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Religion, State and Society

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Coexistence or Confrontation? The Politics of Interaction between Orthodoxy and Islam in Putin's Russia: Culture, Institutions and Leadership
James W. Warhola

Online Publication Date: 01 December 2008

To cite this Article Warhola, James W.(2008)'Coexistence or Confrontation? The Politics of Interaction between Orthodoxy and Islam in

Putin's Russia: Culture, Institutions and Leadership',Religion, State and Society,36:4,343 359
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Religion, State & Society, Vol. 36, No. 4, December 2008

Coexistence or Confrontation? The Politics of Interaction between Orthodoxy and Islam in Putins Russia: Culture, Institutions and Leadership

JAMES W. WARHOLA

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ABSTRACT The interaction between Orthodoxy and Islam during the years of the Putin presidency was complex, dynamic and fraught with potential for conict. Indeed a number of political, demographic and economic factors created conditions that were particularly hospitable for the eruption of religious-based conict. This is particularly so given the ongoing problems of Islamic radicalism, which by the early Putin years had spread beyond Chechnya itself, and by the concomitant appearance and spread of xenophobia, racism and various strains of extremism. Nonetheless, despite rising tensions among communal groups, and also despite a general but unmistakable trend toward increasingly authoritarian tendencies by the central government, there was considerable evidence of the sort of leadership within both religious and governmental bodies that had the eect of mitigating or at least containing conict. Such leadership at the national level may have been pivotal in containing tendencies toward conict. While admirable and almost certainly driven more by prudential than idealistic motives, such leadership will necessarily need to develop a greater degree of accountability to the public than that which was in evidence as the Putin presidency completed its second term amid deepening concentration of power by the Kremlin.

Introduction There is mounting evidence that relations among communal groups became increasingly strained in the second Putin administration, and particularly among religion-based communal groups. This situation was noted by academic observers, government ocials and religious leaders and among the general public. Vladimir Slutsker, deputy chairman of the Federation Councils Unied Commission on National Policy and Inter-Relations Among the State and Religious Bodies (Obyedinennaya komissiya po natsionalnoi politike i vzaimootnosheniyam gosudarstva i religioznykh obyedinenii pri Sovete Federatsii), noted that unfortunately, we must assert that the question of national-religious relations in Russia has become increasingly strained. His larger point, however, was that by dealing with this complex of issues, Russia may serve as an example of multinational, multireligious coexistence (My pervymi, 2006). Ravil Gainutdin, the chairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia (Sovet muftiyev Rossii), declared in the same month that we should be concerned about not allowing an exacerbation of relations between nationalities

ISSN 0963-7494 print; ISSN 1465-3974 online/08/040343-17 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09637490802442934

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and religions to take place, and that without peace and accord between nationalities, our country faces inevitable disintegration (Chief Muslim, 2006). The Putin administration in fact took concrete steps to address the problem by establishing several new political structures, discussed below. The Putin administration also called upon religious leaders and other social leaders to acknowledge and confront this problem of increasing tensions among communal groups and actively involved them in helping to do so. Yet numerous questions remain about the direction of this important aspect of social and political life in the Russian Federation during the Putin presidency. There can be little question that the application of intensied vertikal vlasti (vertical power) was deliberate and of increased ecacy since being inaugurated shortly after the rst Putin administration began. That increased ecacy, however, came at the price of deepening authoritarianism, in the context of what has been described by the Kremlin, and specically by presidential adviser Vladislav Surkov, as sovereign democracy (suverennaya demokratiya), the contemporary Russian model of democracy (see Nasha, 2006). Yet despite the deepening authoritarianism and evidently rising tensions among communal groups, a general condition of strained peacefulness had come to prevail by the end of Putins second term as president.1 In this situation the complicated web of relations among public ocials (at national, regional and local levels), religious leaders, civil society groups and the general public became more complex, yet all the more critical for the maintenance of harmony and civility. How and why did this occur, given that similar circumstances might rather easily have hurled the country into widespread conict? The experience of Russia underscores the centrality of leadership as the decisive characteristic of the maintenance of intercommunal harmony. This essay explores how and why that has come to be so. The reader should note that this article was written while Vladimir Putin was still president; while some shifting of policy by the central government toward these issues may or may not transpire during the Medvedev presidency, it is likely that the general orientation of the Putin presidency will continue under his successor. The character of the interaction between Orthodoxy and Islam in the contemporary Russian Federation is perhaps best addressed by considering the complex sets of relations among the various actors involved. These include: (1) relations between religious leaders and public ocials; (2) relations among religious leaders themselves; (3) triangular relations among religious leaders, public ocials, and civil society leaders; and (4) relations within the general public among various communal groups. Throughout, it is important to bear in mind the dierences between ethnic Russians and Muslim citizens of the Russian Federation as far as their social and political identities are concerned; I explore this theme below. I also consider below the basic demographic picture and the larger domestic political climate, and conclude with an examination of the political and religious leadership that emerged during the years of the Putin presidency. The general theme is that the politics of interaction of Orthodoxy and Islam in contemporary Russia is a complex and dynamic process of mutual interaction among cultural, institutional and leadership factors, with the last of these appearing to be decisive.

