at modern geopolitical ideologies that are tied to Filofei’s original eschatological treatment of the concept with essentially isolationist or empire-preservist geopolitical goals. Second, I will look at how the nineteenth-century, Europe and Constantinople-oriented ‘Third Rome’ of Danilevskii and Solov’yev finds modern adherents. Lastly, Berdiaev’s imperialist expansionist Third Rome perhaps characterises modern Eurasianists and their supporters.

I. The ‘Third Rome’ as a Catehon-Island (Filofei/Eschatologists/Isolationists/Russia-centrism) ORTHODOX GEOPOLITICAL NATIONALISTS/FUNDAMENTALISTS The official Russian Orthodox Church and its Patriarch are usually silent on the contested issues of geopolitics.36 The ideology of Nationalists/Fundamentalists (hereafter N/F) still stems from conservative currents inside or Post-Imperial Third Romes 327 around the church itself: characteristically, many authors named below used to belong to various schismatic Orthodox Churches such as the Old Belief- Edinoverie (Dugin, Karpets), the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (Nazarov, Kholmogorov) that are traditionionally most respective of apocalyptical and conservative ideas such as the late imperial teachings of Ioann of Kronshtadt (1829–1908) and the writings of Metropolitan Ioann of Metropolitan of Saint-Petersburg and Ladoga (Snychev) (1927–1995).37

Of various contemporary authors, this paper highlights Mikhail Nazarov who is becoming arguably the most outspoken voice of Russian nationalists. What makes his writings a noteworthy case is, first, his visibility: a talented publicist with the experience of a protracted stay in the West, he was often in the spotlight in 2005 as one of the initiators of several letters to the State Duma requesting that all Jewish organisations in Russia be made illegal on the grounds that one of the publications, a collection of Jewish religious regulations “Kitzur Shulchan Aruch”, ignites religious intolerance.38 A major public defender of the request, he got a lot of publicity from the case, helping him to promote his recently published nationalist manifesto, a voluminous book entitled matter-of-factly To the Ruler of the Third Rome.39

Nazarov’s two-fold historiosophical worldview is based on Filofei’s original eschatological meaning of the Third Rome, and is representative of most Orthodox N/F:40 Russia is opposed to the rest of the world as the only country that potentially could keep it from the alleged apostasy (decline) of the coming anti-Christian kingdom (often equated to globalisation and/or the USA). Therefore (and not ‘just because of its natural resources’) the world conspiracy forces consider Russia its main enemy in their global war: without full control over Russia, the world ‘behind-the-scenes’ system (mirovaia zakulisa) can’t establish the kingdom of anti-Christ. Hence the fate of the world is dependent on the Third Rome, its catehon, restraining, hold-back power of the Russian empire to provide humanity with a lighthouse for salvation. If Russia fails to restore the Third Rome, then nothing would be able to prevent the world from its own collapse.41

Mitrofanova believes that the (geo)political project suggested by Orthodox N/F for the restoration of Russia as an Orthodox kingdom of resistance to ‘lethal’ globalisation processes has limited possibilities for any active politics: “Not one of the [F]undamentalist authors develops a theory of Orthodox revolution and moreover does not suggest real steps for its achievement (for instance, by calling for an uprising)”.42 According to Mitrofanova, N/F ideologists write little about foreign policies: if the world is destined to fall from God anyway, the ultimate possible goal for N/F is to convert Russia into an Orthodox fortress; she believes that their political project is limited to Russia’s borders at best – borders of the Orthodox world. This localisation of a globalin- character project is also reflected in the common support of N/F for the idea of economic autarchy of Russia.43 Thus, Mitrofanova downplays the political and geopolitical potential of this ideology. 328 Dmitrii Sidorov

Nazarov’s book does not fully support Mitrofanova’s restrained assessment: Nazarov is noteworthy not because of his innovative theoretical interpretation of the Third Rome, but rather precisely because of the practical recipes he suggests. Chapter VII of the book has a telling title: “What the Leader of the Third Rome Should Do?” The Nationalist Nazarov is critical of Russia’s contemporary rulers and, predictably, argues for Russia’s autarchy,44 purification of contemporary political elites,45 and a new solution of the national question of Russians.46 Nazarov is against Dugin’s Eurasianist project as an attempt to “unite the Orthodox, the Muslim and Judaists under the banner Eurasia Is above All”.47 He is sympathetic to the Panslavist project: “First of all, it is essential for restoring the post-Byzantine space of those Orthodox countries that understand the world order and meaning of history: Russia, Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia, and also ancient Christian Armenia. Certainly, Belarus and eastern Ukraine also belong here regardless of their status related to Russia.”48

Chapter IX “Boundaries of the Third Rome” delivers Nazarov’s geopolitical project of restoring the Third Rome in full detail. Having summarised Russia’s territorial losses, he concludes that “we must as actively as possible participate in the restoration process to reduce further territorial losses and to help many of our brothers. And to actually achieve success, it is better to put forward a goal of not minimalist but rather maximalist proportions in hopes that God again would give us as much land as we would be able to spiritually feed. Therefore, we must tend to restore the Third Rome in its historically just boundaries because we can’t leave aside our compatriots on the lost territories (including our ancient, truly Russian lands).”49

For Nazarov, the only legitimate basis for establishing limits of the Third Rome must be the boundary of the Russian Empire as of 2 March 1917 (Figure 4), when the (last) legitimate authority was interrupted.50 Nazarov provides a lengthy ‘inventarization’ of the Third Rome’s territory51 which reads like a list of actual and potential geopolitical conflicts that should not be treated as solved. For example, for Poland and Finland, Nazarov accepts that they are irreversibly independent of Russia yet their status he considers ‘uncertain’ until signing treaties with (future) ‘legitimate’ Russian authorities. As the two countries used to be part of the ‘Third Rome’, their futures should be decided not by politicians but from scratch by their populations. 52 Even if East Prussia (Kaliningrad Oblast) had not been part of the Russian Empire on 2 March 1917, Nazarov accepts its return to Germany only if the country leaves NATO and becomes Russia’s strategic ally recognising the historical boundaries of the Third Rome.53 For the three Baltic republics, Russia should recognise their peoples’ choice for independence but not their boundaries;54 the Trans-Dniester republic in Moldova is a Russian territory, and so forth.55

Furthermore, at some point Nazarov reveals his potential expansionism: “recreation of the Third Roman catehon should not necessarily be limited to Post-Imperial Third Romes 329 the territory of the Russian Empire in its last legitimate boundaries of March 2, 1917. We must accept other peoples if they have similar historic ideals (first of all, the Serbians)…. We also understand that the move to restore the Third Rome will cause resistance of the Judeo-American anti-Rome (the USA) with potentiality for war. Perhaps that would be the last page of history described in the Apocalypses. We can’t prevent it or hide in some Eurasian reservation. Our goal is to accept the apocalyptical challenge and give the answer that God awaits.”56 Still, in my opinion, Nazarov should be considered primarily as an isolationist because he is essentially an escapist; he does not need the world beyond the Third Rome. His limited expansionism is just a step to achieve the ideal isolation (within the Third Rome’s ‘legitimate borders’).

Nazarov’s views are very common even if extreme. For example, they are shared by less nationalist and more Orthodox fundamentalist publicist Yegor Kholmogorov (Figure 8), who writes less for a mass audience and more for intelligentsia circles: sharing with Nazarov geopolitical thought of the imperial revanchist kind, he also rejects postulates of Eurasianism and attempts to synthesise the ideas of Byzantism and the Russian Empire with the latest (advanced) geopolitical models. Kholmogorov is similar to Nazarov in his historical account of the idea of the Third Rome;57 the difference is in the way of restoring the Third Rome and his appeal to a wider intellectual audience.

