Youth are being coached on identity

We are publishing a comment by Svetlana Solodovnik dedicated to the youth forum "Territory of Meanings" and the formation of a new Russian identity.

The government, which some time ago made a bet on the archaization of society, seems ready to step up efforts in this direction. Sometimes you come across amazing things. For example, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov , speaking late last week at the all-Russian youth educational forum "Territory of Meanings", organized by the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs jointly with the Presidential Administration, explained to the young generation that the disagreements around the Pan-Orthodox Cathedral were caused by attempts to split the Orthodox world from the outside. “The real reason is that there are quite a few outside the Orthodox world who want to create a split, primarily using the crisis in Ukraine and anti-Russian rhetoric in order to damage the positions of the Russian Orthodox Church,” he said.

Let us now leave aside the question of how far Lavrov’s invectives correspond to reality (although the accusations against “external enemies” sound very strange when the Russian Orthodox Church, which fully participated in the preparation of the Council and had no substantive claims to the documents being developed, suddenly refuses at the last moment go to Crete, and, according to some, persuade others not to go there). A more interesting audience to which these words are addressed is youth. Young people, especially young students, as you know, make up an insignificant proportion among the parishioners of the Russian Orthodox Church, despite the fact that in recent years the influx of neophytes into the church comes to a large extent precisely from the youth environment.

At the same time, it cannot be said that the forthcoming Pan-Orthodox Cathedral and everything connected with it aroused particular interest among adult parishioners. If you do not take the “zealots” who are ready to see a threat in any contacts with the outside world, and people professionally connected with church affairs, then the church people for the most part reacted to all this cathedral rigmarole very indifferently: well, some kind of official gathering, in which many incomprehensible words will be spoken and decisions will be made, which, as it seems to them, have no direct relation to the life of the parishioners. And all these documents… The Patriarchate has recently forced the priests to read the Fundamentals of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, adopted in 2000, otherwise most of them would still not have become familiar with this concept, to say nothing of the parishioners! Yes, on some forums and websites there is a lively discussion of documents adopted by the Inter-Council Presence of the Russian Orthodox Church that directly relate to church life, but the number of Orthodox who are not even drawing on a statistical error participates in this discussion.

And here the youth - it's good if a dozen people present at the forum have heard at least something about this Council! Of course, water wears away the stone. The church mission is stalling, so why not explain to the younger generation what “Russian identity” is from the state tribunes, if there are no other fasteners yet to be seen? Naturally, patriotism tops the list, but intercultural and interfaith dialogue looms at the end, plus “the formation of traditional family values ​​among young people.” Dialogue and “formation” were facilitated, among others, by Vakhtang Kipshidze, Deputy Chairman of the Synodal Department for Church Relations with Society and the Media, Albir-Khazrat Krganov, Mufti of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Moscow and the Central Region, and Shimon Levin, Deputy Chief Rabbi of Moscow.

Vakhtang Kipshidze said that a modern young man should feel free, choose good over evil and loyalty over betrayal (of course, in the old days, youth was taught quite differently!): “Society should never exist in neutrality, and not a single atheist cannot ignore the religious foundation of his state,” he said.

Shimon Levin assured the panelists that it is religion that allows the economy to develop, the state to function, and humanity to be safe, filling it spiritually.

Albir-Khazrat Krganov , speaking about interreligious dialogue from the point of view of Islam, said that the main goal of any religion is to love the creation of God.

Somehow everything is “wonderful” and “wonderful” - the speakers, apparently, completely lost their historical memory, and their adequate perception of the current day (I'm talking about religion and security). The artificiality of all the constructions offered to the same youth is striking. You can, of course, live a fiction for the time being, you can even form a bureaucratic apparatus of the state, where the main principle will be an oath of allegiance to Orthodoxy (and a little bit to Islam, even other “traditional” ones will certainly not withstand competition). But where will this artificial archaization lead us and what will we get as a result - the same corruption schemes allegedly overshadowed by God's grace (after all, even now many officials consider it good form to assure the public of their Orthodoxy)?

Polls by the Levada Center (February 2016) indicate that only 7% of Russians believe that the Russian authorities should be guided in their actions by religious beliefs - 26% are strongly against such a situation (24% rather for and 31% rather against) . This, of course, rather indicates that citizens do not want the desecularization of the state, while they may relate to archaization in different ways. But archaization does not happen without desecularization, so that, in the end, it is unlikely that such a course can count on real support from the majority of the population.