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Relations between Religious Leaders/Institutions and Public Ocials These relations are generally decentralised and ad hoc, and thus subject to considerable variation depending on numerous factors, certainly including

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the personalities involved on both sides (religious and political). As noted by Forum 18, Unlike most former republics of the Soviet Union, Russia still has no centralised state body dealing with religious aairs. The most senior federal ocials who deal exclusively with religious issues are functionaries and not policy makers. Those in the Kremlin (where, under President Vladimir Putin, power has become increasingly concentrated) who are authorised to take decisions impacting upon religious freedom are normally immersed in mainstream political issues, which they no doubt consider to be far more pressing. Religious freedom concerns are consequently resolved in an ad hoc manner, if the Kremlin is involved at all, or are more usually left to government departments and/or regional administrations. (Fagan, 2003) (emphasis added) The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) occupies the primary place in Russian churchstate relations, and thus holds a certain hegemonic position in Russian society regarding religious aairs, as noted by Zoe Knox: the close links between Church and state have allowed the Orthodox Church considerable privileges which are not extended to other denominations (Knox, 2004, p. 132). This situation, however, does not negate, and thus should not obscure, the central role played by the various institutions representing Muslims in the Russian Federation, who number around 20 million.2 Unlike the ROC, however, the organisations representing the Islamic community in Russia are numerous and variegated. The two major organisations are the Central Spiritual Board of Muslims of Russia and the European Countries of the CIS (Tsentralnoye dukhovnoye upravleniye musulman Rossii) (CSBM) and the Council of Muftis of Russia (Sovet muftiyev Rossii) (RCM). The former was ocially established on 8 April 1994, more or less as the successor to the Soviet-era Spiritual Board of Muslims of the European Part of Russia and Siberia. The Council of Muftis of Russia was established in July 1996, appears to have been largely a function of the force of personality of Mufti Ravil Gainutdin, and unlike the CSBM, the RCM is characterized by a less hierarchical and more lateral internal organization (Hunter, 2004, pp. 5657). There appear to be ongoing rival-like tensions between the two groups on a variety of matters, but perhaps of particular signicance for this article are their respective relations with Russian Orthodoxy. The CSBM tends to view Islam in Russia as a minority faith in a predominantly Orthodox country, tends to accept the symbolic or even legal primacy of the Patriarchate, and even on occasion adopts the rhetoric of the most traditional forms of Russian nationalism. The RCM tends more openly to advocate equality between Orthodoxy and Islam, implying an ocial recognition of the countrys multinational and multiconfessional character. Thus the conguration of relations among formal religious groups is complex in and of itself, as is the aggregate of their relations with public authorities.3 Hunter (2004, pp. 5264) provides a reasonably recent categorisation of these and other Islamic organisations. Thus while the ROC has a single organisation, as do the numerically much smaller Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish community, and even the Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, the much more numerous and politically signicant Muslim groups have no such single representative organisation, but rather a complex of organisations. Further, this organisational fragmentation is also reected in the ethnic reality of communal identity in Russia: whereas the Russian majority is ethnically homogeneous and simultaneously more or less homogeneous

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regarding religious identication (as Orthodox), the Muslims of Russia are ethnically quite diverse. This ethnic diversity is further compounded by a distinct regional dierentiation between the Muslims of central Russia (the Volga region) and those of the North Caucasus, the two regions of greatest concentration of Muslim population. This general demographic conguration is but one of numerous factors that make religionstate relations in Russia particularly complex as well as politically delicate; in aggregate, these factors make sound, stable and morally reasoned leadership absolutely essential for intercommunal harmony. With the term morally reasoned leadership I refer to the exercise of authority in a manner that seeks the good of the community, or the nation as a whole, as the case may be, over and above the particular short-term interests of a given leader or group. In this sense I regard morally reasoned leadership in terms of the Aristotelian category of rulers acting in the interests of the community rather than using power for selsh purposes. This essay concludes with a return to this theme. At the local and regional level, signicant variation exists among regions regarding the nature of relations between public ocials and religious leaders. There is also considerable evidence of unpredictability, perhaps even capriciousness, on the part of both public ocials and ROC leaders regarding the management of the public aspects of religious aairs (Uzzell, 2005).4 Inuence, moreover, may work in various directions: inuence of public ocials upon religious leaders, and of religious leaders upon public ocials. Marsh and Froese identify a syndrome in some regions whereby local and regional ROC ocials exert considerable inuence on public ocials, at their respective levels, concerning non-Orthodox religious aairs within their areas, although they nd no clear pattern nationwide (Marsh and Froese, 2004, pp. 140 41). In fact, this tendency toward ad hoc management of the public aspects of religious aairs may have been even more pronounced at the local and regional levels than at the national level, echoing the patterns that emerged during the Brezhnev years up until the time of perestroika (Warhola, 1992). As noted by Forum 18 in 2005, In a throwback to the 1990s, several Russian regions have adopted local laws restricting missionary activity over the past 18 months. Protestant missionaries in these areas say that they have remained unaected by the changes, however, while regions with a stricter visa policy for foreign religious workers, such as Sakhalin, do not have a corresponding local law. Although the wave of foreign missionary expulsions which reached a peak in 19982002 appears to have subsided, this could be because foreign Protestants are now less likely to conduct their ministry in Russia on an ocial basis. (Fagan, 2005) The new laws on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (particularly foreign ones) that went into eect in 2006 are widely viewed as having a constricting eect as well.5 The fact that major religious organisations generally supported the legislation indicates mutual inuence by state organs and religious bodies. The delicacy of religionstate relations, however, was reected in the fact that some religious organisations, principally the ROC, supported this legislation with some apprehensions and dispute over details. To summarise this section, one can say that relations between public ocials and religious leaders during the Putin presidency may be characterised by several major traits: (1) the absence of a centralised governmental focal point to deal with matters of

