Nikolai Mitrokhin: “Archimandrite Tikhon and Malofeev will introduce Black Hundred ideologies of Russian Orthodoxy”

Nikolai Mitrokhin, a researcher at the Center for Eastern European Studies at the University of Bremen, commented for the SOVA Center on the proposals of representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox community, expressed as part of the discussion of the project “Fundamentals of State Cultural Policy.”

This initiative is in line with attempts by the state and various ideological lobbying groups to limit freedom of expression and speech in Russia. Since the directions of public, state economic life, which were not previously limited by any laws or were not introduced into the framework of any state concepts, are considered by the president as insufficiently controlled, this absolutely useless concept of state cultural policy is being prepared - a project that is clearly condemned by the Russian cultural community, both oppositional and completely systemic.

Pro-Putin groups are trying to use the mechanism for adopting such concepts to lobby for their own interests. In the case of the “Fundamentals of State Cultural Policy,” we observe how certain ideological forces within the Russian Orthodox Church are trying, using their political influence, to “push through” certain norms that, from their point of view, are useful for the church. Only Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev), Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) and Konstantin Malofeev, chairman of the Basil the Great Foundation, which is formally not connected with the church, are participating in the discussion of the project.

It is known that Archimandrite Tikhon, in addition to being the chairman of the Patriarchal Council for Culture, is a member of the board of trustees of the Basil the Great Foundation. The foundation is currently in favor with the authorities as the most active public organization that participated in the annexation of Crimea and support of pro-Russian militants in the Donbass. Accordingly, during the discussion of the proposed project, it is not pro-Putin lobbyists and broad groups of intellectuals opposing them who are fighting, but a group with great socio-political weight that de facto implemented Russian state policy on the territory of Eastern Ukraine, and relatively weak public figures from culture. It is clear that in such conditions the first group is most likely to carry out its initiative.

The question is what exactly Orthodox will this group bring to the content of this concept. And here concerns arise, since Archimandrite Tikhon is known not only as the abbot of a large monastery and Putin’s supposed confessor, at least a priest who met with him several times in the early 2000s, but also as a well-known Russian nationalist who was in contact with society “Memory” and other right-wing conservative groups in the 1990s – early 2000s, and now maintains relations with the most radical and, one might say, combat-ready part of Russian nationalists. The latter are politically covered by the Basil the Great Foundation and its director Konstantin Malofeev.

It can be assumed that Archimandrite Tikhon and Malofeev will introduce into this cultural program the most Black Hundred ideologies of what we now call Russian Orthodoxy. This means that significant resources allocated for the implementation of cultural policy will go not just to the Orthodox, but to political extremists wearing an Orthodox mask, or even just outright militants.

Sources

• Sob. inf.