The Russians like to point out that theirs is the last Christian country in Europe, the envoy from heaven to a godless West.
A particular Mail columnist (I shan’t name him this time lest I be accused of having it in for that Putin fan) agrees. Russia, he confirms, is “the most conservative and Christian country in Europe”, while Britain is neither.
It’s hard to argue with the second part of the statement, but the first one just doesn’t quite tally with what I know about Russia, which is quite a bit more than that nameless hack.
But how do you judge the religiosity of a nation? For example, a man who prays several times a day, observes all the feasts and refuses to work on Sunday won’t be caught in the statistical net if he hardly ever goes to church. Conversely, a regular church-goer who doesn’t believe in God but likes the companionship of a parish will swell the numbers of the believers.
However, while readily accepting the shortcomings of statistics, one still has to insist that there is one datum that gives a more or less accurate idea of a country’s religiosity: church attendance at Christmas and Easter.
These are the two most important Christian festivals, celebrated by both devout and nominal believers, and also by many atheists. For example, I remember my Moscow neighbours, each one a Party member and statutory atheist, painting eggs at Easter and baking kulich, the festive cake not unlike the Italian panettone.
Hence church attendance at Christmas and Easter is as reliable a statistic as one is likely to get. It certainly wouldn’t overestimate the proportion of devout believers. If anything, that statistic would be on the high side, boosted by the typological equivalents of my erstwhile Moscow neighbours.
And what do you know: this year, the same number of people, roughly 1.4 million, attended the Christmas services in Russia and in Britain. Considering that the population of Russia is more than twice that of Britain (although the gap is narrowing by the day), Russia is half as religious.
Putin, who after many wrong attempts finally had to learn that the Orthodox cross themselves from right to left, rather than the way people do it in Hollywood films, celebrated the Christmas mass on his lonesome (if you don’t count the photographer).
The setting was the Annunciation Cathedral, the smallest one of the three in the Kremlin. It was also the only one designed by Russian architects, the other two owing their existence to Italian masters. Perhaps for that reason, Russian tsars always used the Annunciation Cathedral as their private chapel. But they never celebrated major festivals in solitude.
That was because they were neither hypochondriac enough to fear infection nor cowardly enough to fear assassination. Putin is both, but then neither is he a tsar.
He is just a chap raised in the Petersburg gutter, the chieftain of a gang made up in equal measure of KGB officers and gangsters, so intermingled that it’s no longer possible to tell which is which.
Oh yes, he is also – if you wish to believe the aforementioned if unnamed hack – the president of the most Christian country in Europe. Humbug.
The most Christian country in Europe? Not by half, if you choose to believe the church attendance records instead.
Maybe Putin believes his own propaganda.
Society like the Soviet Union which is militantly anti-religious and Putin being a member of an organization that was outspokenly militantly anti-religious you can reasonably ask if the status of Putin with regard to religion is all a sham
Perhaps Vlad Had an experience like Paul he saw the light somehow I do not believe it
The unnamed columnist may have been referring to Russia’s superior innate spirituality. Or perhaps he had the beatitudes in mind, comparing the British, most of whom can claim to be poor only “in spirit”, to the majority of the Russian population who are just poor, period.
That hermit in the picture does not appear to be praying – at least, that is not a normal posture. It reminds me that if I am ever going to run for public office, I must remember to have a professional photographer on hand to document my more pious moments.