THE RUSSIAN HOLY WAR AND MILITARY STATEHOOD.

• Author: Saar, Juri

1. Introduction

   There are three main characteristics that make a religious war (1) a special kind of warfare. Firstly, what is the war waged for, and for what purpose, i.e., how is victory defined. Secondly, who is being fought against, i.e., who defines the enemy and on what justification. Thirdly, how the war is fought, i.e., what means are used and what the rules are. In the case of religious warfare, all three boil down to religion--that is, war is waged for the global victory of a religiously defined community, war is waged against religious enemies, and the means of warfare, the rules, have allegedly received approval from the superhuman realm. War thus becomes sacred, and religious warriors are convinced of the (unlimited) powers given to them by God (Lewis 1990).

   In the tradition of Russian warfare, elements of a religious war, the number of which increased exponentially after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war in the spring of 2022, can be detected at first sight. Religious war is indicated by the activities of the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), which consecrate weapons that are used to attack Ukrainian cities and kill people. In his sermon on 25 September 2022, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, approved all the actions that the Russian occupiers are carrying out in Ukraine and, should they perish, promised them the forgiveness of their past sins by God (Russkaja Pravoslavnaja Cerkov' 2022). Already in 2014, the Russian Orthodox Church announced that it considers the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as a religious conflict (Riistan 2016: 207- 208). The Russian Orthodox Church regularly creates basic arguments for the Kremlin authorities to justify the military invasion of Ukraine in 2022 (Kilp and Pankhurst 2022).

   On the Day of National Unity of Russia, the former President of Russia and Deputy Chairman of the State Security Council Dmitry Medvedev posted on social media, "Why our cause is right". Medvedev announced: "We listen to the words of the Creator in our hearts and obey him. These words give us a holy purpose. The purpose is to stop the supreme ruler of hell, whatever name he goes by -- Satan, Lucifer, or Iblis because his purpose is death. Our purpose is life. His weapon is a blasphemous lie. But our weapon is the truth. That's why our cause is right. That's why the victory is ours!" (Medvedev 2022).

   The article tests the hypothesis according to which Russia's military strategy and the ideas of the country's main ideologists can be linked to a war waged for the sake of religion. The author also attempts to assess to what extent such a link finds practical confirmation in the current Russian-Ukrainian war. The research focuses simultaneously on the analysis of two different areas: firstly, what is expressed in words, what is declared, and secondly, what is manifested in actions. The divergences between Russian 'military thought' and 'military actions' can be large and fundamental while still being informative.

2. Russian religious war and Islamic Jihad

   In Russia, religious war has not reached a level of conceptual development comparable to Islamic Jihad. As a doctrine, the 'holy war' during Putin's era is inferior also to the ideological 'great achievements' of the era of Marxism-Leninism (e.g., Lenin as the prophet of the proletariat's struggle for freedom, the Soviet Union as the centre of the global peace struggle). Bolshevist messianism was widely known, although it was disguised as modern by first trying to conduct a futuristic experiment with its own country and people, the results of which were to expand and be pioneering for the whole of humanity (Pipes 2001). The Bolshevik world revolution and the class struggle for the new world (worldwide communism) can be considered as a holy war. It is not difficult to see that the so-called internal and external class struggle was for the Bolsheviks the same kind of religious undertaking, which included warfare with the capitalist giants in their own consciousness, as well as armed struggle for world revolution, just as Jihad in its various forms has been for Muslims (Saar 2014: 282-287).

   The Kremlin's religious war of today is fought in the name of a religious community defined as the Russian World (Russkii Mir). Mir as a term simultaneously denotes a community, a village community, or a village government, but in Church Slavonic, it also means society, the world, and the state of peace. (2) The Russian World represents a cultural-civilizational, geopolitical and religious concept. It is eclectic and created in a so-called post-modernist key from contradictory components from different stages of history to substantiate the imperial ambitions of the Putin regime. The Russian World embodies the idea of a supranational sphere of Russian civilization called Holy Russia, which includes the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Belarus (occasionally also Moldova and Kazakhstan), but also all ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking people who have embraced Russian culture around the world (Public Orthodoxy 2022).

