Panel: POLITICS, SOCIETY AND RELIGION IN RUSSIA: TRANSFORMATIONS SINCE 2022



1150.3 - PALINGENETIC CIVILISATIONISM AND THE BODY POLITIC: ORTHODOXY, SURVIVAL AND REVIVAL IN RUSSIA SINCE 2022

AUTHORS:
Kolov B. (University of Oslo ~ Oslo ~ Norway)
Text:
This paper analyses how, since 2022, Russian Orthodox-inflected civilisationist discourse has framed the Russo-Ukrainian War as a moment of spiritual testing and rebirth, through which Russia's historical mission and geopolitical vocation are reaffirmed. It shows how themes of sacrifice, moral purification, and collective endurance recast the national body as both a civilisational and eschatological subject, as well as an object of biopolitical renewal, with demographic reproduction positioned as a measure of civilisational strength rather than a standalone policy concern. The paper argues that this palingenetic imagination integrates eschatology, biopolitics, and geopolitics into a single wartime grammar, in which imperial irredentism, demographic survival, and moral regeneration are articulated as inseparable dimensions of Russia's civilisational destiny.