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religion; (2) mutual inuence by the ROC and public ocials that places the ROC in a generally hegemonic position regarding public aspects of religion; (3) considerable regional variation; (4) a general administrative climate that is decidedly more constrictive than that prevailing in the West, at least regarding ocial involvement in religious aairs. These traits developed in a general political context in which religious leaders demonstrated a remarkably consistent inclination to work toward extinguishing, and not inaming, serious discord, either between religious ocials and public ocials or among the believers of various faiths. After considering the larger domestic political climate, I shall now explore the latter theme in greater depth.

Relations among Religious Leaders What was the nature and character of relations among the major religious groups, particularly at the level of their respective leaders during the Putin presidency? This is perhaps the key question: if relations among such leaders were hostile, no government, however democratic or authoritarian, would be able to maintain civil harmony eectively. Relations among the major religious organisations were generally cooperative and civil during the Putin years, perhaps contributing more to the overall climate of positive relations among communal groups than is generally recognised. To put this another way, it seems that the general climate of cooperation (or at least moderated disputatiousness) among major organised religious groups stands in contrast with the increase of communal tensions during the latter years of the Yeltsin presidency and into the tenure of Vladimir Putin. Such cooperation, it seems to me, may well have had a restraining eect on what might otherwise have been an even worse deterioration of relations among communal groups. While acknowledging the presence and indeed the escalation of tensions among some groups at the popular level, we should note that the potential for greater, even violent, conict was very high: the rise of xenophobic expressions and behaviour in Russia during the Putin presidency was widely noted both in Russia and in the West (see Gorenburg, 2006; Russian Federation, 2006). Viewed from this perspective, the tendency for Russian religious leaders to respond to provocations, ill-conceived statements and even isolated incidents of outright attack in a measured and often forbearing manner must be considered a major factor in the maintenance of a general climate of peacefulness within society, but particularly among organised religious groups themselves. Late modern history would seem to demonstrate rather clearly that the application of authoritarian rule by public ocials cannot of itself assure public peace and harmony among communities, and in fact often serves to undermine it. Thus the role of communal group leaders in this case, religious leaders may well be the critical factor, and especially at the national level; lower-level religious leaders were occasionally less restrained and forbearing.6 Nationwide, however, the overall pattern of strained peacefulness appears to be an example of Fearon and Laitins concept of in-group policing equilibria: a communal group eectively polices its members in order to keep potential conicts from escalating into actual conicts, or if violent conict does break out, reins it in by various corrective measures (Fearon and Laitin, 1996). It is precisely here that leadership over a given communal group (religious or ethnic) is absolutely critical, but these relations among religious leaders work themselves out in a larger context, of course, involving public ocials and nonreligious civil society groups. I turn now to that theme.

