Our chronicles feature stories about Kyiv Prince Volodymyr Sviatoslavych and his choice of religion. He sent envoys to the Germans, Greeks, Bulgarians, even to the Arabs. He listened to a philosopher and took into consideration that “drinking makes people merry in Rus’.”
But the grand prince must have obviously overlooked something, because a millennium later, when comparing the Eastern Slavic world (by the cradle of which Kyiv Rus’ had stood) to the West, even an unbiased person cannot but notice a dramatic difference in the achievements of both; one should not deceive oneself and look for reasons for our backwardness somewhere outside the Eastern European geospace — that, supposedly, it happened that way historically. The reasons why the people’s impassioned impulse is blocked, with that people losing dynamism in its development, must be sought in oneself.
What is in common between the states that are hopelessly lagging behind in the general process of civilization and potential candidates for the Slavic Union (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Yugoslavia)? One thing, Orthodoxy. Precisely the Byzantine version of Christianity is what distinguish these peoples from the West. Max Weber wrote in the early twentieth century that the economic ethic of the religion prevalent in a given society exerts a cardinal influence on the choice of that society’s economic model.
The principal distinction between the Western and Eastern Churches consists in how each organizes social existence; precisely how both churches distinguish between things sacred and profane in the life of society. In practice, it means the way the church coexists with the regime and its representatives: emperors, kings, princes, etc. Rulers who introduced Christianity as the official religion in their realms, ranging from Roman Emperor Constantine to Kyiv Prince Volodymyr (currently referred to by the church as “equal to the apostles”) were interested in precisely this.
Prince Volodymyr must have been interested not so much in the luxury of Roman basilicas or Hagia Sophia in Constantinople as he was in the Roman Pope’s and Constantinople Patriarch’s dependence on the Byzantine emperor. At the time Askold and Volodymyr were baptized, the Byzantine and Western Churches differed noticeably in their attitudes to ward the emperor and secular authorities in general.
ROMAN AND BYZANTINE MODELS OF THE CHRISTIAN STATE
In Ancient Rome, paganism knew no legal bounds beyond which state power ended; the emperor was simultaneously Pontifex Maximus — or the chief priest. When adopting Christianity, the Romans with their cult of the state transferred by force of habit the understanding of the role of the highest political authority to the Christian emperor. Of course, this by no means conformed to the basic Christian principle distinguishing between things what is Caesar’s and what is God’s. The Church Fathers were well aware of the fact and have professed the independence of the secular and spiritual authorities ever since Christianity became the official religion.
Theoretically, a good and gracious alliance is the correct form of relationship between church and the state as a kind of symphony. This was spelled out in the famous code authored by Byzantine Emperor Justinian the Great during his rule, AD 527-565. In actuality, however, the paths of emperors and religious hierarchs often crossed, so the political courses adopted by the first Christian rulers of the Roman Empire resulted in the creation of a state church or Christian state. Incidentally, this also signified the beginning of official persecution of people guilty of “wrong” spiritual views.
The split of the empire and conquest of Rome by Germanic tribes caused the Eastern and Western Churches to revise their attitude toward the emperor at the end of the fifth century. The fourth [Chalcedon] Ecumenical Council in 451 AD, with apparent support from (or maybe on the initiative of) of the Eastern emperor, canonically promoted the Patriarch of Constantinople — the latter even claimed supremacy. Such things cost dearly. In this case the Church had to reciprocate by helping strengthen the secular authority.
Meanwhile the Western (Roman) Church received a degree of independence, since the Germanic conquerors brought a new element to the organization of public life, namely the principle of private or personal independence and the autonomy of communities. Charlemagne’s attempt to restore the Roman Empire in the West failed, so that religious life in Western society remained basically independent of local secular authorities and the highest Church hierarch [the Vicar of Christ] stayed in Rome.
In the East, the rebirth of the powerful New Rome allowed to get the better of the Church and subordinate it to the emperor. The last attempt to make the Eastern Church independent of secular authority was made by Patriarch Photius in the ninth century while Prince Askold ruled in Kyiv. Leo VI (called the Wise), however, got Photius out of the way and revised the Isagoge code of canon law. The Eastern Church was finally brought under secular control. This produced a crucial impact on the formation of Byzantine Christian social mentality. Here man’s life passes not in a multidimensional religious-secular space, but in the state’s tedious plane. In Byzantine Orthodox society, man actually loses the most precious thing, freedom of his spiritual development, and relies (voluntarily or not quite so) on the state to solve all his problems.
