HOW different was Russia during the years following the fall of Communism, before the advent of Vladimir Putin’s oppressive regime, when open political debate was possible and involved the remarkably courageous Russian Orthodox priest Fr Gleb Yakunin (1934-2014), whose life and times are the subject of Freedom and the Captive Mind.
Yakunin’s commitment to Russia’s social and political development was deeply rooted in his Christian faith; he saw no conflict between his commitment to his Church and to political action. He believed that the Russian Orthodox Church could help to transform society if it started looking outwards and drew closer to the people instead of functioning as an autocratic structure. He wanted it to face up to its past during the Soviet period, to repent for its ties with the KGB, and for its praise of Stalin and its failure to condemn the system’s ideology, Marxism-Leninism, from which stemmed the state’s anti-religious policies.
Unfortunately, the Moscow Patriarchate saw otherwise and resented his criticism. He was unfrocked in 1994 for refusing to give up his political activities, and then excommunicated in 1997, leading him to found a new Church called the Apostolic Orthodox Church in January 2000.
He was converted as a young man and, believing passionately in democracy and religious freedom, became involved in the Soviet dissident movement. He was arrested in 1979, imprisoned, and then exiled to Yakutia, the coldest region of the inhabited world, until, in 1987, he was granted amnesty by Mikhail Gorbachev.
Not long before the disintegration of the USSR, Yakunin, ever hopeful about social and political reform, and two others founded the Russian Christian Democratic Movement: its principles were fundamental to him. The movement supported “enlightened patriotism”, which involved seeking to heal the country’s deficiencies through reason and repentance, and the principles that political reform should be based on Christian values; that society, the individual, and the nation needed a spiritual renaissance; that reform should be gradual; that the rule of law was basic for a free society; and that Church and State should be separate.
Yakunin was also an inspiring parish priest, serving in a parish outside Moscow while still part of the Moscow Patriarchate, and later as a priest in the Apostolic Orthodox Church. He was a poet and a man of unfailing hope, probably over- optimistic and, indeed, naïve about the possibilities for democratic change within Russia. At his core, he was committed to the truth, and never afraid to speak out, stating “it is necessary for us not to be afraid to speak truth to power in our world.”
Freedom and the Captive Mind is a remarkable piece of scholarship and a major contribution to Russian religious history. Today’s Russia badly needs such courageous and “enlightened patriots” as was Yakunin: his mind was certainly not captive.
Xenia Dennen is a Russian specialist, and chairman of Keston Institute, Oxford.
Freedom and the Captive Mind: Fr Gleb Yakunin and Orthodox Christianity in Soviet Russia
Wallace L. Daniel
Northern Illinois University Press £25.99
(978-1-5017-7734-9)
Church Times Bookshop £23.39