Window on Eurasia

Provincial Cities Said to Hold the Key to Russia’s Spiritual Future

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 18, 2006 – Sixty percent of the residents of the Russian Federation now live in its provincial cities, more than twice as many as those who reside in rural areas and more than four times the number who live in the the megalopolises of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

And both because of the number of people living in these small and
medium-sized cities is so large and because of the specific features of
their history and current situation, they rather than the countryside
or the capitals is where Russia’s spiritual future is going to be
determined, according to a leading Russian Orthodox commentator.

In an article posted online yesterday, Dmitriy Danilov discussed the
reasons behind what he calls “the spiritual desert” these places
have become, the current shortcomings in the work of Russian Orthodox
congregations in these places, and some steps that could help Russia
revive [http://www.pravaya.ru/column/8318].

The problems of these cities -- which Russian and Western commentators
seldom give as much attention to as they do to the capitals and the
villages -- have their roots in the tsarist and Soviet past and in the
trajectory along which they have travelled over the 15 years since the
collapse of the USSR.

In pre-Soviet times, Russian cities developed very differently than
their counterparts in Europe. Situated on the periphery of
civilization, they lacked relevant models of urban life for copying and “did not
know the developed urban culture which might have reproduced the
longstanding non-aggressive ties with their neighbors.”

Instead, Danilov continued, “as soon a something threatening which
appeared to represent a more serious city, [the government of Russia]
destroyed either the city itself or its independent status.” And as a
result, the cities remained outposts and fortresses rather than places
where “an Urban Resident in the West sense” could appear.

Moscow and St. Petersburg have always been exceptions, Danilov said,
but “the victory of one over the other as a rule meant little for the
urban world of Russia as a whole.” Indeed, for most residents of
Russia’s smaller cities, such shifts represented only the replacement
of “one black hole swallowing up resources by another.”

This difficulty in the development of genuine cities was compounded by
Soviet policies driven by an ideological commitment to overcome the
differences between urban and rural life, something that might have
lifted up rural residents but in fact had the result of keeping most
urban residents tied to and at the level of rural ones.

And in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet system, the situation in
small and medium-sized cities in Russia has become even worse. However
bad things have become in rural Russia, “the rural resident always
remains by his nature and self-identification a rural resident. He
simply has no other choice.”

But when small and medium-sized cities lose their industrial base and
began to decline, their residents, who have no ability to make the
tradition to the major megalopolises “devolve into the more customary
status of the Russian urban world – into a ‘sloboda,’ a
neighborhood in this case with close ties to the countryside.

Such decay, Danilov wrote, leads to a situation in which the residents
of these provincial cities are “morally liberated from any social
activity whatsoever,” and rapidly take on the worst rather than the
best features of rural life. Indeed, he says, it is possible to speak
about “the de-socialization” of this body of partially urbanized
individuals.

What has the Orthodox Church been doing to help counter these trends?
Danilov asked. Unfortunately, he said, not as much as it could or
should, sometimes because of the policies of the governments under
which it has lived but quite often because of the ways in which the Church
itself at the parish level has evolved.

Between 1992 and 2002, he noted, the number of Russian Orthodox
parishes in the Russian Federation rose from 2880 to 8897, something that many
hierarchs and officials like to call attention to as evidence of what
they believe is a genuine revival of church life in that country.

Certainly, they have some reason for taking pride in this development,
Danilov said. But he argued that there are three reasons for thinking
that this statistic, one that he says is unlikely to grow much in the
near future, is hardly an adequate measure of the impact of the Church
in Russia.

First, as a result of the Church’s experience in Soviet times, most
priests view their responsibilities as being limited to providing
services to those who come to them rather than reaching out to the
community and seeking to organize it. As a result, the numbers of
people the Church reaches is much smaller than it should be.

Second, while there may be more people attending Church now than in the
past, fewer of them are active participants in the work of the Church,
thus leaving the priest more autonomous and isolated and the community
he is supposed to serve far more atomized than it was in the past or
remains in some rural areas.

And third – and this is Danilov’s most important point in this
particular case – the Russian Orthodox Church is overwhelmingly
urban. “Almost 90 percent of its parishes are in cities and especially in
the small and mid-sized provincial cities he is concerned with.

Given the problems residents of these locales now suffer, the
Church’s failure to reach out, organize and speak for them means that “the
real space of Russian Orthodoxy ever more often recalls the space of the
Church in late Roman times, whose leaders seldom ventured outside the
borders of the former ancient cities where it was born.”

That might be sufficient were the parishes in these small cities where
most Russians live in the right place, staffed with dynamic priests,
and actively involved in promoting (or restoring) a sense of community that
people there now lack. But in the current situation, the approach of
the Orthodox Church is not enough.

And those who believe in the saving power of the Church need to
recognize that they much focus their efforts where most Russians now
life, not in Moscow and St. Petersburg, however much attention these
cities receive, or in rural areas, however nostalgically they may
continue to look back to the places from which they came.

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