Why Russia is a prisoner of geography

We throw across the term "subculture wars" so freely that it has develop into tough to realize and remember what a true and bloody battle about lifestyle seems like. Vladimir Putin sees himself as the protagonist in a battle for the survival of an essential Christian lifestyle as absolutely as Islamic State casts itself as the defender of Islamic cultural purity. Of route there are profound operational, historic and political modifications, and it would be foolish to disregard these, or to slide into the variety of panic this is induced by Islamist extremism. however a sensible picture of what lies in the back of the appalling conflict in Ukraine has to reckon with the parallels – and has to understand that secular geopolitical calculations and bargains may also no longer supply us the equipment for making sense of what is occurring.

Putin's shut ally and supporter, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, made it clear in an awesome sermon delivered on 6 March, the day earlier than Orthodox Lent began, that he regarded the Russian crusade as a conflict to protect Orthodox civilisation in opposition t Western corruption, of which homosexual pride marches were singled out because the main symptom. This become no accident: regardless of high recorded stages of prejudice in opposition t LGBT+ americans in Ukraine, fresh Ukrainian coverage has liberalised, and Kyiv has a high-profile activist community and annual parade.

For the Patriarch, here is both a normalising of grossly sinful behaviour and a pollution of Russian Christian identity, due to the fact that Kyiv is the place Russian Christianity has its origins. About three-quarters of Ukraine's population identify as Orthodox, and it has a excessive stage of church attendance, but its Orthodoxy coexists with the expressions of a extremely diverse set of cultural norms. it's problematic sufficient to cope with non secular diversity: Russia's contemporary history suggests very low tolerance of non-Orthodox Christian (no longer to point out Jewish and Muslim) minorities. The prospects for minorities in Ukraine in the event of a Russian victory are not promising. but what is worse within the eyes of a undeniable type of Russian Orthodox is the toleration of ideological diversity within the public sphere.

[See also: Xi Jinping could stop Putin's war in Ukraine. Will he?]

The Patriarch and others see the Western agenda not as a genuine liberal pluralism but as what we might name "coercive tolerance", through which toleration is simply a primary step against enforcement – on the very least of the focus of Western beliefs. ironically, Russian anxieties listed below are distinctively modern ones, echoed in the language of the American non secular correct, who see the liberal securing of rights no longer as a guarantee of defense and civic dignity but a provocative announcement that definite moral alternatives are being floated on the open market.

consequently, in a society dominated with the aid of consumerism, toleration is considered a form of aggressive public promoting. It have to all be about promoting "life" to an avid and supposedly uncritical public. (we can recognize some thing of this in our personal vitriolic disputes about trans rights, the place it appears to be often assumed that recognising the gross injustices suffered by means of some agencies of americans is a covert method of "merchandising" definite selections. here is a travesty of how individuals adventure their identification and negotiate their selections, however is a rhetorically potent myth.)

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it is handy to lament all this as barbarous nonsense. but it may also help to consider how Ukraine looks to a couple Russians like a dangerous hybrid of cultures: a spot that looks Orthodox, with a historical past that's key to Russia's own Christian id, but in fact is a worm for the godless indifference of the West. here is no longer so far-off from the militant Islamist anger at Muslim societies that accept the public presence of some un-Islamic norms and habits. The difficulty arises in the assumption that lifestyle, including religious tradition, need to of its essence be monolithic and that it can be maintained best through legal coercion – or, in the case of Ukraine, violent, unprincipled and unbridled aggression.

[See also: Russia-Ukraine war: an invasion 30 years in the making]

however we could do worse than ask why non-Western cultures so worry being sucked into what they trust an ethical vacuum. If all they see is a collection of reactive demands for emancipation acted out in opposition t a backdrop of consumerism and obsession with material boom, the suspicion and hostility is a bit of greater intelligible. What do we within the shrinking "liberal" world feel emancipation is for? possibly it's for the liberation of all individuals to collaborate in a good social challenge, in a society of sustainable and fair distribution of goods. perhaps it is for the construction of a social order in which our interdependence, countrywide and overseas, is more absolutely acknowledged.

cohesion with Ukraine involves sanctions for you to can charge us as well as Russians – choices for you to have an effect on our reliance on oil and fuel and open our doors to extra refugees. If we're inclined to settle for these penalties for the sake of a positive imaginative and prescient of interdependence and justice, we shall have a extra compelling narrative to oppose the dramatic, even apocalyptic, myths bobbing up in different places on earth.

Unwelcome neighbours, after all, tend now not conveniently to vanish; wherein case, we should determine how we are living respectfully with them. One element that might be referred to in keeping with Patriarch Kirill is that neighbours must be adored, now not terrorised into resentful silence – a depend on which the God first recounted in Kyiv in 988 had a very good deal to claim.

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