Interestingly, the baptism of new states in the East was accompanied — on the rulers’ initiative — by the institution of national patriarchates. As a result, the patriarch regarded local hierarchs as though they were members of his cabinet in charge of religious affairs. This was the case with Bulgaria, Serbia, and later Rus’.
VOLODYMYR’S 1,000-YEAR-OLD TRADITION
After ascending to the Kyiv throne, Prince Volodymyr sought to bring under control religious life as well. He tried to reform the existing creed and give his subjects uniform gods, but failed, as the idea of a totalitarian empire appeared easier implemented within the framework of Christianity, precisely its Byzantine model. This was at the core of his much eulogized choice of creed, choosing a religion where the highest religious authority is subordinated to the political leader. As for the Roman Pope’s independence, it must have held little attraction to the Kyiv prince.
Of course, in such conditions we could not have created a powerful spiritual current forming an appropriated atmosphere in society and changing it every time history presented us with a new challenge. There is no selfless devotion independent of secular authority, just as there is no spiritual life. George Florovsky, the savant on the Russian Church, asked, “What does this Russian silence mean, lasting over centuries, so drawn-out? ... How is one to explain this belated awakening of Russian thought?”
The late, great Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus wrote, “I think that the first mistake is the Byzantine rite, making us, the easternmost part of the West, part of the East. Our individualistic Western spirit, bound by despotic Byzantine Orthodoxy, never could shed this spiritual duality which would subsequently develop the hypocrisy complex. The spirit of Orthodoxy was a heavy burden befalling the young and immature soul of the people, leading to effeminacy as an attribute of our spirituality. The steel hard discipline of the Tatars impregnated the Rus’ spirit, lending it aggressiveness and pyramidal structure. The Ukrainian spirit never succeeded in getting out from under this heavy rock.” Given such conditions, a society can only transform into a despotism, as was vividly demonstrated by Russia under Ivan the Terrible, Peter I, and Stalin.
It should be noted, however, that the crisis gripping Orthodox society is the unavoidable result of spiritual life suppressed by the regime; it has nothing to do with lack of creative potential within the Orthodox Christian system. Orthodoxy rests on the same Christian basis as Western Catholicism or Protestantism; secreted in it is as great a spiritual potential. Whenever secular purges slacken spiritual development receives fresh impetus.
Something of the kind happened in Ukraine later, during the Lithuanian-Polish period. At the time the situation was unique; Orthodoxy received no support from the state and, therefore, had no one breathing down its neck. Moreover, within that state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the two (perhaps three) extant forms of Christianity and Orthodoxy were at an obvious disadvantage. Without doubt, it was yet another challenge of history. Ukraine picked up the gauntlet and proved its worth. Sometime during that period — the turn of the seventeenth century — began the Ukrainian Renaissance, the most exciting page in the history of Ukrainian spiritual life.
The mentioned shortcomings of Orthodoxy are firmly embedded in the Russian Church. Thus the joining of the Ukrainian Church to the Moscow Patriarchate in 1686 actually signified the final spiritual disaster suffered by the Ukrainian people as a society with the initial aspiration for Western models of social existence.
Another underlying thesis of Orthodoxy deserves mention. It is rooted in Byzantium and boils down to the one-creed-one-state formula. This notion, unacceptable in the West, inevitably conquered the newly baptized heathens: first Bulgarian prince Simeon who dreamed of uniting Bulgaria and Byzantium (naturally, visualizing a single Orthodox Oecumene as his domain), who was followed by the Russian tsars with their Third Rome idea (under Orthodoxy, to be sure).
And so the adoption of Christianity as Orthodoxy actually meant spiritual life being trampled by the heavy boots of secular authority. Figuratively speaking, the Brahman had to take orders from the Kshatriya, the latter imposing his notion of spiritual life. Thus was prepared — rather reinforced — the fertile ground for totalitarianism.
And the way of destroying totalitarian stereotypes is quite simple: taking public life out of the one dimensional world, albeit state-building one, and introducing it into a multidimensional space with a spiritual coordinate. There is this truth that has been known for almost two thousand years: render under Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.