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The Triangle of Relations among Religious Leaders, Public Ocials and Civil Society Leaders The presence or absence of civil society in Russia has been intensely disputed since the perestroika period. Predictably, perhaps, the general divide is between western observers who view Russias nascent postsoviet civil society as under increasingly heavy assault by the Putin administration (for example Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, the US State Department) and the Putin administration itself, which maintains that it is creating the political conditions for the emergence of a truly civil society by working to eliminate the decidedly uncivil characteristics of Russian society (such as powerful organised crime, staggeringly high rates of substance abuse and its inevitable train of woes, vicious and widespread military hazing and consequent draftdodging).7 I tend to concur with those viewing the political developments since 2000 as having taken an increasingly authoritarian direction. After briey considering several pertinent demographic factors, I shall return to consider in greater detail the triangle of religious leaders, public ocials and civil society leaders. As is widely recognised, Russias overall population is declining. This fact has been cited by Putin as a major national problem, and listed on the Kremlins ocial website as a national priority for resolution (Resheniye, n.d.). At a session of the Russian Security Council Putin said: If nothing is done, Russias population will halve by the end of the 21st century . . . . We are facing a critical line during the last 13 years the number of dead [Russian] citizens exceeded the number of new-borns by 11.2 million people (Putin, 2006). Here he echoed the concerns he expressed not long after assuming the presidency in 2000: If the current tendency continues, the survival of the nation will be threatened. We really do face the threat of becoming an enfeebled nation. Today the demographic situation is one of the most alarming that the country faces (Putin, 2000). The UN warned that Russias population could fall by as much as a third by 2050 (see Russia, 2006b). Measures were taken to spur population growth by oering material incentives for mothers, but the eect of these remains questionable. The problem is compounded by the fact that the growth rate among ethnic non-Russians is generally higher than among Russians, and particularly high among non-Russian Muslims: gures oered in 2004 were 1.7 births per 100 for ethnic Russian women as compared with 4.5 per 100 among women in predominantly Muslim ethnic groups (Hunter, 2004, p. 45). The former gure is below the replacement level; hence the alarmed tone of Putins 2006 annual state-of-the-nation speech. Russia was also experiencing patterns of immigration that were troubling to the authorities in the demographic context. The politically problematical character of these patterns was exacerbated by various factors, including the Chechen conict, rising levels of xenophobia (discussed below), and a perhaps natural ethno-nationalist reaction among aected minority groups. In a public interview with the media in February 2007 Putin in fact appeared to place much of the blame for the rise in xenophobia and nationalist extremism in Russia on immigration (Transcript, 2007). Perhaps not surprisingly, the agenda of the World Russian Peoples Congress (Vsemirny Russky narodny sobor) on 57 March 2007 involved discussion of relations among ethnic and religious groups; according to Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, these issues were expected to feature high on the events agenda (Fight, 2007). Similarly, the inaugural meeting of the newly-established Public Chamber (Obshchestvennaya palata), in January 2006, was charged by Putin with the critically

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important task of helping to resolve the problem of rising tensions among Russias communal groups. The Public Chamber was established in 2005 by the Putin administration for the stated purpose of strengthening civil society and providing an institutionalised voice for major social groupings such as womens organisations, veterans organisations and religious groups. It is composed of 126 members drawn from various social organisations.8 Let us, then, consider the question of relations among religious, political and civil society leaders. As noted above, there had been marked disagreement over the nature and indeed the presence of civil society in Putins Russia since the collapse of the USSR. There can be little question, however, that postsoviet Russia faced an array of social and political problems that could only be addressed by an apparatus of state authority with greater force than that of the Yeltsin years: this much has been widely acknowledged both in Russia and in the West.9 Stephen White has spoken of Russias disempowered electorate (White, 2004).Whether or not Russia has, on balance, mustered and applied authority beyond the limits allowed by modern democracy, however, remains a point of sharp dispute.10 The climate of increasingly authoritarian rule is, however, accompanied by a general public passivity toward it. How the two are connected is a complex topic deserving serious consideration in its own right. However, both appear to be related, in an equally complex manner, with the robust macro-economic growth of Russia since the latter 1990s. As Vladimir Shlapentokh notes, The Russians are currently enjoying a real increase in their standard of living and a greater level of political stability in society. As a gift to all Russians (both government and private workers), the authorities gave them a nearly two-week-long holiday to celebrate Christmas and the New Year, an unprecedented event in the world. What is more, reconstruction in downtown Moscow and several regional centers is booming. One third of the public, according to a survey by the Fund of Public Opinion in December 2006, reported that their material life had improved in the last year. Most people are simply unconcerned about the political killings and the general decline of democratic institutions in Russia. (Shlapentokh, 2007) How did international factors inuence the interaction among public ocials, religious leaders and (non-religious) civil society leaders? This is a massive and complex topic, and I can touch on only a few points here. Perhaps most signicantly, recent research by Sarah L. Henderson indicates that work in the area of human rights by foreign nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) tends more to reinforce ties outside the country than to establish horizontal relations among the public and groups that would bolster civil society (Henderson, 2002). According to this view, international organisations seeking to build civil society in Russia have often done little but raise suspicions concerning their motives on the part of public ocials and church leaders. Their net eect, as argued by Henderson, was not necessarily to buttress civil society in Russia, but to lead to the creation of patronclient ties between the international donor and the Russian recipient rather than horizontal networks of civic engagement among Russians NGOs and their domestic audience (Henderson, 2002, p. 139). To the extent that this is so, it is understandable that both the Putin administration and religious leaders have frequently expressed suspicion about the motives of such groups, even when such suspicions appear (from a western perspective at least) rather self-serving.