FIGURE 4 [not reproduced here] The Russian Federation (2005) compared to the Russian Empire (1917) and the Soviet Union (1991). Tuva and Kaliningrad regions are parts of the Russian Federation and of the USSR but have not been parts of the Russian Empire. Source: the author, redrawn from a map by Billie Bielckus (SIPRI 1997). 330 Dmitrii Sidorov

These differences in tactics are, for example, in Nazarov’s criticism of Vladimir Putin and Yegor Kholmogorov’s openness to collaboration with the current authorities as visible in his participation in an Orthodox conservative project ‘Russkaia Doktrina’ [Russian Doctrine] that is allegedly supported by the authorities.58

Kholmogorov argues for Russian agiopolitics, a program of rational political actions aimed at strengthening the ‘sacral infrastructure’ of the Russian Orthodox world. Kholmogorov is the most ardent apologist for emerging ‘political religions of the latter days’. For him, the eschatology of the latter days should be the foundation of Russian national mythology; the restoration of the future should be conceived as the restoration of Russia’s eschatological fate.59 For Kholmogorov, the emergence of political Orthodoxy is an undeniable phenomenon. It is not an anti-modernisational reaction but a specifically Orthodox form of realisation of the deep processes in the religious conscience of the contemporary world. It is not a departure from Orthodox dogmatics and is not similar to the emergent political Islam; it is oriented to support the state rather than the people (‘political Orthodoxy welcomes Christian, imperial supranational order’). The goal of political Orthodoxy is not the creation of an Orthodox state but rather secession of a social space where salvation is most possible.60 For example, Kholmogorov argues for the establishment of an Orthodox political order and restoration of a holistic national Orthodox salvation infrastructure (e.g., ‘ideally, there should be no place in Russia from where a church is not visible’). The idea of Orthodox geopolitics for Khomogorov is twofold. First, it is geopolitics of the Third Rome, Russia as the catehon, the restraining world power. In this role it must aim at those geopolitical goals that are needed for strengthening Russia’s status as a strong state in the world system. Second, there is a specific Orthodox geopolitics, the geopolitics of Byzantism that aims at establishing an Orthodox political order and restoring the infrastructure of salvation in the territories with a population where Orthodoxy is a systematic identity factor.61 This logically leads to a call for ‘Russian irredenta’ 62 and Orthodox missionary expansionist claims.63

In the opinion of the author of this paper, the most interesting although most often overlooked current of Orthodoxy-related geopolitical ideas are works stemming from a new wave of philosophers like Alexandr Neklessa and Vadim Tsymburskii (Yegor Kholmogorov could be part of the group). Respected scholars and prolific writers, they are frequent contributors to both general academic/intellectual journals, and Orthodox-historiosophicalgeopolitical venues.64 Reflecting on Orthodox theology, the latest western philosophical discourses and respective of such Russian geopolitical thinkers of the past as Tyutchev, Leont’iev, Danilevskii, Semenov-Tian-Shanskii, Savitskii, Post-Imperial Third Romes 331 and Gorshkov, they innovatively advance Orthodox geopolitical thinking. They are often critical of both modern Russian Liberal Westerners who “have not suggested original geopolitical concepts” and concepts of Russian Nationalists that are “underdeveloped”.65 They could for convenience be labeled here together as postmodernist for they believe that the world has entered a new epoch that could be variously labeled as the epoch of postmodern, the epoch of latter days, last times, and so on. Grigorii Nikolaev (Kremnev) suggests calling this line of geopolitical reasoning geoapocalyptics (geoapokaliptika).66

Tsymburskii is the author of several innovative geopolitical concepts. Kholmogorov rightly characterises his famous metaphor of ‘Island Russia’ as isolationism directly oppositional to the neo-Eurasianism of Alexandr Dugin.67 Tsymburskii also challenges Huntington’s vision of contact lines of civilisations by highlighting instead inter-civilisational cultural spaces (limitrof) that lack certain civilisational identity and could be invaded by neighbouring civilisational platforms (civilisations’ areas of stable control). Russia’s space for expansion is its Great Limitrof, the belt of cultures surrounding it, primarily in the south. Tsymburskii is also critical of Panslavism: he sees the roots of the current Russian imperialism’s crisis in its attempts to expand into Europe (instead of the Great Limitrof). Tsymburskii is a rare optimist about post-imperial Russia’s new reduced territory: its exit from Europe and loss of dominance in the Great Limitrof could lead to realization of the ‘Island Russia’ project (e.g., focus on Russia’s own civilisational platform and its final settlement, especially of Siberia and the Far East; Tsymburskii even suggests a transfer of the Russian capital to the Urals).

Third Rome problematics enters Tsymburskii’s geopolitics in several ways. First, for him “the fall of Byzantium and Russian emancipation from the Mediterranean paradise (signified by the emblem of the Third Rome) was the first factor for emergence of [Russian] civilization there.”68 Second, following Lamanskii, Spengler and Toynbee, Tsymburskii’s research interests migrate now into the sphere of what he calls chronopolitics, a study of heterogeneity of historical time and its implications for geopolitical development. 69 He believes that civilisations tend to treat their geopolitical space along a certain repetitive spatial metaphor. For Tsymburskii, Russia’s spatial ‘proto-phenomenon’ is not the popular metaphor of ‘endless plain’, rather of an ‘island’: “Filofei’s Third Rome is an island amidst the apostatic Universe.” He finds here that real Russian geopolitics occurs as a chain of manifestations of this ‘islandic’ proto-phenomenon as reflected both in Russia’s basic myth of the Third Rome,70 and its current status of ‘Island Russia’. Tsymburskii’s model ‘Island Russia’ rejects attempts to treat the new reduced post-imperial Russia as if exisiting ‘instead of Russia’; rather, it treats it as part of the country’s continuing historical tradition.71

A geoeconomic approach to Russian geopolitics has been suggested in the concepts of Alexandr Neklessa, who analyses the structure of the globalised 332 Dmitrii Sidorov world.72 In his view, the modern world ‘division of labor’ creates a sharp fracturing of the world into economic macrostructures that depend on the economy’s ‘modernization’ and its place in the global community. The highly developed prosperous ‘North’ (aka ‘West’) is economically and politically dominating; it enters the stage of ‘postindustrial culture’, in which the main object of production is high technology and ideas. The place of industrial leader passes to the ‘new East’, Asian, primarily Pacific countries, that have been and are experiencing ‘an economic miracle’. Located along the Indian Ocean, the ‘South’, has been experiencing the troubles of failed modernisation or exhausted natural resources, first of all oil. Since the collapse of the USSR, Eurasia has been in a state of uncertainty; it seeks a ‘Russian project’ that would allow a return to its former place in the world. A Novelty of the modern epoch is in transgeographic structures: ‘quasi-North’, the army of globalisation, of international dealers, bureaucrats and all that well-being depends on new financial and virtual ‘post-economics’, and ‘deep South’, the zone of decay of the civilisation structures, degradation of ‘fallen states’, rule of terrorism and criminality. As a geoeconomic Russian project, Neklessa puts forward a concept of formation of ‘hyper-North’ as a counter-distinction to the postmodern ‘quasi-North’ – the transformation of Russia into the zone of super intensive scientific-technological development and future technologies.73

According to Tsymburskii, the works of Neklessa constitute the “most interesting contribution to Russian geoeconomics.”74 Partially overlapping each other, these works form one metatext characterised by a dialog between two domains: the field of ‘humanitarian esotericism’ and ‘esotericism of geoeconomics’.75 Neklessa, a prominent member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, fully adopts Orthodox metahistorical schemes: he interpretes history as a Big Myth and utilises the six-day Biblical cosmogony to describe historical modes of production. Neklessa is also an isolationist: he treats small science and production towns of the Russian North as ‘islands of meaning’, networks of the Third Rome. However, his version of geoapocalyptics is the most pessimistic about possibilities of the Third Rome’s resurrection, prophesying instead emergence of a non-Christian neo-pagan ‘Fourth Rome’. In that he is increasingly reminiscent of conspiracy theorists like Nationalist Nazarov and Eurasianist Dugin.

II. The ‘Third Rome’ with Europe (Danilevskii/Neo-Panslavists and-or Europeanists/Russia-and-Europe)

For the founder of Panslavism, Danilevskii (1822–1885), the essence of world history is a struggle between Roman (Catholic) and Byzantine (Orthodox) Post-Imperial Third Romes 333 civilisations that nowadays are represented by Germanic and Slavic cultural entities.76 In his geopolitical utopia Danilevskii predicted ‘the third stage of the Eastern Question’: creation of an Eastern (e.g., Orthodox-Slavic) empire, an all-Slavic union of Russia, the Czech Republic, Moravia, Slovakia, Serbia (including Bosnia and Herzegovina), Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Greece, Hungary, part of Turkey.77 Danilevskii stressed the empire’s universality, non-Russianness, insisting that the capital of that empire should be not Saint-Petersburg or Moscow, but Constantinople (Tsar-City, Tsargrad).

