Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Russia and Ukraine: An Exceptional Love Affair?
Russia and Ukraine: An Exceptional Love Affair?
Mar 18, 2025 6:47 PM

In a meeting with young historians last fall, Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the annexation of Crimea (RT described this delicately as “the newly returned” Crimea) and reminded them that “Prince Vladimir [Sviatoslavich the Great] was baptized, and then he converted Russia. The original baptismal font of Russia is there.” Matthew Dal Santo, a fellow at the Saxo Institute at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, uses a public exhibition of art in Moscow (Orthodox Rus. My History: The Rurikids) to explain in The National Interest how Russia and Ukraine hold intertwined histories rooted in Orthodox Rus’.

“Faulty as history, Rurikids’ defiant expression of offended Russian exceptionalism is nonetheless more than a pose,” Dal Santo writes. “The West’s doggedly legalistic construction of the crisis has consistently underestimated how much Ukraine means to Putin—and a substantial proportion of the Russian public—as well as the high costs Russia is prepared to pay to keep it out of the West’s orbit.” More from his article:

While historical themes have always featured in Putin’s public statements, especially prominent themes in the Ukraine crisis have been Crimea’s significance as the site of Prince Vladimir of Kiev’s baptism in 988 and the fount of an East Slavic civilization based on Orthodoxy, and the Kremlin’s duty to defend the inhabitants of a “New Russia” (“Novorossiya”) consisting of the lands conquered by Catherine the Great (reign: 1762-96) in southern and eastern Ukraine. While “Novorossiya” has retreated to the margins of public discussion, Crimea continues to unite Russians. To convert that consensus into lasting support for Russia’s defense of its political interests in Ukraine, the Kremlin and its allies maintained a strong focus on Russia’s medieval history in the autumn and winter of 2014-15, foregrounding Russia’s non-Western values, the imperative of preserving national unity and the historical and cultural links uniting the East Slavic (Rus’) world. As Alexei Miller, a historian of public memory at the Russian Academy of Sciences, has written: “It is quite possible that in the historical perspective 2014 will be perceived as the beginning of the long process of mobilizing civil society on a platform that will be not only anti-liberal, but also nationalist.”

One example of this mobilization was the Orthodox Rus. My History: The Rurikids exhibition in Moscow’s Manege Exhibition Hall, 4-23 November 2014. Opened by Patriarch Kirill (“of Moscow and All Rus”: in the patriarchate’s view, this includes Ukraine) in Putin’s presence as part of National Unity Day celebrations, it ed a quarter of a million people—12,700 a day—in two weeks. A long tunnel of rooms in a snaking S-shape, it depicted the achievements of the twenty-one princes and tsars of the Rurikid dynasty in an epic style, relying heavily on nineteenth-century movements in Russian art. Bearded warrior-princes in flowing robes battled Khazars, Mongols and Swedes, guarded fortress walls, issued laws, built cities and received the blessings of churchmen. Wall maps showing additions and losses to the lands of Rus’ suggested the arbitrariness of Eastern Europe’s modern borders; banners bearing the exhortatory words and effigies of historians, philosophers, saints, patriarchs and presidents—including Putin twice—hung between them. Posters of “surprising facts” added a lighter note. But Rurikids’ message was serious: Russian (russkaya) civilization is exceptional, the Orthodox Church is the nation’s defining cultural institution and a strong, centralized state is crucial for guarding against foreign and domestic foes. Eighty official guides, mainly Orthodox seminarians, reinforced its themes.