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The Putin administrations project of extending hegemonic inuence in the former Soviet areas and beyond (to Iran and Mongolia, for example) may be viewed as an extension of the general pattern of hegemonic control over civil society-type groups, only in this case with the explicit intention of helping to combat religious extremism, or the threat thereof (see Foreign, 2000). There were numerous reasons for this general foreign policy orientation, including economic and military reasons, but they certainly included the perceived problem of increasing terrorist threats. The Putin administration more or less consistently sought to provide material and other forms of support for authoritarian rulers in Central Asia and Azerbaijan who oppose politicised Islam. In doing so it understandably enlisted the help and support of religious leaders within Russia. Relations within the General Public among Various Communal Groups Numerous observers, including the Kremlin itself, noted an increase in tensions among communal groups. Manifestations included racial/ethnic intolerance, ethnocentrism, xenophobia and more general political extremism, especially on the radical right.11 There was generally a subdued but growing tendency toward xenophobia among Russians, while ethnocentrism as in-group favouritism may be more common among Muslims (Hammond and Axelrod, 2006). Yuri Shabaev attributes the postsoviet increase in xenophobia to an ideological vacuum: Russian specialists have noted with increasing alarm that there is a strong growth of racist and xenophobic feelings in Russian society. This situation is a logical result of the removal of the idea of an expansive civic solidarity from the mass consciousness. Having rst rejected the idea of the Soviet people, and then having failed to build a general civic identity, the regional political elites (together with politicians at the federal level) and ethnic entrepreneurs created the ideological basis for the expanding xenophobia. (Shabaev, 2007) Signicantly, the entire issue of Russian Analytical Digest in which Shabaevs chapter appeared (February 2007) was devoted to the issue of Russian nationalism, which was widely seen as gaining momentum since the end of the Yeltsin years.12 This occurred in the context of a mutually reinforcing rise of ethno-nationalism and heightened religiosity among Muslims. According to the interior minister of the Russian Federation Rashid Nurgaliyev, hate crimes increased, but police eectiveness in solving them also increased.13 In this regard the Chechen conict was viewed by Trenin and Malashenko as a major factor shaping both the political regime and the wider society in Russia. According to Malashenko, the Chechen war among other things facilitated the radicalisation of Islam in the northern Caucasus, and within Russia as a whole (Trenin and Malashenko, 2002, p. 257). In the view of Valentina Melnikova, head of the Russian Union of Soldiers Mothers Committees, Terror in Russia is clearly the child of the Chechen war (Chechnya, 2004). This theme has been treated rather extensively elsewhere; the general consensus is that the Putin regimes handling of the Chechen problem was connected with the rise in terrorism and intergroup tensions throughout the country, but particularly in the Caususus region and in major cities in which resided substantial numbers of ethnic non-Russians, who were predominantly Muslim.14

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There seems little doubt that a politicisation of religion has occurred since the collapse of the USSR (see Johnson et al., 2005). It might, however, be said that the Muslims of Russia have experienced a religionisation of their politics, rather than what is usually described as a politicisation of their religion. Traditionally rather passive political behaviour by Muslims seems to have been energised to a degree of social and political salience commensurate with previous levels of religious activity. In any case the overall picture of relations among ethnic Russians and non-Russians must include the religious factor as central, even despite the famously low levels of public religiosity by those who identify themselves as Russian Orthodox. What is crucial is the question of social and political identity. In contemporary Russia this is signicantly complicated by the dierential identity structure of Orthodox and Muslims. The principal distinction is that while ethnic Russians are overwhelmingly Orthodox by religious aliation, and thus experience an ethnic homogenising factor, the community of Muslims is generally (but not exclusively) of non-Russian ethnic identity,15 and as noted above the general political and social orientation of Russian Muslims is variegated along regional lines (the central Russia/Volga region and the north Caucasus area), although this situation shows much evidence of rapidly changing (Malashenko, 2006). The tendency for Russian xenophobia to attempt to link itself to Orthodoxy has been noted and examined: The diverse groups that constituted the xenophobic nationalist right almost always had one common feature: they drew on Russias traditional faith, Russian Orthodoxy, for legitimacy (Knox, 2005, p. 533). To the extent that this was so, it placed the ROC in a potentially awkward position of unwelcome moral compromise, but also placed it in a uniquely powerful position to serve the higher interests of the Russian Federation by acting as a moderating force upon those who would otherwise exploit its symbolic capital for xenophobic or other political purposes. An important question is whether the ROC acted upon this opportunity during the Putin presidency. Knox concludes that the ROC under Patriarch Aleksi compromised in order to appease nationalists, that this resulted in a weak leadership that was at the mercy of factional struggles and that thus in the nal analysis it adds Russian Orthodoxys weight to anti-democratic causes, nally contributing to a climate of extremism and exclusion in post-Soviet Russia (Knox, 2005, p. 542). I question the validity of this conclusion, nding instead that the ROC arguably served as a moderating political force, although not necessarily a democratising one, at least as liberal democracy is conceived in the West.16 In any case, however, the Putin administration did not watch passively as these trends gained momentum, but instead responded by engaging religious leaders to help stabilise society, and also instituted changes to Russias political structures to deal with the countrys increasingly problematical inter-group relations. A brief look at these will help to underscore the importance of the leadership factor. The Crafting of New Political Institutions to Help Manage Inter-Group Relations The Putin administration established several new political structures to deal with increased tensions among social groups. It is likely to take some years to determine how eective their role and activity was in achieving this purpose and it should be noted that the pervasive and publicly stated motive of increasing vertical authority in Russia was likely to have been behind the setting-up of each of them. These new institutions were: the State Council (Gosudarstvenny sovet), composed of all regional governors (established in July 2000); the Public Chamber (Obshchestvennaya palata),