I have not found any serious modern discussion of reconquest of Istanbul, and the possibility of an All-Slavic (or All-Orthodox) Union is discussed by few authors. The main problem of modern Panslavism, as with the Panslavism of the nineteenth century, is its refusal to accept the obvious: unified ‘Slavic’, and moreover ‘Orthodox-Slavic’ civilisation so far does not exist. K. A. Smirnov and O. V. Kataeva write about ‘Slavic society (soobschestvo)‘ that ‘includes 12 states’.78 Most Panslavists eventually conclude that the Slavic world consists at best of three countries: Russia, Belarus, and Serbia.79

Those who Mitrofanova labels as neo-Panslavists are different from their predecessors, focusing more on the issues of interaction with specifically the European civilisation. Natalia Narochnitskaia’s voluminous work Russia and Russians in World History80 is representative of this transformation of modern Panslavists.81 In my opinion, many of them could be better labeled as Europeanists (Table 1) or even as post-Panslavists. Her book is essentially a critical review of the history of international relations with mostly Europe from an Orthodox point of view. It shares with the Orthodox Fundamentalists a rejection of the West and globalisation, and also rejects McKinder’s belief in the Eurasian Heartland. For Narochnitskaia, throughout history the pivotal area of world geopolitics is so-called ‘post- Byzantine space’, the area of the Eastern Question, the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Western Russia (Figure 1). For Narochnitskaia, Russia and the Balkans constitute the Orthodox world, ‘post-Byzantine space’, which is different from Western civilisation. The collapse of the Soviet Union has again intensified struggle for the post-Byzantine space (that seemingly geographically corresponds to the territory of All-Slavic union of the early Panslavists82) between the interests of Orthodox, Latin (Western) and Islamic civilisations. Narochnitskaia concludes that “the common/shared goal of western powers in the past and nowadays is the same – to prevent in the strategic region of the straits and the Mediterranean the formation of a large Slavic Orthodox state with a clearly distinctive independent national spirit.”83

Narochnitskaia makes frequent references to the Third Rome, superficially in the eschatological way described above. Yet essentially her take is not Nationalist/Fundamentalist in her minimisation of its 334 Dmitrii Sidorov Muscovy dimension: following Synitsyna, Narochnitskaia claims that the Third Rome was not a major concept in Muscovy; instead, the idea of Byzantine heritage for Moscow was promoted by the West (the Pope of Rome and Holy Roman emperor) to make Russia its ally in the fight with Ottoman Turkey. A deeper goal was to spread Catholicism to the east that would be facilitated if Russia was weakened in her fight with the Turks.84

Eventually, the book’s main message is the following: true unity that could bring growth and independence to Europe should be based on recognition of the universally equal values of our experiences. The future lies in constructively merging all cultural components of Europe (including the Slavic and Orthodox). Therefore, the Russian ‘challenge’ is essentially an ‘appeal’. The future of Russia is Europe’s future too.85

Although historically a major geopolitical current in Orthodoxy, modern neo-Panslavism is a less popular and, as mentioned, somewhat different ideology now. It accepts Danilevskii’s basic reasoning in terms of the Slavic-Orthodox world under Russia’s leadership and of coexistance with other worlds or civilisations (also popular are the ideas of Toynbee and Huntington). Unlike N/F, Panslavists recognise certain values of other civilisations, their right to existence, and do not consider Panslavic civilisation as universalist.86 Yet the N/F branch is perceived by many modern neo-Panslavists as less dangerous for Russia and even as a temporary ally in the fight against ‘the alliance of American, pan-Turkic and Israeli forces’.87 The modern neo-Panslavist attitude to Eurasianism and specifically Islam is inconsistent; some even accept a special value of not only Islam, but also of Hinduism. They actively borrow concepts from the ideology of so-called ‘Russian cosmism’ that have been rejected by the Church as heresy and do not see anything wrong in the teaching of Roerichs.88 Mitrofanova believes that neo-Panslavism is increasingly an ideology of not ‘Slavism’ but Russian nationalism and could merge with political N/F becoming their extended version.89

Perhaps the most extensive examination of the Third Rome concept from a statist (derzhavnost’) perspective point of view could be found in Alexei Mitrofanov’s book. Not a neo-Panslavist, he is nevetheless similar to Narochnitskaia in his focus on relations with Europe: his book is characteristically titled Russia: Between Collapse or Joining the European Union.90 A long-time deputy of Russian parliament and the head of its committee on geopolitical issues, Mitrofanov discusses the concept of the Third Rome as an emblem of a strong centralised Russian state. His conclusion is that Russia has only one choice: either to disintegrate or to establish a strong centralised unitary state and join the European Union to create a global super-civilisation.91 Post-Imperial Third Romes 335

III. The Eurasian ‘Thvtird [sic] Rome’ (Berdiaev/Imperialists/Expansionists/Eurasianists)

ORTHODOX NEO-EURASIANIST TRADITIONALISTS Eurasianism was formulated in the 1920s in the circle of Russian émigrés, in particular in works by Nikolai Trubetskoi and Petr Savitskii. In contrast to the idea of All-Slavic union of Danilevskii, they put forward the idea of a Eurasian ‘continental state’ that includes many ethnic and religious groups. At the same time, Eurasianism was conceived at the core as an Orthodox ideology: Savitskii argued that ‘the Eurasianists are Orthodox people’.92 However, Eurasianists interpreted Orthodoxy far more broadly than what the Church teaches. ‘Paganism is a potential Orthodoxy’, claimed Savitskii referring primarily to Buddhism. Islam is also a kind of Orthodoxy for him. According to Savitskii, the two religions both reflect different sides of Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy, therefore, for most radical Eurasianists, is the core of a larger religious-cultural world that is called ‘potential Orthodoxy’ because it still does not belong to the Orthodox Church. With all its distance from the canonical Orthodoxy, the Eurasianists believed that politics is only a means for realisation of religious goals.93 This is why Eurasianism could be considered as an Orthodoxy-related geopolitical ideology.

Most of neo-Eurasianist intellectual projects are connected to Alexandr Dugin, whose project is more ambitious than that of the early Eurasianists: Dugin aims at integration of all existing traditionalist (and anti-globalist) ideologies. Orthodoxy is presumably a major ideology (tradition) for Dugin and the Eurasian empire is called its natural geographical embodiment. Most of Dugin’s major works make reference to the Third Rome idea. However, Dugin’s take on the concept reflects his adherence to the Old Belief version of Orthodoxy: he believes that the ideal was hollowed after the Church reforms of the mid-seventeeth century. and the resultant schism; the Petrine westernisation further betrayed the Third Rome: “with the transfer of the capital to St. Petersburg and the abolition of the Patriarchate …Russia ceased to be dogmatically legitimate Orthodox empire in the theological and eschatological senses”. Dugin is among few authors who consider the Soviet Union as essentially a reincarnation of the Orthodox Third Roman empire.94

Neo-Eurasianists are expansionists: the ‘Orthodox world’ for Eurasianists is by far bigger than the ‘Slavic world’ of the Panslavists and is open for expansion. This breadth allows for inclusion into the Orthodox world (the so-called Pan-Eurasian Zone, Figure 5) the peoples of Turkey, Iran, and India that have never even lived in Russia. For many analysts, Eurasianism is the most influencial of the Orthodoxy-related ideologies due to its broad understanding of Orthodoxy, allowing for inclusion of almost any non- Western religion. The Eurasianist project is not local, rather universalist, in suggesting, for example, the spread of the Eurasianist ideology throughout the world: it seems that neo-Eurasianism tends to transform itself into a global ideology.95 At the same time, it positions itself as an Orthodoxy-related ideology (Figure 6).

