(Vladimir Putin with Orthodox Patriarch Kirill. Image source: CEPA)

In one of the most memorable scenes of the immensely popular Father Arseny: Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father—the biography of a spiritual leader (commonly called a “starets” in Eastern Orthodox Christianity) who spent several years inside a Soviet labor camp—the titular character tries to break up a fight between two inmates. As punishment, he and one of the brawlers, Aleksei, are locked in an unheated cell for forty-eight hours without food or water. While Aleksei slams against the door, trying in vain to escape his imminent fate, Arseny folds his hands in prayer. At first, Aleksei—an atheist, like most people living in the USSR—mocks the starets. Amazed at the calmness Arseny exudes in spite of their bleak predicament, Aleksei eventually decides to join him. When the forty-eight hours pass, the guards are shocked to learn that both men have survived. Arseny is not surprised, and—by now—Aleksei isn’t either. Having reconnected with God, he vows to leave his non-belief behind and become the starets’ devoted student.

At first glance, Father Arseny bears a striking resemblance to another popular Russian text, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. Both became unlikely bestsellers, known and read throughout post-Soviet Russia. Both express sympathy for people the Kremlin considered criminals. Both describe the brutal conditions of the Soviet penal system. And, both are told from the perspective of individuals who manage to transcend those conditions through exemplary inner strength and unwavering trust in the teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church.

That, however, is where the resemblance ends. Gulag Archipelago is considered one of the crowning achievements of illegally published samizdat, or dissident literature, that criticized the Soviet regime at great personal risk to its underground authors and publishers. Father Arseny, by contrast, belongs to a more recent and altogether different literary tradition—one that hasn’t been suppressed by Russia’s political establishment, but celebrated.

First released in 1993, two years after the dissolution of the USSR, the supposedly non-fictional story of Father Arseny (whose unverifiable existence has been called into question by numerous scholars) is one of the earliest and most popular examples of a wave of post-Soviet religious writing that continues to this day. The ultimate aim of this new genre wasn’t to expose and criticize the Soviet government’s abuse of power, the way Solzhenitsyn and other samizdat writers had done, but to reposition Orthodox Christianity as a cornerstone of Russia’s national identity.

In the process, texts like Father Arseny—not to mention subsequent bestselling and culturally-defining books such as Everyday Saints and Other Stories, the 2011 autobiography of Metropolitan Tikhon Shevkunov, the bishop of Pskov and Porkhov—played a crucial role in formulating the now-ubiquitous concept of Rússkiy Mir (“Russian World”), a conservative ideology that views Russian society as distinct from and superior to its western neighbors. Its origins trace back to the 19^th century, when Slavophile intellectuals opposed calls to curb the absolute power of the czars and modernize the Russian Empire along the lines of Europe’s constitutional monarchies. Their modern-day counterparts take a similar stance, justifying Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian and imperialist policies by presenting the Russian Federation as the last bastion of Orthodox Christianity in an increasingly secular and hostile world. Examining the effects of this religious literature will therefore give us a clearer understanding of Russia’s support for Putin today.

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The political impact of contemporary religious writing in Russia can be partly attributed to the historical and literary contexts in which it first emerged. In the Soviet Union, mainstream literature—like other art forms—conformed to the standards of Soviet realism, projecting an idealized vision of communist life that contrasted with everyday reality, filled with smiling, well-fed, and invariably patriotic farmers and workers. The USSR’s collapse gave way to experimentation with previously prohibited literary styles like postmodernism. But while the main characteristics of some of those styles—irony, absurdity, and relativism—had been present in samizdat writing for decades, they rapidly fell out of favor with readers when the hopeful anticipation of Russia’s long-awaited democratization gave way to hardship and disillusionment.

As Lina Shaw, a scholar of Slavic languages and literatures, notes in her 2018 doctoral thesis, “The Phenomenon of Orthodox Bestsellers in Contemporary Russia,”  “the economic collapse, political instability, and loss of a collective ideological framework” during the late 1990s and early 2000s “created a demand for literature that offered certainty, moral grounding, and a sense of national identity rather than playfulness or skepticism.” Religious writing that reintroduced Russians to their Christian heritage, resurrected from censorship-induced death, proved particularly adept at meeting this demand. Not only insofar as its spiritual themes of absolution and cosmic justice provided a welcome escape from real-world anxieties (Shaw describes the genre as “warm,” “non-judgemental,” and conveying a “sense of healing and peace”), but also because its preoccupation with Russia’s national identity—an identity it linked to Orthodox Christianity—spoke to widespread fear of social decay and desire for a strong, unified state.