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noted above, composed of 126 members from various civil society organisations (2005); and the Federation Councils Unied Commission on National Policy and Inter-Relations among the State and Religious Bodies (Obyedinennaya komissiya po natsionalnoi politike i vzaimootnosheniyam gosudarstva i religioznykh obyedinenii pri Sovete Federatsii) (2006).17 These joined the already-extant Duma Committee on Social Groups and Religious Organisations (Komitet GD po delam obshchestvennykh obyedinenii i religioznykh organizatsii). Arguably a charter on counteracting extremism issued in 2007 by the pro-Kremlin political party United Russia (Yedinaya Rossiya) (Kostenko, 2007; Unied, 2007) indicated the administrations general desire to nd proactive measures to deal with various forms of perceived political and religious extremism. United Russia encouraged other political parties and interest groups to sign up to it. Some did so, while others refused, claiming that the Kremlin was inating the threat of extremism and using it as a pretext for suppression of political opposition (Kostenko, 2007). The net eect of the charter remains to be seen. Perhaps predictably, the motives behind these new institutions were called into question from various quarters within and outside Russia; they were decried as a cynical attempt to quell civil society by enforcing a topdown manipulation of society. In all likelihood, however, multiple motives were operating, as so frequently happens in human aairs. None of the new institutions, in and of themselves, would seem to represent a retreat from the prospects of building a more vibrant civil society in Russia. In fact the Putin administration established each of them with the stated intention of having them serve to bolster civil society. Yet can the state itself construct a civil society? Numerous observers inside and outside Russia questioned the motives of the Putin administration on this score, some raising the deeper theoretical questions of how an increasingly authoritarian state could genuinely foster a type of society that would deliberately place constraints on that state power that it would almost certainly not accept. In the nal analysis, however, the ultimate ecacy of these new institutions will probably end up being the clearest and most accurate indicator of the regimes motives. If their activity serves actually to buttress and spur on the development of a genuine civil society, the stated reasons for their establishment will have been validated. If they end up doing little but buttress the states power at the expense of civil society groups that would otherwise have challenged that power, then the stated reasons for their establishment will be dicult to substantiate; in either case, the character of the regime will be revealed by its actions, not its words. In this complex situation, the critical role played by political leadership becomes increasingly evident. The nature of any given political regime is arguably a function of a complex, indeterminate interplay of institutions, underlying political culture, and leadership. This last factor is frequently not given the necessary attention in modern political science, perhaps because it is notoriously dicult to assess in a productively comparative manner, and extraordinarily dicult if not impossible to analyse usefully with present quantitative research methods. Given the paucity of serious studies focusing on the centrality of sound leadership as a critical factor in good governance, one must wonder why contemporary social science tends to avoid the matter. After all, the scholarly literature on leadership itself is quite thin, and frequently texts on comparative politics largely skirt the issue, perhaps fearing that taking leadership itself seriously might come dangerously close to harking back to medieval studies of politics (the mirror of princes genre) that placed the character-formation of prospective leaders at the centre of attention.18 Yet in some circumstances (and perhaps most) it is hard to avoid the conclusion that leadership is the crucial determining factor. The prospects for Russian social and political stability, at least regarding interaction

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among communal groups and between them and public authorities, may thus rise or fall according to this admittedly dicult-to-dene factor. Perhaps in no other domain of public aairs is the character of the leadership of relevant actors more directly decisive than in governance of society: poor leadership in business leads to bankruptcy for the rm; poor leadership in private organisations or philanthropic endeavours leads to wasted money; but poor leadership in politics aects everyone, deleteriously and usually rather directly.19 Conclusion: Leadership, Political Culture and Institutions Several public ocials including Vladimir Slutsker, as well as President Putin himself, have suggested that Russia may serve as a model, or at least example, of multinational, multireligious cooperation. Perhaps the globally self-conscious nature of Russian identity may serve to reinforce a tendency toward a leadership style that is more characterised by inter-group conciliation than would otherwise be the case. Russia is and has long been acutely conscious of its role in history and in contemporary global aairs. Not only political leaders but various religious leaders including Patriarch Aleksi and Rabbi Berl Lazar have echoed this theme. As Lazar said recently, I believe the next two or three years will see the role of our country on the world scene claried. Russia occupies a unique place as a natural bridge between East and West. Russias role in overcoming the confrontation may be not just useful but also decisive to some extent. That is why the turn Russia will take in the nearest future is so important. Certainly I am asked about the role of religion in settling not so much Russian as world problems. . . . [R]eligion naturally stands in the way of violence and helps people to accept the common things they share and to seek solution to their problems in the ways of God. For this reason it is especially important that any abuse of religion be barred and rst of all the terror disguised with religious slogans be stopped. Leaders of all religions should state responsibly that those who in the name of faith commit terrorist actions do not just misunderstand religion but are its enemies. (Russias Role, 2007) For any of this to transpire, sound and positive leadership by public ocials, religious leaders and (non-religious) civil society groups seems critical, and the Putin presidency seemed quite cognisant of this. Symptomatic of the sensitivities of that administration was the quick and decisive response of condemnation by President Putin of the attack on the mufti of Ingushetia on 31 January 2007 (see Putin, 2007), as compared with his aloof and detached response to the murder of journalists (Politkovskaya and others) and even public ocials.20 At the same time, relations among various religious and ethnic groups were sometimes characterised by a general tone of defensiveness, but not belligerence, particularly in the Islamic press and other media in Russia (see SMI, 2008). Given the evident increase in xenophobia and racism in Russia, such belligerence might otherwise have emerged and been directed against perceived hostile groups: ethnic Russians against various peoples of the Caucasus, for example, or Orthodox against Roman Catholics or Muslims. However, even in a matter as sharply controversial, and as multivalent, as the dispute over the Basics of Orthodox Culture course, political interaction among the various religious, public