Arkadii Maler’s recent work96 is an attempt to reposition neo-Eurasianism as an Orthodox geopolitical ideology by balancing it with the Third Romism and Byzantism,97 an Orthodox ideology of symphony between the Church and state authorities.98 Similarly, Vladimir Karpets in Eurasianism seeks a balance between the monarchist ideals, Third Romism, and the Eurasian continental empire (of the Jean Parvulesco and Alexandr Dugin kind that means a new Axis, under the slogan Paris-Berlin-Moscow, and further to Beijing).99

NEW CHRONOLOGY Eurasianism is an influential ideology, and the New Chronology of Anatoly Fomenko and Gleb Nosovskii could be treated as its peculiar reincarnation. Based on earlier theories of Nikolai Morozov, the two professors at Moscow

in four maps. Map 4: Structure of multipolar world. The Eurasianist vision of the future.” The darker shade is applied here to the so-called Pan-Eurasian Zone (one of the four dividing the world); for neo-Eurasianists it includes Russia-Eurasian Big Space, Islamic Continental Big Space, and Hindu Big Space). Post-Imperial Third Romes 337 State University use mathematics and astronomy to provide evidence that world chronology as we know it today is fundamentally flawed, compiled by historians from numerous sources and is full of duplications of historical events. Our history is, they claim, fifty centuries shorter than we traditionally believe.100

According to the New Chronology, the first Rome was Alexandria (Egypt), the second Rome was Constantinople (a.k.a. Jerusalem). Then the Third Rome split into three Third Romes (Constantinople, Rome of Italy, and Moscow).101 The Third Rome as Moscow was the capital of a Great Russian Empire that embraced practically the entire world (Figure 7). It was created by the Grand Russian Prince Georgy Danilovich and his disciples. The empire disintegrated at the beginning of the seventeenth century as a result of big political intrigues.

The New Chronology is essentially about “the true grandeur of ancient Russian history, about the strength of the Russian spirit and weaponry, about power that managed to unite the peoples of the world. One can’t choose the Homeland, yet one can choose the history of the Homeland that is closer and more daring.”102 While shrinking world history, New Chronologists always enlarge Russia’s imperial space and the geopolitical importance of Russia in the past. New Chronology could be viewed as a far-right version of Eurasianism and a prime example of post-imperial geopolitical imagining.

Having lost its reigning position in Russian politics, the Communist party attempts to reposition itself in post-Soviet politics. As evident in writings of Gennady Zyuganov, the party tries to represent its Marxist doctrine as consistent with and rooted in other popular ideologies. Written from the civilisationist perspective, Zyuganov’s manifesto of the party’s new position, The Geography of Victory103, develops the image of Russia as a self-sufficient economic, political, and cultural unit in the middle of Eurasia. Zyuganov views the world in terms of traditional geopolitics and defends the notion of Russia as a Eurasian empire within the former Soviet borders.104

Scholars have a tendency to underrepresent the Orthodox dimension of the new Communist geopolitics. For example, Tsygankov makes no reference to the religious dimension and Mitrofanova characterises Zyuganov primarily as a leftist Eurasianist.105 Meanwhile, Orthodoxy is an essential element of Zyuganov’s new eclectic ideology (together with Eurasianism and civilisational geopolitics).

FIGURE 7 The Third Romes of the New Chronologists: for them, the first Rome was Alexandria (Egypt), the second Rome was Constantinople (aka. Jerusalem). Then the Third Rome split into three Third Romes (Constantinople, Rome of Italy, and Moscow). Source: the author. Background map: “The kingdom of Presbyter Ioann or Russo-Turkic Horde as the main power in the XIV-XV cc.” Source: G. Nosovskii and A. Fomenko, Imperiia (Moscow: Faktorial Press 2000), Part 4, Chapter 3 “History of Several Romes: First (Ancient) Rome, Second (New) Rome, and, third, three “Third Romes”; available at Post-Imperial Third Romes 339

According to Zyuganov, Russian ‘practical geopolitics’ was born in the sixteenth century together with the birth of the first Russian centralised state and emergence of the first Russian geopolitical doctrine (the Third Rome). Zyuganov highlights the role of spiritual, moral and religious factors in the creation of the united Russian state and contrasts it to ‘naked profit interests’ (elsewhere). He puts the USSR in the same imperial perspective and considers the modern world as continuing the struggle between ‘continental’ Rome and ‘oceanic’ Carthage.106

If previously the value of the state (derzhava) was for ideologists of Russian communism clearly above the value of Orthodoxy, Zyuganov now already supports the Third Rome formula and therefore accepts that the main goal of Russia as a state is protection of Orthodox faith in the world. Orthodoxy meanwhile is equated with the ideas of social justice, and eventually with Communism.107 Mitrofanova observes conflicts between particularism (Fundamentalism) and universalism (Eurasianism) in Zyuganov’s worldview and concludes that Zyuganov’s interpretation of Orthodox Communism is increasingly reminiscent of N/F with its idea of the encapsulation of Holy Russia.108

The empire is dead, long live the imperial geopolitics? The collapse of the Soviet Union, one of the biggest empires in history, has made the imperial theme only more relevant for Russian geopolitics. The country’s adjustment to its new post-imperial status and the new world order of one dominant superpower (the USA) unsurprisingly corresponds with the revival of imperial geopolitics in the realm and beyond. It is hoped that this paper helps understanding of the varieties of post-imperial Russian geopolitical ideologies by shedding light on the often overlooked Orthodoxy-related themes such as the Third Roman empire(s).

Three forms of interpreting the Third Rome idea have been identified as well as their contemporary reincarnations. Orthodox nationalists and fundamentalists together with geoapocalypticians argue for Russia’s isolationism and find some religious meaning in the empire’s fall: for them, it is part of the predicted Christian historiosophy, another evidence of Russia’s special role in the world. Neo-Panslavists and Europeanists see the Third Rome in a mutually respective civilisational relationship or alliance with Europe. Finally, Berdiaev’s criticism of Third Romism as a perpetual expansionist idea finds some evidence in the neo-Eurasianist vision of the Third Rome as a Eurasian (continental and potentially global) empire. This paper attempts to shed light on the apparent gap in most of the accounts of the post-Soviet revival of geopolitics in Russia, their insignificant attention to various geopolitical ideologies in post-Soviet Russia stemming from a centuries-old Russian Orthodox worldview as expressed in the preeminent metaphor of Russian ‘Third Rome’. Several reasons and counterarguments could be suggested for this ignorance. First, unlike in the political Islamic world, the Orthodox religion is often viewed as a feature of the past, and is seen as relatively marginal in contemporary politics and ideological debates in the country. However, as this paper shows, many (if not all) of the authors considered here are powerful politicians and prominent intellectuals; their constructs are often modern (if not postmodern), and an analysis of their sophisticated intellectual constructions shows their increasing politicisation.

Second, the underrepresentation of Orthodox discourses in accounts of Russian geopolitics could be a result of the fact that those in other disciplines (Russian/Slavic politico-sociological and historico-ideological studies) have already researched the topic: there have been numerous studies of the Russian Orthodox Church, its domestic and foreign politics, its role in ideologies such as nationalism and messianism and so forth. This paper focuses on the concept of Third Rome while it may seem that the topic has already been well analysed, even if only partially from the geopolitical point of view. Therefore, to understand Russian geopolitical Orthodoxy, one must make the effort to learn from works of other disciplines.

Third, the lack of attention to Orthodoxy in geopolitics is a legacy of the Cold War. And that period itself remains one of the least researched periods. Hopefully, scholars will be able to put aside such arresting metaphors as the Empire of Evil and look more in depth into the geopolitics of the Soviet period. For example, the geopolitical visions of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, the preeminent Russian philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century, await scrunity. While this paper is on Orthodoxy-related geopolitics, there should be, perhaps, a more specific examination of strictly Orthodox geopolitics of the Russian Orthodox Church and other Orthodox Churches in the realm.