Read “Russia and Ukraine’s Medieval Love Affair” by Matthew Dal Santo in The National Interest.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Video: Dispelling myths about economic inequality
The lure of socialism lies in its promise of “equality,” a hazily defined concept that educational and political leaders transform into an even more ambiguous social goal. The word itself triggers the innate sense of fairness and equity cherished by everyone raised under the influence of Western culture. The Bible, after all, repeatedly warns believers to have no respect of persons when meting out justice, which Aquinas ranked as “foremost among all the moral virtues.” But do modern-day social engineers...
Fifty years later, cities still suffer the economic effects of the 1968 riots
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the riots that began in 1968 after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The riots—sometimes referred to as the Holy Week Uprising or King assassination riots—spread through 110 cities across the United States. As historian Peter B. Levy notes, Fifty-four cities suffered at least $100,000 in property damage, with the nation’s capital and Baltimore topping the list at approximately $15 million and $12 million, respectively. Thousands of small shopkeepers saw their...
Radio Free Acton: Discussion on Communism in Cuba; Tech & work part II: Growing technology in agriculture
On this episode of Radio Free Acton, Acton’s director of programs and education, Paul Bonicelli, talks to John Suarez, research director at the Center for a Free Cuba. This talk is a preview of an ing event at Acton on April 17: Communism in Cuba, its international impact, the democratic resistance and U.S. Cuba policy. Then, on the next Tech and the Future of Work segment, Dan Churchwell, Acton’s associate director of program outreach, speaks with Kevin Scott, a soybean...
Is there a connection between opioid use and unemployment?
For the past several years the U.S. has been undergoing an opioid epidemic. Opioidsare drugs, whether illegal or prescription, that reduce the intensity of pain signals reaching the brain and affect those brain areas controlling emotion, which diminishes the effects of a painful stimulus. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in 2013 there were more than249 million prescriptionsfor opioid pain medication written by healthcare providers. This is enough for every adult in America to have a bottle of...
Remember the intangibles: A caution to the 21st-century economist
Today’s economists have no shortage of confidence, offering models and measurements aplenty. But are the tools of the field keeping pace with the actual forces and factors at work? bination of economics with statistics in plex world promises a lot more than it delivers,” economist Russ Roberts recently wrote. “We economists should be more humble and honest about the reliability and precision of statistical analysis.” Indeed, in our plex economy, what can economists actually know? In a new essay at...
The Social Capital Index: A geography of ‘associational life’ in America
In recent decades, America has experienced a wave of economic and social disruption. In our search for solutions, however, we tend to look only at the surface, assessing the architecture of particular policies or stroking our chins over economic measurements like Gross Domestic Product. But what if we had a deeper view of the dynamics beneath the surface? What if we had way to measure, assess, and observe the state of“associational life”in America (as Alexis de Tocqueville may have called...
Cronyism fueled the murder of a Slovak journalist
“Slovakia has been living through one of the most turbulent times in its young history,” says Martina Bobulová in this week’s Acton Commentary. “It has been almost a month since the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kušnírová, which have put these events in motion.” Much has changed in past four weeks – the nation went to the streets and the country experienced the biggest public protests since the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Robert Fico’s third...
How growth rates affect the wealth of nations
Note: This is post #74 in a weekly video series on basic economics. In the previous video in this series we learned a basic fact of economic wealth—that countries can vary widely in standard of living. How can we explain wealth disparities between countries? The answer, as Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution university explains, is growth rates. Tabarrok examines the growth rate of the U.S. economy and considers what would life be like if our economy had grown at an...
Unemployment as economic-spiritual indicator — March 2018 report
Series Note: Jobs are one of the most important aspects of a morally functioning economy. They help us serve the needs of our neighbors and lead to human flourishing both for the individual and munities. Conversely, not having a job can adversely affect spiritual and psychological well-being of individuals and families. Because unemployment is a spiritual problem, Christians in America need to understand and be aware of the monthly data on employment. Each month highlight the latest numbers we need...
Virtues, once again
“Crisis of Responsibility: Our Cultural Addiction to Blame and How You Can Cure It,” by David L. Bahnsen; Foreward by David French; PostHill Press, 2018; 170 pp.; $26. It’s been a long, hard slog on humanity’s path to the current century and its peculiar predicaments. Along the way, there have been numerous guidebooks to assist our respective generations’ quests for living honorable lives in the face of varyingly difficult circumstances. To list them, in fact, would create a magnificent bibliography...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved