Elaine Wilson (Slavic Ph.D.’23; Term Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University and Barnard College) published an essay on the fusion of the sacred and secular in Russian wartime propaganda and political worldview (Public Orthodoxy, Dec. 30, 2024).

One soldier surveys the horizon through a pair of binoculars while three more operate an anti-aircraft gun. In the background, spires of Kremlin cathedrals pierce a sky full of zeppelins, aglow with golden light emanating from the Mother of God. This is but one of the scenes upon the walls of the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, a Byzantine-steam-punk architectural mashup and a monument to military might located outside of Moscow. Completed in 2020, the Cathedral is a grandiose testament to contemporary Russia’s militant theocracy.

Some scholars have argued that this cathedral is the foremost symbol of a new civil religion. This religion has taken partial shape through the re-writing of legal doctrine; contemporaneous with the cathedral’s completion in 2020, nearly one third of the Russian constitution was subject to amendment. These revisions harmonize with the conservative stance of the Moscow Patriarchate, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church (hereafter referred to as ROC) which insists upon Russia’s thousand-year history, “traditional family values,” and the definition that marriage is strictly between a man and a woman.