Closed City Christians: Theopolitics of Canonical Territory in Post-Soviet Russia

A new ‘Great Schism'? Theopolitics of communion and canonical territory in the Orthodox Church

“…1 The post-Soviet churches sought the recognition of their autonomy directly from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, despite being on what the Moscow Patriarchate considered as its canonical territory. This theological-political concept, which claims the sovereignty of a church over a particular territory and its subjects, was strategically deployed by the Russian Orthodox Church to defend its monopoly over the whole territory of the former Soviet Union (Martin 2019). 2 Yet similar territorial claims were made by the aspiring national churches, so debates on canonical territory encompassed both local claims for autocephaly and Moscow's jurisdiction over lost territories.…”

Militant Orthodox Fringe: Political Programs of Early 21st Century Serbian Right-Wing Organizations

“…Russia has played an important role in Serbia during the last several decades, often seen as the "Mother Hen" to Serbia, a helpful hand in fending off what the Right Wing understands as the nefarious "West" (Biserko & Stanojlović, 2016). Russia's Orthodoxy is oft seen as a utility in foreign relations (Coyle, 2018;Martin, 2019), and has been used by Russia to officially embrace Serbia under its wing. The Eurasian concept used by the SNP Naši is dubbed the "Panarin model" of Eurasian integrations, where, somewhat naively, Belgrade is seen as the "fourth capital" of Eurasia, after St. Petersburg, Kiyiv, and Almaty.…”