   The Russian World, like the Islamic ummah, has no physical borders; it has a direct concern with all lands, countries, and territories where Russians live or where there is a tradition of using the Russian language. In this regard, since Sergei Karaganov presented his 'concept of near abroad' (Karaganov 1992), Kremlin ideologists have started to use the (Russian) language as a weapon in a hybrid war. For people in the Western world, the attempt to politicize the use of language was shocking, but for those who lived in the Soviet Union, where the Russian language was purposefully used as a means of Russification, such an approach was not surprising.

   The Russian World embraces all those who, according to Moscow, should belong there. No one is called to the Russian World individually by God, as in Islam, but certain groups of people are made aware of their collective membership. Each member of the group would be obliged to obey such a 'collective call'. Instead of religious equality, the doctrine emphasizes the duty of obedience and self-sacrifice. Not much is known about birth right belonging to the Russian World in addition to Russian citizenship. Refusal to belong to the Russian World means treason with corresponding consequences.

   The religiosity underlying the Russian world is not as clearly in place as it is in Islam, where the believer has definite religious obligations. The Russian World, unlike the Muslim ummah, is centralized and hierarchical, i.e., directly related to subordination to Moscow as the centre. The Russian World has one and only one common political centre (Moscow, the Kremlin), one common historical, spiritual source (Kyiv as the 'mother of all Russia'), one common language (Russian), one common church (the Russian Orthodox Church and the Moscow Patriarchate) and one common the patriarch (Patriarch of Moscow) who works in 'symphonic harmony' with the president, that is, the national leader (Putin), maintaining a special common spirit, morality and culture (Public Orthodoxy 2022). With the help of the Russian Orthodox Church, they want to fill the void left after the disappearance of the CPSU as the ideological support of the Bolshevik state from the arena of history, doing so with similar militancy.

   On 5 September 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Russia's new foreign policy doctrine called the Russian World (Putin 2022a). The doctrine states that Russia must 'protect, secure, and promote the traditions and ideals of the Russian World'. The Russian Federation provides support to compatriots living abroad to realize their rights, ensure the protection of their interests and preserve the Russian cultural identity, the doctrine says. According to the document, Russia must strengthen cooperation with other Slavic nations, as well as China and India, and strengthen ties with the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa.

   Ukraine, as a sovereign state, has no place in this concept. In the holy war, it is the kindred nations who refuse to participate in a global religious event that are treated as traitors. Already Putin's declaration of war immediately before 24 February 2022 presented the motives of the holy war when he, in the name of the interests of Holy Russia, denied the existence of Ukrainians as a people and the right of the Ukrainian state to life (Putin 2022b). The Kremlin's claims about the 'Banderians and neo-Nazis' who seized power in Kyiv are an example of the demonization of the attack that goes along with the religious war. In addition, the crimes against humanity and war crimes systematically carried out by the Russian military are aimed at the peaceful population, i.e., all Ukrainians, for the sole reason that the occupiers were not welcomed in Ukraine with bread and salt.

3. Waves of Russia's religious war in the 20th and 21st centuries

   Russia's religious war, like Jihad, continues without interruption (Khadduri 2005: 55-73), but active combat occurs in waves, alternating between periods of calmer and active warfare. From Moscow's point of view, the Great Patriotic War was a hot phase of the religious war, to which the Second World War created a favourable background. Nazi Germany was an asymmetric weapon for Stalin, and the aid provided by the West was ultimate to be used in the fight against the West itself. Before the outbreak of the World War, the Bolsheviks worked closely with their enemies, who were later brought to trial (the Nazis). The satanic stratagem was to make the class enemies fight each other first, to win the great war essentially with the help of the enemies, and at the end of the war, together with one group of enemies to judge and punish another group of enemies.

   One of the cornerstones of today's identity of the Kremlin is the desire to experience religious pride and sacred enthusiasm for the victory achieved at that time. 'Immortal...