Russia

Chapter 7 addresses the question of how, after seventy years during which religion was violently suppressed, a religious reawakening could have occurred within a few years that is unparalleled in the post-communist states. According to the empirical data, many signs speak for a religious renaissance in Russia. Not only has church membership increased by about 30 per cent, but also belief in God. However, the religious revival can be hardly attributed to a deep-rooted religious mentality, and forms of religious practice are barely used. The religious renaissance in Russia has less a religious than a national and political character, with most people equating being Russian with being Orthodox. Talk should therefore be of a borrowed religious boom, one that has less to do with the internal dynamics of the religious than with political, cultural, and economic factors.