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ocial and civil society actors was generally civil. Consider, for example, the sequence of events following inammatory statements by the mufti Nagulla Ashirov: Ashirov described the teaching of Basic Orthodox Culture in a Russian school in Cuba as a manifestation of creeping christianization and called the Russian Church as a narrow ethnic confession, accusing it of the shameless lobbying of its own interests. He also challenged the parents right to choose what subjects their children would study and said that the parents might suddenly decide the schoolchildren should learn Mein Kampf. We are glad that Mufti Nagullah Ashirov realized how divisive his sayings appeared to be. No one is intended to convert Muslims into Orthodoxy in schools through the lessons of Basic Orthodox Culture. Our Muslim brothers and sisters may be sure about that, Fr Vsevolod [Chaplin] told Interfax in his interview on Thursday, commenting on the conict between the mufti and the Orthodox community. (Russian Church, 2007)
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The Council of Muftis also found it necessary to admonish Ashirov for his inammatory remarks about Israel (he called it a malignant tumour), and, signicantly, expressed regret for the remarks in a manner that indicated deep concern at the prospect that such remarks might serve to iname social tensions. According to Interfax, We are saddened by the improper wording used by mufti Nagullah Ashirov, council press secretary Gulnur Gaziyeva told Interfax. She said Council Chairman Ravil Gainutdin had asked Ashirov on several occasions to observe the rules of conduct and to develop a correct attitude to brothers-in-faith and while protecting the interests of Muslims not to insult the sincere feelings of people of other religions despite issues that may be truly painful for Muslims. It is important that issues in the dialogue between religions do not develop into a conict, but are instead constructive and produce true positive results, Gaziyeva said. (Russian Muslim, 2007) Again, as with the quick and sharply critical response of President Putin to the attack on the mufti of Ingushetia, so also here the rapid and sharply rebuking response by the Council leadership may be viewed as emblematic of a particular leadership culture that placed a premium on maintaining civil relations among religious and ethnic groups. While commendable in and of itself, and perhaps essential for the stability and even viability of Russia, such an apparently cooperative and conciliatory orientation by the central government nonetheless raised charges that the Putin administration used the threat of xenophobia and other forms of extremism as political tools to thwart opposition (Playing, n.d.). According to this view, the Putin administration may have used and perhaps even provoked tensions among religious and/or ethnic groups as a pretext for aggrandising power in the name of maintaining order. Thus the question once again arises about the type of regime that emerged under Putin. Was it so self-serving as to engage in such provocations? One would hope not, but even if it were, good leadership among national-level religious leaders perhaps served as a moderating force. Given the complex interplay of religious and ethnic heterogeneity, demographic change and rising tensions among communal groups, the leadership presiding over the various religious groups may well have been key to the maintenance

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of political stability and harmony. If this is so, then the central question concerns the nature of that leadership, on the part of religious and other civil society leaders, and on the part of public ocials. Specic leadership qualities which are likely to be required include: (1) the capacity to govern eectively by applying the minimum necessary constricting force on society so as to enable the ourishing of true civil society; (2) the capacity to provide guidance and indeed even inspiration for citizens towards higher standards of civil interaction; and (3) the capacity to heed the voices of their constituents so that the gap between rulers and ruled is eectively reduced to the formality that is at the heart of citizenship in the best Aristotelian tradition: rulers and ruled each knowing how to rule and how to obey (see Aristotle, Politics, book 3 on citizenship). In Russia today it may well be the religious bodies that can best exemplify this type of leadership, by drawing upon and living out the loftiest ideals of their respective faiths, and by expediting the cultivation of such leadership among civil authorities by foregoing the wielding of direct public authority. In such a case the multinational, multireligious character of Russia could well turn into one of its major strengths rather than a potentially ruinous source of weakness. However, these virtues of restraint and cooperative ecumenism exist in various degrees, and even at the national level some religious leaders have demonstrated a greater degree of them than others. In any case, as Blair Ruble noted in 2006, It is clear that religion, through a variety of institutions and confessions, has become a vital and vibrant force in the region. The dynamism of religion manifested in the growth of some movements, the variety of new means for engaging the public good, and innovative ways of grappling with postSoviet chaos stands in startling contrast to an ever more visible return of a peculiar kind of political stability that comforts so many throughout the former Soviet Union. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, religion is a creative force in the post-Soviet space. Indeed, unlike local political systems and elites, religious institutions and leaders often respond far more quickly to the profound changes taking place in how people live their lives . . . . Political leaders who somehow echo the past might be reassuring. Nonetheless, many are turning to religious belief for answers. (Ruble, 2006) (emphasis added, except in line 6) In this context, good leadership is clearly the key element. Notes
1 This is so even in Chechnya, where more strain than peace prevails, but where Putins pacication programme has succeeded in eectively buttressing a pro-Kremlin regime under the direction of Ramzan Kadyrov. See Chechen (2007). 2 The number of Muslims in Russia is a matter of considerable dispute, and the disparate gures oered by various sources frequently reect various political orientations with an interest in either overstating or understating them. See Hunter (2004), pp. 4251. 3 I gratefully acknowledge having these insights pointed out by an anonymous reviewer. 4 Uzzell cites the case of a conversation with Yuri Sipko, head of the Union of Evangelical ChristiansBaptists: Sipko told me that Baptists now have far less access than the Orthodox Church to government schools and military bases. But he surprised me by revealing that his clergy usually do not have problems in visiting prisons even though they lack formal, nationwide agreements for this with the justice or interior ministries. He said that the heads of individual prisons and prison camps have great latitude in deciding which visitors to

