Russia adopted Christianity under Prince Vladimir of Kyiv in AD 988 after centuries of following animist beliefs. Since 1997 the Russian Orthodox Church (Russkaya Pravoslavnaya Tserkov) has been legally recognised as the leading faith and has resumed its prolific role in public life, just as it had in tsarist days. However, Russia is also a multiconfessional state with sizeable communities of Muslims, Buddhists and Jews and a constitution enshrining religious freedom.
The religion's birth dates to AD 988 when Vladimir I adopted Christianity from Constantinople (Istanbul today), the eastern centre of Christianity in the Middle Ages. The Church flourished until 1653 when it was split by the reforms of Patriarch Nikon, who insisted, among other things, that the translation of the Bible be altered to conform with the Greek original and that the sign of the cross be made with three fingers, not two.
Those who refused to accept the reforms became known as Starovery (Old Believers) and were persecuted. Some fled to Siberia or remote parts of Central Asia, where small communities of followers survive. During a brief period in the late 18th century, when the followers were free from persecution, Old Believers also founded a community in Moscow which remains the most important in Russia.
Peter the Great replaced the self-governing patriarchate with a holy synod subordinate to the tsar, who effectively became head of the Church. When the Bolsheviks came to power Russia had over 50,000 churches. Atheism was vigorously promoted under Communist rule and Stalin attempted to wipe out religion altogether until 1941, when he decided the war effort needed the patriotism that the Church could stir up. Nikita Khrushchev renewed the attack in the 1950s, closing about 12,000 churches. By 1988 fewer than 7000 churches were active and many of the priests still allowed to practise were in the pay of the KGB.
Since the end of the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church has seen a huge revival. New churches have been built and many old churches and monasteries – which had been turned into museums, archive stores and even prisons – have been returned to Church hands and restored.
Churches are decorated with frescoes, mosaics and icons with the aim of conveying Christian teachings and assisting veneration. Different subjects are assigned traditional places in the church (the Last Judgement, for instance, appears on the western wall). The central focus is always an iconostasis (icon stand), often elaborately decorated. The iconostasis divides the main body of the church from the sanctuary, or altar area, at the eastern end, which is off limits to all but the priest.
Apart from some benches to the sides, there are no chairs or pews in Orthodox churches; people stand during services such as the Divine Liturgy (Bozhestvennaya Liturgia), lasting about two hours, which is held daily any time between 7am and 10am. Most churches also hold services at 5pm or 6pm daily. Some services include an akafist, a series of chants to the Virgin or saints.
Services are conducted not in Russian but ‘Church Slavonic’, the Southern Slavic dialect into which the Bible was first translated for Slavs. Paskha (Easter) is the focus of the Church year, with festive midnight services launching Easter Day.
AWorking churches are open to everyone.
AAs a visitor you should take care not to disturb any devotions or offend sensibilities.
AOn entering a church, men bare their heads and women cover theirs.
AShorts on men and miniskirts on women are considered inappropriate.
AHands in pockets or crossed legs or arms may attract frowns.
APhotography is usually banned, especially during services; if in doubt, ask permission first.
Russia has small numbers of Roman Catholics, and Lutheran and Baptist Protestants, mostly among the German, Polish and other non-Russian ethnic groups. Communities of Old Believers still survive in Siberia, where you may also encounter followers of Vissarion, considered by his followers to be a living modern-day Jesus.
According to a 2007 US government report on religious freedom, Russian courts have tried to use the 1997 religion law (asserting the Orthodox Church’s leading role) to ban or impose restrictions on the Pentecostal Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other minority Christian faiths.
Islam is Russia’s second-most widely professed religion, believed to be practised by as many as 9.4 million people. Many more millions are Muslims by heritage. They are mainly found among the Tatar and Bashkir peoples and a few dozen of the Caucasian ethnic groups. Nearly all are Sunni Muslims, except for some Shi’a in Dagestan. Muslim Kazakhs, a small minority in southeast Altai, are the only long-term Islamic group east of Bashkortostan.
