Rival brothers

The celebration of the 1020th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus' perfectly demonstrates the whole gamut of changes that have occurred in the post-Soviet space over the past two decades, since the famous Millennium. Then the decorous and pompous nature of the celebration was not overshadowed by any excesses. And a faithful patriot of the Soviet country and a staunch adherent of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Filaret (Denisenko), better known in the competent authorities under the pseudonym Antonov, was one of the main organizers of the celebrations designed to show the whole world that everything is in order with freedom of religion in the USSR.

Now it's the other way around. Russian hierarchs are going to Kyiv as if they were in the “near abroad”, the confrontation between the Moscow and Constantinople Patriarchates has spilled out into the streets (so far, thank God, only in the form of a “war of portraits” of two primates), and Filaret is either the Kiev Patriarch or an anathematized Citizen Denisenko found himself on the deep periphery of events, despite President Yushchenko’s sympathy for him. However, there are rumors in the information space that Constantinople is about to recognize Filaret - some argued that this could happen already during the current celebrations.

However, instead, Patriarchs Alexy and Bartholomew served the Liturgy together, then talked peacefully and separated, and the head of the foreign policy department of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Kirill, later stated that this was a meeting of two brothers, and not competing companies. But still, the impression was created that the worst scenario—a conflict in world Orthodoxy—was avoided almost at the last moment. Especially considering how the Russian media in recent days have treated the Patriarch of Constantinople almost as an agent of the CIA, world imperialism and Brzezinski, who is only thinking about how to harm Russia more to please Ukrainian nationalists and the American authorities.

In fact, such PR has little to do with reality. The truth is that President Yushchenko really wants the Primate of Constantinople to give legitimacy to Filaret and his associates. Just like the church interests of Moscow and Constantinople often seriously diverge - both in the Ukrainian church issue, and in the British (which seems to have been resolved), and in the Estonian one (it still remains extremely painful). Even when discussing such an exotic topic as the care of believers in China, the two churches cannot find a common language. The most important thing is that Constantinople insists on its real primacy in the Orthodox world, while Moscow is ready to recognize only a nominal primacy for it. So, if we can talk about the Patriarchs as brothers demonstrating unity, then they are competing brothers, and unity was achieved on the basis of compromises and is perceived by observers as temporary.

Bartholomew went to Kyiv in order to establish his understanding of hierarchy in the Orthodox world. He repeatedly emphasized that it was his church that was the mother church of the Ukrainian one. And if so, then, consequently, Constantinople has the right to the role of arbiter in the conflict between various church movements in Ukraine. In his address to the Orthodox believers of Ukraine, Bartholomew does not mention either the canonical church or the schismatics who are considered in Moscow to be Philaret and his supporters, as well as the small and increasingly marginal autocephalous church. The Patriarch of Constantinople speaks only of “confusion,” of “division,” which “destroys not only the spiritual unity, but also the civil unity of the Ukrainian people and carries obvious grave consequences for the future of Ukraine.” Moscow has a sharply negative attitude towards the intervention of President Yushchenko and his brother Peter in church problems. In Constantinople, on the contrary, they believe that “the civil, political, ecclesiastical and, in general, intellectual leadership of the Ukrainian people has a common duty to use as widely as possible within acceptable limits the gift of Baptism given by God, not only for the immediate correction of various confusions and traumas of the historical past, but and to restore the unifying role played by the Orthodox Church in the self-awareness of the Christ-loving Ukrainian nation.” A similar quote—with some stylistic edits—could have come from the lips of the Ukrainian president.

But since Bartholomew wants to be an arbiter, is he interested in publicly taking the side of one of the participants in the Ukrainian church conflict - in this case, Philaret, for whom Constantinople also has no special sympathy? In the 90s, he tried to unite around himself various non-canonical groups, including Greek ones, who consider Bartholomew a heretic. Or is it more important for the Patriarch of Constantinople that his arbitration role be tacitly recognized by Moscow, albeit without any optimism (and with a desire to reconsider it at the first opportunity). So that even after Bartholomew’s Kyiv statements, the Moscow Patriarch would maintain outwardly friendly, fraternal communication with him. In order to obtain concessions from Moscow, for example, on the Estonian church issue, let us recall that the Moscow Patriarchate ignores church events in which representatives of the Estonian Orthodox Christians under the jurisdiction of Constantinople take part. The question seems to be rhetorical.

In the fall, a pan-Orthodox meeting is to take place in Istanbul, in which the primates of all canonical churches will take part - in recent months there were great doubts that Alexy II would come to Bartholomew (and, consequently, the significance of the meeting would sharply decrease). After the dialogue of the Patriarchs in Kyiv, Bartholomew expressed hope that his Russian colleague would still visit Istanbul: usually such statements are not made out of nowhere.

It is also necessary to mention the counter-play of the Moscow Patriarchate, which in recent days has launched an active struggle for the sympathy of the Orthodox world - this is how it won over to its side the Church of Cyprus, which ignored the Kyiv celebrations, and also achieved the cancellation, under the plausible pretext, of the visit of the Georgian Catholicos to Kyiv. It is clear that if Constantinople in the current situation had agreed to unilateral recognition of Filaret, then not only would the meeting in Istanbul be disrupted, but the unity of the Orthodox churches would also be undermined. In return, Bartholomew received an extremely unreliable, politically opportunistic ally, on whose side there is only a minority of practicing believers in Ukraine. It seems, however, that the Patriarch of Constantinople, even without this, would not have entered into a tough conflict with Moscow, fraught with a severance of relations, since he expects to gain more advantages by establishing his arbitration function both in universal Orthodoxy and in the affairs of Ukrainian believers. It seems that Moscow’s counter-game was actually aimed not at disrupting the expected reception of Filaret into the fold of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, but at preventing the Kyiv celebrations from turning into a demonstration of Bartholomew’s primacy in the Orthodox world on the eve of the Istanbul summit.

What's next? Most likely, tough negotiations, difficult behind-the-scenes compromises with external manifestations of piety. And new stages of competition between Orthodox brothers.

The author is vice-president of the Center for Political Technologies