I hope that there will be further research into the major Russian Orthodox geopolitical metaphor, the concept of Russian Third Rome, since undoubtedly it will continue to occupy one of the central places in the modern Russian geopolitical imagi(nation) (Figure 8). I am currently writing a paper on the urban dimension of this metaphor (“Moscow the Third Rome”) and a paper on Stalin’s Third Romism. Further studies perhaps could also look at Third Romisms in a comparative international perspective as similar ideologies existed in, for instance, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Germany – or even the United States. As I am finalising this paper, I have just learned about a recently published book by an American history revisionist, Matthew Rafael Johnston, called The Third Rome: Holy Russia, Tsarism, and Orthodoxy.109 Its purpose is “to alter the political universe of those who read it.” Religion remains one of the most exciting frontiers for further geopolitical research. Post-Imperial Third Romes 341

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Mark Bassin for early advice, Prof. Harold Schefski for help and encouragement, Dr. Gregorii B. Nikolaev (Kremnev) for insights into Orthodox geoapocalyptics, Dr. Sergei Shubin and anonymous reviewers for criticism, participants of a session at the IBG Annual meeting in London (2005) and of the Interdisciplinary Research Seminar “Evolving Borderlands: Frontiers, Borders, and Boundaries in Modern Eastern Europe” (CSULB, Fall 2005) for questions and comments (especially Pascal Zandt). I also would like to thank the Sova Center for help in obtaining a copy of Mitrofanova’s book that proved to be very influential for this study. FIGURE 8 “Russia is everything, the rest is nothing” – these are the last words of Orthodox publicist Yegor Kholmogorov at a nationalist meeting in the center of Moscow to celebrate a new national holiday, People’s Unity Day (November 4th, 2005; effectively a replacement for November 7th, the October Revolution Day). This was the first major public manifestation of the political Right, an emergent force in post-Soviet Russia. Yegor Kholmogorov addresses the crowd with an icon in an attempt to remind the Orthodox foundation of the holiday (sources: photo adopted from http://www.ljplus.ru/img/a/y/aysa/esm-173.jpg; www. livejournal.com/users/holmogor; http://rossia3.ru/Prawmar). 342 Dmitrii Sidorov NOTES 1. A. Tsygankov, ‘Mastering Space in Eurasia: Russia’s Geopolitical Thinking after the Soviet Break-Up’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 36 (2003) pp. 101–127. 2. J. O’Loughlin, ‘Geopolitical Fantasies and Ordinary Russians: Perception and Reality in the Post-Yeltsin Era’, Geopolitics 6 (2001) pp. 17–48. See also J. O’Loughlin and P. Talbot, ‘Where in the World is Russia? Geopolitical Perceptions and Preferences of Ordinary Russians’, Eurasian Geography and Economics 46(1) (2005) pp. 23–50. 3. V. Kolossov and N. Mironenko, Geopolitika i Politicheskaia Geografiia [Geopolitics and Political Geography] (Moscow: Aspekt Press 2001) pp. 162–172. Their discussion of modern Russian nationalist geopolitical ideas avoids any Orthodox references; These ideas are rather presented as influenced by Panslavism of Danilevskii and anti-Westernism. V. Tsymburskii is superficially representted as neo-Westerner and critic of Third Romist temptations. 4. See also presentations at an international conference “Between Ethnos and Eurasia. Ideas and Influence of L.N. Gumilev” (Moscow: The Institute for History of Natural Sciences and Technics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 27 June, 2005), especially papers by Konstantin Axenov ‘Ideas of L.N. Gumilev in Modern Russian Geopolitical Conceptions’, and Viktor Shnirel’man ‘Alternative Eurasianism’. 5. Anastasia Mitrofanova Politizatsiia ‘Pravoslavnogo Mira’ [Politicization of the ‘Orthodox World’] (Moscow: Nauka 2004). In a rare study of contemporary ideologies of political Orthodoxy, politologist Mitrofanova evaluates the possibility of formation of ‘an Orthodox world’ as a cultural-political unity analogous to the ‘Islamic world’ and its consequences for security. Although socio-political rather than a geopolitical study, Mitrofanova’s book provides a useful starting point for classification of various currents of political Orthodoxy. Another work on the topic is Alexandr Verkhovskii’s study Politicheskoe Pravoslavie: Russkie Pravoslavnye Natsionalisty i Fundamentalisty, 1995–2001 [Political Orthodoxy: Russian Orthodox Nationalists and Fundamentalists] (Moscow: Tsentr Sova 2003). 6. Tsygankov (note 1). 7. Tsygankov (note 1) p. 105. 8. There are numerous accounts; I draw here on D. Sidorov, Orthodoxy and Difference: Essays on the Geography of Russian Orthodox Church(es) in the 20thCentury (Princeton Theological Monograph Series 46). (San Jose, CA: Pickwick Publications 2001) ch. 2. 9. Millennial expectations abounded: the Church predicted that the world would end in 1492, and similar apocalyptic premonitions came in 1500. When the world failed to end in 1492, the Metropolitan of Moscow marked the event by proclaiming Ivan III to be the “new Emperor Constantine of the new Constantinople – Moscow.” Another prophecy of the time, which recurred frequently in Russian messianist thought, was that the Third Rome would liberate the Second: Moscow would capture Constantinople. The idea of Moscow as successor of Byzantium was assisted by the marriage of a Russian ruler to a niece of the last Byzantine Emperor. The Grand Duke of Moscow began to assume the Byzantine titles of tsar (a version of the Roman ‘Caesar’) and to use as his state emblem the double-headed eagle of Byzantium (symbolising the East-West duality of the culture). P. Duncan, Russian Messianism: Third Rome, Revolution, Communism and After (London and New York: Routledge 2000) pp. 10–12. 10. Duncan, Russian Messianism (note 9) pp. 10–12, emphasis mine. 11. Nataliia Sinitsyna, Tretiy Rim: Istoki i Evoliutsiia Russkoy Srednevekovoy Kontseptsii (XV-XVI vv.) [Third Rome: Origins and Evolution of Russian Medieval Concept (XV-XVIth c.)] (Moscow: Indrik 1998). See also N. Sinitsyna, ‘Uchrezhdenie Patriarshestva i Tretiy Rim’ [Patriarchate’s Establishment and Third Rome], 400-letie Uchrezhdeniia Patriarshestva v Rossii/IV Centenario Dell’Istituzione del Patriarchato in Russia (Rome: Herder Editrice E Libreria 1991) pp. 59–80; N. Soboleva, ‘Kontseptsiia ‘Moskva – Tretiy Rim’ i Ofitsial’naia Rossiyskaia Simvolika Vtoroy Poloviny XVIII-XIX v.’ [Concept of ‘Moscow the Third Rome’ and the Official Russian Symbolics of the Second Half of XVIII-XIX c.], Rossiia i Mirovaia Tsivilizatsiia: k 70-letiiu Chlena-Korrespondenta RAN A.N. Sakharova (Moscow: Institut Rossiyskoy Istorii 2000) pp. 195–210. 12. Sinitsyna Tretiy Rim (note 11) pp. 327–328; M. Poe, ‘Izobretenie Kontseptsii “Moskva – Tretii Rim” [The Invention of the Theory ‘Moscow, Third Rome’], Ab Imperio 2 (2000) p. 68. 13. Sinitsyna Tretiy Rim (note 11) p. 328; Poe (note 12) pp. 78–79. 14. ‘6And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. 7For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. 8And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus Post-Imperial Third Romes 343 will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.’ (2 Thessalonians 2:6–8) The Bible. New International Version (International Bible Society 1984). 15. The urban dimension of the topic will not be considered here, see my paper in progress. 16. In Pravoslavnyy Sobesednik in 1861–1863 (Sinitsyna Tretiy Rim [note 11] p. 13). 17. Contrary to common beliefs, the doctrine of the Third Rome was unknown to the Slavophiles and had not been occupying a key position in Panslavists’ teaching (see Poe [note 12] p. 77). 18. For further studies, see I. Kirillov, Tretiy Rim: Ocherk Istoricheskogo Razvitiia Idei Russkogo Messianisma [Third Rome: Essay on Historical Evolution of Russian Messianism Idea] (Moscow: T-vo Tipo-Litografii VI.M.Mashistova 1914); K. Belova, ‘Konstantinopol’ i “Tretiy Rim” v “Dnevnike Pisatelia” F.M.Dostoevskogo (1876–1877)‘ [Constantinople and Third Rome in F.M. Dostoevskii’s ‘Writer’s Diary (1876–1877)‘], Vostok v Russkoy Literature XVIII-Nachala XX veka. Znakomstvo. Perevody. Vospriiatie (Moscow: IMLI 2004) pp. 197–215; S. Nosov, ‘Ideia “Moskva – Tretiy Rim” v Interpretatsii Konstantina Leont’eva i Vladimira Solov’eva’ [Moscow the Third Rome Idea in Interpretation of Konstantin Leont’ev and Vladimir Solov’ev] Russkaia Literatura i Kul’tura Novogo Vremeni (St. Petersburg: Nauka 1994) pp. 156–165. 19. V. Lur’ye, Tri Eskhatologii: Russkaia Eskhatologiia Do i Posle Velikogo Raskola [Three Eschatologies: Russian Eschatology Before and After the Great Schism] available at . 