Muslim history in Russia goes back more than 1000 years. In the dying days of tsarist Russia, Muslims even had their own faction in the duma (parliament). The Islamic Cultural Centre of Russia, which includes a madrasa (college for Islamic learning), opened in Moscow in 1991.
Some Muslim peoples – notably the Chechens and Tatars – have been the most resistant of Russia’s minorities to being brought within the Russian national fold since the fall of the Soviet Union, but this has been due as much to nationalism as to religion. In an apparent effort to ease tensions between the state and Muslim communities following the war in Chechnya, Russia became a member of the influential Organisation of Islamic Conferences in 2003.
Islam in Russia is fairly secularised – in predominantly Muslim areas you’ll find women who are not veiled, for example, although many will wear headscarves; also, the Friday holy day is not a commercial holiday. Few local Muslims seriously abide by Islam’s ban on drinking alcohol.
There are around 1.5 million Buddhists in Russia. The Kalmyks – the largest ethnic group in the Republic of Kalmykia, northwest of the Caspian Sea – are traditionally members of the Gelugpa or ‘Yellow Hat’ sect of Tibetan Buddhism, whose spiritual leader is the Dalai Lama. They fled from wars in western Mongolia, where Buddhism had reached them not long before, to their present region in the 17th century.
The Gelugpa sect reached eastern Buryatiya and Tuva via Mongolia in the 18th century, but only really took root in the 19th century. As with other religions, Stalin did his best to wipe out Buddhism in the 1930s, destroying hundreds of datsans (Buddhist temples) and monasteries, and executing or exiling thousands of peaceable lamas (Buddhist priests).
Since 1950 Buddhism has been organised under a Buddhist Religious Board based at Ivolginsk. For more about Buddhism in Russia see http://buddhist.ru/eng.
Jews, who are estimated to number around 186,000 people, are considered an ethnicity within Russia, as well as a religion. Most have been assimilated into Russian culture.
The largest communities are found in Moscow and St Petersburg, both of which have several historic working synagogues. There’s also a small, conservative community of several thousand ‘Mountain Jews’ (Gorskie Yevrei) living mostly in the Caucasian cities of Nalchik, Pyatigorsk and Derbent. Siberia was once home to large numbers of Jews but now you’ll only find noticeable communities in Yekaterinburg and the Jewish Autonomous Region – created during Stalin’s era – centred on Birobidzhan.
There are two umbrella organisations of Russian Jewry. The Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS supports the Italian-born Berl Lazar as chief rabbi – he is also a member of the Public Chamber of Russia, an oversight committee for government. The other is the Russian-Jewish Congress, which recognises Russian-born Adolf Shayevich as their chief rabbi; he's rabbi of the Moscow Choral Synagogue.
Many cultures, from the Finno-Ugric Mari and Udmurts to the nominally Buddhist Mongol Buryats, retain varying degrees of animism. This is often submerged beneath, or accepted in parallel with, other religions. Animism is a primal belief in the presence of spirits or spiritual qualities in objects of the natural world. Peaks and springs are especially revered and their spirits are thanked with token offerings. This explains (especially in Tuva and Altai) the coins, stone cairns, vodka bottles and abundant prayer ribbons that you’ll commonly find around holy trees and mountain passes.
Spiritual guidance is through a medium or shaman, a high priest, prophet and doctor in one. Animal skins, trance dances and a special type of drum are typical shamanic tools, though different shamans have different spiritual and medical gifts. Siberian museums exhibit many shamanic outfits. Krasnoyarsk’s regional museum shows examples from many different tribal groups. Tuva is the most likely place to encounter practising shamans. There are shamanic school-clinics in Kyzyl, but, like visiting a doctor, you’ll be expected to have a specific need and there will be fees for the consultation.