Sometimes this preoccupation was explicit, at other times implicit. On the surface, texts like Father Arseny do not read as open endorsements of the type of society Putin has created, even if—at the end of the day—that’s exactly what they were. Even in the most desperate circumstances, its protagonist embodies humility, unconditional love, and non-violent resistance to evil—values that arguably run counter to the Russian Orthodox Church’s unequivocal support of the Ukrainian invasion, which it has declared a “Holy War.” In conviction as well as in practice—Arseny is parishless, building up a spiritual community independently of the Russian Orthodox Church—the convicted priest arguably has more in common with someone like Leo Tolstoy, whose search for God likewise operated outside the realm of organized religion, than with Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and a close ally of Putin.

But in other ways, the ideas presented in Father Arseny do indeed foreshadow Putin’s Russia. Shaw notes that, despite its “realistic depiction of the tragic experiences of prisoners in labour camps…[it] never questions the social structure that is built on totalitarian dictatorship.” Echoing Dostoevsky’s diagnoses in his 1862 novel House of the Dead and 1865 novella Notes from Underground—which argued against the socialist causes the author supported earlier in life, before his own arrest and imprisonment—Arseny does not blame the Soviet leadership, but mankind as a whole: “I cannot point a finger at our authorities,” he declares, “because the seeds of faithlessness fell on the soil which we ourselves had prepared.”

This statement contains two radical assertions, both of which abound in academic studies of Dostoevsky and fit squarely within the ideological framework of Rússkiy Mir. Firstly, it implies that society cannot be improved on a societal level (i.e., by means of reform or revolution) but only on an individual one, through personal, spiritual development. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it suggests that Soviet citizens suffered not because they lived under an authoritarian system, but a secular one, and that all they needed to do to live better, happier lives was to rekindle their relationship with God.

Father Arseny also aligns with Rússkiy Mir ideology insofar as it draws a clear moral and political distinction between Russians and non-Russians. Unlike in Gulag Archipelago, Soviet bureaucrats—including the camp’s guards and secret police officials—are presented in a surprisingly positive light: loyal to their regime, compassionate to the extent that their jobs allow, and above all, capable of spiritual redemption through their relations with Arseny, who—to the initial disbelief of some of his followers—asserts they should “not be held responsible for the tragedy, because they were carrying out their duties, and they did what they could to help people.”

Notably, the possibility of salvation does not extend to the camp’s non-Russian characters, like the handful of German POWs captured during the Great Patriotic War. As Shaw puts it, these defeated, dissenting Wehrmacht soldiers are portrayed, “in accordance with the social stereotypes of their time,” as cowards and collaborators, “enemies of the people” whose betrayal of their own nation and nationality contrasts unfavorably with the unassailable patriotism of ethnic Russians.

Despite its many humanistic themes, Father Arseny’s message is, as the stories about the German prisoners show, far from universal. While cloaked in the guise of anti-establishment samizdat literature, the text is not critical but forgiving of the USSR’s political establishment. Its conclusion, pointing into a direction opposite of Gulag Archipelago, can be summarized as follows: for Russians, true piety does not take the form of unconditional love for all mankind so much as unwavering support of one’s own country and countrymen, no matter how poorly they may treat you.

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The impact of contemporary religious writing is not only tied to the quality of its content, but also the convenience of its style. Though inspired by obtuse and esoteric hagiographies from the Middle Ages, the genre uses uncomplicated, accessible language that—though largely dismissed by literary critics—greatly appeals to the average reader.

The title of Shaw’s thesis is not tongue-in-cheek; many of these texts really did become genuine bestsellers. As early as 2001, the Los Angeles Times reported Father Arseny had already sold more than 400,000 copies in Russia alone. Since then, the book has been reprinted more than fourteen times. It has been translated into English as well as French, Spanish, Romanian, Greek, Bulgarian, and Latvian. Indicative of its wide appeal, it’s also available in audiobook format and even inspired a 2003 album by singer-songwriter Aleksandr Marshal, reportedly made with Patriarch Aleksii II’s blessing.

Another mainstream religious text, Metropolitan Tikhon’s Everyday Saints and Other Stories—which recounts the author’s spiritual training at the Pskov-Caves Monastery in Pechory—achieved a similar degree of critical and commercial success on the Russian market. It sold more than 1,100,000 copies within its first year of publication, beating E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey for Russia’s best-selling book of 2012 and winning first prize in the “Readers’ Votes” category of the annual Big Book awards, one of the country’s largest literary competitions.

