Alexander Verkhovsky September 11 and the subsequent US military operation in Afghanistan became the second birth for the concept of: the conflict of civilizations; Samuel Huntington, especially in Russia. Of course, little remains of Huntington in Russian public discourse: the West and the world of Islam are opposed to each other, and Russia, as the leader of the Eastern Christian civilization, must find its place in this most important global conflict today.

Alexander Verkhovsky Vladimir Putin inherited a not very well-ordered legacy in terms of relations between the state and religious associations. It has already become commonplace to assert that under Boris Yeltsin the state had special relations with the Russian Orthodox Church (the Moscow Patriarchate, in contrast to other jurisdictions).