Religion and Nationalism in the Orthodox Religioscape: Southeastern and Post-Soviet Europe in Historical Perspective

This article analyzes the historical relationship between Orthodox Christianity and nation formation. In past centuries, most adherents to the faith lived in the Ottoman and Russian Empires, under the Moscow and the Ecumenical Patriarchates. These two empires followed different historical trajectories as they entered the modern world of nations, and their ecclesiastical institutions evolved very differently. This article uses historical experience, and the model developed in 19th century Southeastern Europe (SEE) to interpret the relationship between faith and nation in post-Soviet Europe. In SEE, the authority of the Ecumenical Patriarchate (EP) fragmented because of rising national movements. Over the 19th century, as Greece, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria became independent or autonomous states, they adopted a new blueprint for the relationship between church and nation. In contrast, the USSR superseded Holy Russia. Abolished in 1721, the Moscow Patriarchate was revived in 1917 but faced Soviet persecution for decades. Within the post-Soviet nations that emerged after the USSR’s 1991 dissolution, ecclesiastical institutions duplicated the model originally developed in 19th century SEE. National and religious conflicts became intertwined, and national antagonisms were disguised as ecclesiastical disputes. This article offers a guide for understanding post-1991 religious conflicts in Estonia, Moldova, and Ukraine, as well as the 2018 schism between the Moscow Patriarchate and the EP.