On May 28, 2016
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Mount Athos, one of Orthodox
Christianity's holiest sites, during his official trip to Greece.
It doesn’t
happen very often these days that heads of states make official pilgrimages.
One such pilgrimage took place this Saturday when Russian President Vladimir
Putin arrived on Mount Athos. This monastic polity on an isolated peninsula in
northeastern Greece is hailed by Orthodox Christians worldwide as the “Holy
Mount” and the “garden of Our Lady” and serves as the perennial source of
spiritual gifts and ancient monastic tradition.
It is not
Putin’s first visit to Mount Athos. In 2005, after two unsuccessful attempts,
he was the first Russian head of state to set foot in this place, where Russian
tsars had once competed with Ottoman Sultans through their respective
patronages. Nor is he the only international dignitary who comes here –
Britain’s Prince Charles is perhaps the best-known frequent visitor.
Yet this is the
first time that the head of the Russian state and the head of the Russian
Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, are here together. They are marking the high
point of a big campaign to observe the millennium of the Russian presence on
Athos. The anniversary is being commemorated this year with dozens of
exhibitions, conferences and church services to highlight modern Russia’s
leading role in what has come to be known as Orthodox Christian civilization.
A document from
1016 bears the signature of Gerasimos, the hegumen (abbot) of the “monastery of
Ross,” which is interpreted as proof that by that time monks from the medieval
state of Kievan Rus, who converted to Christianity just 28 years before, had
already established a presence in this Byzantine center of monasticism. What is
more certain is that in the following decades and centuries, beginning with the
Kiev Monastery of the Caves, Athos monks of various ethnic backgrounds had a
huge effect on the way Christianity developed in the northeastern Slavic lands
that today constitute Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Moscow’s most
revered icon, which guards the entrance to Red Square, came from Mount Athos.
The chapel that houses the icon was raised by the Soviets and restored in the
1990s. A copy of the icon was brought to Russia by Greek monks at that time.
From the 14th century onwards, monasteries all the way north to the White Sea
and east to Siberia were built to imitate the principles of Athos. Meanwhile,
the tradition of pastoral care by monks of prophetic talents known as elders
(“startsi”), also originating from Athos, gained importance in Russia in the
19th and 20th centuries.
While donations
from Russian tsars and nobles were plentiful, it was the thousands of Russian
pilgrims and monks that poured in to the monastery southeast of Thesalloniki
that kept the Russian presence alive. In the early decades of the 1900s Russian
monks outnumbered Greek, Serbian, Romanian and Bulgarian ones until Soviet
atheism came close to extinguishing the Russian presence. This history is
important for Russia, for Putin and his presidency.
“We have great
respect for Greece as a whole and for Athos in particular,” Putin said on his
previous visit in 2005. “And if Russia is the biggest Orthodox power, Greece
and Athos are its sources. We remember it and value greatly.”
In the run up
to the current anniversary, Russian state and private donors, many of whom
constitute an informal club of regular pilgrims to Athos, invested millions of
euros into the reconstruction of the Russian St. Panteleimon Monastery and its
dependencies on the peninsula. Led by a 100-year-old abbot, St. Panteleimon is
one of 20 monasteries under the aegis of the Istanbul-based Ecumenical
Patriarch, which today constitute the unique multiethnic monastic polity. It
has its own senate and governor and its own rules, such as barring any female
from entry, which date back to the edicts of Byzantine emperors and are
safeguarded in the Constitution of Greece and in special clauses concerning the
country’s entry into the European Union.
Ask any pilgrim
to Athos and he will speak of it as a unique place of personal connection to
God. The Russian president and patriarch are certain to have their own personal
spiritual experiences connected to this place. Yet what are important for the
public at large are the political messages that this visit carries both for the
wider world and for the Russian public at home.
When President
Putin and Patriarch Kirill inspect the recent renovations of the historically
Russian facilities in this microcosm of the unruly family of national Orthodox
Churches (in which Russians and Greeks often vie for dominance) and when they
pray together in a special service to the Russian saints who have lived on
Mount Athos, they will emphasize Russia’s position among the heirs to
Byzantium. That is a heritage, which is by all means European, but markedly not
Western. They will also stress that the church and state in today’s Russia
stand together, following the Byzantine model of “symphonia,” a close
cooperation of the divine and earthly powers, which runs contrary to the
Western notion of separation between church and state.
Athos monks are
known for their ultra-conservatism in social and family matters, opposition to
relations with Western Christianity and strong criticism of U.S.-dominated
globalization and secularization at least as much as they are for their ascetic
endeavors, spiritual heights and virtues of Christian love. By visiting this
autonomous enclave of the EU, which does not subscribe to the dominant liberal
European values of gender equality, human rights and freedom of movement, the
Russian president and patriarch will pay homage to the “other Europe” of
traditional Christian values – as opposed to those of the Enlightenment – that
seems besieged by the winds of modernity.
Both Putin and
Patriarch Kirill have on many occasions stated their opposition to the hegemony
of Western liberalism manifested most acutely in the adoption of gay marriage
legislation, and would like to see Russia as a natural center for Western
social conservatives. To make that statement once again on friendly European
soil when Russia and the EU are going through the lowest point in their
relationship due to the crisis in Ukraine, a millennium of common Russian and
Ukrainian presence in this unique part of Europe is a spectacular occasion.
The opinion of
the writer may not necessarily reflect the position of RBTH or its staff.
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