20. L. Saraskina, ‘F.M. Dostoevskii i “Vostochnyy Vopros”’ [F.M. Dostoevskii and the ‘Eastern Question’], Sine Arte, Nihil: Sbornik Nauchnykh Trudov v Dar Professoru Milivoe Jovanovichu (Ser. Noveyshie Issledovaniia Russkoy Kul’tury 1) (Belgrade-Moscow: Piataia Strana 2002) pp. 250–263; Yu. Kostiashov, A. Kuznetsov, V. Sergeev, and A. Chumakov, Vostochnyy Vopros v Mezhdunarodnykh Otnosheniiakh vo Vtoroy Polovine XVIII-Nachale XX v. [The Eastern Question in International Relations in the Second Half of XVIII-early XX c.] (Kaliningrad: Kalinigradskii Gosudarstvennyy Universitet 1997); S. Khatuntsev, ‘Vostochnyy Vopros v Rabotakh K. N. Leont’eva’ [The Eastern Question in K. Leont’ev’s Works], Stranitsy Istorii i Istoriografii Otechestva 2 (Voronezh: Izdatel’stvo Voronezhskogo Universiteta 1999) pp. 63–82. 21. For example, N. Zernov, ‘Moskva – Tretiy Rim’ [Moscow Third Rome], Put’ 51 (1936) pp. 3–18; N. Zernov, Moscow the Third Rome [Moscow Third Rome] (London: Soc. for Promoting Christian Knowledge; New York: Macmillan 1937). 22. N. Berdiaev, The Origin of Russian Communism (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press 1931/1960) p. 144. N. Berdiaev, The Russian Revolution (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press 1931/1971) p. 41. 23. N. Berdiaev, The Russian Revolution (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press 1931/ 1971) p. 41. 24. See, for example, Mikhail Agursky, The Third Rome: National Bolshevism in the USSR (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1987) or a more recent Russophobic treatise by Roman Kis’, Final Tret’ego Rimu: Rosiys’ka Mesians’ka ideia na Zlami Tisiacholit [The End of the Third Rome: The Russian Idea at the Turn of the Millennium] (L’viv: Institut Narodoznavstva NAN Ukraini 1998). 25. Poe (note 12) p. 82. 26. And a paper by historian N. S. Chaev, ‘“Moskva – Tretiy Rim” v Politicheskoy Praktike Moskovskogo Pravitel’stva XVI veka’ [Moscow the Third Rome in the Political Practice of the Moscow Government of the 16th c.], Istoricheskie Zapiski 17 (1945) pp. 3–23. According to Chaev, the idea of Filofei was not a translatio imperii theory, rather a declaration of independence from predator imperialist states. 27. Even if there is no evidence of Ivan’s familiarity with the concept or ever saying these words. (Poe [note 12] pp. 81–82). This is actually not the first scene in the film. 28. See O. Vasil’eva, Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov’ v Politike Sovetskogo Gosudarstva v 1943– 1948 gg. [Russian Orthodox Church in the Politics of the Soviet State in 1943–1948] (Moscow: Institut Rossiyskoy Istorii 2001) and/or my paper in progress. 29. D. Trenin, The End of Eurasia: Russia on the Border Between Geopolitics and Globalization (Moscow: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2001). 30. I. Vasilenko, Geopolitika: Uchebnoe Posobie [Geopolitics: Textbook] (Moscow: Logos 2003) pp. 68–73. 31. N. Nartov, Geopolitika: Uchebnik, [Geopolitics: Textbook] 3rd ed. (Moscow: Unity/Edinstvo 2004). 32. V. Dergachev, Geopolitika: Uchebnik [Geopolitics: Textbook] (Moscow: Unity-Dana 2004). 33. Kolossov and Mironenko (note 3) themselves emphasise the importance of geoeconomics and politico-economic strategies. 34. Mitrofanova (note 5). 344 Dmitrii Sidorov 35. A. Lazari, ‘Neskol’ko Zamechanii po Povodu Idei Moskvy – Tret’ego Rima, v Russkoy Mysli XIX veka’ [Few Comments Regarding the Idea of Moscow the Third Rome in Russian Thought of the XIXth c.] Kultural Literacka Dawnej Rusi (Lodz: Acta Universitatis Lodziensis, Folia Litteraria 32 1992) p. 149. 36. A.Verkhovskii (note 5) p. 113. 37. See Ioann (Snychev), Russkaia Simfoniia [Russian Symphony] (St. Petersburg: Tsarskoe Delo 2004). Panslavism is another source of inspiration. Writings of Archimandrite Konstantin (Zaytsev), especially his Chudo Russkoy Istorii [The Miracle of Russian History] (Jordanville: Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary 1970), were important for recovery of the original Third Rome idea from Berdiaev’s (mis)interpretations. 38. Izvestia, ‘Prosecutorial Answer to Jewish Question’ (23 June 2005), translated and posted on website . 39. Mikhail Nazarov, Vozhdiu Tret’ego Rima: k Poznaniiu Russkoy Idei v Apokalipsicheskoe Vremia [To the Ruler of Third Rome: Towards Understanding the Russian Idea in Apocalyptic Time] (Moscow: Russkaia Ideia 2005). See also I. Kuz’menko, ‘Geopolitika Sviatoy Rusi’ [Geopolitics of Holy Russia], III Rim: Russkii Al’manakh 1 (1994) pp. 7–12; Moskovskii Istoriko-Politologicheskii Tsentr, ‘Osnovnye Kontseptsii Natsional’noy Bezopasnosti v Istorii Rossii’ [Main Concepts of National Security in Russia’s History], III Rim: Russkii Al’manakh 2 (1997) pp. 10–15; Moskovskii Istoriko-Politologicheskii Tsentr, ‘Vvedenie’ [Introduction], III Rim: Russkii Al’manakh 1 (1994) pp. 3–5; V. Maniagin, Tretii Rim i Belyy Dom: Ocherki Russkoy Istorii [Third Rome and White House: Essays on Russian History] (Moscow: Sviataia Rus’ 2002). 40. For example, Petrov claims that geopolitics in terms of Orthodox historiosophy is contestation between the catehon Russian Orthodox civilisation and apostate anti-Christian civilisation (V. Petrov, Geopolitika Rossii: Vozrozhdenie ili Pogibel’ [Geopolitics of Russia: Revival or Death?] (Moscow: Veche 2003) p. 23). 41. Nazarov (note 39) p. 753. 42. Mitrofanova (note 5) p. 123. 43. Mitrofanova (note 5) p. 122. 44. Nazarov (note 39) pp. 782–789. 45. Nazarov (note 39) pp. 789–798. 46. Nazarov (note 39) p. 798. 47. Nazarov (note 39) p. 829. 48. Nazarov (note 39) p. 832. 49. Nazarov (note 39) p. 886. 50. Nazarov (note 39) p. 887. On 2 March 1917, the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne. 51. Nazarov (note 39) pp. 888–909. 52. Nazarov (note 39) pp. 888–889. 53. Nazarov (note 39) p. 889. 54. Nazarov (note 39) p. 890. 55. Nazarov (note 39) p. 893. 56. Nazarov (note 39) p. 913. 57. Ye. Kholmogorov, Russkiy Proekt: Restavratsiia Buduschego [The Russian Project: Restauration of the Future] (Moscow: Eksmo, Algoritm 2005). The book was published too late for this review but it seems to be a collection of essays previously placed online. Kholmogorov’s interpretation of the Third Rome could be found in his essay ‘Tretii Rim: Ocherk Proiskhozhdeniia Ideologii’ [Third Rome: An Essay on Origin of the Ideology] (2004), available at . 58. See, for instance: Mikhail Golovanov ‘Russkaia Doktrina na Ostrove Russkoy Slavy’ [The Russian Doctrine on the Island of Russian Glory] (12 Oct 2005), available at . There is evidence that Kholmogorov plans to participate in the elections of Moscow State Duma (Fall 2005). 59. Ye. Kholmogorov, ‘Restavratsiia Buduschego’ [Restoration of the Future] (15 Mar 2005), available at . 60. Ye. Kholmogorov, ‘Religii Poslednego Vremeni’ [Religions of the Latter Time] (24 May 2005), available at . 61. Ye. Kholmogorov, ‘Politicheskoe Pravoslavie’ [Political Orthodoxy] (9 June 2005), available at . 62. Ye. Kholmogorov, Pragmaticheskaia Irredenta’ [Pragmatic Irredentism] (11 May 2005), available at . 63. Ye. Kholmogorov, ‘Politicheskoe Pravoslavie’ [Political Orthodoxy] (9 June 2005), available at . Post-Imperial Third Romes 345 64. Such as websites as pravaya.ru, apn.ru, intelros.ru, and russ.ru. 65. Ye. Kholmogorov, ‘Geopolitika’ [Geopolitics] (23 July 2004), available at . 66. Gregorii Nikolaev, ‘Vyzov Geo-apokaliptiki’ [Challenge of Geoapocalyptics] (5 Sept 2005), available at ; also in G. Nikolaev Vyzov Geoapokaliptki [Challange of Geoapocalyptics] in Eskha tologicheskii sbornik (St. Alteyia 2006, in press) pp. 383–396. See also Vadim Tsymburskii, ‘Russkie i Geoekonomika’ [Russians and Geoeconomics], in Pro et Contra 8 2 (2003) p. 216, available at . 67. Kholmogorov (note 65). 68. V. Tsymburskii, Rossia – Zemlia za Velikim Limitrofom: Tsivilizatsiia i Ee Geopolitika [Russia, the Land behind the Great Limitrof: Civilisation and Its Geopolitics] (Moscow: URSS 2000) p. 15. 69. V. Tsymburskii, ‘Skol’ko Tsivilizatsiy? (S Lamanskim, Shpenglerom i Toynbi nad Globusom XXI Veka)‘ [How Many Civilizations? (With Lamanskii, Spengler and Toynbee Over the 21st c. Globe)], Pro et Contra 5/3 (2000), available at . 70. As well as the legendary Kitezh-City that sunk underwater to stay uncorrupted; built on the marshy lands St. Petersburg is another example. 71. V. Tsymburskii, ‘“Ostrov Rossiia” za Sem’ Let (Prikliucheniia Odnoy Geopoliticheskoy Kontseptsii)‘ [Seven Years of ‘Island Russia’: Adventures of a Geopolitical Concept], Polis (March 2001), available at . 72. Alexandr Neklessa is a prolific writer. Examples of his numerous publications are Liudi Vozdukha, ili Kto Stroit Mir? [Homines Aeris or Who Builds the World?] (Moscow: Institut Ekonomicheskikh Strategiy 2005); (ed.), Global’noe Soobschestvo: Kartografiia Postsovremennogo Mira [Global Society: Cartography of Post-Modern World] (Moscow 2002); Mirovoy Sever i Mirovoy Yug: Novyy Tsivilizatsionnyy Kontekst [The World’s North and the World’s South: A New Civilizational Context] (Moscow: Rossiyskaia Akademiia Nauk 2002); Transgranich’e, Ego Landschafty i Obitateli [Trans-Borderlands: Its Landscapes and Enhabitants [Moscow: Nauchnyy Sovet RAN 2002). This review draws upon interpretation of Neklessa’s works by Yegor Kholmogorov (note 65) and Vadim Tsymburskii (note 66). 73. Kholmogorov (note 65). 74. See also Tsymburskii (note 66). 75. Ibid. 76. Mitrofanova (note 5) p. 103. 77. The same geographical extension of the Slavic-Orthodox state could be seen in the verse by Tyutchev, the prominent poet and famous ideologist of Panslavism.

