20/05/2024 08:30 - 10:45

HALL: FATESI - TOMASI

Proponent: Suslov M.

Chair: Kotkina I., Suslov M.

Speaker: Agadjanian A., Khroul V., Kolov B., Stoeckl K., Suslov M., Suslov M.

The panel aims to analyze the Russian Orthodox Church's (ROC) responses to the Russian war in Ukraine. The panel will address the following issues: (i) on the conceptual level, the Church is trying to revise the theory of Just War, laid down in the Bases of the Social Concept (2000), by tapping into the Russian intellectual history (especially, theological legacy of Ivan Il'in). In this way, a new doctrine of "Necessary War" emerges on the intersection of political theology and ideology of identitarian conservatism; (ii) on the symbolic-representational level, ROC is sacralizing the ongoing war for the purpose of isolating and excluding this topic from the public discussions; (iii) on the level of political discourses, ROC is normalizing and de-politizing the war as a socio-political context lying outside of the sphere of individual agency and political decision-making. In this way, it is argued that the war is a personal ordeal on a par with other natural and social calamities. The panel will provide interdisciplinary empirical research of these and concomitant issues in order to understand ideational evolutions inside ROC since February 2022, as well as the Church-generated ideology's place in the "big picture" of legitimation of war by the regime of Putinism.