The Russian Orthodox Church in Search of the Cultural Canon

This paper documents and analyzes the building blocks of the Orthodox cultural canon and cultural policy. The author argues that in spite of the Church’s attempts to renegotiate its status in (post-) secular society, the Orthodox cultural products have restricted access to the nation-wide market, partially due to the lack of theoretical reflection on culture, and partially because of the Church’s unsettled accounts with Russian history of the 20th century. This produces an effect of increased reliance on the state’s restrictive measures in the cultural sphere.