Moscow, Peter’s city, and Constantine’s city Are the holy capitals of the Russian realm. But where its outer limit, where its border, To north, to east, to south, and where the sun sets? Destiny will unmask them in future times. Seven inland seas, and seven great rivers, From Nile to Neva, from Elbe to China, from Volga To Euphrates, from the Ganges to the Danube — That is the Russian realm. And never will It pass, as the Spirit foresaw and Daniel predicted. (1848 or 1849) F. Tyutchev, Poems & political letters of F. I. Tyutchev. Translated with introd. and notes by Jesse Zeldin (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press 1973), p. 131. Original Russian version: N. Lisovoy, and T. Sokolova (eds). Tri Rima (Moscow: OLMA-Press 2001) p. 5. 78. Mitrofanova (note 5) p. 131. 79. Serbia plays big role in the political mythology of modern Panslavism. It is perceived as not only the natural (and seemingly the only) ally of Russia, but also as a preserve of truly Slavic and truly Orthodox values that have already been lost in Russia. Joint actions of the Western world against Yugoslavia under Milosevic and Republic Serpska under Radovan Karajic have been perceived by Panslavists as proof of their theory of the fight between ‘Slavdom’ and ‘Latindom’ (Mitrofanova [note 5] p. 132). 80. Nataliia Narochnitskaia, Rossiia i Russkie v Mirovoy Istorii [Russia and Russians in World History] (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniia 2004); see also N. Narochnitskaia, ‘Bor’ba za Postvizantiyskoe Prostranstvo’ [Fight for Post-Byzantine Space], Nash Sovremennik 4 (1997). Daughter of an 346 Dmitrii Sidorov academician, she is also a specialist on the history of international relations. Narochnitskaia has worked about eight years at the UN headquarters in New York City; currently she is a member of the Russian parliament and deputy head of its committee on international affairs. 81. K. Mialo, Mezhdu Zapadom i Vostokom: Opyt Geopoliticheskogo i Istoriosophskogo Analiza [Between the West and the East: An Experience of Geopolitical and Historiosophical Analysis] (Moscow: Izd. Solov’ev. Ser. “Rossiia i Mir: Itogi XX veka” al’manakh, 5/2003.) (Moscow: Russkiy National’nyy Fond 2003) [first published: Moskva (1996)] pp. 11–12; A. Nazrenko, Russkoe Samosoznanie: Mezhdu Tsarstvom i Tserkov’iu [Russian Self-Conscience: Between Kingdom and Church] Moskva: zhurnal russkoy kul’tury/12 (2000), pp. 133–144. K. Smirnov and O. Kataeva, Istoricheskii Vyzov Slavianskomu Soobschestvu [Historical Challenge to Slavic Society] (Moscow 2000); Russko-Slavianskaia Tsivilizatsiia: Istoricheskie Istoki, Sovremennye Geopoliticheskie Problemy, Perspektivy Slavianskoy Vzaimnosti. Comp. E. Troitskii (Moscow 1998). 82. Mitrofanova (note 5) p. 129. 83. Narochnitskaia (note 80) p. 401. 84. Narochnitskaia (note 80) pp. 125–126 85. Narochnitskaia (note 80) p. 8. 86. Mitrofanova (note 5) p. 128. 87. Mitrofanova (note 5) p. 131; Narochnitskaia, (‘Bor’ba’ note 80) p. 235. 88. At the same time, most Panslavists are similar to Fundamentalists (and differ from Eurasianists) in their attitude to the Islamic world, and to a different extent criticise the Eurasianist approach. There is evidence that the ideology of Panslavism in modern interpretation is increasingly amorphous and in many aspects becomes reminiscent of Eurasianism. Some Panslavists even support the purely Eurasianist idea of union of the Orthodox world with the world of Islam. For example, N. Narochnitskaia, despite general negative (nepriaiznennoe) attitude towards Islam, accepts that “Islamic and Orthodox worlds are not absolute antipodes and have possibility of constructive coexistence in geopolitical balance (ravnovesie)”, Mitrofanova (note 5) p. 131. 89. Mitrofanova (note 5) p. 135. 90. Alexei Mitrofanov, Rossiia pered Raspadom ili Vstupleniem v Evrosoiuz [Russia: Between Collapse or Joining the European Union] (Moscow: Ad Marginem 2005). Alexey Mitrofanov is one of the leaders of the notorious LDPR party of Vladimir Zhirinovskii. In the West LDPR is often erroneously perceived as a Russian ultra-nationalist party; however, behind their clever yet superficial right-wing rhetorics is essentially a liberalist Westernisation ideology expressed in the party’s name, Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. 91. A. Mitrofanov (note 90) p. 309. 92. Petr Savitskii, Kontinent Eurasia [Continent Eurasia] (Moscow: Agraf 1997) p. 92. 93. Mitrofanova (note 5) pp. 112–113. 94. A. Dugin, Osnovy Geopolitiki [Foundations of Geopolitics] (Moscow: Arktogeia-Tsentr 2000) pp. 395, 407. 95. Mitrofanova (note 5) p. 139. 96. Arkadii Maler, Strategii Sakral’nogo Smysla [Strategies of Scared Meaning] (Moscow: Parad 2003). 97. Early manifestations of the future Byzantism ideology can be found in works by K. N. Leont’ev (e.g., Vizantism i Slavianstvo, Pis’ma Solov’evu, Vladimir Solov’ev protiv Danilevskogo) who was skeptical about the ideas of Slavic brotherhood. 98. The geopolitical and political component of Maler’s Eurasian neo-Byzantism is the following: the ideal form of Byzantine (Orthodox) statehood is ‘imperial democracy’, a strong hierarchical and centralised state. Its ideology is threefold: “1. Russia is the successor of the historical mission of Byzantium, catehon. Moscow [is] the Third Rome; 2. The main principle of Russian statehood is the symphony of authorities, unity of the state and the church. Orthodoxy is the state religion. 3. The main geopolitical goal of the empire is expansion of the Orthodox tradition, construction of the Eurasian Orthodox empire at the scale of the whole globe.” Source: A. Maler, ‘Sotsial’naia doktrina neovizantizima’ [Social Doctrine of Neo-Byzantism] (25 August 2005), available at: http://w.w.w.pravaya.ru/govern/392/4583. 99. For example V. Karpets, ‘Imperiia Neizbezhna’ [Empire Is Inevitable] (24 June, 1 July 2005), available at . 100. N. Khodakovskii, Tretiy Rim [Third Rome] (Moscow: AiF-Print 2002) p. 15. It is not easy to embrace the corpus of works on the New Chronology: Morozov’s works alone constitute 8 big volumes, more than 6.5 thousand pages, Fomenko and Nosovskii – more than 10 thousand pages. There are also three volumes by Postnikov, books by Valianskii and Kaliuzhny, Guts, Zhabinskii, Efimov and others not Post-Imperial Third Romes 347 counting the internet and works by foreign authors. I use here G. Nosovskii and A. Fomenko, Imperiia: Rus’, Turtsiia, Kitay, Evropa, Egipet. Novaia Matematicheskaia Khronologiia Drevnostey [Empire: Rus’, Turkey, China, Europe, Egypt. New Mathematical Chronology of the Ancient] (Moscow: Faktorial 1996). Also, I draw upon Khodakovskii’s book because it is essentially a popular representation of this corpus. It provides an accessible overview of various monographs of A. Fomenko and G. Nosovskii and other followers of the New Chronology. For English translations see A. Fomenko, History: Fiction or Science (Douglas, UK: Delamere Resources Ltd. 2003); 7 volumes expected, so far only two are available. For a rare scholarly analysis of the New Chronology look at Konstantin Sheiko “Lomonosov’s Bastards: Anatolii Fomenko, Pseudo-History and Russia’s Search for a Post-Communist Identity” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis) (University of Wollongong 2004). 101. Nosovskii and Fomenko Imperiia (note 100), Part 4, Chapter 3 “History of Several Romes: First Ancient Rome, Second New Rome, and three “Third Romes”, pp. 358–361, 398–404; see also . 102. Khodakovskii (note 100) p. 6. 103. Gennady Zyuganov, Geografiia Pobedy [Geography of Victory] (Moscow: Zyuganov 1997), available at . See also Part 3 in his Postizhenie Rossii [Understanding Russia] (Moscow: Mysl’ 2000). 104. Tsygankov (note 1) p. 120. 105. Tsygankov (note 1); Mitrofanova (note 5). 106. Zyuganov (note 103). 107. Zyuganov in 3 Nov. 2000 interview said he would not contrast Communist ideology and religion (Orthodoxy) and repeated the widespread idea that the Mt. Sinai Preaching (Nagornaia Propoved’) and the Moral Codex of the Builders of Communism are essentially not different (Mitrofanova [note 5] p. 144). 108. Mitrofanova (note 5) p. 147. Perhaps the revanchist Third Romisms of Nazarov and Zyuganov could constitute a special category; they could be treated as a new, specifically post-imperial form of the Third Rome. 109. Matthew Rafael Johnston, The Third Rome: Holy Russia, Tsarism, and Orthodoxy, 2nd ed. (Washington: The Foundation for Economic Liberty 2004).