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7 8

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9 10

11

12 13

14

15 16

17 18 19

admit . . . . Thus, in spite of the Putin administrations push for centralization in Moscow, it seems that decisions about churchstate relations still vary widely among individual bureaucrats and bureaucracies out in the provinces. Holly Cartner of Human Rights Watch referred to the law as an unprecedented assault on the work of human rights groups that would inevitably undermine the rights of all Russians (Russia, 2005). For a dissenting voice on this see Petro (2005). It should be noted that cooperation among religious leaders generally appears more at the higher administrative levels, and especially at the national level, than at the regional or local levels. In particular, the lower-level religious leadership of the ROC does not mince words when it comes to criticising sektanty and other non-Orthodox, and also some ocial Muslim leaders occasionally do likewise (for example, the mufti Ashirov, whose statements are quoted below). I gratefully acknowledge this point having been made by an anonymous reviewer. These sharply diverging views can easily be observed on the websites of the organisations noted; in the case of the Kremlin, see in particular Eektivnoye (n.d.). For background, description of the Public Chamber and related web-links see Russia Prole.org (http://www.russiaprole.org/resources/structure/publicchamber) (last accessed 6 August 2008). This is a major theme in Lynch (2005), particularly ch. 3, pp. 85127. See also Evans et al. (2006). Perhaps most cursorily emblematic of these dierences is the rating of Russia as not free by Freedom House (www.freedomhouse.org) and the Kremlins dismissive response of that categorisation, while emphasising the purportedly increased strength of Russian democracy under Putin (www.kremlin.ru). Sweden and Finland have recently joined the ranks of the sceptics: see Sweden (2007). The distinction between ethnic Russians and non-Russians from the Caucasus region appears to pervade every area of Russian society, extending even into the miserable life of military conscripts, where the dagestantsy (a term used collectively for all non-Russian Caucasians) have been noted for particularly abusive hazing of Russian conscripts. See Wrongs (2004). For recent news on nationalism in Russia, see WPS Digest (n.d.), Baker and Glasser (2005), ch. 3, Russia (2006a). Hate crimes are on the rise, and the increase is concentrated in urban areas, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said in an interview published on 26 February in the newspaper Soyuznoye Gosudarstvo. According to Nurgaliyev, in 2006 police solved 169 cases involving attacks on foreign nationals, up 27% from the year before. The majority of racially motivated attacks are directed against people from the Caucasus and Central Asia. In the latest incident, two teenagers stabbed an Azeri in the Moscow metro last week, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported on February 26 (Hate, 2007). This phenomenon was noted even before the rst Putin administration, however. In 1998 Human Rights Watch cited three causative factors in particular: a misguided and failed Soviet nationalities policy; migration caused by ethnic strife and the collapse of the Soviet Union; and economic dislocation resulting from the introduction of a market economy (The Rise, 1998). I refer to this as a complicating factor in the handling of religious matters in general by the Putin administration in Warhola (2007). As pointed out by an anonymous reviewer, however, this interpretation does not necessarily mean that Knoxs thesis is false: the Russian Orthodox Church may have itself moderated by compromising with nationalists, although with inevitable consequences for its posture on various political issues. For the Constitution of this body see http://www.council.gov.ru/unitcom/about/index.html. The major exception to this point is Burns (1978). The relevance of leadership has been long understood in the military, where there is great emphasis on training not just in military skills but specically in leadership skills. The fact

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that the specic leadership skills required in the military context are very dierent from those required in the context of democratic government (see Aristotle, Politics, book 3 on citizenship) does not negate the centrality of leadership character as a determinative factor, and perhaps the most critical one, in the civilian context. 20 For a journalists scathing account of the increase in apparently politically motivated, and allegedly Kremlin-sanctioned, murders in Russia, see Specter (2007).

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