A Byzantine vision for Russia
By Dmitry Shlapentokh
The views of a ruling elite's inner world are often hard to penetrate. This is
especially the case with the Russian elite. Still, it is possible to glean
something of Russia's geopolitical vision as held in the mind of former
president and now Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
This is because Putin, and very possibly most of the Russian elite, has a
peculiar spokesman - Arkhimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov, superior of the Sretensky
Monastery in Moscow.
Tikhon befriended Putin a long time ago, becoming, according to rumor, his
confessor, and he continues to be close to Putin. When Putin laid flowers on
the graves of post-revolutionary
emigres whose remains were recently returned from abroad, Tikhon was among the
few who accompanied him.
The Russian elite's views on the present are often shrouded in historical
allusion. The past has become politicized; a special government commission was
recently formed to fight "falsification of history".
Of the myriad historical books and, especially, historical movies that have
been produced with direct encouragement from the government, none provides as
comprehensive a vision of Russia's global role as the movie The Fall of an
Empire - the Lesson of Byzantium. It was produced by Tikhon about a
year ago and remains relevant in providing an inside view of Russia's elite.
[1]
The widely acclaimed movie on the surface deals with the Byzantine Empire,
which collapsed under the pressure of the Ottoman Turks in 1453, after 1,123
years. Still, the allusion to the present is clear; and viewers cannot doubt
that the movie is not about the distant past, but rather about Russia today.
The point of the movie is that the Byzantine Empire was a great Orthodox
civilization that was not just the equal to the Orthodox West but superior to
it in its cultural splendor and economic development.
The empire prospered when it maintained its attachment to Orthodoxy and the
social-political system that rested upon it. A strong central power controlled
both political and economic life. It was Orthodoxy that instilled Russians with
a sense of love for their state. The mighty state was able to fend for itself
and fought successfully against Muslims - that is, until it engaged with the
West.
The Westerners were not Orthodox, yet the Byzantines regarded them as Christian
brothers and took their polite and friendly gestures at face value. This was a
grave illusion. The Westerners deeply hated the Byzantines as Orthodox, and
their smiles were just a mask. The smiling masks worn during a Venetian
carnival in the movie are a symbol of the West: external friendliness covering
a predatory nature.
Dreaming about fighting a common enemy - Islam - the Byzantines cooperated with
the Western Crusaders. But, instead of fighting the Muslims, the Crusaders in
1204 ransacked Constantinople (Istanbul), the empire's capital, from which they
took immense riches that later became the financial foundations of European
economic development.
The economic and political blows, however, were not the most dangerous. Most
detrimental for the empire was the spiritual and social degeneration that
followed. The influence of Orthodoxy went into decline as Western creeds gained
ground. As a result, individualism spread, and the state started to lose its
grip over the economy.
Even more dangerous was the development of the narrow ethnic nationalism of
various ethnic groups of the empire who forsook their trans-ethnic Orthodox
imperial identity. Weakened from all sides and betrayed by the West, the
Byzantine Empire collapsed, and the Muslim Turks took over.
The strong implication of the movie is that the ultimate danger is seen as
coming from the East, from both the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds, the only
force that could engulf Russia and erase it completely from the surface of the
Earth.
The West is of hardly any help, though while the Muslim challenge is open, the
Western danger is more subtle. An excerpt from the movie, "The West's vengeful
hatred of Byzantium and her successors is entirely inexplicable to the West
itself; it goes to some deep genetic level, and - as paradoxical as this may
seem - continues even to the present day."
The message is that for Russia to survive, it should return to its primordial
values: Orthodoxy and strong power. Surrounded on all sides, Russia should deal
with its enemies in the same way as they once dealt with it: Russia should use
the West against the East, and the East against the West.
Dmitry Shlapentokh, PhD, is associate professor of history, College of
Liberal Arts and Sciences, Indiana University South Bend. He is author of
East Against West: The First Encounter - The Life of Themistocles, 2005.
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