the new russian nationalismRussian culture dominates, but to testify to it far beyond its bounda-
ries, especially in conditions of contemporary human civilisation’s
spiritual and moral crisis. (Ofitsial’nyi sait Moskovskogo patriarkhata
2009)Patriarch Kirill’s suggestion that the Russian way of life be pre-
sented (and even reproduced) worldwide clearly goes beyond
Huntington’s theory of original and exclusive civilisations that
are unable to comprehend one another. In ecclesiastical under-
standing, Russian civilisation is valuable not so much because
of its uniqueness as because its values and principles are deemed
to be universal, and can be disseminated beyond the realms of
‘the Russian world’. If uniqueness were the only issue at stake,
one may agree with the phrase ‘civilisational nationalism’, sug-
gested by Emil Pain (2007; see also Verkhovsky 2014c: 74).
However, the ecclesiastical approach is not nationalist, but uni-
versal. Nationalism – ethnic or civic – suggests exclusivity, a
closed nature, the maintenance of strict boundaries between ‘us’
and ‘them’. One can hardly talk about ‘nationalism’ when the
values of a specific civilisation are freely promoted to more or less
the entire rest of the world.
The universalism of the ecclesiastical approach emerged
even more clearly during Patriarch Kirill’s speech at the World
Russian People’s Council in 2013. Despite a preliminary remark
about the uniqueness of the Russian civilisation, the Patriarch
stressed that ‘the value of any civilisation lies in what it brings to
humanity... As a country and a civilisation, Russia has some-
thing to offer the world’ (Ofitsial’nyi sait Moskovskogo patri-
arkhata 2013). Here the universal cultural mission of Russian
civilisation is clearly in harmony with the universal mission of
the Church to save humanity – that would be impossible if the
Church accepted Huntington’s theory of isolated and hostile
civilisations.
Thus, on the official level the Russian Orthodox Church does
not promote nationalist concepts – neither ethnic, nor imperial,
nor civilisational. The Church does not ethnicise, but univer-
salises, going beyond – theoretically and practically – not only
the borders of the Russian Federation but also the borders of its