Orthodox Christianity, Civil Society, and Russian Democracy

As table 1 shows, these levels of religiosity are much higher on every question for Orthodox Christians than for the nonreligious, indicating that the categorization made between Orthodox Christians and nonreligious Russians is a valid and useful one. The data also indicate, however, that there are great divisions among those who identify themselves as Orthodox. For example, only a small percentage of self-identifying Orthodox Christians attend church regularly, and some even state that they do not believe in God, leading one to wonder how such individuals construe their responses in their own minds. This observed variation in relative levels of religious devotion, along with the insights gleaned from Chesnokova's work, has led me to develop a categorization method that breaks the group of Orthodox believers down into two distinct categories.8 The first category, the devout Orthodox, includes only those respondents who identified themselves as Orthodox Christians, stated that they believe in God, and attend church services at least once per month, all central indicators of Orthodox religiosity. According to these selection criteria, devout Orthodox Christians in the survey number 186.

The remaining 1,001 self-identifying Orthodox, some of whom do not even believe in God and none of whom attend church services more than a few times per year, are labeled cultural Orthodox, following Varzanova.9 The third category remains the same, comprising the 1,210 respondents who listed no religious affiliation. Using these two distinct categories of Russian Orthodox Christians, we can examine the true nature between Orthodox religiosity and civic and democratic values.

Orthodox Christianity and Civil Society

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, scholars have regularly identified low levels of interpersonal trust in Russia as a major obstacle to political reform and social development.10 As the data in table 2 indicate, levels of trust are even lower for the devout Orthodox than they are for other Russians. Less than a quarter of all Russians polled agreed that most people can be trusted, with the percentage agreeing with that statement highest among the cultural Orthodox and the nonreligious (23.6 and 23.1 percent, respectively), compared to 19.3 percent for the devout Orthodox. This may be attributable to the religious outlook of devout believers. Orthodox Christians, not unlike many other Christians, believe in the fallen nature of this world and the existence of evil, perhaps leading to distrust for the general public, as opposed to coreligionists or those with whom they have frequent contact. Given these numbers, however, we should be careful about ascribing too much significance to this difference, although the topic certainly warrants further study. Here it is sufficient to note that the levels of trust among citizens in Russia are on par with those of other countries of the former Soviet Union, which tend to be higher than in Central and Eastern Europe."