I have given many an Orthodox Christian tongue lashings here for various reasons, but isn’t this a bit over the top? So the ROC may have delusions of grandeur. What else is new? Is that really a reason to leave the ROC? I don’t think so.

The ROC is clearly the most important church in all of Orthodoxy in the modern world. Let it have its delusions of grandeur. If its basic theology stays the same, I don’t see how it really matters all that much.

Me, defending the ROC, who would’ve thunk it?

The “Third Rome” idea doesn’t seem to be his area, but he is pro-white and anti-Islamic — hence not a Eurasianist, while he is (of course) anti-American.

He is very clear that Russia must be ethnically Russian, white, and Orthodox to survive, and that civilization is European and has its roots in Greece and Rome.
He is a close colleague of Natalia Narochnitskaia.

I am inclined to say he is a neo-Panslavist.

ROCOR was not a "schismatic" church as the article says. It was the natural, uncompromised and true continuation of the ROC in freedom while the MP church was trapped inside the USSR under communism.

And there is nothing "so called" about our churches...they're as "real-deal" as a church can be.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1431048/posts

Since the unholy union of the Sergeian church and Khrapovitsky’s ROCOR, there is only the late Vitaly Ustinov’s Russian Orthodox Church in Exile (ROCie), some priested and some priestless Old Believers (who live and pray separately), and the Greek churches, such as the GOC (which is affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church).

Please recall that the Whites in Western Europe after the Bolshevik takeover were transferred to the jurisdictions of Greek churches.

Oh, I see...

I am a member of ROCOR. My late father was the Synodal choir director for over 30 years and his father before him (appointed by the Met. Anastasy). My brother is a preist in ROCOR (Jackson, NJ parish) and my maternal grandmother wrote over 70 church services for the Church including that to the Most Holy Kursk Root Icon of the Sign.

I knew Metropolitan Vitaly as I saw him each week at my church (the Synodal Cathedral on E. 93rd Street in Manhattan). He was a good man and we pray for him often.

There is nothing "unholy" about the reunification of the Russian Church. What Metropolitan Lavr, an old and dear family friend, (who at this moment lies in repose in the Cathedral in Jordanville, where I will be going tomorrow and singing in the choir for his Otpevanie) did was the right thing.

You are free to disagree but please do not slander or insult good and decent people who choose to remain with the the Church rather than go into schism and make a mockery of the Canons. I have seen and heard the most disgusting and UNholy things written and said by those whom are against ROCOR and the ACT and find it to be completely against all that is Orthodox and Christ-like.

You will be in my prayers.

http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/general/kalomiros.aspx

Such people are not schismatics, but preservers of the Nikonian faith.

Tikhon was Lenin’s well-fed puppet, while anti-Communist parish priests became food for starving peasants. Sergei was Stalin’s appointee, and Patriarch Alexis is a KGB agent codenamed Drozdov. Putin said “There is no such thing as a former Chekist”, and Alexis is still the Church’s boss.

Just as Met. Anthony (Khrapovitskii) did the right thing after John Kedrovsky was appointed to extend Lenin’s dominion over Russian Orthodoxy to the United States, such people seek to avoid Putin’s dominion over what little remains of the Greco-Russian church.

“I knew Metropolitan Vitaly as I saw him each week at my church (the Synodal Cathedral on E. 93rd Street in Manhattan). He was a good man and we pray for him often.”

Ustinov was against “reunification”, and was kidnapped and nearly institutionalized by the ROCOR/MP. His church (ROCiE) is one you call schismatic; are you calling him a schismatic but defending his character? Schism is a grave sin.

The only kidnapping done was by those who whisked him away to Mansonville and locked him up there (the same people who kept him locked up at Synod and in my belief were drugging him...how else does one explain the fact that he could not recognize people whom he saw almost on a daily basis for years? I saw him decline and often commented on it to my mother. More than once he did not recognize my father who was the choir director! He didn't recognize my brother and actually asked if he was baptised even though he (my brother) served in the alter with him each week. All I can say is that it was strange. We ALL realized that something was "not right" with Met. Vitaly in regards to his mental status...and we ALL acknowledged he seemed quite senile. Those who locked him up in Mansonville claim this is nonsense and all I can say to that is I witnessed it myself (as did everyone else in my family and those who were actually there at the time).

Anyway - you can think what you want and continue to be against the church. I have heard all of this garbage before and find it to be tiresome. God have mercy of you. I'm won't continue to argue about it because it's pointless.

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