Like Father Arseny, the ideological potential of Everyday Saints and Other Stories resides in its supposed innocence. Here, too, there is more to the story than initially meets the eye. Idyllic descriptions of life in the town of Pechory, located near the Russian border with Latvia—of its “lovely small homes, with turrets and neat small lawns and little palisades,” eternal and unchanging—don’t exist for their own sake, but rather establish a sense of continuity between Russia’s past and present. Equally palpable is the town’s air of organic oneness: a culturally and spiritually enclosed space where, to use Shaw’s phrasing, “anything ‘out of place’ stands out as un-Russian.” In doing so, this seemingly mundane autobiography reaches far beyond its local, isolated setting, contributing “to the nationalist project of forming and reinforcing national consciousness without openly claiming that it is doing so.”

Tikhon’s proficiency in mass media communication is reflected in his professional background. Before enrolling at the Pskov-Caves Monastery, he studied screenwriting at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, and joined the monastery when it functioned—first and foremost—as a Soviet-approved tourist attraction, providing visitors with a heavily doctored, unrealistic impression of pre-communist history and religion. As metropolitan bishop, Tikhon remained involved in the country’s state-sponsored culture sector, serving as secretary of the Patriarch’s Council for Culture, member of the Kremlin’s Council for Culture and Art, and editor of the Russian Orthodox Church-run literary journal Russian House. In addition to his 2011 autobiography, he has written a popular children’s book about the Orthodox saint Seraphim of Sarov, and serves as editor-in-chief of the online information portal Pravoslavie (“Truth”), a joint venture between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Kremlin that—much like Putin’s own speeches—characterizes Russia as an Orthodox nation threatened by foreign, secular forces. Identified as a “pillar” of the Church’s “traditionalist camp” in political scientist Irina Papkova’s 2011 study The Orthodox Church and Russian Politics, Tikhon frequently accompanies Putin on diplomatic trips, and is rumored to be his personal confessor.

Befitting of his background, Tikhon has also written and produced several films, including the 2008 documentary The Fall of an Empire: The Lesson of Byzantium. First shown on the state-controlled television channel “Russia” on the eve of Putin’s transfer of power to Dmitry Medvedev, it presents the Russian Federation as the spiritual successor of the Eastern Roman Empire, the birthplace of the Orthodox Church following the Great Schism of 1054 CE. As its narrator, Tikhon claims the Empire did not collapse due to invasions or economic crises—as the majority of historians have argued—but because of the imperial elite’s growing ties with the “coarse, ignorant, money-grabbing” non-Orthodox West. Paralleling 19^th century Slavophile resistance to liberalization, the documentary, in the words of one researcher, passes off “emotionally charged, deeply agitating ideological propaganda” for public education.

Whether because or in spite of its propagandic nature, Fall of an Empire—like Everyday Saints—made a strong impact on Russian popular culture. The documentary won a Golden Eagle, the motion picture equivalent of the Big Book awards, and was praised by public figures like the anti-globalist historian and politician Natalya Narochnitskaya, whose review of the film—published in the government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta—waxed poetic of the West’s “indifference to other cultures” and ignorance of Christianity’s true heritage.

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Discussions about the relationship between religion and politics in contemporary Russia often present the Orthodox Church as subordinate to the Kremlin—a trusty propaganda service that bends religious doctrine until it aligns with Putin’s goals. In truth, the Church has frequently marched ahead of the state in their shared battle for public opinion, not behind it, with religious writers having helped to create the very sentiments that Putin now relies on to maintain his hold on power.

Father Arseny was first published seven years before the Russian president entered office in 2000. Roughly the same period of time stands between the release of Fall of an Empire and Russia’s occupation of Crimea. When, early in his career, Putin was actively trying to establish relations with western leaders and integrate into the European political economy, Orthodox and Orthodox-affiliated writers like Metropolitan Ioann Snychov and Igor Shafarevich preached that western liberalism was inherently anti-Russian, and that autocratic terror was the best way to govern the Russian people. Putin, in short, did not set the stage for his own authoritarian backsliding; he merely saw the road the Church had cleared for him and decided to take it.

These contemporary religious or religious-adjacent narratives aren’t records of their time so much as they are record-setters. They are, as Shaw concludes, “speech acts… [that] produced historical consequences rather than described them.”

In post-Soviet Russia, Orthodox literature has done more than rehabilitate Christianity after decades of state-sponsored atheism. By offering readers a vision for a new national identity, one different from and irreconcilable with the country’s European neighbors, it resurrected the crusade of 19th century Slavophiles. Providing an ideological justification for Putin’s break with the West, Orthodox literature and media bears responsibility for ushering in a new Cold War and replacing Soviet dictatorship with a new kind of authoritarianism, one older and arguably more resilient than its secular predecessor.

Tim Brinkhof is a Dutch journalist and researcher based in Atlanta. He studied history and comparative literature at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and has written for JSTOR Daily, History Today, Jacobin, New Lines, and Film & History.