Every large and enduring state rests on a spiritual core around which its social life is organised - a core that helps build the economy and the political system, repel external aggression and withstand internal turmoil. This monograph argues that for Russia that core has consisted of three values: adherence to the conservative Orthodox tradition, collectivism, and a continually evolving imperial-Eurasian worldview.
The book traces their formation across a thousand years in four essays. The first follows the establishment of Orthodoxy as a way of life and thought in Kievan and Novgorodian Rus, where Christianity took hold in the struggle with paganism and where ecclesiastical and princely power developed a symphony of authority rather than the rivalry familiar in Western Europe. The second examines the Orthodox state and the peasant-collectivist, conciliar society of Muscovy, shaped by the harsher conditions of the north-east and by resistance to Catholic influence. The third analyses the gradual secularisation of the spiritual collectivist code in the Russian Empire from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The fourth addresses the radicalisation and subsequent stabilisation of spiritual life in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia.
Written by a specialist in comparative law and comparative state studies, the study connects religious history, political culture and the theory of the state, and offers a Russian scholarly perspective rarely available to the English-language reader. It is addressed to researchers and university teachers, and to students of law, political science and history, as well as to the general reader interested in how the spiritual foundations of a state are formed, tested and preserved.
Aleksey Yu. Salomatin is Doctor of Law and Doctor of History, Professor, and Corresponding Member of the International Academy of Comparative Law. His research covers comparative law and comparative state studies, the history of Russian statehood, and the interaction of law, religion and political culture.
